If you’re interested in the future of Windows, I suggest you tune in to the live broadcast of this morning’s Build conference keynote. It’s due to sta
[See the full post at: Windows at Build – big stuff coming]
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Windows at Build – big stuff coming
- This topic has 37 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 10 months ago.
AuthorViewing 16 reply threadsAuthor-
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And refrigerators! Don’t forget refrigerators!
1 user thanked author for this post.
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Is there anyone here who thinks Microsoft’s hype is something other than just hype any more?
Whatever they say, I’ll believe it when I see it actually working. Where’s that ability to photograph something from several angles and have Windows just turn it into a 3D model?
“Big stuff” hasn’t been part of Windows development since Vista. It doesn’t describe deleting perfectly good features and subsystems without something as good to replace them.
Many folks might say Vista was a failure, but they might also herald Windows 7 as the greatest Windows ever. Where did that goodness come from? Big stuff developed in Vista, followed by the necessary years of refinement and bugfixing.
Years are what it actually takes to build good things that are beyond the abilities of any one human to conceive in complexity. Not months.
The words you may have been looking for are “spinning wheels”. Microsoft is just making doughnuts in the parking lot of operating systems. Sounds impressive, makes lots of smoke, but at the end of the day really only just ruins a nice sports car.
-Noel
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“The words you may have been looking for are “spinning wheels”. Microsoft is just making doughnuts in the parking lot of operating systems. Sounds impressive, makes lots of smoke, but at the end of the day really only just ruins a nice sports car.”
You, Sir, have my vote for best analogy on the “new” Microsoft ever!
Are we “loving” Windows yet?
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You, Sir, have my vote for best analogy on the “new” Microsoft ever!
Noel-
You have my vote too.
-Alice
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One issue that bothers me is the hype given to yawners. The new features are not the type of feature most users will really care about enough to beat down the doors to get a copy when it is released. It seems MS has lost sight of what the main purpose of any OS is.
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As Noel aptly said, we don’t know at this point if MS is just blowing smoke and showing us what they want to accomplish, or wether this stuff really will see the day and work as intended.
There are a lot of good ideas presented, with the usual good and bad side of the same coin. For instance, all this “personal digital assistant” stuff. Its nice that our gadgets can take care of details but that turns us into forgetful people that rely far too much on the gadget being available and working properly. Thus we might end up completely lost in the real world when the technology fails because we don’t use our memory, organisation and coping skills as much.
I can really appreciate the workplace supervision and powerpoint translation feature. Workplace supervision, when done for anything except employee spying, can be a real boon to productivity. I’ve retired recently, but in my former line of work maintaining about 600 classrooms equiped with modern A/V systems with a crew of 6 to 8 people, I can easily envision how we could use the classroom cameras in a novel way, 1 – to check if a tech really went to room X, who was the tech and did he/she perform what was on the work order, and then close the order or flag it for further followup. 2 – Facial recognition: A – the teacher walks up to the podium, is recognized by the security system and the AV system becomes unlocked and available for use (currently, they have to swipe their ID card in the reader). B – Via facial expression & behaviour analysis, a call to the tech help desk can be initiated if the software detects that the teacher seems to be having trouble with the equipment, etc (currently, they have to initiate a manual phone call).
We often have international conferences and guest lecturers so having their powerpoint presentations translated for attendees or students, in their native language, can be a real help in appreciating and understanding the presentation content more so than usual.
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Microsoft making big steps towards eliminating Win32???
Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. Here’s a sneak peek at its replacement.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-windows-must-die-for-the-third-time/
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
6 users thanked author for this post.
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Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. Here’s a sneak peek at its replacement.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-windows-must-die-for-the-third-time/
From that article:
Microsoft introduced a new programmatic model with the introduction of the Windows 8 OS. That framework, which is now commonly known as Universal Windows Platform (UWP), is a fully modernized programming environment that takes advantage of all the new security advancements introduced since Windows 8 and that are in the current Windows 10.
While Windows 8 was not well-received in the marketplace because of its unfamiliar full-screen “Metro” UX, the actual programmatic model that it introduced, which was greatly improved for desktop-style windowing in Windows 10, is technically sound and much more secure than Win32 due to its ability to sandbox apps.
I’m here to tell you that I need hip boots to wade through that.
I have 4 decades software engineering experience, but am no dinosaur. Just this week I implemented GPU-based code to analyze a megapixel image in less than half a millisecond.
Every fiber of my being says that the “Universal Windows Platform” offers NOTHING of value.
It would have been a GREAT idea had they actually done even a little of what those odiferous paragraphs above claim.
It should come as no surprise what I’m saying… In what is it, 4 years now of UWP development have you personally SEEN anything you would call amazing implemented in the Metro/Modern/UWP paradigm?
(I wish I could make that question show in a bigger font; it’s a big question)
Wouldn’t you think you would have seen at least SOMETHING amazing if there were actual substance to it?
Back in 1978 I was speaking commands into a microphone connected to an Apple II, and was able to control the movements of a little remote-controlled car. Seriously.
Computers are no less than ONE MILLION times more powerful today. Do they understand us one million times better, even after 40 years of development?
What we need is less marketing and more actual, substantive engineering.
-Noel
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Yup, I think MS missed the boat with Windows phone, and now they are digging a deeper hole.
Their powers that be seem to think that the whole world revolves around mobile computing.
And they seen to assume that the entire universe of computing can migrate to that platform.
Bwahahahaha!!! I like the mobile stuff, but comparing the two is like apples to oranges …
Back in 1978 I was running a computer that filled an entire room. You’ve probably seen those in old movies. 🙂
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
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@Noel yeah I caught that article as well. I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have maintained for some time that “Windoze” as an OS has probably Plateued as in they cant really find a meaningful direction to go with it. You also echo my sentiments that Marketing is basically the “tail wagging the dog”
Produce a good reliable reasonably priced product and it will sell its self without all the Advertising Hyperbole 😉3 users thanked author for this post.
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There was a clear cut direction they could have gone: Take the core OS that so many people used, improved security and privacy, then add optional modules and apps that users need and would buy at a price that is justifiable.
The problem is they don’t know how to do that. They too much into marketing, finance, buying other companies that they have no clue how to integrate, etc. This makes bundles of money for top mgmt that require no knowledge, skills and effort, but destroys the company in the long term. It’s the path of all dominant monopolists.
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> While Windows 8 was not well-received in the marketplace because of its unfamiliar full-screen “Metro” UX.
MS introduced that UI for unification with phones, then dropped the phones and left us with it. Now they introduce yet another UI and “phone on ARM”. Nonsense.
And all this for absolutely NO justification whatsoever — what exactly does this offer that was needed that we did not have in Win7?
This is a general problem in the tech industry: the corporate management and engineering people have become so disconnected from users that they are incapable to create products and services that provide value — they are all inventions that only the top 1% can dream of: driverless and flying cars, $400 juicers that are no better than fists, space rockets, speakers with screens in the bedroom and so on.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/09/medicaid-chief-andrey-ostrovsky-silicon-valley-missing-unicorns.html
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It seems pretty clear that all of the things we’re being told about UWP on the desktop that supposedly make it better are not the primary reasons for UWP’s existence. UWP (like Metro/Modern before it) is about Microsoft desperately trying to ‘will’ a well-stocked app store into being so they can start selling phones (initially) and so they can reap the benefits of an Apple-style walled garden on all platforms they support. All of the benefits touted for UWP on the desktop really seem to be attempts to sweeten the UWP pot to try to get people on board more than anything else.
There are two sides to everything (if not more). The flip side of all of those UWP benefits is that “apps” can do less than programs. If they’re fully sandboxed to keep them from having access to the system at a lower level, it means that programs we now take for granted that do that low-level stuff won’t be able to do so. The programs we use to remove the silliness MS has injected into Windows, and to replace the good stuff MS has removed, won’t be able to do that anymore in app form. Microsoft will have much more say in what we can do with our own systems. It’s quite clear that this is already one of the goals of Windows 10, but because of the powerful nature of the Win32 system, we can bend Windows back to our will (without which I would certainly not be using Windows 8.1).
Apple’s iOS has a great deal of protection against malware. It’s so locked down and restricted that it would be difficult for malware to do anything. For those who want to use something out of the box, this approach is perfect. For those of us that want to go a little deeper, it would be so frustrating that I’d probably end up using an iDevice as a cutting board like in that video clip.
For those of us who are already annoyed by the control Microsoft wishes to give itself over our PCs, UWP just looks like more of the same. More control for Microsoft, less for the user. While that may appeal to some users, it certainly does not to me.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)1 user thanked author for this post.
Thanks but sorry, couldn’t read that ‘article’ without stepping in too many marketing cow patties.
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A Field of dreams. If you build it they will come. LOL! 🙂
I think that the elephant in the room that Microsoft still cannot see is that applications make the OS successful, not the other way around.
It doesn’t matter if you can make the next great PC operating system, or the greatest mobile OS ever. Users, applications, and developers are the key drivers of the market.
Just look at the Windows phone.
If you think that you can attempt to dictate changes to the underlying platform that the existing applications are built on, you will probably fail. The main reason is economic. There are millions and millions of man hours and dollars, not to mention billions of lines of code tied up in software that still works. What company executive will sign off on buying all new software, if what he has already works?
Why do you think Cobol programmers still have jobs?
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
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This “Pick Up Where You Left Off” looks really cool. 2 things:
a/ will it work without Cortana? (1. I don’t want it; 2. Even if I would – there no Cortana in Polish)
b/ will it work with Android?
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Microsoft making big steps towards eliminating Win32??? Microsoft knows Windows is obsolete. Here’s a sneak peek at its replacement. http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-windows-must-die-for-the-third-time/
Thanks for this article! Its a good analysis of what MS is up to, especially with their Windows 10 S version. “Trial Balloon” is an apt description.
But I don’t buy, quote: “… Not just for Microsoft itself but also for the end-users that will have a much more secure computing experience to show for it.” . It might be secure from “outside” threats, but all that is undone by the “internal” threats/stuff that leak private data when you use the OS and its services and apps. We always hope that MS won’t turn malevolent at some point, or won’t get hacked. But they will “monetize” users to the max. For me, that is already a threat of sorts.
Quote: “… As it stands, you also can’t change the default search engine to Google from Bing either. All of this is done under the premise of improved security.” Yeah yeah, as we say in french, “la sécurité as le dos large” (security has a large back, as in security being used as an umbrella term ).
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Recommend reading the comments to that article. Very entertaining, and informative! 🙂
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
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They’re gonna pry Windows 8.1 from my cold dead fingers 🙂
The comments didn’t really do much for me except reinforce that most tech savvy people are completely disgusted with M$.
Fortran, C++, R, Python, Java, Matlab, HTML, CSS, etc.... coding is fun!
A weatherman that can code4 users thanked author for this post.
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The comments didn’t really do much for me except reinforce that most tech savvy people are completely disgusted with M$.
Yeppers!!! 🙂
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
Naming stuff at MS needs some work. Fall Update (FU) has to go.
The Fall Update arrives in Spring in the southern hemisphere. Seems MS does not know that.
I was surprised to see that iTunes is going to be in the Windows Store but not so surprised to see some Linux there. I will be interested to see if MS actually delivers on all the other stuff they promised. They have yet to deliver on a few things that were promised in the last build.
Maybe Microsoft should just create a desktop environment for Linux, and call it Windows LX.
🙂
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
Windows has a future?
I see nothing that makes any difference for me.
We don’t need yet another UI — we need the one they dropped to make way for phones, which they dropped. I don’t need entertainment and Cortana in the bathroom.
And we sure don’t need fluent but solid.
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I will be interested to see if MS actually delivers on all the other stuff they promised. They have yet to deliver on a few things that were promised in the last build.
The last build? Hell, they still haven’t delivered some stuff they promised way back when Vista was “The best Windows that we’ve ever made”!
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Windows 10 Fall Creators Update? I see another fancy name with nothing of substance, just like the useless Creators Update (to me, at least).
I am a bit surprised that Apple will port iTunes to the Windows Store (using the so called “Universal Windows Platform” eh?), but other than that and the fact that Microsoft finally got round to porting Microsoft Office to the Windows Store using UWP, almost nobody else did so. As Noel said, almost nothing has been done on the UWP front from the time Windows 8 shipped in 2012, four and a half years ago.
If Microsoft really wants other developers to use UWP, perhaps they should port ALL their own applications using UWP first?
But I don’t fault other developers for not using UWP at this time, as Windows 7 is still the most used Windows version on PCs, and Windows 7 does not support the Windows Store.
Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.
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I read the article.
It validates the point I have made here more than once: if the advantages of Win10 are indeed programmatic, security, reliability and so on, than mess with the UI? Why force ads and surveillance down people’s throats? Why cause instability and frequent upgrades? After all better soundness should bring more stability.
No, I don’t buy the thesis. Changes are now for change’s sake that serve corporate, not user interests. For decades I’ve been saying that the IT industry operates like the fashion industry. They envy the fact that fashion houses can pull whatever rabbits they feel like out of their hat and sell. This disincentivizes stability and soundness and what MS is doing is precisely what should be expected under these circumstances.
BTW, if Win32 is the problem, why does not MS develop UWP apps that replace popular Win32 apps to really demonstrate how superior they are and attract users? Because they (a) don’t have the talent and competence (b) because they know how hard, costly and time consuming that is. They simply rely on their past dominance to try to force developers and users to go their way. We know where that is headed, but Satya can go home with tens of millions even if MS goes down the drain–who cares? After all Marissa Mayer got $186 millions for utterly failing.
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