Microsoft Drops Aero from Windows 8

By butilikethecookie
in The Fast Ring (Insider Previews)

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Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted

And just because there are "newer" internal builds, what I just posted, proving Aero is still there.. and "Glass" is there too is rubbish?

Aero will be gone in the "Release Preview" this is official from microsoft, the OP's screenshots are from what we will get in the RP which will be released the first week of June.

Proficient

Anthonyd

Posted
Posted

Facepalm. Aero glass has been removed from the latest build and it will not be in the final. It's gone.

No one is talking about the consumer preview, it's an old build and a lot has changed since then.

There's a huge difference between "gone" and "disabled by default" ;)
Neowinian

DrEmmettLBrown

Posted
Posted

I have to say that this "dumbing down" of the UI can be taken too far. Right now I'm running the CP in Parallels on Lion on a Hackintosh laptop and DP in Parallels and standalone on Mountain Lion on an i7 QM development system, and each release has gotten IMHO worse. This is a slippery slope that MS is treading and, ironically, Apple is doing something nearly identical.

I believe that the mistake they're both making is reducing the OS to the lowest common denominator (LCD) of hardware platforms so that the minimal development and support effort needs to be expended for all. This is a two-edged sword as it cuts costs, but I think it will also cut sales - and the benefactor may well be Android... or W8. I really don't think that provisioning an OS so that its feature-set accommodates a phone or netbook and calling that the "standard platform" is moving forward. At best, it's stasis and at worst, it's losing business. So we may well be looking at Vista in the (re) making.

This sacrificial casting off of UI features to accommodate the LCD platform isn't a mistake that MS hasn't made before - they did the exact same thing with nearly every release of Win CE through Windows Mobile. Stupefying each more and more until... the OS shrunk and died. All in the interest of making them run faster on the slowest of their supported hardware platforms - I don't think that support and development costs were an issue here, but... well who knows?

I think that the pretty face of the Aero UI "engine" brought a lot of people into the fold from Apple, Linux and attracted new users. I also think that the inclusion of "dumbassery" in it will chase many away. We're not driving phones here... they're computers, stupid. I sincerely believe that cleaning up the pigsty of design-by-committee that Windows has become (esp. the Registry - this needs to go, why carry the weight/mess of all the configuration info for all the apps whether in use or not all the time - and that truly brain-dead, toxic dump of an idiot's idea of a cache WinSxS should simply be... deleted, and then forgotten about, forever.

Here we have a simply brilliant OS with two of the stupidest concepts ever devised by man draped around it's neck - and dragged, kicking and screaming, into W8. And I think I could name 7 or 8 other "issues" that are similarly adding bloat with no possibility of benefit being large enough to offset even 30% of the added blubber.

Perhaps I'm being too demanding personally, but I've already chosen my platform - and the catchphrase is "I only want the OS!", as the chant goes. Mostly, it was Vista, W7, Windows CE, W8 DP and CP and the ridiculously problematic WPA/WAT that has driven me here - and not without a significant expenditure of time and effort. Sadly I'll probably have to continue to use W8 and W7 for my development business, but virtualization does ease the pain somewhat. Under it all, at least there's a platform that's based on the simplicity and elegance of Unix - though getting dumber by the release, too. And yes, I've tried, and used quite extensively, the leading Linux versions. But they're not yet my cup of tea.

MS is making a number of mistakes with W8 and a few quite admirable choices. But they need to focus on what's under the UI more than they are. What they're doing right now is simply putting lipstick on a pig.

Grand Master

Nashy

Posted
Posted

Steven Sinofsky? You do realize he was also the Windows 7 boss, which you are trying to cling to right now. Not to mention he oversaw the development of the Ribbon UI, which everyone now loves. Firing him, and Microsoft looses a valued boss. Personally, I would love to see him head Microsoft and not Ballmer, but Microsoft would be fools to "fire" him.

Personally, I would fire him if he *didn't* change Windows. Remember this?

ballmer_500x387.jpg

How about this?

500x_ballmernote43.jpg

The market rejected them. Why? Because this

Windows_7.png

isn't working, nor will it ever work where the market is headed. This UI is unsustainable, and no they can not put off changing Windows around any longer.

Sorry, but Microsoft *HAD* to change, and Metro fits that bill. Don't blame Microsoft or Sinofsky, blame the consumer. The consumer wants light, and mobile gadgets, and more and more of them are sold each day.

Not to mention that the mouse is dying. Microsoft knows this, Apple knows this, and Google knows this. Microsoft can't afford to sit still again,.because a few users still feel like they are owed something. This is nothing more than Microsoft adapting to market trends, much like Windows 95 was a switch to match the rise of the desktop PC. Those things aren't selling like they used to, too bad so sad, but it's time for new things.

I'm going to say this again.

I DON'T USE A TABLET! I DON'T WANT A TABLET OS ON MY POWERFUL HOME COMPUTERS!

Why is it so god damned hard for you to get this through your god damned head. Jesus Christ.

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Proficient

Unknown_97784568745

Posted
Posted

Your link was pretty impotent, 1, maybe 2 people on the link were complaining, the other links on the page show maybe another 10-12 combined, hardly comparable to the enormous number of complaints directed at windows 8.

How many people had computers in 1995? And how many of those people had internet access? And how many of those were following windows news?

Aero will be gone in the "Release Preview" this is official from microsoft, the OP's screenshots are from what we will get in the RP which will be released the first week of June.

No it's not. It clearly states that you'll only see some changes from that screenshot in the release preview.

Grand Master

Stokkolm

Posted
Posted

I'm going to say this again.

I DON'T USE A TABLET! I DON'T WANT A TABLET OS ON MY POWERFUL HOME COMPUTERS!

Why is it so god damned hard for you to get this through your god damned head. Jesus Christ.

It's definitely not a tablet only OS. It works great on the desktop, it's different, yes, but it's no less friendly than the start menu was.

Grand Master

HawkMan

Posted
Posted

I'm going to say this again.

I DON'T USE A TABLET! I DON'T WANT A TABLET OS ON MY POWERFUL HOME COMPUTERS!

Why is it so god damned hard for you to get this through your god damned head. Jesus Christ.

it's not a tablet OS. and stop with the huge fonts.

It's an OS designed to work good on both desktops, laptops tablets. pretty much every computing device with a screen 10 inches and up. it also happens to work better for regular desktop use than the start menu.

one UI to rule them all.

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Grand Master

firey

Posted
Posted

So you call the desktop and taskbar which we've been using for years a **** UI? :laugh: You really don't need to use the Metro start screen if you don't want, and I'm sure someone will find a way to completely disable it.

I call dropping the start menu, wanting to go more tablet styled interface ****, yes. You do need to use the metro start screen, there are no ways around it at this point, and until then..

Grand Master

Dot Matrix

Posted
Posted

I'm going to say this again.

I DON'T USE A TABLET! I DON'T WANT A TABLET OS ON MY POWERFUL HOME COMPUTERS!

Why is it so god damned hard for you to get this through your god damned head. Jesus Christ.

How about one of these?

http://www.bing.com/...+PC&FORM=HDRSC2

Like it or not, touch will be augmenting the desktop. No one ever said you had to use a tablet, but the 9x UI was designed for a different time. Those times are now changing. Metro will be carrying desktop computers in a new direction in the next few years. Give it time to mature and you'll forget all about the old 9x UI. Windows 8 is far from a tablet OS. It's the first OS that will run on multiple devices without destroying the UX.

Also, like I said, you are now a minority. The market is moving away from desktop computing to slimmer, powerful mobile devices.

Grand Master

remixedcat

Posted
Posted

HP's all in one touchsmart PCs are POS.... lots of people say the GPU's die in those things and I see those things marked down in sales so much and nobody takes em!!! LOL

Mentor

Luis Mazza

Posted
Posted

....What they're doing right now is simply putting lipstick on a pig.

I shall say... A VERY OLD AND ULGY PIG.

What an ugly OS is W8!!!

I wonder what new buyers are looking... an already beautiful computer (a Mac) running Mountain Lion, full of effects and lights with retina displays and those ugly monochrome screens from Windows 8!

EPIC FAIL MICROSOFT!

Those are the last Steve Ballmer days, really. And unfortunately they won't be nice.

Rookie

didymo

Posted
Posted

To this day I still believe Vista was the greatest OS ever. I didn't even know why people kept whinging about how bad it was. The introduction of Aero made it so beautiful - it was a joy to use. I ran every beta of Vista on this same really old computer that runs W8 CP - WDM 1.0 graphics card, P4. I didn't have driver issues and performance wasn't bad. I guess most people just couldn't adapt to change?

I loved Aero a lot, but over the years you just get so accustomed to it and it just becomes kinda boring and you don't really take attention to how aesthetically pleasing it used to be.

Microsoft just seems to be getting lazy ever since they finished with Vista, probably because its development spanned like over 5 years. Windows 7 was a good update however it was quite minor, not to mention performance was slightly worse than Vista. The perceived increased performance was probably due to the fact that people were getting better computers over the years or drivers, not the actual OS.

Design ideas are now bland, basic and discoverability is becoming increasingly limited. I will upgrade this old computer to 8 because its performance will probably be greater than previous versions but at the cost of less features. There isn't anymore incentive to purchase new PC's since there aren't really any new requirements to the typical user. Existing conventional PC's won't upgrade. The only winners for Microsoft might be tablets, but only because of the hardware features, for example: gyro, accelerometer, proximity, sensors, UEFI, definitely not the OS itself.

Aero brought Microsoft to the future by harnessing modern graphics cards performing complex tasks. This is now for some reason being reversed back to basic block graphics all for just saving like 30 minutes of battery life? Instead of removing features to increase performance, how about actually making changes to the internal code or whatever. Also hybrid boot sucks its just as slow as a clean boot its basically hibernating but worse as well as ClearType breaking in Metro mode.

Now that Aero is becoming more boring, Microsoft is trying as hard as it can to deemphasise it. They know Aero is getting boring but can't find a better alternative/solution so they're turning everything into a kids play-machine, just for the sake of a "new UI".

There is so much white on that preview screenshot, it's as if they have high contrast mode on or something. It's sure clean however, in fact it's so clean it hurts your eyes. Maybe they want it to hurt your eyes so you decrease screen brightness to save energy use?

Metro is beautiful on Windows Phone, on a PC is less than impressing.

Grand Master

BeerFan

Posted
Posted

HP's all in one touchsmart PCs are POS.... lots of people say the GPU's die in those things and I see those things marked down in sales so much and nobody takes em!!! LOL

Yep. All-in-Ones work only in certain situations. Just like tablets, they serve a specific function. The traditional desktop PC isn't going anywhere anytime soon. And Microsoft shoving this tablet-oriented, fisher-price fugly OS on the masses isn't going to win them any market share.

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Grand Master

MS Bob 11

Posted
Posted

They should make Julie Larson Green in charge of PowerShell. Then PowerShell will become simplified, fast and fluid, beautiful, re-imagined, no compromise, harmonious, immersive and Metro style. :p Any buzzwords I forgot?

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