8 Issues In Windows 8: Modern vs Desktop
To be fair, I did not spend a lot of time on either Windows 8 CP or RP, Virtual Box & switching between a configured OS and beta OS on the Air was annoying. Since the past 2 days, however, I have been all Windows 8 on the Air. And Windows 8 feels great but I have a few issues, those I hoped wouldn’t make it into the final release:
- Installing apps puts a lot of tiles on my Modern start screen, InteliPoint for example puts links to help files and other useless stuff. Desktop apps get an icon on the desktop and on the modern start screen. It’s unnecessary clutter.
- Installing Windows 8 games puts a game tile on the modern start screen and not in the Xbox hub, unlike in Windows Phone. The Xbox tile doesn’t list just the PC games anywhere, instead has a huge list of Xbox and PC games you’ve recently played–something I quite like, but I’d rather have my PC games listed in the Xbox hub.
- The Me tile in Windows 8 can only update either Facebook or Twitter; unlike Windows Phone, you cannot update multiple social networks together.
- The People hub does not sync groups I created on my Windows Phone. Nor can you send Twitter messages to your contacts from the People hub, unlike the amazing Outlook.com People hub.
- The Share charm sounds very useful. Unfortunately, on Windows 8 Pro, if you’re going to be in the desktop a lot, it’s useless. Even IE desktop pages can’t be shared. It’s ridiculous that nothing can be shared from the desktop. (Cue OS X Mountain Lion)
- Broken IE: The modern IE and the desktop IE are completely different. If I have a page open on the desktop & want to share, I cannot send it to the touch-IE to share. This broken IE problem is an annoyance since it makes Windows 8 Pro feel like 2 independent experiences and not a cohesive UX. (If you set another browser as your default, you lose Modern IE. That doesn’t even make sense.)
- Windows 8 Mail App: It’s beautiful. I haven’t used mail clients since a long time and the Mail app was just perfect. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support email threads; as a result all the ease of use and simplicity results to an app that falls short. It could’ve been the perfect email client. How hard could it be to duplicate the Windows Phone mail client?!
- On the Modern Start screen if you take the cursor to the right/left edge in the center, you can scroll horizontally; which is a neat touch. Unfortunately, the behavior doesn’t work in any app, not even in Microsoft’s apps–a good UX element that’s broken.
So those are 8 issues I hoped wouldn’t have made their way into the final build. Having said that, within a few hours of installing, I completely switched to W8 on my Air as my primary OS. It’s beautiful, quick and Windows.
I’ve tried using the Mail app for a while. But I’m a heavy user of folders to sort my emails, and the lack of drag and drop made it a hassle to move emails using a mouse.
Great list. This is the only non-ignorant negative W8 article I’ve read since the dev preview.
Thank you.
I agree with Jarrod. I still viscerally hate, loathe, and detest Win8, and can see no good reason for running it on a Mac Air except for testing, but you have articulated a lot of the problems with Win8. If one is to sum up,
I would say that MS seems to have tried to plaster a WinPhone-type UI onto the front of Win7 and failed both to make it a complete UI (hence all the things that start out looking very good and then fall down frustratingly, like the email client) and also to properly tie the two parts together (hence the broken pieces in IE).
IMHO, MS should properly divorce the GUI and the rest of the OS. In this way they could market a better OS with a WinXP-lookalike GUI to the millions of business desktops, with a Win7 GUI to home desktop users, and with a Modern GUI to people running it on hardware like Surface.
It would be against the point of Windows 8, which seems to be to use Microsoft control of the average desktop to push the UI formerly known as Metro on the masses to sell phones and tablets and finally get developers to make Windows mobile apps. They’re not worried about desktop users as a captive audience. Making the UI consistent is supposed to make the average user choose “Modern UI” for their next phone or tablet. Bolting on Win7 to desktop and pro still lets them call it an all in one best of both worlds.
That’s probably the most articulate summary of everything that’s wrong with Windows 8.
Unfortunately Microsoft has alienated its own
developers who seem to hate the new environment on mass – search the Microsoft
developer forums for comments on the use
of Visual studio that’s been Metro’ed to the point of being useless.
Windows 8 is horrible for desk users, and it’s a pretty poor second compared to Android and IOS touch – no wonder the
upgrades are so cheap, about the only clever thing Microsoft has done with
respect to Windows 8.
Guess the Microsoft mantra these day is – If you
can’t please everyone then you might as well hack everyone off!
I expect points 1,3,4 and 7 to be fixed as the Metro Apps and the desktop installers are getting updated – and I think that we’ll get new versions of some of these months before the official release in 2 months. Point 6 will remain a pain for long, though.
1 needs a policy. Not just updated installers.
For the IE issues there is a setting under Internet Options that allows you to set the Desktop IE as the default. This way even if you open a link from a Windows Store app it will open IE on the desktop.
Great list, glad to see constructive criticism. Versus most people (aka journalists) seem to be freaked out at having to click 1 button to get to the desktop.
So far, I am pleased with Windows 8 on my development machine. My wife actually insisted on upgrading from Win 7 ultimate for her personal machine.
We just bought movies & music through the store, and they play on our xbox, on our PCs and on our Win8 tablet…with 1 purchase.
Its a true upgrade, in my opinion.
hmm nice list. My opinion on People app is they should have develop more better by adding multiple posting and add feature of combining contacts to make it easy .
Messaging app should have multiple selection option also.
Both the IE should be fixed like Chrome Metro app .
Share charm should be working for both metro/modern start screen and Desktop.
Agree with almost everything you listed. Especially drag and drop, which you ought to be able to do with your fingers on touch as well. I don’t understand why groups are not supported in People as it is in Hotmail. It’s not supported in Windows Phone either. IE on Desktop should be able to switch to Metro since you can do the opposite. Seems silly. Why cannot the Desktop share? Obvious to me they want to wean you from the Desktop but they introduced Office 2013 which requires the Desktop only. Huh?