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Microsoft GUI Operating Systems Software Windows Technology

Windows Blue 9364 Screenshots Show Feature Enhancements 502

An anonymous reader writes "As expected, a new pre-public version of Windows Blue (build 9364) has leaked online and it reveals a handful of features that are coming in the next big Microsoft Windows 8 update." Several sites have screenshots from the build; Hot Hardware says "Assuming this is all completely legitimate, the most obvious change pertains to the Metro UI, including greater flexibility in sizing Live Tiles and customizing the Start screen, particularly as the Personalize setting (among others, including Devices and Share) is now under the Settings charm. The Name Group feature for the Start menu looks a little more polished, too."
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Windows Blue 9364 Screenshots Show Feature Enhancements

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24, 2013 @07:40PM (#43266057)

    Shit.

    • by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @07:58PM (#43266179) Journal

      Unfortunately, I have to agree.

      If they would have even hinted at bringing back the normal desktop, it would have been big news. Well, at least they didn't mandate ribbon menus on all applications written for Windows. But then, until they ditch Metro, I'm afraid that enterprise adoption will remain a little slow...

      • by the_Bionic_lemming ( 446569 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:41PM (#43266417)

        Windows 2000 desktop please..

        Some of us just want to use a pc, not get entertained by dancing buttons and other crap.

        • Some of us just want to use a pc, not get entertained by dancing buttons and other crap.

          Which could also refer to Unity. I've been on Ubuntu 12.04 for some months now and, while I'm okay with Unity, I fail to see any real benefit versus a lighter and slimmer UI. It's even worse on my small laptop screen.

      • by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @09:15PM (#43266665)
        I can get around the start menu, I can get around the interface changes, I can even deal with the "control panel" not remembering my settings (I always have to select small icons), but until they fix Windows 8 to enable the reason for Windows existance, easy interface for multi-tasking... then they can literally fuck off.
        • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:27PM (#43267035)

          they can literally fuck off

          By that, do you mean that at the moment, they are capable of fucking off, but they'll lose this capability when they fix the interface?
          Hey, and now that we're on the subject anyway; what exactly is fucking off? I have trouble imagining how to have sexual intercourse with such an abstract concept named "off".

          *sigh*, the use of the word "literally", is literally not always correct! It drives me figuratively crazy!
          Maybe because liter is a metric unit?

        • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:34PM (#43267303) Journal

          I can get around the start menu, I can get around the interface changes, I can even deal with the "control panel" not remembering my settings (I always have to select small icons), but until they fix Windows 8 to enable the reason for Windows existance, easy interface for multi-tasking... then they can literally fuck off.

          Dude, why would you possibly expect 'Microsoft Windows' to handle window management? And why would you want window management, and multiple monitors and stuff, when you could be squinting around your thumbs on a 10 inch tablet? Get with the Future!

          The fact that having multiple monitors is cheaper and easier than it has ever been isn't a good thing, it's a temptation designed to corrupt and destroy the weak minded. Resist, brother, and embrace the all-full-screen-all-the-time-for-fuck-knows-what-reason future!

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Tablizer ( 95088 )

            Dude, why would you possibly expect 'Microsoft Windows' to handle window management?

            Microsoft Windows Tiles -- you don't know whether to pee or leave.

          • Hey I understand you're being facetious but spare a thought for the people who actually want a simple calculator 24" inches wide. AND TOUCH!

      • classic shell brings it back.

        or if you're a paying customer, start8 by stardock.

        I use Windows 8. I rarely ever see metro.

        I find it useless and frustrating. Not because I think it's poorly designed. But because it's forced on the wrong device. My PC is not a tablet.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:30PM (#43267285)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by spd_rcr ( 537511 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:03PM (#43266203) Homepage

      I keep getting suckered into this articles just to see if the failing PC market has finally forced them to pull their heads out of their *sses and reinstate the desktop by default and the start button...

      Maybe I'd better luck wishing for some higher res displays as standard on notebooks... How is it that cell phones need 1080p displays, but for doing real work, 1366x768 is supposed to be great ?!

      • by tuppe666 ( 904118 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:21PM (#43266319)

        Maybe I'd better luck wishing for some higher res displays as standard on notebooks... How is it that cell phones need 1080p displays, but for doing real work, 1366x768 is supposed to be great ?!

        ...maybe you should look at a chromebook like the pixel. [2560 x 1700 at 239 PPI] which has a higher than 1080P resolution :)

        http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixel/ [google.com]

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by besalope ( 1186101 )

          The Chromebook Pixel is a laptop that brings together the best in hardware, software, and design to inspire future innovation.

          While using an Intel 4000 integrated graphics chipset... pass.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

            The Intel 4000 GPU is fine for everything except high end gaming. Most importantly power consumption is pretty good, so battery life is reasonable.

            Those high res screens suck up a lot of power. The 13" retina MacBook has a 96Wh battery and weighs a hearty 2Kg. NEC do the 13" LaVie Z that has a 1600x900 screen and 35Wh battery. It gets similar battery life but only weighs 875g. 1600x900 gives you more usable desktop space than a 2x zoom retina display too.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Yes, the Chromebook hardware looks great, if it ran a proper OS I'd be interested.

    • No kidding. But their heads are too far up their asses at this point to understand that this direction they're going is not popular.

      Honestly, if we're not going to ever get Aero back (which is fine), they could at last have the decency to give us the classic look back instead of this monotone nonsense that just blends into everything.

      I loathe the day none of this ever gets better and I end up one of those holdouts like people who were still clutching to XP when Windows 7 was released.

      • by Nerdfest ( 867930 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:44PM (#43266435)

        They're going to keep heading that direction, and the old desktop is going to go away. The problem with the old desktop is that they don't get 30% of the cost of every piece of software installed on it. They they people will knuckle under and pay it, because their only choices other than Windows is Apple, who will most likely have the same app store lock-in in OSX by then as well, and Linux. They figure the extra money is worth the loss of customers. Personally, I'm hoping there is a rush to Linux and they die a horrible death, but I'm probably overly optimistic.

        • by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:06PM (#43266931)

          their only choices other than Windows is Apple

          Which decade are you living in? The #1 OS in the world right now is Android... so linux. This is a trend that will continue. Unless Microsoft makes windows absolutely free, they are dead to the world. I think Windows 9 or whatever they will call it will be their last hurrah. My company, who still uses Winxp and never trys anything new is test bedding several linux distros with some users for the first time ever. I was shocked, but the trial is going fantastically... I never thought it would happen in my lifetime but Linux may just beat Microsoft yet.

      • I loathe the day none of this ever gets better and I end up one of those holdouts like people who were still clutching to XP when Windows 7 was released.

        Why don't you just run Wine on Linux? That way you can stay up to date and run those pesky few Windows apps you need. If you can get away with relying on an outdated version of Windows for the work you do then you can probably do it on Linux.

        • by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:56PM (#43266505) Homepage Journal

          Why don't you just run Wine on Linux?

          Because Wine is broken? I mean, other than that, well sure.

          Me, I run XP in a VM. Works fine. I don't let it on the Internet because, well, it's Windows, and Microsoft has trained me not to trust them... but other than that, does everything I want it to. Office, my legit copy of developer studio, image processing apps, testing the Windows version of the software I develop... Do the same thing with linux, for that matter, except it's well designed enough not to hose itself just because there is a network connection.

          Virtual machines: For those of us who are tired of solutions that don't work very well.

    • by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:48PM (#43266467) Homepage Journal

      My suggested Windows 8 slogan: "Nowhere to go but up!"

  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 24, 2013 @07:42PM (#43266061)

    The only connection people already know between Windows and Blue is the Blue Screen of Death. In fact, it took me a minute to realize this wasn't about 9364 screenshots of BSODs.

  • by ThorGod ( 456163 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @07:42PM (#43266067) Journal

    As a Win7 user, did anyone else feel completely lost reading the summary?

    • by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:09PM (#43266259) Journal

      Not lost per se, but only because I had to endure a bit of a tour (my last employer was a Microsoft Premier/Platinum/Perpetual/etc partner - they drink the koolaid by the tankerload.)

      All I can say is, thanks to a recent layoff and job search, I was able to quickly winnow out the intelligent IT departments from the flaming morons. The ones with intelligence are holding off on W8 until either Microsoft fixes that Metro garbage into usability, or a decent 3rd-party enterprise-ready UI bolt-on comes into play. Their explanations as to why ranged from the standard 'wait-forever-before bothering', to some very reasoned responses that made perfect sense (mostly revolving around training costs, incompatibilities, and etc) The one prospective employer I avoided with haste is busy trialing W8 among their IT folk for a push out to their users starting at the end of this quarter, but with little regard to testing with users outside their IT department.

      In-depth grilling into how they think and react as a department is a must if you can do it. It reveals a lot about what you're walking into, but the trick is to blow past the buzzwords and get them to really explain it.

      (My views may be a bit biased though - I'm finally going back into Linux administration with a kick-ass new employer...)

      • by yuhong ( 1378501 )

        I don't think MS particularly cares. Getting the corporate world to move away from XP is much more important to them as it is going out of support, and even MS admits finishing the move to Win7 is much more important.

        • by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:34PM (#43266381) Journal

          I can agree to that, but only to an extent - doing so would show that Microsoft is playing a short game, not a long one.

          Win7 will likely hang around enterprises for at least the next 5-7 years (or more) if this is the case, but then what? An "enterprise" version that has the familiar desktop?

          I'm not seeing anyone, not even Microsoft, demanding that the workplace convert over to touch-screen UIs, even in a distant future. The reason why is as close as the nearest heavy user of Excel...

    • There's very little that's charming about Windows 8.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @07:44PM (#43266079)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Goodyob ( 2445598 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @07:47PM (#43266097)
      • Re:Idiocracy! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by SpazmodeusG ( 1334705 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:08PM (#43266941)

        That screenshot doesn't show just how bad windows management in Metro is. There's actually no way to display two apps side by side. You know how you sometimes like to read a PDF on one half of the screen and an editor in the other? You can't do that. Metro application have two modes. Fullscreen or snapped into a 320px narrow margin.

        It's quite telling that the Windows Blue preview advertises "you can run two apps side-by-side for better multitasking". Metro is so bad at Window management even the newest version will be nowhere near the abilities of Windows 1.0. You can't arbitrarily size programs. That might be acceptable for a phone but it's just ridiculous on a PC.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gagol ( 583737 )
      Guess what? Consumers generally consumes content on their computers... you know, the vast majority of human beings.
      • Re:Idiocracy! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:01PM (#43266199)

        Guess what? Consumers generally consumes content on their computers... you know, the vast majority of human beings.

        And most of those consumers have already largely switched to smartphones and tablets. In a vain attempt to win them back, Microsoft has sacrificed their competitive advantage with business users – you know, the ones who actually pay the vast majority of their licensing fees...

        • Guess what? Consumers generally consumes content on their computers... you know, the vast majority of human beings.

          And most of those consumers have already largely switched to smartphones and tablets. In a vain attempt to win them back, Microsoft has sacrificed their competitive advantage with business users – you know, the ones who actually pay the vast majority of their licensing fees...

          Its kind of sad really that that Desktop monopoly is so hard to break, Microsoft keeps throwing its customers...and its partners under the bus, just to do it again. Its ironic that both of these groups are moving over to a Google Os. Business Users still feel pretty trapped, but will keep their older hardware running as long as Microsoft let them.

          • Not Google (Score:4, Interesting)

            by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @09:07PM (#43266601) Homepage Journal

            Its ironic that both of these groups are moving over to a Google Os.

            LOL. It's not ironic. It's imaginary. There's no significant move towards Google Chrome or Google anything else for that matter in the OS space. There are three players, and only three: Microsoft, Apple, and linux. Apple's got the ball right now, as their machines can run all three OS's, all at once, legally and legitimately. If you're worried about movement, worry about Apple. Google? No chance.

      • Re:Idiocracy! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:13PM (#43266283) Journal

        The "vast majority of human beings" don't sign massive EA contracts that pay Microsoft's bills.

        We'll see how it shakes out when enterprises begin tinkering with OSX and/or Linux on larger scales towards the end of their upgrade cycles.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • You can multi-task, where does it say you can't? All you have to do is skip the Metro apps, which shouldn't be a problem if you're multi-tasking since that very fact means you have non-Metro programs that you're currently using.
      • you know, as a person who has to use windows 7 sometimes at home and work, I can only say your sentence reads as complete gibberish. so does the article: charms, Name Group and Live Tiles....gad.

    • Re:Idiocracy! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by a_mari_usque_ad_mare ( 1996182 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:32PM (#43266373)

      I use Windows 8 on my school laptop (grad student in materials engineering) and I am not thrilled with the news of this update. Everything they mention is related to metro, the touchscreen interface for Windows 8, with nothing on the desktop/laptop side. The main complaint with Windows 8 was that the metro stuff should have been optional, as it is not needed or wanted on a normal PC. With the Blue update we see that after hearing the criticism and commentary from the release of Windows 8, MS' only response is a few tweaks here and there.

      I'm worried by MS' attitude more than anything else, like the idea that the desktop is just for legacy software, and that metro is the future. Metro or whatever you want to call is not the future of the PC. It not even the future of touch. It's an also-ran, second rate touch OS, and it continues to sell poorly next to iOS and Android. I've used all 3 OS' on touch devices, and even there metro is not great. Alot of buttons and controls are hidden by default, so you are always trying to toggle between different views. Maybe someone spiked the water in Redmond, because I never imagined that after winning the desktop OS wars they would just lose interest and abandon their users.

      • Re:Idiocracy! (Score:4, Informative)

        by fredgiblet ( 1063752 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @10:02PM (#43266911)
        I seriously doubt that MS is dropping the desktop or considering it legacy. The reality is that Microsoft is unifying their interface across phone, tablet and computer and since tablets are the future and tablets use touch, touch is the priority. This is obviously imperfect for those of us who still use traditional form-factor computers, but in 5-10 years we'll be a minority (if not sooner).

        I think that Metro is actually Microsoft, for the first time in a long time, being ahead of the curve. I expect Apple will be following suit within a few years.
    • [...] the corporate world needs a multi-tasking UI.

      Actually, my somewhat old experience in the corporate world pretty much says the opposite.

      Consider most people in the corporate world with PCs. The ones I saw, way back when, would tend to hit the maximize button so that the application window took up the whole screen. They weren't taking advantage of multiple overlapping windows and tended to get confused by them. In fact, those people who came over from Windows to Mac were always confused that the maximize button wouldn't expand everything to fit the w

    • why does Calculate, Sound Recorder need to be full screen??

      It's not a small screen tablet or phone

  • by Osgeld ( 1900440 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @07:54PM (#43266149)

    one of the featured screenshots being a calculator that will suck up every inch of my large desktop monitor, take that you 20 year old serial terminal in the other room and your fucking text based "windows"

  • As a person who will use the right os for the job and have no actual feelings about them, I'm more curious to know what has changed in the os rather than the ui. Anyone have any details? I'm waiting for automatic vm of every application, more integration with products outside the company. Another incarnation of an agent(maybe it will suck like the others but please don't stop trying), automatic knowledge of its physical location and surroundings(your remote is under the pillow), subsecond desktop transit
  • by simonbp ( 412489 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:00PM (#43266195) Homepage

    Why is a Windows release named after its most famous failure screen? Is the marketing department that ignorant?

  • by JDG1980 ( 2438906 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:04PM (#43266217)

    Several sites have screenshots from the build; Hot Hardware says "Assuming this is all completely legitimate, the most obvious change pertains to the Metro UI, including greater flexibility in sizing Live Tiles and customizing the Start screen, particularly as the Personalize setting (among others, including Devices and Share) is now under the Settings charm. The Name Group feature for the Start menu looks a little more polished, too."

    They don't get it, do they? Power users and most business users don't want to tinker with the Metro UI. We want to be able to get rid of it and boot straight into the Desktop with a traditional Start Menu.

  • by knarf ( 34928 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @08:07PM (#43266243)

    I can sort of see what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8. The idea is not theirs, nor is it a new idea. It actually goes back a long, long time. When GUIs were born designers wanted to implement direct-manipulation as much as possible. The user had to be able to grab anything, drag and drop and click and whatnot it. This included the windows used by programs, if the user wanted to have that giant word processor in a 50x50 pixel window overlapped by a dozen other windows then they should be able to.

    Now that GUIs are old hat, all that direct manipulation is getting a bit long in the tooth. Shuffling windows around, organizing them 'just' so is just as inefficient as doing the same to text in a word processor. Why not leave all that repetitive work to the computer? That is what machines are for, after all? In short, Microsoft has discovered the advantages of tiling window managers [wikipedia.org].

    The sad part is that they seem to have forgotten to study the subject before designing Windows 8. All they had to do was install one of the many available existing tiling window managers on a unix of choice and give it a whir. Xmonad [wikipedia.org] or dwm [wikipedia.org] or any of the others do an infinitely better job of it than Windows 8 does. They work with the user, not against him/her.

  • Personalization is currently under the "settings" charm in Windows 8. If you're on the desktop, Personalization (as in desktop theme) is right there in the charm menu. If you're in Metro, then it's the first item under "Change PC settings" (as in, "Personalize" is the first damned thing you see when you launch it). The only thing they did, if anything, was change the label in the charm to be dumbed down for the casual user who couldn't find Personalize without having it spelled out for them. Probably a resu

  • How much longer are they going to keep making products for consumption instead of creation?

    Windows 8 is the "other" in "every other version of Windows sucks," which means they better get their head out of their ass for Windows 9 (or whatever name they pick out of the hat next).

    Otherwise, this is going to push their bread-and-butter business customers away from them and towards Linux. Who'd have thought that the year of the Linux desktop might actually end up being Microsoft's doing?

  • by Y-Crate ( 540566 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @09:16PM (#43266667)

    I have a soft spot for the new Start Screen. I find it much more appealing than the old Start Menu which seemed more like a Start Slab by the time it was deprecated. The initial concept had been compromised by the amount of crap that it was asked to handle. Using a tile-based system is a great way to package different sources of data and information into neat little groupings. We can agree to disagree on that one.

    My problem is that the rest of the Metro UI doesn't really follow the lead of the Start Screen at all. Aesthetically, it jettisons the entire look and feel for what seems like a bunch of images and text adrift in a lot of whitespace.

    Icons have little or no depth at all. They don't really adhere to their origins in minimalist mass transit iconography as the Start Screen does, nor do they acknowledge the benefits of effective drop shadows - or really any developments since the year 2000. I'm pretty sure the version of KDE that shipped with my copy of LinuxPPC 1999 was the aesthetic equal in this one regard.

    Text is widely spread out with no clear delineation between where one active area begins and another ends. Even info grouped together appears to take up a significant amount of screen real estate. Not due to font sizing issues, but rather, the line spacing and just random weirdness in the layout. It reminds me less of an OS and more of a poorly-designed Web 2.0 site.

  • by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Sunday March 24, 2013 @11:08PM (#43267175)

    I'll use Metro when I can see my application, code trace, call stack, and variable watch list at the same time.

    If Metro is so friggin' brilliant how come VS2012 isn't native? Oh and thanks for making the menu titles shout at me. That's nice.

  • by ndykman ( 659315 ) on Monday March 25, 2013 @12:33AM (#43267571)

    I have been using Windows 8. Yes, as a power user I do miss the start menu and how it enabled discovery of programs and multitasking. But, the kernel is responsive and I like the simpler, less chrome look. Even Windows 7 feels less responsive and snappy to me now. And the ideas in Windows RT (the new runtime) make a lot of sense (highly asynchronous, access from managed and native environments). But, they wrapped it up in the weirdest way.

    Why Microsoft just doesn't embrace a "desktop mode" and "metro mode" on a per user basis just baffles me. If you select desktop mode, you get the start menu, and to get to the metro screen, you have that option on that menu (or shift+win). Win key takes you back to desktop from any metro app. Metro mode, works like Windows 8 now. Shift+Win is desktop shortcut.

    Ta-da, best of both worlds. And you buy some time to get the Windows RT runtime for desktop apps, or integrating metro into desktop mode.

    Microsoft, this isn't hard at all. What's up?

  • Why all the hate? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheRealQuestor ( 1750940 ) on Monday March 25, 2013 @01:02AM (#43267683)
    I have been using 8 since the 1st preview and I have come to really like it. A LOT. I did NOT like it in the early days as I was die hard windows 7 user and it is a great OS. But 8 is 7 after a couple more years of refinement. Do I like Metro? nope. Do I want a touch screen? nope. I hate fingerprints on my screens! But thanks to apps like Start8 I don't even have to know there is a metro ui. [though there are a few nice apps there].

    There just are so many refinements in 8 that I could never consider going back to 7.
    Is it perfect? nope. But the parts that irk me are few and far between.
    It really is fast, it really is rock solid stable, and it get's out of my way and lets me actually get work done.
    I'm sure I am going to be modded to hell for this but it is a great OS. I'm not a shill, nor do I have a gun pointed at my head to say this. I just am a old fart who likes my PC and I really do like 8.

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