Well, I went and downloaded the customer preview of Windows 8 a few days ago. The install went really well – I did an upgrade of a spare window7 drive – not the usual scenario for a Beta or preview, but what the hell – I’ll scrub it again later. I was very impressed with the upgrade procedure – it was all done within the windows environment – it was very friendly, with nothing scary or unexpected happening. When it finally booted into nice, shiny windows 8 I was a little excited. I’ve seen many, many versions of windows – each one of them being quite different in style and functionality from the last. As a developer, I’m certainly interested in the new Metro interface – its based on HTML 5, which seems quite strange for a desktop environment, but if it makes the interface more friendly, and more fun to program, then I’m game. Well, I can only say that the new interface befuddled me. I’ve used some strange UIs before – including Unity on Linux, but this is batshit. Honestly, nothing about it made sense. First, if the UI was meant to be more touch friendly, and cuddly for non techies, then why the hell are all of the icons now large, rectangular boxes? Where is the organic, flowing bedazzling phenomena we were expecting. Apart from some stylish colorus, this looks like computers for pre-school. I’ve never experienced anything so mind bogglingly pointless, and difficult to come to terms with. I’ve been using computers for 30 years, and I couldn’t find my programs, documents, settings – nothing. When I did manage to open something up, I couldn’t work out how to shut it down again, and had to use the Alt-F4 combination. In fact, when I came to shut the whole damn OS down, I couldn’t find any way to do it, and just held Alt-F4 down until I choked the air from its vile throat, and killed this bastard son of Fisher Price.
A couple of days later, I relented and tried again. It booted up, and I entered my hotmail password to log in (it had asked for my hotmail details during setup). Here, it was again – Lego for grown ups. Stupid looking vector dish drawings, and all. After moving the cursor around the edge of the screen for a bit – hunting for functionality, I noticed a bar that appears on the right hand side called charms (give me a break), with some options, and one in the top left. The best bit is when you scooch down to the bottom left, and hey presto – our old friend the start button makes a re-appearance – disguised (yes you guess it) as a square box.
Apparently, under the hood, windows 8 is much better – start up times, searches, indexing is all greatly improved, and the overall experience should be better. I was expecting some small issues, as this is a preview – but its not that I found any bugs per se – it just looked really blocky and basic – styled by someone who used to work designing toys for under 5s. I may be missing the point – and in a year or so, I might be loving the whole thing , but I’m horrified at the moment. I’m guessing Microsoft will be quickly releasing Windows 9 next year, with a greatly improved, and classier user interface – along the lines of Gnome 3, or Snow Leopard. it just aint cutting it, Ballmer Baby.