Not the best example, the 1st gen iPhone didn't get all the features of iOS 2.x and 3.x. (still got mine
)WP7 isn't EOL btw, it's still a cheap solution for OEMs. You won't find any WP8 devices selling for £99 just yet!
*** The Official Microsoft Surface Thread ***
- Thread starter Bennie-Mac
- Start date
Not the best example, the 1st gen iPhone didn't get all the features of iOS 2.x and 3.x. (still got mine
)WP7 isn't EOL btw, it's still a cheap solution for OEMs. You won't find any WP8 devices selling for £99 just yet!
Soldato
"But I'm under no illusion it won't be without problems though."
This is fine, when was the last time any software was released without bugs, regardles of publisher.
Of course it will have its problems, it will also have its SP1.
Soldato
It would have been fine if it wasn't just repeating what he said in his first sentence. That he repeated it makes it seem like he is drumming that point home excessively. Hence superfluous.
Of course it will have bugs and design limitations. That is stating the obvious.
Caporegime
Not according to your viewpoint it won't.
Soldato
Provide quotations or run along.
Caporegime
Blatant inference/implying that MS/W8 won't have those flaws.
Apparently the entire Tech media industry is wrong, but you are right?
"Windows 8 tablets have none of these problems." O rly? Quote in full context before you cry that one.
And, whilst I'm quoting this one, you seem to think iOS development is exclusively expensive. MS development is hardly cheap. Many, many, many software houses charge upwards of £1,000 a day for MS stack development. SQL Server DBAs scoff at that amount.
Developers still get paid what they get paid, regardless of what tools they use to develop. Sure, a few niché markets here and there may have mild increases in prices - but the extreme differences you seem to think there are, just do not exist, except for some legacy stuff like zOS developers because most of them are in retirement.
"HTML/CSS/JS, C++, C# to VB.NET" - so developers can choose between making a website, or a .NET app. Hardly an exhaustive list, but you've spun it none the less to sound like a great deal of choices for developers - which it isn't, and is exactly what you complained about the iOS equivalent choices: Website, or Objective-C.
People just focus on the bad points - just like you have ignored Apple's great success and only focused on the limitations, yet the complete converse when discussing any of MS' products - and that's not limited to this thread, I might add. You skim over the MASSIVE failures they have had, and continue to praise them, and hail as successes, things that many see as a failure. This very much includes your dismissive unfounded statement that when someone is forced to use #if SILVERLIGHT, that it simply must be a failure in their design. It just cannot be a problem with MS' integration of siliverlight in .NET. No siree.
You've "done your homework to come to my conclusion" - could you possibly be any more arrogant?
"Don't take the moral high ground by making out I'm throwing the troll word around willy nilly. I'm not. I'm an ex-moderator on here so I know how things work. Dj_Jester wrote a trollish post, see above for the dissection, and he has a bit of a rep for it." Oh wait - you can! Must be the holier than thou, do what I say "ex-moderator" coming out, I suppose. I've done my homework on this. That's how I came to my conclusion. You've got a bit of a rep for it.
Right up to the point that the iPad was launched everyone thought and hoped it would be an OSX slate. 28 months later Microsoft launches what Apple should have launched in the first place.
I want one.
I am also thinking about moving to windows phone 8 when it comes out also.
PC = Windows 8
Phone = Windows 8
Tablet = Windows 8
Xbox = able to run metro apps
The integration between the devices is going to be amazing.
I am also thinking about moving to windows phone 8 when it comes out also.
PC = Windows 8
Phone = Windows 8
Tablet = Windows 8
Xbox = able to run metro apps
The integration between the devices is going to be amazing.
Yep been using it since the first consumer release. I actually quite like it now I have it set up how I want it, Makes things much quicker imo. But I don't use any metro apps on the PC, I just use it as a full screen start menu.
I do install start8 though to get a proper button where the start menu used to be.
Little things like the task manager, Copy/paste windows, Having 2 taskbars on dual monitors & the icons moving to whichever screen they are on is cool.
The one thing I don't like is how hidden the restart/shut down menu is but I rarely do those anyway.
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Caporegime
Can't say I really care for the iPad but if that was true they wouldn't have sold as many as they have. Personally think MS are too late to the game and this'll be a complete flop.
Soldato
Dj_Jester said:
I said, agreeing with someone, that of course it will have bugs and flaws.
You quote me saying that W8 and WP8 will, essentially, be fundamentally more advanced than iOS (and this is not opinion, it is fact). And that it won't have lazily tacked on integrations to Facebook where something better like a Contracts API exposed to third-party usage would suffice.
How is that now a "blatant implication that W8 won't have those flaws"?
I merely stated it won't have *certain* flaws and limitations that exist in current rival offerings. How did you extrapolate that to mean it won't have *any* flaws and limitations whatsoever? You wouldn't be putting words into my mouth, would you?
Dj_Jester said:
And once again you get the wrong end of the stick entirely and make yourself look like a complete idiot.
This has nothing about being right or wrong, me and them or anything. It was simply an amusing reference to the fact that tech media back then couldn't make any sense of the MinWin project. I distinctly remember reading articles suggesting Microsoft was working on a whole new OS from the ground up and that MinWin was it. There was even Slashdot joining in on the action suggesting Microsoft had finally "seen the light" to start debloating their operating system. Ever since W7, the Server Core and Hyper-V projects; the purpose of MinWin has been visible for all to see but even still many of the tech media still simply do not understand it.
No that's not in full context. Not the piece you quoted. Because if you had actually read and understood it you'd see I was referring to a specific set of problems that exist today on rival platforms. The versioning issues of Android, the language barrier issues of iOS, etc. I said that W8 won't have these problems - because it won't. At no point did I suggest it wouldn't have *any* problems. That would be ridiculous. And it is equally ridiculous that you are trying to spin things as though I said that.Dj_Jester said:
I'm not sure at all the relevance of comparing the cost of a iOS app developer to a SQL Server DBA. But in any case, you missed my original point (again), which was:Dj_Jester said:
From post #189: "Microsoft's solution is that a company can still re-purpose their existing developers to write their W8 Metro apps. There is no massive sea change to undertake."
I shall expand on that now since you clearly didn't understand. What I'm saying is that any development team with C++, C#, HTML/JS human resources already onboard (and let's face it, that is pretty much all of them) can simply repurpose them to do Metro development. Whilst it is totally possible to repurpose such a developer to write Objective-C, it takes longer and is more costly, and you also have to find a willing individual first.
W8 Metro development will be cheaper, by far. Because you can write real Metro apps (not "websites" like you seem to think) using HTML/Javascript. So literally, almost overnight, every low-salary web developer can jump on the Metro bandwagon and start producing apps.
Dj_Jester said:
You'll see in a few months from now how quickly and cheaply a Metro app can be knocked out. Until then, I guess you'll just have to continue on being extremely sore and irritated about someone's opinion on the internet.
Dj_Jester said:
It's a longer list than what Apple has. I don't see how one language (and an incredibly niche one at that) versus *at least* four mainstream ones can be considered as "spinning". By "at least" I am of course referring to the fact that the .NET CLR is language agnostic and there's a whole raft of less-mainstream languages built on top of it. The big one on that list is of course HTML/JS. Writing true Metro apps with that is, as I said before, going to open up a huge low-cost developer base of Metro apps. And no, these aren't at all the same as "Offline web apps with an icon" like on iOS. Again, do some research and educate yourself about how the HTML/JS apps are baked right into the WinRT and XAML engines. They can inherit and use all the same styles, positioning, layout mechanisms etc that a XAML-authored application can. They can even access certain WinRT functionality through JavaScript, such as sensors, GPS, touch gestures etc.
Is that what this is all about? I've ignored Apple's success? I'm sorry, but I thought this was a Microsoft Surface thread where, you know, the subject of conversation is geared towards the thread title.Dj_Jester said:
What exactly is it that you clearly find so offensive about listing the shortcomings of existing rival products *that are on the market* versus a new upcoming product which, based on publicly available information, has clearly solved some of those shortcomings? This is what technology discussion is all about. It's what technology and the constant evolution is all about. If people weren't allowed to discuss this sort of thing then we'd still all be running, I don't know, Symbian powered phones I guess.
And all that clap trap you KEEP bringing up about pre-processor macros for Silverlight specific code... Silverlight is a presentation layer. If you have designed your application correctly you'd write a presentation layer implementation for each different type of presentation that you require. So you might have a web front end, a Windows application, a Silverlight applet etc etc. There really shouldn't be any reason AT ALL for leakage to occur between layers (or differing implementations of those layers) to such an extent that pre-processor macros are needed. Have you ever heard of MVVM? Of course you haven't. Because otherwise you'd realise that this whole line of argument about Silverlight is utterly deluded.
What's amusing about the Silverlight thing you started is there is actually a far better example you could have and should have used to fortify your argument that Microsoft has damaged its SDKs in the past by segregating them. And that example would be .NET itself. More specifically, that the 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 versions all ran off a 2.0 CLR. And then 4.0 wiped the slate clean. There is also another example you could have used whereby an assembly that is targeting the WinRT cannot use regular .NET libraries. Which will cause developers to have to write wrappers around all their WinRT code. In any case, none of this is relevant. I said that there will be one SDK, called WinRT, and that that SDK will version gracefully over time. I stand by that. The fact that you ended up grasping the completely wrong end of the stick is not my problem.
Dj_Jester said:
Why is that arrogant? Is it because you find my conclusion offensive? I didn't realise we were having a religious debate. I thought it was a thread discussing new technology where, you know, opinions are allowed and they can turn out to either fly or sink.
Dj_Jester said:
Not at all. Caged was implying that I was "being the judge of posts" and I said no I'm merely calling out a trollishly written post (and a singular post, at the time). This has nothing to do with being an ex-moderator. Clearly I seem to bother you very deeply. I'm devastated by that. Maybe you should consider getting that chipped shoulder looked at? Or as a more serious piece of advice: Maybe people here would take you more seriously if your posts weren't littered with an extremely aggressive tone, winking smileys trying to feign having the upper hand, deliberate misquotations that can be resolved by a reader simply by backtracking a couple posts to see what was actually originally said and just general misinformation that can be disproved by a top 3 Google hit.
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Yeah there are a few nice touches, but to me they aren't enough to justify upgrading a PC from W7. Things that (I assume) will just be a drag in from the side on a touch screen, like bringing up the charms menu or the options bar in the Metro start menu are a bit cumbersome with a mouse.
I have tried like you to use the Desktop exclusively, and it can almost be done, but to me it feels like Windows 7 with some annoying bits, rather than a newer and better OS.
But... I can fully see how it will work on touch screen tablet, and the ability to have an iPad style device with a Metro UI, but also know that if I want to fire up a 'proper' application I can, really appeals.
I think MS have tried to make a sort of hybrid that gives all the benefits of a desktop OS with all the usability of a tablet one, but it just lacks a little bit of the desktop bits to make it work. All it would need is a W7 style Start menu on the Desktop and I would be sold, tbh.
Soldato
Same here. But don't forget it comes with a stylus pen which helps mitigate *some* of the issues in using traditional Windows desktop via a touch screen. I think it will be highly usable, to a degree we've not seen before from a legacy mouse/keyboard OS.
Of course if you absolutely do need the precision of a mouse, then there's nothing stopping you keeping a wireless mini/laptop style mouse with a microUSB receiver in your bag. Just like most people already have today for their laptops!
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Yep.
My main issue with the iPad is that it neither replaced my phone or my laptop. Its an additional device that, for me at least, didn't make sense.
My laptop is old and dying. The full W8 Surface looks like something that can replace my laptop as a laptop, but also offer the portable touchscreen simplicity of an iPad, without making me carry a 3rd device.
If I want to do 'laptop' things, I'll fold out the keyboard and use it like a laptop. If I want to do iPad things, I'll use the Metro UI and touchscreen.
I'd actually given up hope that something like this would be coming along and started looking at thin and light Ultrabook style devices.
My main issue with the iPad is that it neither replaced my phone or my laptop. Its an additional device that, for me at least, didn't make sense.
My laptop is old and dying. The full W8 Surface looks like something that can replace my laptop as a laptop, but also offer the portable touchscreen simplicity of an iPad, without making me carry a 3rd device.
If I want to do 'laptop' things, I'll fold out the keyboard and use it like a laptop. If I want to do iPad things, I'll use the Metro UI and touchscreen.
I'd actually given up hope that something like this would be coming along and started looking at thin and light Ultrabook style devices.
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Soldato
I love my iPad for casual web surfing and e-mail but I don't really feel the urge to use it for anything else. Other than e-mail, it's very hard to use the iPad for anything other than a consumption device. Where most of my daily activities are geared around production.
Hell, even my Mum couldn't use an iPad for her eBay business. How would she use a scanner with it? A printer? Mass editing of photos to get them ready for upload to eBay? Some of it would be possible but in general the whole process would be exceptionally tedious. Whereas I can see precise benefits of a Surface so much so that I've already told her I am going to get her one!
Soldato
I think they will launch the same day as W8. Honestly. Microsoft are acting strangely confident all of a sudden and a bit of a PR coup like this is clearly but slowly being lined up.
I think the Surface hardware is ready to go. They're just waiting for the OS to be finished.
I think the Surface hardware is ready to go. They're just waiting for the OS to be finished.
Good.
If MS don't release both Surface versions on the day that W8 comes out, they will have missed the boat. I can guarantee there are plenty of other hardware manufacturers out there with touch screen slate devices just waiting for W8 RTM to fall onto their doorsteps.
So that would mean W8 and Surface out before the end of the year. Cool.
If MS don't release both Surface versions on the day that W8 comes out, they will have missed the boat. I can guarantee there are plenty of other hardware manufacturers out there with touch screen slate devices just waiting for W8 RTM to fall onto their doorsteps.
So that would mean W8 and Surface out before the end of the year. Cool.