Fall Creators Update
Also known as the Lucifer Release.
Microsoft has released a new preview of Windows 10's Fall Creators Update, showing off elements of its new Fluent Design System and introducing a host of features. At the Build developer event last month, the company announced the Fluent Design System as a move away from the flat design language which characterised the "Metro …
I'm quite happy with the 'broken abortion' (how quaint), especially as I never used 7.
I hear moans and whines but never any detail, not that it would bother me.
It doesn't matter in M$ came out with a flawless, faultless O/S there would be a huge queue of people ready to diss it as it doesn't exactly fit like an old pair of slippers . Yeah ,like you buy a new car that is exactly the same as the old one?
Here's some details:
Flat (no 3D) UI style
No transparency or other relational cues
Horrible default color options
Excessive amounts of empty space
Touch sized objects in a desktop environment
Poor organization in the start panel
Missing features that were there for years
Advertising in the OS
Mixed UI styles depending on the framework used to build the program
Two different control panels, with options spread across both of them
There's also the perennial favorites of the ribbon and telemetry.
I'll give you that there will always be someone who hates it, no matter how perfect, but this is far from perfect. It's still fundamentally a phone and tablet UI and it doesn't look or feel good on the desktops and laptops where it's actually being used.
The quote "only the strong will survive" is actually a misquote regarding natural selection. Natural selection will select out those of a species least capable of adapting to the changes in their environment. One might suggest that as the world evolves, people who can't figure out how to become comfortable with a new version of Windows after 10 years might be headed down the same road as the dodo.
"One might suggest that as the world evolves, people who can't figure out how to become comfortable with a new version of Windows after 10 years might be headed down the same road as the dodo."
The evolutionary error in your post is that Windows 10 is also part of the ecosystem, so the other possibility is that it will become extinct due to a lack of competitiveness.
It's like this: take the edge of a wood surrounded by parkland. Pretty, isn't it? It is actually a battleground between trees and grass. Trees crap dead leaves or resin on the grass and deny it sunlight; grass removes surface water and slows tree growth.
But there are other factors like climate. This affects the relative competitiveness of trees and grass. Hence savanna, pampas, and various types of rainforest.
Sometimes adaptation isn't needed, you just wait for the climate to change. And the climate is made neither by ordinary users nor by Microsoft; they influence it but they don't make it.
> ... as the world evolves, people who can't figure out how to become comfortable with a new version of Windows after 10 years might be headed down the same road as the dodo.
... as the world evolves, versions of Windows that users aren't comfortable with might be headed down the same road as the dodo.
People (paid by MS or just stupid? Maybe both) were saying exactly the same thing a few years ago about the fantastic new Windows 8.
I hope they're not missing their world-changing brilliant new UI too much, now that's a minor footnote in the history of IT blunders... I expect they're too busy getting excited about the new design language in the "Fall Creators Update" to remember though.
One might suggest that as the world evolves, people who can't figure out how to become comfortable with a new version of Windows after 10 years might be headed down the same road as the dodo.
That only works if Windows 10 is the only way to survive. It may be that if enough people switch to alternatives, it'll be the ones who stuck with the evolutionary dead-end of Windows 10 that will go join the dodo. All it would take is for some of the major software houses to produce full-featured Linux versions of their packages and a lot of small business would seriously consider a switch. Windows still seems to be better for managing and controlling large numbers of devices centrally though, so one might expect large organisations to persist.
"All it would take is for some of the major software houses to produce full-featured Linux versions of their packages and a lot of small business would seriously consider a switch."
What do you even need that still requires a local install? SAP, Oracle, Salesforce... all the business software is browser based and generally SaaS. There are a few outliers like Photoshop and IDEs, but they are working on it.
Also, why go through the trouble of managing local fat OSs in the first place?
I think the way that people go is to Google Chromebooks. That gives them enterprise support from a massive company (if they want it), a free OS, an OS which is easy to manage individually and as a fleet. I wouldn't be opposed to a Linux OS... but I think companies would more likely move to the next thing. The next thing is a laptop OS that works like a mobile OS.
What do you even need that still requires a local install? SAP, Oracle, Salesforce... all the business software is browser based and generally SaaS. There are a few outliers like Photoshop and IDEs, but they are working on it.
The performance of some of this stuff is dire, especially if someone has failed to put in enough bandwidth and someone in the office decides to download some large files (or puts a bunch of stuff on to Google Drive or Dropbox and everyone else's machine decides to synchronise content). A lot of technical stuff is still local, electrical tools such as OrCAD/Altium/Allegro, plus the mechanical stuff (Solidworks/Pro-E) because it's highly graphical and a browser is not going to cut it.
I've worked in a place which used SalesForce and it was hilarious watching the panic when it went down for a day a while back. I've worked in places which use on-line stuff that is painfully slow. I much prefer to run stuff locally, where outages and security breaches are entirely of local making.
That's right, I have never really embraced the cloud. My software is owned by me, in that I can keep using it (without upgrades, admittedly) without having to pay anyone else any more money, unlike all this SaaS stuff.
"One might suggest that as the world evolves, people who can't figure out how to become comfortable with a new version of Windows after 10 years might be headed down the same road as the dodo."
Yeah, that... or companies still riding high on the 1990s model of fat, proprietary, paid OSs are headed down the same road as the dodo.
It doesn't matter in M$ came out with a flawless, faultless O/S there would be a huge queue of people ready to diss it as it doesn't exactly fit like an old pair of slippers
That is not true. Not because there would not be people seeking to diss it, but because M$ has not managed to EVER make a flawless, faultless bit of software in its +40 years of existence. I suspect initially this was stumbled upon as an excellent tactic to keep flogging upgrades, but it soon became a cost saving habit as the cost of quality eats into profits and people bought it anyway.
The likelihood of M$ ever making something that is even halfway decent is thus remote. M$ knows that its buyers are as gullible as out of work miners voting for Trump.
Just get rid of the Microsoft billboard of flipping flashing tiles that are advertising Xbox, candy crush, Microsoft products and services I don't want, distracting flip animations, crap that doesn't uninstall, or worse still, silently reinstalls after you uninstall it.
Windows 10 and metro is basically an advertisement platform.
Yeah ,like you buy a new car that is exactly the same as the old one?
I did once, upgraded because at the time the monthly payments required were cheaper than not doing so, assuming I wanted to keep owning a car. Old and new cars parked next to each other at handover, the sales chap said that at this point he was supposed to go over the controls on the new vehicle to make sure I knew where they all were. I just asked if they were all the same as the old one, he said yes and we agreed that he'd done the job.
"Just give us a fucking Windows 7 user interface you morons"
Yeah, that is what people want... probably won't get it though. Why? Desktop OS is a commodity. For the vast majority of people, it is a useless piece of software which you need to boot to run a browser (generally Chrome browser). Microsoft doesn't like that... that Windows has become that thing that makes it take longer for Chrome to boot. They are going to keep throwing stuff at people in hopes of stumbling across something which makes them realize they really need an old school fat OS... and that they want to pay for it.
The update has a selling point that means you can pin websites to the start bar? And smoother scrolling between different monitor sizes to name a few of the ones listed.
I can do that in Windows 7, I could do that in XP I think. Fairly sure I had smooth scrolling between laptop monitor and main desktop monitor. Seamless in fact.
They do seem to be racing to reach first gear in a lot of ways.
Still Linux support is nice.
You cannot believe how hard I facepalmed when the Win10 machine I was setting up for a friend refused to let me pin Chrome (used for addblock, I'd not want phishing attacks on them) bookmarks to the start menu.
No problem, I can use the desktop. But the entire idea of the new start menu was for fancy options and live content and... oh, works fine only for Edge content. Yeah, I see their priorities there. But I'm not foisting it on others (gui change from windowed content the main thing "where is the X?" and "Oh, you have to grab it and throw/drag the window from the top... yeah it's a bit buggy at times").
Chrome spies on what you search. Possibly what sites you visit. I can turn it off or run a fork (Iron etc).
10 spies on everything. I cannot turn it off, I can only choose a Linus option.
I can live with one, the other I cannot (well, I can live with Linux, but others may not have that choice).
Wait till SatNad monetizes Windows-as-a-service, and you need to buy a subscription to unlock 'freemium' features on Windows, to receive patches, drivers etc.
It's like people have already forgotten what SatNad had done to the Solitaire game in Windows 10.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3180657/Microsoft-fire-Windows-10-users-playing-Solitaire-costs-10-year-unless-want-sit-video-ads.html
That was a sneak preview of what is to come.
>That was a sneak preview of what is to come.
Err that just confirmed that MS were still following Apple iOS.
Years back 'free' app's on iOS generally had relatively discrete ad's in a static bar across the bottom of the screen.
Then we got the full screen ad's which pop'd up between runs of games, but were easily dismissed. In the last year (since circa the launch of Mobile Strike?) the pop up ads now run for a minimum (not user controlled) time before they can be dismissed; which seems to be getting longer, plus they will change the location of the 'X' close button, between ad plays so that you have to look to find it.
So for a sneak preview of what is over the horizon for Windows, just look at other more advanced platforms - remember one of the patented features of iOS is it's ad hooks.
The difference though is that IOS is a mobile operating system. Windows 10 shouldn't be trying to be a mobile OS when installed on a PC. We're also talking about the OS pushing advertisements, not an app. I have a choice of installing free apps on my phone but if I buy a new PC then I have less to no choice about the OS. Remember Windows 10 is no longer free but costs real money.
>The difference though is that IOS is a mobile operating system.
And Windows 10 isn't trying to be a mobile operating system with its tablet and phone platform variants?
>We're also talking about the OS pushing advertisements, not an app.
The AC explicitly exampled Solitaire, which is just an app bundled with the OS.
But the differences are irrelevant, it is the direction of travel that is being discussed.
iOS is an operating system and Apple has patents for the OS level integration of ad's. Yes presently the Apple hooks are only used by "non-OS" app's but there is nothing - other than market image and some degree of respect for their customers - that is preventing Apple shipping an ad pusher as part of the OS release. As has been noted MS follows Apple, albeit with a lot less finesse...
>Remember Windows 10 is no longer free but costs real money.
It never was 'free' - the 'free' giveaway was to selected existing Windows licence holders only.
http://winaero.com/blog/windows-7-games-for-windows-10-anniversary-update-and-above/
You can get the wonderful vibrant coloured Windows 7 free games to add to Windows 10. I have a test install on one PC and 10 is rock solid so far. I had to use Classic Shell for the classic start menu and a lot of registry hacks from tenforums.com tutorials to get it under control. A shoutout to tweakhound.com for the tutorial and tweaks which helped a lot. Uninstalled most of the apps, deleted crap from start menu I am never going to use and also used WinAero tweaker to turn off telemetry etc. Windows 7 which I love is on all of my PC's and just works although I tweak it to my liking. Tweaking 10 to my liking has taken copious amounts of reading and effort for a UI that looks worse than 7. Is 10 more secure than 7? Doubt it has the same core engine win32 and 10 has the new metro stuff too. Now M$ does not have a mobile phone how about a real desktop OS? Or is this what the Window 10 Workstation is at $300 + a copy. Probably a Windows 7 Ultimate OS with the 7 x out and 10 written in its place. Really should not have to spend about 5 days installing my programs and setting stuff up and fighting the OS to get Windows the way I would like it rather than M$ defaults.
Every windows 10 update has been a complete fuck about with gpos. Each ipdate breaks something that worked in previous builds. Be it lock screens, start menu XML, default program assignments, per user apps. The list goes on.
10 is a horrid experience every 6 months.
"If it makes that unusable flat 2D design more like the UI in Windows 7"
that would be nice, of course, but the millennial CHILDREN running the show in the Halls of Redmond aren't about to let THAT happen... they *MUST* *CRAM* the 2D FLATSO FLUGLY up our collective orifices! For our own good!
"The rest of us" indeed. Like in the article's title. Totally abandoned, as usual.
Does anyone else see the remarkable similarity between this new "Acrylic material" and Aero?
Seems like reinventing the wheel and claiming it's a brand new thing...
I'm pretty sure the skeuomorphic inspiration for Aero was glass. This new approach is inspired by Acrylic. It isn't like they just re-patented 'Aero, with rounded corners'
"I am not sure who would prefer the new version unless using touch control."
Pretty much sums up how I feel about the entirety of Settings vs Control Panel. And it's been like this for what feels like the last 5 or six iterations.
Please, Microsoft, make one set of system controls and make them not be shit.
I just press the Windows key and type. It's clear that the search engine comes from the makers of Bing... but unlike Bing, it often actually comes close. So, I don't think I've actually seen the settings interface. I just search for what I need and generally try to use Powershell for most everything.
I will admit that display resolution should not be categorized as advanced settings.
Same here. I suspect when this lands for universal distribution it'll be the usual botched bloatware that deliberately resets all my settings back to Slurp's preferences, as well as installing a shitload of code and features that I didn't ask for, and won't use.
Still, the good people at O&O will hopefully issue a prompt update for ShutUp10, and a quick download and run will fix as many privacy holes as possible.
I think that screenshot also shows many of the problems with metro nicely.
The right one isn't particularly good, but at least you have a decent amount of information on your screen, as well as some aide to help you distinguish between mime types and protocols.
Whereas the new look wastes lots of space and gives you no clue on what's going on. Does that column with the different "Internet Explorer" Logos have anything to do with what's on the left? How can I disable individual types?
I have a fairly recent hi-res Windows 10 convertible (Lenovo Yoga 900). When I returned to my desk I was asked to preview the cretin's security features. It had stolen my desktop - no other interactions (3 finger salute) would work.
There was a link in this notification that said "Learn more". Nothing else. I didn't want to "Learn more" since I was at work and had real stuff to do. Still, no other options.
I gathered several co-workers around to marvel at how crappy this PC-DOS company had become. Took lots of suggestions on what key-strokes to try, what mouse clicks to click and where on the screen. Nothing worked.
Finally, I realized I had applied the Display font-size option since normal fonts are tiny on a 3200x1800 13" display and I run at %175 of normal. The desktop robber was unable to deal with non-standard sizes. The TAB key took me to a hidden "Remind me later" button.
I think this line of ThinkPads can now run Linux satisfactorily. FU, cretins!
GUI scaling is f...ked up beyond unreal in Windows 10 (against hopes of believers). Helpful hand of MS likes to fiddle with this on users' behalf (and as usual without being asked to). End result is that while high DPI screen remains usable (but far from sharp), the stuff on lower res screen (of the multi display setup) can only be described as murky. And I not talking about some legacy apps (though rendering of MS' management consoles is downright despicable). It's the interface of Outlook 2016 that really puzzles me - gritty, dirty, blotchy space with smallish and blurry text. Or falling apart GUI in Lync, Skype (or whatever they'll call it tomorrow).The harder they try the worse it looks (downhill since Windows XP). WTF MS.
and this is one of the things that I have less and less patience with on Windows: hunting down/figuring settings and configurations.
Control Panel? Group Policy? right click on Computer? Charms? System Properties? Direct Registry tweak? Sacrifice chicken?
Windows used to be easy for beginners. Now it's really only easy for people who either configure all the time or those who never bother to do it.
Google up a Windows 8 Wifi setting howto and you may very well find that 8.1 does it differently, let alone 10.
Getting to the point where Powershell is probably easier.
Getting a consistent, unified, stable and predictable way to configure Windows would remove huge annoyances. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be consistent, unified....
Of course, this being MS, it brings to mind https://xkcd.com/927/ and it would also be nice if they ended on the right side of https://xkcd.com/1778/ instead of on the left.
I don't care about the new stuff because Microsoft is not giving us what we ask for. We want a logical start menu like in Windows 7 or earlier. We want the ribbon gone but good from everything. We want an option for Aero. We want a working pre-boot F8. We want all tracking of any kind for any reason gone forever. We want the ability to control which updates we get. We want the ability to control which drivers we install. We want your "apps" to stay uninstalled once we uninstall them. Correction: We don't want your apps to ever install.
I personally want a proper backup program to return. I personally want a return to the Windows 7 style recovery console. I personally want Secure Boot permanently banned. I personally want Microsoft to require System Restore to be turned on by default. I personally want Windows to stop trying to be my friend and using non-professional terminology like "We're glad you're here."
I am not pleased nor will I be. Ask 100 random people who use Windows 10 and 99 of them will hate it.
It's hardly surprising, I foresaw this when SatNad was announced as the new CEO to take over Ballmer.
What was SatNad's previous job at Microsoft? Enterprise cloud. I rest my case.
It's also a PR-driven appointment: the shareholders thought that a jeans-wearing ethnic minority CEO will spruce up Microsoft's beleaguered corporate image. Don't forget the corporate logo change, and the setting up of a clique of fans and groupies, the 'Insiders'.
That goes back to before Windows 2000, except it was called Microsoft Services for Unix or something then.
Today a VM on Windows makes more sense, or indeed just using Linux, and maybe WINE or a VM for Windows apps. Seems to me that Win7 was last version that could be customised without 3rd party software to be "sane", though file Explorer horrible compared to XP.
Utterly worthless for those who do not have a Microsoft account, and who do not intend to sign up for one.
As a desktop Windows user, I have no wish to drink SatNad's Kool-Aid. In fact, I kind of miss Ballmer now.
In fact, the prima facie evidence of Microsoft's retardation under SatNad would be Skype's latest revamp. Do you really need more proof?
Admit it Microsoft, Edge a.k.a the polished turd of IE and Microsoft's mobile ambitions have failed. Adding touch-centric features does nothing in the grander scheme of things.
I'd really like to have a browser choice for my small Windows tablet, but Chrome and Firefox both removed their touch UI options, and non-touch-UI-aware browsers are a pain to use on an 8" touchscreen.
I don't use it on my desktop, but on my tablet Edge is about the only browser that's usable.
(I do use the pen quite a bit, so the pen input updates will be nice, as will the new software keyboard.)
"new dictation button on the touch keyboard, though this currently only works for US English and Chinese (Simplified)"
So they can detect the script you would use to write down the the words you are speaking? That is amazing!
(Traditional and Simplified are alternative scripts, used in Mainland China and Taiwan, respectively. Putonghua|Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese & others are spoken dialects of Chinese)
"So they can detect the script you would use to write down the the words you are speaking? That is amazing!"
It's quite easy according to the Microsoft world view.
Everyone is monolingual. Buy another device if you want another language.
Corollary: Unless you buy an Enterprise language, you are monolingual and will speak the language that we think you ought to, depending on geolocation.
This has really nothing of value for people interested in working rather that fiddling with websites and games?
"Pin websites on Taskbar" That's a feature????????
Bah!
Ability to have Icon for a specific web page is about 25 years old on Windows. Basically since pre-Win95 supported TCP-IP and a web browser.
Stop trying to be cool and give back a version of windows with
1) Privacy
2) Proper customisation of desktop like we had from Win95 to Win7
3) Decent WIMP GUI for people not using tablets, phones, wacom, touch etc. Available on various GUIs from 1976 till win 7.
4) No Ribbon or flat, or menu items that hide because they are little used. The 3D effect on GUI elements added approximately Win3.11 is fine. No need for fancy effects or flat UNLESS people select them by customisation.
MS has lost the plot. Probably around 2004 actually.
For those of you commenting who hate MSFT I have to ask why you even bother to read this or comment - just go back to quietly hurting small furry mammals until a topic comes up on which you can objectively comment.
For those wishing things were the same as version X.xx the bad news is it will never be, but the good news is that if you take part in activities that accelerate the early-onset of dementia you can live in yesteryear full time again!!
For the rest of us we'll grudgingly put up with "New & Improved" mania from our software, auto and these days even our fruit&veggie vendors.
My Win10 machine keeps telling me it wants to schedule a reboot. Even when I've just done one. Given that it takes fifteen minutes before it becomes usable again, I am reluctant to sign up to its stupid game. I am giving serious thought to ripping out the hard drive for a fresh one and seeing if this machine will happily run Win7, then copy over the stuff I need.