It's good to see an article that focuses on more than the usual changes people obsess about in Windows 8.
These "not bad" changes in Windows 8 also underscore a recurring problem with software: people are forced to choose between "take the good and the bad" or "nothing", they can't just take the "good". Software updates are too big and bundled when the reality is that a lot of components could sensibly be upgraded by themselves.
Changes in Task Manager for instance could have been folded into any version of Windows to date, and if a few programmers had access to the right source code I'm sure they could have added this at least to XP. Yet they can't, and Microsoft won't, and users of any version other than 8 are kept from a perfectly sensible improvement.
Rather than charging $200 for an "upgrade", sometimes I think it would make a lot more sense if you could pay Microsoft $10 for the "new system utilities package" (which would update your Windows XP Task Manager alone, and whatever else falls into that category). In other words, don't restrict access to the truly useful upgrades just because no one wants Metro.
Upgrading a bundled application does not fragment the platform. In Android you see things like totally different device sizes, new APIs that some phones can handle and not others, etc.
Best idea I've heard to date regarding Windows 8. I would pay to get the Win8 desktop improvements on Windows 7: task manager, file transfer dialog, file explorer ribbon, etc.
Why not just get Win8 then? You want them to create two product lines because you want to keep the start button?
Furthermore, when someone does send you a link for a Win8 app you won't be able to run it. Or if you want to developer a Win8 app then you won't be able to.
I've been using Win8 since the release preview as my main desktop machine and as a desktop OS it's almost strictly better than Win7. The Metro UI is just a curiosity at the moment as I don't have a touch screen, but Win8 is still a better desktop OS than Win7.
Changes in Task Manager for instance could have been folded into any version of Windows to date, and if a few programmers had access to the right source code I'm sure they could have added this at least to XP.
Got any facts to back that assertion up? For all we know, the task manager changes couldn't have been added to Windows 7 or Windows XP. Maybe there's a new API that allows them to get these sorts of detailed statistics and present them to the user.
Piecewise marketing would be a disaster, but charging the standard price and letting people disable the pieces they don't want, that would be nice--- and to a large extent, Windows XP and 7 did exactly that -- you had Classic mode, which disabled all the UI cockups and kept the fucntionality improvements.
These "not bad" changes in Windows 8 also underscore a recurring problem with software: people are forced to choose between "take the good and the bad" or "nothing", they can't just take the "good". Software updates are too big and bundled when the reality is that a lot of components could sensibly be upgraded by themselves.
Changes in Task Manager for instance could have been folded into any version of Windows to date, and if a few programmers had access to the right source code I'm sure they could have added this at least to XP. Yet they can't, and Microsoft won't, and users of any version other than 8 are kept from a perfectly sensible improvement.
Rather than charging $200 for an "upgrade", sometimes I think it would make a lot more sense if you could pay Microsoft $10 for the "new system utilities package" (which would update your Windows XP Task Manager alone, and whatever else falls into that category). In other words, don't restrict access to the truly useful upgrades just because no one wants Metro.