In-Depth with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview
by Andrew Cunningham, Ryan Smith, Kristian Vättö & Jarred Walton on March 9, 2012 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Microsoft
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Windows 8
Technically, everything in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is in a non-final preview, but some things obviously need a bit more work than the others—one of these areas is the core set of Metro apps included with the Consumer Preview, all of which carry a prominent APP PREVIEW label. For this reason, we're just taking a limited look at just a few of Microsoft's core Metro apps for now—we'll do a deeper dive when they're finished, but at least for now it doesn't make a lot of sense to do a head-to-head comparison with their counterparts in iOS and Android. That said, let's continue:
Metro’s Mail uses a design that’s very common in email clients: You have accounts/folders in the left, emails in the middle and the selected email in the right-hand-side. The overall design is extremely bare, something you’re not used to in a desktop email client. There aren’t any visible buttons when in accounts/folders view but when you select a certain account or folder, you get buttons for new email, respond and delete. The respond button holds reply, reply all and forward functions inside it. Right-clicking fires up the so-called menu, which allows switching between accounts and folders view, as well as options to move or mark the email or sync your accounts.
The actual text editor offers a bit more power than the rest of the mail client. Once again, the tools are a right-click away but fortunately, the text editor isn’t as limited as other parts of the app. The basic text editing features are present along with some additional email tools. One should also note that the default signature is “Sent from my Windows 8 PC”, which is more or less a direct copy of Apple’s “Sent from my iPhone/iPad” signatures.
What about supported services and protocols? First and foremost, Metro’s Mail client only supports Hotmail, Gmail and Exchange accounts. Yes, you read it right, there is no support for 3rd party POP or IMAP services as of this writing. This is a huge drawback if you use any other services. For example, our AnandTech mail server is IMAP, which means I can’t use my work email with Metro’s Mail client. Of course, it’s possible to auto-forward emails from other services to Hotmail/Gmail, but that’s not a very convenient solution—hopefully this will change in the final version of the app.
Overall, Metro’s Mail client is fairly awkward for desktop use. It makes sense on a tablet with limited screen estate, but even a free email client like Windows Live Mail is way more powerful and usable in desktop environment. It doesn’t seem logical to be constantly right-clicking in order to access the menu when regular desktop email clients have the menu visible at all times. Even simple commands like reply and syncing are buried under a second click, which is just illogical.
Calendar
Metro’s Calendar is similar to Mail: It’s a very scarce app with not much extra. In Mail, this was a bigger issue but a calendar app doesn’t need to be filled with features to do its job.
The design is very basic. The background is grey and event tiles are in bright colors. Weekends show up in darker grey in day and week views, distinguishing them from weekdays.
Navigation is once again hidden behind a right-click, which brings up options for alternating between day, week and month views, as well as option to navigate to today or add a new event. Adding an event can also be done by clicking a tile where you want to schedule the event to. Navigating between days/weeks/months is done by bringing your mouse close to the upper corners and clicking an arrow.
Adding an event has the common tools which are used by many other services. You can add a location, message, reminder and so on. There is an option to select the calendar where you want the event to be added, which is useful if you use different calendars/services for home and work purposes for example.
Service support is the same as Mail’s: Google, Microsoft (via Windows Live), and Exchange. I quickly tried Google and Microsoft and they synced fine. There is a slight delay in Metro’s Calendar so it takes a while before an event shows up. Different colors in the calendar stand for different services – in this case Google is in blue and Microsoft is in green.
Again, it feels odd to be constantly right-clicking in order to navigate in the user interface. There is definitely enough space for day/week/month buttons and personally I would prefer having them visible rather than right-click to access them. Moreover, the lack of list view can be a con if you’re used to using Apple’s calendar applications. Overall the calendar app is alright – there is no yippee effect but it’s mostly functional.
Messaging
Like the other apps we've looked at, Messaging can only access a couple of services at present—Windows Messenger and Facebook, so again it's really best looked at as a demo or proof-of-concept than as a replacement for whatever your favorite IM program is. Messages between parties are laid out in a standard "speech bubble" format, with different colors and arrows to differentiate the parties who are sending messages.
As a side note, Messaging is actually a really good example of the kind of app that works really well with Metro Snap—it takes up just the right amount of space on the side of your screen, and even on a 1366x768 display you still have enough room to use desktop apps comfortably. Someone make a Twitter client that works like this soon, OK?
People
The Metro People app serves more or less as an aggregator for all of your contacts from different services, including Facebook, Hotmail, Twitter, Google, Exchange, and others. You can tie People to these accounts directly from the app, and it will also pull data from accounts you've set up through other apps (like Messaging, Mail, and etc.). It can also aggregate status updates from various social networking services under its "What's new" heading.
Photos
There is a very basic photo viewer included in Metro. Don’t expect anything fancy, all it does is view your photos. Supported services are the local pictures folder (obviously), Facebook, SkyDrive and Flickr. Once you enter your credentials, all of the photos show up in the now-familiar Metro-style grid of tiles [Editor's note: Kristian had problems getting SkyDrive and Flickr working, but this may be due to his geographical location—both services work fine for me here in the US].
The menu has four tiles, one for each service. Click a tile and the selected service opens. Right-clicking doesn’t bring any extra features here in the main menu.
Once you open a service, it shows you the photos and possible folders. I created a test Facebook account and uploaded a few pics from our recent reviews, and they all show up fine. Unfortunately, Photos doesn’t show Facebook photos where you were tagged, so it’s limited to photos uploaded to your account.
Inside an actual photo folder, you can play a regular slide show of the pictures or view them separately. Pictures library allows deletion and browsing by date as well, and Facebook has an option to view the photo in Facebook.
Metro’s Photos is very tablet-like and once again screams for touch input. It’s usable with a mouse but there are better photo viewing applications which are a lot more powerful as well in terms of features (editing, organizing, etc.). This time the service support is at least decent and Photos is indeed more than just a shortcut to your pictures folder.
Camera
Windows 8 includes a basic camera app that can be used to take pictures with your device's built-in camera—snapshots are saved in your Pictures library by default. The app has basic settings for setting camera resolution, controlling brightness, and other settings—it’s not going to turn a crappy webcam into an SLR, but it’s nice to see Windows finally get a functional native camera app.
Conclusions
The finished versions of these apps may be entirely different than the evaluation versions that Microsoft is showing off in the Consumer Preview, but even in their current form they give us an idea of how Windows 8 is going to approach the problem of vendor lock-in.
It seems like all of the major players in the tablet market—Google, Apple, and most recently Amazon—are using their hardware and software to lock the user into their respective ecosystems. Apple's iCloud offers easy setup and syncing for Apple mail, calendar, and other services; Google has built everything from an email service to a social network in an effort to get you to spend all of your time on its pages; and the Kindle Fire is purpose-built to purchase items from Amazon's stores. It can make interoperability difficult, and the longer you live in a given ecosystem, the more painful it can be to jump ship.
This is not to say that Microsoft doesn't offer you the option of lock-in: all settings are synced via your Windows Live ID, which is also needed to download apps, and it can also tie you to Hotmail, SkyDrive, Messenger, and any number of Microsoft-hosted services—they are trying to run a business here. The difference in Windows 8 is that you can also access data on the services that you're already using, and have data from those services treated the same way as data hosted by Microsoft. It's convenient and, most importantly, it presents a consistent user experience no matter where your stuff is coming from.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
286 Comments
View All Comments
Andrew.a.cunningham - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
1) We'll probably do an analysis of that with an RTM version of the OS. I wouldn't expect it to change too drastically from a patched copy of Windows 7.2) Not guaranteed, but probably. When 7 was released, Vista got a Platform Update that added support for DX11, some WDDM 1.1 features, and a few other things: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971644
Windows 7 is still in its mainstream support phase, so I'd expect those updates to be available after Windows 8 RTM.
R3MF - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
many thanks Andrew.Andrew.a.cunningham - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Welcome! :-)valnar - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Isn't the fact that new Windows phone BOMBED in the marketplace enough reason not glorify this crappy GUI? The public has already spoken.And....what makes a good tablet or phone OS (touch screen) does not necessarily make a good desktop OS.
silverblue - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
True, however everybody has differing tastes. I don't mind it, personally, and it's not as if the Windows 7 desktop has gone forever.As for Mango, it's not on many devices and hasn't been out long. I also firmly believe that it's the first flavour (sorry) of Windows Phone that Microsoft has truly taken seriously. Give it time. Had dozens of devices been launched with Mango yet sales been poor, I'd have been more inclined to agree with you.
Touch screen technology has been around a while and it's about time that a mainstream OS had extensive functionality in this area.
Subzero0000 - Sunday, March 11, 2012 - link
>Isn't the fact that new Windows phone BOMBED in the marketplace enough reason not glorify this crappy GUI? The public has already spoken.Well, that's exactly why they have to FORCE metro to their biggest userbase (Desktop PC). They want people to get used to metro, then hopefully people get attached to it and choose to buy tablet/phone with metro.
PopinFRESH007 - Sunday, April 15, 2012 - link
+1This is where I think Apple's methodical, very deliberate, well thought out approach is going to win over a lot of people after Windows 8 launches. Microsoft already tried this in reverse order and it was awful until they instantly became irrelevant when the original iPhone launched. They crammed a mouse and keyboard OS into a crappy touchscreen phone and called it a day. Here they are cramming a touchscreen phone/tablet OS pasted on top of a desktop OS and figured out the least amount of work to make it possible to maneuver between the (what feels like) two OS's. When the review consistently has "There are actually two versions of..." you know you have done something wrong as an OS engineer.
I've given Win8 a fair shake, I've really tried to give it an honest everyday usage to give it a fair comparison. I have a Lumia 900 and have been running the consumer preview since it came out. I'm really going the extra mile to give the Metro UI a shot, but it just doesn't scale to a desktop (In the way windows 8 implements it) very well at all. I've used Win8 on a very nice prerelease tablet and it works wonderfully. Microsoft should really take a step back and survey the industry and learn from what has been successful and what has had problems. The iPad is crushing the tablet market because it benefits (like many Apple products) from a halo of the iPhone, iTunes, and iCloud. Google has realized their misstep in segmenting the phone & tablet OS's and I think Microsoft will come to realize that a touchscreen tablet has more in common with a touchscreen smartphone than it does with a keyboard and mouse desktop PC.
The thing about Metro is that it is very simplistic and *could* scale easily. Look at a Windows Phone 7 next to a Windows 8 Tablet and it's ability to scale is obvious. I think the real problem here is Microsoft is taking a Bold, half hearted, All-in, keep some chips in reserve, Go for the gusto, partially move to Metro. They cram it down your throat but don't believe in it enough to completely re-think the OS an move to it. I would like Windows 8 a whole lot more if it was a unified experience with Metro at it's center. The half ***ed cramming of two OS's with different UI's into one cup of tea is what really pushes me away from Windows 8. If they left the core of windows 7 under the hood so any windows 7 app's would run, and provide a simple framework for developers to create "live tile" shortcuts that plugin to the new services that Windows 8 will bring this would be a much better OS. If this is the future, GO FOR IT!! There should not be a control panel for "desktop" and a settings for Metro. There should not be Metro IE 10 and IE 10 for Desktop. If they built API's and service frameworks for developers to bridge Metro UI to C++ code and let developers design their software the best way that suits their needs there would be far better support. The Metro UI as a launcher for native C++ app's and HTML5 Metro apps would be great. This would be especially true if developers could push notifications and information to the live tiles for their app's. Imagine a multiplayer game like Battlefield 3 on Windows 8. On the Metro UI "Start" screen the Live Tile for BF3 would be alive with info from battlelog. So you could easily see if some friends are playing the game, or if there is new content/updates, etc... It would be like having the community features of Steam, without ever having to "Launch" anything. A quick glance at your games area of your Live Tiles and you could see who is online playing what games and quickly join in. The same thing would be true for a more professional app like Photoshop. Imaging if Adobe, using these types of API's could build in collaboration features tied into the Live Tiles & using SkyDrive. You could save an image in your skydive and share it to your fellow team members, then if there are changes and edits all of those peoples Live Tiles for Photoshop would reflect that new information. They have so much potential and are at a solid time to make the leap, the real leap to Metro with less risk. They have a solid "traditional" OS in Windows 7 that they could continue to sell. They also have the ability to really bring a new level of integration that has been absent from Microsoft products. Tie in Xbox Live like they did on Windows Phone 7, and integrate voice chat, the friend list, messaging, etc as system wide services. The list goes on and on with the amount of potential they have to make a seamless experience across all of their platforms from phone, to xbox to tablet to PC. It's sad to see this is the best they can do.
As mentioned above, I think Apples approach of using services like iCloud to bridge your data from a mobile platform to a desktop platform is a better strategy. Really looking at each element of a mobile OS and thinking how that will work on a desktop with a mouse and keyboard; working to merge what makes sense and leaving out what doesn't. I think Apple is also failing at this to some extent as well. They should be working on unifying their "Store's" so I could make an app that when loaded on an iPhone would have the iPhone UI, when loaded on the iPad would have the iPad UI and when loaded on a Mac would have a windowed UI, and the store would serve up the correct parts of the binary depending on if it's on a mobile device like iPhone/iPad or Mac.
/END RANT.
jabber - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
The feedback has been 100% negative. Really really bad. No question I haven't seen a normal PC user yet that likes it or wants to use it.The feedback for Windows 7 was 90% positive.
Not looking good MS.
futurepastnow - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
The feedback from the two "normal" non-technical computer users I showed it to was very negative. I let them play with it with no instructions or advice, and they couldn't do anything. It's the least intuitive interface ever.Oddly (or not oddly), the most computer-literate person I showed it to figured he could get used to it, since he uses keyboard commands for everything and they still work. He thinks Microsoft are out of their minds, though.
Perhaps that is Microsoft's problem, I wonder? All of their engineers, testers and QA people know all of the keyboard commands, which puts them in the 1% of computer users. Perhaps if they created a special version of Win8 for interface testing, which *required* mouse input for all actions, they'd seriously reconsider Metro.
Exodite - Saturday, March 10, 2012 - link
I don't know, I'm a software engineer myself and I wouldn't touch W8 with a 10ft pole.I like the minor underlying enhancements to things like the Task Manager and File Transfer dialog, though nothing of that can even begin to make up for the UI clusterfuck.
I run a multiple-display desktop system.
I _like_ nestled folder structures and rely on it to organize.
I prefer minimal clutter on the desktop, to the point the only application icons there are Chrome and MPC-HC, and half a dozen project folders. I also use minimal size icons.
Huge icons in listings, and the enormous amount of whitespace they add, is wasteful and inefficient.
I can't stand that good and intuitive UI elements like radiobuttons and checkboxes are giving way to touch-oriented dragbars, it just underlines wha ta gigantic step backwards the entire Metro experience represents.
Perhaps you're right about technical and professional users being less impacted by the horrors of W8 due to being more comfortable with keyboard shortcuts than users in general, my personal experience isn't enough to say one way or another.
On the other hand I'd argue that that particular group of people are least inclined to accept the changes because they very rarely have to. I don't have to use Windows as a development platform, I could quite trivially move to any *NIX platform of choice.
And if Microsoft doesn't see the light before Windows 7 hits EOL I might as well migrate platform, at least I can set up the UI as I prefer that way.