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
What comes next?
Microsoft released the beta version of Windows 7 to the public in January of 2009. At the time, it was basically feature-complete, but Microsoft made some tweaks and incorporated them into a release candidate build that it released in early May. The OS was then released to manufacturing in July, and public availability followed in October.
Microsoft’s stated goal for Windows 8 is to ship later this year, and using Windows 7’s timeline as a reference we can see that they’re still more or less on track for that. What we don’t really know is whether Windows 8 is as far along in the Consumer Preview as Windows 7 was in its beta—that will be the main factor in determining how quickly the rest of the development process goes by.
We also know nothing about product editions or cost at this point. Now, we didn’t know these details at this point in Windows 7’s cycle either, but if you’ll recall, the evaluation copy of Windows 7 offered in the beta and release candidate stages was clearly branded as “Windows 7 Ultimate,” suggesting that the multiple product tiers introduced in Vista would stick around to at least some degree. Everything in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is branded as, well, a Consumer Preview, meaning that Microsoft could really go anywhere with respect to product editions at this point.
In an ideal world, I’d love to see the company sell one edition of Windows that did everything Windows was capable of doing, but in our flawed reality I would settle for the death of the Ultimate edition, which has always had trouble justifying its existence (remember Ultimate Extras? Neither does anyone else). The few extra features it does offer (Bitlocker, primarily) would roll nicely into the Professional edition, and would be a suitable answer to the new version of FileVault introduced in Lion last year.
Unfortunately, I think Microsoft is all-too-likely to maintain the status quo in this case. People who do apples-to-apples comparisons of the OS X and Windows pricing structures are missing the point a bit—Apple has a nice high-margin hardware business that helps to subsidize its software development, which means it can more easily offer upgrades where $29 gets you a new OS that you can use for every computer in your house. Microsoft is a software company, and its bottom line depends on Windows—drastic price cuts would be awesome, but I don't think they're in the cards.
Conclusions
I was a huge advocate of Windows 7 when it came out, both personally and professionally. I immediately upgraded all of my systems just after release, and shortly after I started pushing it on my friends and family (I spent most of Thanksgiving 2009 upgrading systems). I spearheaded a migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 where I worked at the time, a small shop hesitant to change and frightened of the new. I thought it was a great upgrade—it provided a host of much-needed updates with few of Vista’s real or imagined shortcomings—and I thought that any computer that could be upgraded to run Windows 7 should be upgraded to run Windows 7, from the fastest multi-core desktop workstation to the lowliest netbook.
My reaction to Windows 8 is more tempered, assuming that what we see here in the Consumer Preview is more or less representative of the final product. I think it has the potential to be a killer tablet operating system, and for my part I think it’s quite usable on a laptop and desktop, but I have my doubts that more skittish users and businesses are going to be able to see past the newness of Metro.
The other problem Windows 8 is going to have is that, while it offers some nice under-the-hood updates, and while Metro is much more usable with a mouse and keyboard than some pessimists will lead you to believe, it’s not the essential upgrade for PCs that Windows 7 was. Thanks in part to the user-facing and under-the-hood improvements in Windows 7, desktops and laptops don’t need a new operating system like they did three years ago when their only options were the aging XP, the flawed Vista, or the alien landscape of Linux.
If you’re reading this, the chances are good that you’re a technology enthusiast with a decent system, and you’re the ones to whom Windows 8’s under-the-hood enhancements will appeal the most. Give the preview a test drive, evaluate whether you’ll use the new features, and give Metro a fair shake—like it or not, it’s the future of the platform, and it’s well-implemented here. If you’re happy with Windows 7, though, this isn’t the must-have upgrade that its predecessor was, and Microsoft’s long-term support cycle—mainstream support until 2015, extended support until 2020—means that you’ll still get significant software updates (new DirectX and IE versions and a handful of other backported features) for awhile and security updates for even longer. You’ve got time to wait for Windows 9.
We'll continue to cover changes in Windows 8 as it progresses toward its eventual release, at which point I'd like to post an updated version of this article covering new stuff and any features we missed this time around. If there's something missing in this review that you'd like to see covered, you can contact me at andrewc@anandtech.com, or find me on Twitter (I'm @Thomsirveaux).
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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.