Indeed. I'm a life-long Mac user who has grown tired of Apple pushing what it thinks I need instead of listening to what I actually want. Arrogance is unbecoming, and Apple has it in spades. I'm increasingly using Windows to get "real work" done, and seeing Microsoft humble itself and listen to users is an encouraging sign that I'm making the right choice.
Apple's always been that way, though. This is nothing new. Perhaps you're tired of Apple telling you what to do and it not being the will of Steve Jobs? Perhaps the Reality Distortion Field truly is collapsing, bringing users back into the fold with Android and to a lesser extent, Windows.
Come back to us! We welcome you back to the real world where limited is limited and not "optimal."
Apple has always been different, but I disagree that they have always been the way they are now.
Lately, it seems the extent to which Apple cares about professional users is inversely proportional to their profits. Some will say that Apple is right to ignore professionals if they can make far more money selling iToys, but I think that strategy will eventually backfire.
Professionals tend to be influencers, and the pros I know in the audio, graphics, and video worlds are abandoning Apple in droves. It's entirely possible that this will have zero impact on Apple's bottom line, but it will be hard for them to maintain the perception that their computers are high-end when nobody that needs a high-end computer actually uses a Mac.
Moreover, while nobody disputes that Apple can make far more money selling to consumers than power users, the former is a fickle audience. If/when Apple loses its mojo (and I'd argue that it's already happening), they'll wish they had a more stable base of customers. But a lot of those customers will have already moved on.
For what? Apple? Windows Phone? Blackberry? The last one was added for strictly humor, but seriously? Keep telling yourself they're leaving when the numbers obviously speak to the contrary.
I think Microsoft is a company that always have listened and adapted to the needs of their enterprise customers, which is why windows 8 was such an aberration. The user interface shift towards integrating touch in win 8 has to be seen as an out of character, slightly panicked move to stop the bleeding pc sales. Anyways, good to see microsoft with their priorities more in order this time!
This mindless conflation of Win8 and PC stagnation really needs to stop. It was clearly blurted out by someone with no idea how this market works, most likely some techblogger scum. Why repeat after them?
now they only need to change that icon for the windows store , unless you have the exact green theme , it looks so ugly , amateuristic , white on green looks feels for me annoyign to watch. While it supposed to be very important... , or am i missing a option to change it.
I like the changes to hide search and task view but I wonder because it is of my stubbern old preferences and habbits.
A question about windows 10 , are the windows apps like reader supposed to work? Because those aps dont seam to load? Only did some visual studio 2013 express and browsing on it.
windows 10 installed on VirtualBox 2GB -32bit ,ICH9 ,Vt-x/Nested Pages,128MB VRAM,Intel PRO/1000 MT.
Have they fixed focus stealing? Finding that windows has decided to allow something trivial like notepad to steal focus while you're typing is ridiculously annoying.
Does file Explorer now understand that a hard link doesn't actually take up the same space as the file it links to? For years Microsoft have been explaining away this gigabyte stealing piece of stupidity as though we users, rather than its code, were the ones who didn't understand the difference.
Until those issues are addressed there's no benefit to upgrading from 7.
How do you propose it does that? The file does have a size on disk. There is no primary link with auxiliary links, they're all the same. You can't have only one of the links show the size as it wouldn't know which one to treat as the primary source.
Wish that Micro$oft would give us a choice. Let us use text based menus and not the gawd-awful ribbon with all it worthless pictograms. Please, just give us a choice!
I can. Taking up the first two buttons on your taskbar with two app-sized, essentially useless icons was always going to lead to people screaming. Not everyone has 1600p displays to fit those icons there. Some have 720p displays and that's a LOT of wasted space. Plus, I bet Microsoft is still slapping the Windows Store and IE icons there, too.
Search didn't even need to be there anyway. Search is something you can do by pulling up the Start Menu/Screen, then typing. Anyone who would use it already knows that. Taskview has never needed a button before.
Does this mean online only files will also no longer show up in modern apps? That makes it siginificantly worse because before, the file would be automatically downloaded.
In addition, now I have to manage everything. Make a folder just for my tablet! Separate all your pictures and videos to 2 places making it more annoying to manage! No thumbnails!
To go further... OneDrive for Business is nearly unusable because it doesnt support the WIndows 8.1 style offline/online files.... So instead of fixing that they just got rid of the offline/online files. Fail.
I agree. It is a huge step backwards. I really like how it works today, especially on my Dell Venue 8 Pro. I have uploaded my entire photo collection to OneDrive, so the Windows 10 changes really destroy my workflow on the tablet. I hope Microsoft reconsiders this change. Just making the icons for online only vs. offline files easier to distinguish would probably alleviate most of the confusion
When they change the default behaviour then they should provide an option to keep the old behaviour (previous default). Please stop dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator eg. Removing One drive offline file place holders and File Manger for access. Better help and better interfaces can get around the basic problems if well thought out. Help files and option panels need information describing what it affects; the default behaviour; how each option affects this; in what situation would you need to choose each option. Simply repeating the option label and some of the option values from an earlier build is worthless without the context(s), explanation(s) and examples as described above. This requires a documentation system used by the developers to constantly update the option dialogs, messages and context sensitive help. What are you doing, why are you doing it, where are the files/regkeys affected, how do I use it and why do I need it ????? They seem to work in their different groups with their heads down and no one has a full understanding of what is going on. They start replacing functionality by first removing the old functionality and before they finish they must release it half done. They break it and it takes several years to hopefully fix it before breaking it again.
I am just thrilled with the changes to OneDrive in that it gives the user more choice in using (or even not using) OneDrive. Like with browsers, users should be able to choose the cloud service that works best for them. The placeholder system was unusable for those of us with slow, unreliable internet service. Together with the recently announced integration of Dropbox, I feel that Microsoft is easing away from the concept of cramming OneDrive down our throats. I use Windows for 90% of my work but I use Linux managing bank and investment accounts and a few other uses. Dropbox (and Drive via Insync) offer clients for both Windows and Linux, so they are a better choice for me than OneDrive, at least until MS (which "loves Linux") offers a Linux client. So thanks Microsoft from easing back on total integration of OneDrive.
The online placeholder stuff was a simple shell namespace extension. Very easy for Dropbox to add their own support. I wrote something similar at work for our cloud support.
How does one gain access to the touchpad gestures? Do we need to download special drivers? I've never seen a touchpad that supports even basic scrolling in Windows without 3rd party drivers.
I am finally getting used to some of the changes in Windows 8.1 and with 10 they just go an d switch it again drastically. I have a Surface Pro and am glad that I haven't even tried to put Windows 10 on it. I have 10 on my desktop at home. Hardware all works. The first build worked great with my games and the second build broke all of the games. I will likely download this build because it can't get worse in that respect. I have some Windows 8 app store based apps and it Windows them, but I'd like to be able to specify the resolution because when adjusting the windows size I get some crazy rendering.
I like the charms bar because I can check time and battery power in a full screen app without getting out of full screen or interfering with the app.
This feedback has the unappealing effect of where someone complains and they change the behavior and that cause someone else to get upset. I like the listening part; I'd probably like it better if they mostly listened to me only.
I, for one, really like the way OneDrive functions in Windows 8, with placeholder files with the file metadata for the files that are not available offline. That feature, along with better pricing, was what drove me to switch to OneDrive from competing cloud storage, and it is also a big selling point for low-end Windows 2-in-1's vs. competing Android/iOS devices. I hope Microsoft hears from a lot of users that switching to a "selective sync" model is a regression for many users, and at least provides the option for keeping this OneDrive feature from Windows 8.x. I understand the confusion that it can create (I had to explain it to my wife, who was frustrated for exactly the reasons stated in the article), so maybe using selective sync as the default mode makes sense, with the option to show all files.
Let's hope that Microsoft has actually had some input from potential users who are over the age of 30 when they roll out W10. W8 looked like it had been designed by young techno geeks who had no clue of what had gone before, what people were used to, and what they could reasonable accept as "advancements". People will accept change, but not 90 degrees all at once, after they have had many years of incremental upgrades to a basic concept.
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42 Comments
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yannigr2 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I think the best feature is Microsoft LISTENING. Very good Microsoft, very good.lilmoe - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
+1hrrmph - Sunday, November 16, 2014 - link
+1tribbles - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Indeed. I'm a life-long Mac user who has grown tired of Apple pushing what it thinks I need instead of listening to what I actually want. Arrogance is unbecoming, and Apple has it in spades. I'm increasingly using Windows to get "real work" done, and seeing Microsoft humble itself and listen to users is an encouraging sign that I'm making the right choice.HisDivineOrder - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Apple's always been that way, though. This is nothing new. Perhaps you're tired of Apple telling you what to do and it not being the will of Steve Jobs? Perhaps the Reality Distortion Field truly is collapsing, bringing users back into the fold with Android and to a lesser extent, Windows.Come back to us! We welcome you back to the real world where limited is limited and not "optimal."
tribbles - Friday, November 14, 2014 - link
Apple has always been different, but I disagree that they have always been the way they are now.Lately, it seems the extent to which Apple cares about professional users is inversely proportional to their profits. Some will say that Apple is right to ignore professionals if they can make far more money selling iToys, but I think that strategy will eventually backfire.
Professionals tend to be influencers, and the pros I know in the audio, graphics, and video worlds are abandoning Apple in droves. It's entirely possible that this will have zero impact on Apple's bottom line, but it will be hard for them to maintain the perception that their computers are high-end when nobody that needs a high-end computer actually uses a Mac.
Moreover, while nobody disputes that Apple can make far more money selling to consumers than power users, the former is a fickle audience. If/when Apple loses its mojo (and I'd argue that it's already happening), they'll wish they had a more stable base of customers. But a lot of those customers will have already moved on.
Michael Bay - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Apple is just one of the many now.Yes, they do have a shitload of money, but without Jobs they have no vision to invest it in.
Michael Bay - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Droid pls, if anything, people are leaving it.SkyBill40 - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
For what? Apple? Windows Phone? Blackberry? The last one was added for strictly humor, but seriously? Keep telling yourself they're leaving when the numbers obviously speak to the contrary.MarcusMo - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
I think Microsoft is a company that always have listened and adapted to the needs of their enterprise customers, which is why windows 8 was such an aberration. The user interface shift towards integrating touch in win 8 has to be seen as an out of character, slightly panicked move to stop the bleeding pc sales. Anyways, good to see microsoft with their priorities more in order this time!Michael Bay - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
This mindless conflation of Win8 and PC stagnation really needs to stop.It was clearly blurted out by someone with no idea how this market works, most likely some techblogger scum. Why repeat after them?
plopke - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
now they only need to change that icon for the windows store , unless you have the exact green theme , it looks so ugly , amateuristic , white on green looks feels for me annoyign to watch. While it supposed to be very important... , or am i missing a option to change it.I like the changes to hide search and task view but I wonder because it is of my stubbern old preferences and habbits.
A question about windows 10 , are the windows apps like reader supposed to work? Because those aps dont seam to load? Only did some visual studio 2013 express and browsing on it.
windows 10 installed on VirtualBox 2GB -32bit ,ICH9 ,Vt-x/Nested Pages,128MB VRAM,Intel PRO/1000 MT.
Hairs_ - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Have they fixed focus stealing? Finding that windows has decided to allow something trivial like notepad to steal focus while you're typing is ridiculously annoying.Does file Explorer now understand that a hard link doesn't actually take up the same space as the file it links to? For years Microsoft have been explaining away this gigabyte stealing piece of stupidity as though we users, rather than its code, were the ones who didn't understand the difference.
Until those issues are addressed there's no benefit to upgrading from 7.
Gigaplex - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
How do you propose it does that? The file does have a size on disk. There is no primary link with auxiliary links, they're all the same. You can't have only one of the links show the size as it wouldn't know which one to treat as the primary source.flyingpants1 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Are you serious? Google "windows stealing focus".webguy77 - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Wish that Micro$oft would give us a choice. Let us use text based menus and not the gawd-awful ribbon with all it worthless pictograms. Please, just give us a choice!Da W - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Welcome back to that 2007 debatewebguy77 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
You're right Da W ~ It's 7 years later and the ribbon still sucks!Michael Bay - Thursday, November 20, 2014 - link
Go right back to text-based input then.m0oooo - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I actually can't believe they added the ability to hide Search and Task View icons. How unexpectedly nice.Now, can someone tell me how to make Win+E keyboard shortcut go to This PC instead of Home (whatever that is), that would be awesome.
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
I can. Taking up the first two buttons on your taskbar with two app-sized, essentially useless icons was always going to lead to people screaming. Not everyone has 1600p displays to fit those icons there. Some have 720p displays and that's a LOT of wasted space. Plus, I bet Microsoft is still slapping the Windows Store and IE icons there, too.Search didn't even need to be there anyway. Search is something you can do by pulling up the Start Menu/Screen, then typing. Anyone who would use it already knows that. Taskview has never needed a button before.
D. Lister - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
"Search is something you can do by pulling up the Start Menu/Screen, then typing."Or just by pressing F3 (at least in Win7/Vista/XP).
invinciblegod - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
Does this mean online only files will also no longer show up in modern apps? That makes it siginificantly worse because before, the file would be automatically downloaded.In addition, now I have to manage everything. Make a folder just for my tablet! Separate all your pictures and videos to 2 places making it more annoying to manage! No thumbnails!
Stephen Barrett - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I realllllly do not like the OneDrive change. This was the best part of Windows 8.1. I probably wont update to windows 10 if this ships.Stephen Barrett - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
To go further... OneDrive for Business is nearly unusable because it doesnt support the WIndows 8.1 style offline/online files.... So instead of fixing that they just got rid of the offline/online files. Fail.tolgerias - Monday, November 17, 2014 - link
I agree. It is a huge step backwards. I really like how it works today, especially on my Dell Venue 8 Pro. I have uploaded my entire photo collection to OneDrive, so the Windows 10 changes really destroy my workflow on the tablet. I hope Microsoft reconsiders this change. Just making the icons for online only vs. offline files easier to distinguish would probably alleviate most of the confusiontygrus - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
When they change the default behaviour then they should provide an option to keep the old behaviour (previous default). Please stop dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator eg. Removing One drive offline file place holders and File Manger for access. Better help and better interfaces can get around the basic problems if well thought out. Help files and option panels need information describing what it affects; the default behaviour; how each option affects this; in what situation would you need to choose each option. Simply repeating the option label and some of the option values from an earlier build is worthless without the context(s), explanation(s) and examples as described above. This requires a documentation system used by the developers to constantly update the option dialogs, messages and context sensitive help. What are you doing, why are you doing it, where are the files/regkeys affected, how do I use it and why do I need it ????? They seem to work in their different groups with their heads down and no one has a full understanding of what is going on. They start replacing functionality by first removing the old functionality and before they finish they must release it half done. They break it and it takes several years to hopefully fix it before breaking it again.Da W - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
You should write that to microsoftArchipelago - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I am just thrilled with the changes to OneDrive in that it gives the user more choice in using (or even not using) OneDrive. Like with browsers, users should be able to choose the cloud service that works best for them. The placeholder system was unusable for those of us with slow, unreliable internet service. Together with the recently announced integration of Dropbox, I feel that Microsoft is easing away from the concept of cramming OneDrive down our throats. I use Windows for 90% of my work but I use Linux managing bank and investment accounts and a few other uses. Dropbox (and Drive via Insync) offer clients for both Windows and Linux, so they are a better choice for me than OneDrive, at least until MS (which "loves Linux") offers a Linux client. So thanks Microsoft from easing back on total integration of OneDrive.jhoff80 - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
This is just ridiculous. How did Microsoft having Onedrive built in EVER stop you from using Dropbox?Gigaplex - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
The online placeholder stuff was a simple shell namespace extension. Very easy for Dropbox to add their own support. I wrote something similar at work for our cloud support.CaedenV - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Today HVEC support was added to Win10 and Kodi... Today is a very good day, and now my BluRay ripps play much more easily on my PCs :Dsheh - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
I assume your rips are H265. My understanding is that currently x264 still produces better quality than available H265 encoders (x265)?hrrmph - Sunday, November 16, 2014 - link
Great to see more media codec / file format support.Anyone know the best way I can bleat at MS to lobby for adding FLAC support?
Gigaplex - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
How does one gain access to the touchpad gestures? Do we need to download special drivers? I've never seen a touchpad that supports even basic scrolling in Windows without 3rd party drivers.mkozakewich - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
I assume it's a Windows API that third parties like Synaptic can use in their touchpad drivers.imaheadcase - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Did they fix res scaling with windows 10?eanazag - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
I am finally getting used to some of the changes in Windows 8.1 and with 10 they just go an d switch it again drastically. I have a Surface Pro and am glad that I haven't even tried to put Windows 10 on it. I have 10 on my desktop at home. Hardware all works. The first build worked great with my games and the second build broke all of the games. I will likely download this build because it can't get worse in that respect. I have some Windows 8 app store based apps and it Windows them, but I'd like to be able to specify the resolution because when adjusting the windows size I get some crazy rendering.I like the charms bar because I can check time and battery power in a full screen app without getting out of full screen or interfering with the app.
This feedback has the unappealing effect of where someone complains and they change the behavior and that cause someone else to get upset. I like the listening part; I'd probably like it better if they mostly listened to me only.
Makaveli - Thursday, November 13, 2014 - link
Updating it now in my VM thanks for posting this.awall13 - Friday, November 14, 2014 - link
I, for one, really like the way OneDrive functions in Windows 8, with placeholder files with the file metadata for the files that are not available offline. That feature, along with better pricing, was what drove me to switch to OneDrive from competing cloud storage, and it is also a big selling point for low-end Windows 2-in-1's vs. competing Android/iOS devices. I hope Microsoft hears from a lot of users that switching to a "selective sync" model is a regression for many users, and at least provides the option for keeping this OneDrive feature from Windows 8.x. I understand the confusion that it can create (I had to explain it to my wife, who was frustrated for exactly the reasons stated in the article), so maybe using selective sync as the default mode makes sense, with the option to show all files.Hortense - Wednesday, November 19, 2014 - link
Let's hope that Microsoft has actually had some input from potential users who are over the age of 30 when they roll out W10. W8 looked like it had been designed by young techno geeks who had no clue of what had gone before, what people were used to, and what they could reasonable accept as "advancements". People will accept change, but not 90 degrees all at once, after they have had many years of incremental upgrades to a basic concept.phissith1 - Tuesday, January 27, 2015 - link
ANy one else having problem with bluetooth on technical preview? Headphone, speaker, keyboard and mouse none work!!