Tag Archives: windows 8

microsoft, windows

Windows 8: Forget Surface Pro, what matters is the app platform

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Microsoft has launched Surface Pro, its own-brand Windows 8 tablet, causing the usual agitation.

  • The 128GB model is sold out online, but has it sold well, or did Microsoft only make a few?
  • Is it too expensive for the spec?
  • Is the battery life too poor?
  • Can you type properly with it on your lap?

All reasonable questions, but to me rather unimportant.

When Microsoft “reimagined” Windows, its goal was to establish its operating system as a new tablet platform. Otherwise, there would have been no sense in upsetting millions of Windows users who were broadly happy with Windows 7, by imposing a new touch-friendly, blocky, mainly single-tasking platform on top of the old familiar Windows.

How is it doing so far? Not well. The reviews for Surface Pro are a symptom of this. It is being treated mainly as an Ultrabook with a detachable keyboard rather than as a tablet. That is a shame, since Surface (RT and Pro) is designed to be tablet-first, with the keyboard cleverly designed into the cover to mitigate the difficulty of using touch alone when you have to use desktop apps.

There are several reasons why Surface is seen as a kind of laptop rather than as a tablet.

First, Microsoft has so far failed to change the way Windows is perceived. People buy Windows devices to run Windows apps, by which they mean Microsoft Office, Skyrim, Foobar2000, and/or their corporate apps written in Visual Basic or C#. The existence of the new Windows Runtime platform is incidental and mainly annoying, since it can get in the way if you only want to run Windows.

This could soon change if there were numerous compelling apps on the new platform; but there are not, and that is reason number two. Which Windows Store apps are better (presuming you have a tablet) than their desktop equivalent, or which are great apps that have no desktop equivalent? It is a short list. Personally I would name the Wordament game, Maps, and the Weather app as examples; and yes, I know how lame that sounds.

Microsoft slipped up badly by spending so little effort on the built-in apps, especially Mail, but also Music and others. The result is that users spend little time in the new user interface (I am guessing but have anecdotal evidence). The further result is that the platform is unattractive to developers, despite the size of the Windows market.

Take a look at the MetroStore Scanner  and you can see that around two hundred apps are added most days (green is updates rather than additions).

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That in itself does not tell us much. Just one hundred great new apps would be fantastic news for the platform. But no, they are mostly trivial and/or poor and/or repetitive and/or uninteresting.

Why are developers not building more and better apps? That indeed is the question. The main reason of course is that size of the market, not in terms of the numbers of Windows 8 users out there, but in terms of likely sales or adoption.

This is circular though. Good apps will increase the size of the market. So what else?

My views on this changed when I sat down to build my own app, simple though it is. This was harder than I expected, and there is still a z-order bug which I have not got round to fixing. A core question though is this: does the platform help developers to build apps that delight the user? In this respect it is not yet good enough. The kind of app you will build if you follow all the guidelines will be genuinely touch-friendly, but look a bit blocky and spaced out too much. There is also the problem of the disappearing menu bar and the fact that users do not always discover options hidden in the Charms bar. It is too easy to build apps that are not good enough. I regard the poor quality of apps like Mail as evidence of this.

Put another way, it is not yet a platform that inspires developers and makes them want to support it, despite its immaturity.

Windows 8 is not going well then; but I do not write it off. Better apps surely will appear. Further, Microsoft’s next go at this, whether it is called Blue or Windows 8.5 or Windows 9, should be better as the team fix annoyances and add compelling features.

As yet though, there is no sign of Microsoft averting the march of Windows towards being a business-oriented, desktop platform occupying an ever-smaller niche in a world of mobile and browser apps. If I were CEO Steve Ballmer, I would find that a concern.

microsoft, windows

Why is Windows 8 not selling better?

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The Register reports a rumoured blame game playing out between Microsoft and its OEM partners concerning why Windows 8 sales have not taken off in the hoped-for manner.

A separate source at a major Windows 8 PC maker confirmed frustration is simmering inside Microsoft, and the blame is settling on PC makers. He said [Microsoft] "is pinning the blame on the manufacturers for not having enough touch-based product".

PC makers on the other hand:

PC makers, though, are hitting back after Redmond’s finger-pointing – countering that if they’d followed Microsoft’s advice they’d have ended up building very expensive tablets and would have been saddled with the costs of a huge piles of unsold units. Those who did buy Windows 8 PCs ultimately bought the cheap laptops not high-end Ultrabooks or hybrids.

This is a silly discussion. I agree that not enough tablets were available at launch. On the other hand, the OEMs are correct: the market for high-end expensive hybrids is limited, and rightly so as they are not good value for most users.

What both sides seem to be ignoring is that Windows 8 was always going to be a hard sell. Microsoft made a conscious and deliberate decision to create a new tablet platform and bolt it on to desktop Windows in order to establish it. The added value for users who just want to run Office and other desktop apps is small, while the cost in terms of learning to find your way around a new Start screen is significant.

This could yet work out well for Microsoft. As the platform matures and better new-style apps appear, Windows 8 will become more attractive. Further, as users discover that Windows 8 is not really hard to use, the reasons not to upgrade will diminish. In theory, users will gradually be able to spend more time in the touch-friendly user interface rather than in the desktop, making pure tablet use of Windows 8 (no keyboard or mouse) more attractive.

The counter-argument is that Windows may never shake off its desktop inheritance and that the Metro-style platform will never be important.

Maybe Microsoft should have communicated "let’s have a low-key launch and build this slowly" rather than spending big on marketing in the hope that nobody would notice these issues.

It is true that there are big and long-standing problems with the way Windows machines are designed, built and marketed, problems that have caused Microsoft to create its own Surface devices (I am typing this on Surface RT) and to copy Apple by opening its own stores, selling "signature" PCs with third-party rubbish removed.

In addition, Microsoft made inexplicable mistakes with the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT, such as building a mail app that is barely competent – one app that almost everyone will try and which could have been used to show off the potential of the new platform. Check the reviews; there is even something odd about the few five-star ratings.

That does not mean that the subdued launch of Windows 8 is mainly Microsoft’s fault, or mainly the fault of its partners. The reasons are more obvious and more fundamental.

apple, laptops, tablets, windows

I am done with laptops

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2012 was the year I lost interest in laptops. It happened in February, when I was in Seattle and purchased a Samsung Windows 7 Slate for the purpose of testing Windows 8.

This Slate has an Intel Core i5 CPU and is a flawed device. With Windows 7 it was particularly bad, since Windows 7 is not much fun for touch control. Windows 8 is much better, though now and again the screen will not respond to touch after being woken from sleep, and a cold reboot is needed.

That said, performance is fine, and the Slate has a couple of characteristics which I like. One is small size. It fits easily in almost any bag. In fact, I can put this Slate, an iPad and a Surface RT in a bag and they take up no more room that with a typical 15.6” laptop.

The second is convenience. If you are travelling, a laptop is an awkward and unsocial thing. I have come to dislike the clamshell design, which has to be unfolded before it will work, and positioned so that you can type on the keyboard and see the screen.

I do not pretend that desktop Windows has a great user interface for touch control, but I have become more adept at hitting small targets in the likes of Outlook. In addition, many tasks like browsing the web or viewing photos work fine in the touch-friendly “Metro” personality of Windows 8.

What about when you need to sit down and do some serious typing, coding, or intricate image manipulation? This is when I pull out a keyboard and mouse and get something similar to a laptop experience.

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The above shows my instant coffee-shop office, with wireless keyboard and mouse, and internet connection through mobile phone. Though I have abandoned the keyboard and mouse shown, preferring a Bluetooth set I picked up late last year which leaves does not require a free USB port.

I am not sure why I would ever want another laptop. When in the office, I prefer a PC under the desk to a laptop on the desk. A tablet, whether Windows, Android or iOS, works better for mobility, even if mobility means watching iPlayer in the living room rather than travelling around the world.

Nor do I like hybrid tablets with twisty screens and keyboards, which lose the simplicity and instant usability of the tablet concept. I make an exception for Microsoft’s Surface RT, particularly with the touch keyboard cover, which does not get in the way or take up significant space, but does form a usable keyboard and trackpad when needed. There will always be an advantage to using a physical keyboard, since even if you get on fine with a soft keyboard there is no escaping the large slice of screen it occupies. Well, until we can type with detected thought processes I guess.

I am told that an iPad with a Logitech Ultrathin keyboard is also a nice combination, though I have not tried this yet.

gadgets, reviews, windows

Review: Logitech t620 Touch Mouse for Windows 8

Slowly but surely, the humble mouse has been getting more sophisticated. The first examples had just one button. Then came two buttons, then two buttons and a scroll wheel (which is also a third button), and of course wireless so you get a tidier desk at the expense of regular battery replacement.

The touch mouse takes the concept further, with a surface that detects gestures as well as clicks. Logitech’s t620 has an unblemished smooth polished surface and works by detecting where and how you stroke or tap it. It also has a physical click which functions as right, left or middle click depending where and how you click it. Middle click is the trickiest: click the lower 2/3 of the mouse with 2 fingers.

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The “scroll wheel” on the t620 is a matter of stroking the mouse vertically pretty much anywhere on its surface. It takes some adjustment, but has an elegance that a mouse with physical controls lacks. The downside is occasional lack of precision, on which I have more to say below.

This is a smart mouse, and comes with a small bag, a USB wireless receiver, and a printed setup guide. It runs on 2 AA batteries, though you can use just one if you prefer and it will still work. I found it a lightweight mouse even with both installed.

When you connect the mouse for the first time, Windows 8 will prompt to download the SetPoint control software, or you can download this from Logitech if the automatic download fails for some reason.

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Windows 7 is also supported, though some of the gestures, like Show Charms, are specific to Windows 8. The mouse works fine on a Mac though without any gesture support as far as I can tell; you do get right and left click, scrolling and so on.

I also tried the mouse on Surface RT, with puzzling results. A driver seemed to be installed, but no SetPoint software, and some gestures work but not others. My favourite, Show Charms, does not work on the Surface RT.

The SetPoint software is rather good, and shows a mini video demonstration of each gesture. You can also enable or disable each gesture, and in some cases set options. For example, you can have a double-tap show the Windows start screen either when executed anywhere on the mouse, or only when carried out on the lower 2/3. The trade-off is convenience versus the risk of triggering the action accidentally.

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Another important setting sets the pointer speed. I found the speed too fast on the default setting, which means the pointer shoots across the screen and is hard to control. Reducing the speed a couple of notches fixes this.

Windows has its own pointer speed setting too, and I guess it depends whether you want to set this globally for any mouse, or specifically for the t620. One thing I noticed using SetPoint is that the mouse speed is faster immediately after booting, until the SetPoint software starts running.

The USB wireless receiver is a Logitech Unifying Receiver, which means you can connect other Logitech devices such as a wireless keyboard through this single receiver. This could be important if you have something like a Slate with only a single USB port. For the same reason, I prefer Bluetooth devices on a Slate, though connection can be more troublesome. It is time the hardware manufacturers got together with Microsoft to improve wireless device connectivity without needed USB dongles.

The gestures

How about the gestures then? You get the following special actions:

  • Middle click (click lower 2/3 of mouse with 2 fingers)
  • Start Screen (double-tap lower 2/3 with 1 finger)
  • Show desktop (double-tap lower 2/3 with 2 fingers)
  • Switch applications (swipe from left edge)
  • Show Charms (swipe from right edge)
  • Vertical scrolling (swipe up and down)
  • Horizontal scrolling (swipe left and right)
  • Back/Forward (swipe left and right with two fingers)

You can also set scroll options. I tried with and without inertia, which lets you flick for an iPad-like continuous decelerating scroll, and decided that I like the feature.

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How well do the gestures work? Fairly well, but the problem with any touch device is that you can sometimes trigger actions by accident. I found this a problem in the browser, which has gestures for Back and Forward, with pages disappearing unbidden. The solution is to disable any features that do not work for you.

There is also a problem with horizontal scrolling versus the actions that swipe from left or right. It is easy to trigger a swipe action when trying to scroll.

Sometimes the mouse seems inexplicably fussy about what will or will not trigger an action. I like the Show Charms gesture, because this is otherwise awkward to do using the mouse. It does normally work, but sometimes I swipe in and nothing happens. This may improve with practice, or maybe it is a bug somewhere, I am not sure.

In general, practice does make a difference. For example, I discovered that a very light double-tap is best for the Start Screen gesture. In general, this device responds well to a light touch; trying to force a gesture to work with firmness seems counter-productive.

These issues illustrate the point that a touch device introduces an element of imprecision which some will find infuriating. If you play games with fast action and where any mis-click could be fatal, this mouse is not suitable.

The gain is significant too. The ability to do more with the mouse means less switching between mouse and keyboard. The quick flick to Show Charms makes Windows 8 more user-friendly, if you are using it without a touch screen.

Overall I like it, but be prepared for some time learning to get the best from this mouse, and expect to change some of the settings from the default.

 

microsoft, professional, software development, windows

Fresh Paint Windows Store app: in equal parts great and frustrating

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Now that the initial shock of “where is the Start menu” is wearing off, some of the real issues and points of interest in Windows 8 are coming to the surface (ha!), one of which is what a good Windows Store (also known as Metro) app is meant to look like. Microsoft has not been helped by the fact that most apps in the Store are either simplistic, or poor quality, or both.

In this respect Fresh Paint is worth a look, since it comes from Microsoft and is the outcome of considerable work and research. There is a post about the history of the app on Steve Clayton’s blog which is good reading.

The title cleverly combines the sense of a new approach to Paint, the Windows app from way back, with the fact that this is a simulation of paint (the liquid stuff). I have not found much in the way of documentation, though there is a FAQ here, but even a few moments playing shows that this is a sophisticated painting tool, especially on a tablet where you can paint with a finger or stylus. It works on both x86 and ARM devices such as Surface RT though performance is laggy compared to that on a modern x86 PC, and the pencil and pastel tools are missing.

This is an example of immersive UI. While painting, few tools are visible. As a concession, there are five faint tools at the bottom of the screen for undo, redo, show template, centre artwork, and dry. Right-click or swipe in, and you get tools for selecting the painting tool (pencil, brush or pastel), a colour palette that really is like a palette, with the ability to mix your own colours, an eraser, a dropper tool which I have not fully figured out, and a dry paint tool that picks up wet paint from the canvas.

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Click or tap surface and you can select the canvas type and background colour. The camera button lets you use an image as the background.

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Paintings are saved automatically every five minutes or when you return to the home page. You can also export paintings as .PNG files.

You can zoom in and out using the mouse wheel or pinch gestures.

The app is free, but Microsoft offers paid-for add-in packs which provide templates. You can paint over the template, then use the template tool mentioned above to remove it from the canvas. There is a free Fun Pack to get you started.

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This is not a replacement for the desktop Windows Paint. Features missing in Fresh Paint include selection, fill, cropping, resizing, rotation, clipboard support and printing, to name a few.

Concerning Fresh Paint, three things are obvious.

One is that this is innovative, bold, and excellent in the way it lets you paint in a manner that is much closer to the real thing than most computer graphics software.

Second, users are having real difficulty figuring it out. Some users have not worked out how to get the menus and tools showing at all, hence this is explained in the FAQ mentioned above. Others are like Terry Odell who says:

The problem I have is there’s no "help" or "right click to figure out what things do" in the app. It’s total trial and error, and perhaps if I were 5 like my grandson, I’d be able to figure it out. There are choices on the top of the screen, and more choices/icons on the bottom. The camera on the bottom opens up the ‘real’ camera on my computer, but there’s no ‘click here to take a picture’ (not to mention I have no idea what to do with one.  I’d rather see a tutorial of some sort than have to keep wading through forums to get a question answered. As for ‘dropdown’ I have no idea where that is? The top menu? The bottom menu. Windows 8 is hardly intuitive, and the apps, while great in theory, don’t have enough information provided for how to use them.

It is as if not having documentation is a point of pride, because the app should be so easy to use that documentation is not needed, and if the user does not get it, it is the user’s fault. It puzzles me, since it in a few hours the team could provide some simple documentation that would help users get the best from this app.

Third, it is not stable. I got several crashes in the course of playing around briefly to write this post.

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Why is it crashing? There are hints that it may be to do with graphics drivers. I have the latest NVIDIA drivers and other apps and games are solid. It would be interesting to know the reason why it falls over so much, and whether this is caused by buggy app code or problems in the Windows Runtime itself. It is not just my system; take a look at the reviews in the Windows Store for more reports.

I do not mean to be snarky; in many ways this is a brilliant app both for children and for anyone with some artistic talent. It just needs a little more work, and seems to say a lot about the state of Windows 8 apps right now.

microsoft, professional, software development, Web, windows

The Windows 8 app platform: how is it going? A few clues from developers

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One way of looking at Microsoft’s Windows 8 strategy is as an attempt to establish a new tablet platform. By welding the tablet platform to the desktop platform, Microsoft ensured that every customer who wanted the latest Windows release would also get the tablet release, though some are stuck with keyboard and mouse to control it. The downside is that some users who would have upgraded to Windows 8 if it had been less radical will stick with Windows 7. Microsoft is betting that despite the controversy, the hybrid operating system is a better bet for the difficult task of creating a new ecosystem than building a completely new tablet operating system that few would have purchased.

So how is the new platform doing? I asked on Twitter for developers with apps on both Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 to let me know how the rate of sales or downloads compare.

One was the maker of Cineworld, a cinema listing app for the UK and Ireland. He reported:

my cineworld app has about 1.8K downloads a month on WP.. on #win its a few hundred

The other was an app for fans of Manchester United football club called 1st4Fans:

Windows 8 is 70/day. Windows Phone is 130/day

Another was the maker of Barcode Generator:

Barcode Generator stats say 32K download since Aug and several hundreds dwn/day. Looks pretty good, isn’t it?

The author of TweeterLight says that he has “more downloads of W8 app in 1 month than WP7 app in 1 year”, showing that not everyone is finding the phone platform bigger than the tablet platform, though a key factor is that there is an official Twitter client for the phone but not for new-style Windows 8:

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TweeterLight is also a paid-for app, which means fewer downloads and perhaps avoidance of the Twitter throttling that has afflicted the free clients.

Others are reporting a boom in Windows Phone downloads, like Lestyn Jones who says:

I’m finding that my #win8 app downloads are slowly growing where as my #wp8 have skyrocketed.

Put that together with the Cineworld stats – 1.8K per month for an app that is only relevant in the UK and Ireland. It does look as if Windows Phone has been considerably reinvigorated by the launch of Windows Phone 8.

Returning to Windows 8 though, my initial reaction was that these responses are not an impressive start for Microsoft’s new platform, considering the wide usage of Windows on the desktop.

My further reflection though is this. I find myself more willing to try out new-style apps on Windows 8 than desktop apps either on Windows 8 or previous versions, thanks to the ease of installation and removal, discovery through the store, and the additional security of the app sandbox. An interesting question to ask then: if Microsoft had not created this new app platform, how many of these niche apps would have been downloaded as desktop applications?

Despite its imperfections and mixed reception, at least Windows 8 now has an app platform.

This is a small sample and other reports would be welcome.

.net, development, microsoft, nokia, software development, windows

Trial apps and in-app purchases easy to hack on Windows 8 says Nokia engineer

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A principal engineer at Nokia, Justin Angel, has written a piece showing how to hack apps on Windows 8, undermining their potential revenue for the app vendors. “This is an educational article written in the hope both developers and Microsoft can benefit from an open exchange of knowledge,” he says, adding that the article was written in his own time and has nothing to do with his employer.

The hacks he describes cover:

  • Compromising in-app purchases by modifying data held locally, such as app currency.
  • Converting trial apps to full versions without paying
  • Removing ads from games
  • Reducing the cost of items offered for in-app purchase
  • Injecting Javascript  into the Internet Explorer 10 process in order to bypass trial restrictions

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There is an inherent security weakness in any app that has to work offline, since the decryption keys also have to be stored locally; this inherent weakness is not unique to Windows 8. However, Angel argues that Microsoft could do more to address this, such as checking for tampered app files and preventing Javascript injection. Code obfuscation could also mitigate the vulnerabilities.

Although Angel is writing in his own time, the issues are relevant to Nokia, which makes Windows Phone devices and may make Windows 8 tablets in future.

Should Angel have revealed the cracks so openly and in such detail? This is an old debate; but it is sure to increase pressure on Microsoft to improve the security of the platform.

.net, apple, development, mobile, professional, software, software development, visual studio, web authoring, windows

Infragistics building cross-platform development strategy on XAML says CEO

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I spoke to Dean Guida, CEO at Infragistics, maker of components for Windows, web and mobile development platforms. Windows developers with long memories will remember Sheridan software, who created products including Data Widgets and VBAssist. Infragistics was formed in 2000 when Sheridan merged with another company, ProtoView.

In other words, this is a company with roots in the Microsoft developer platform, though for a few years now it has been madly diversifying in order to survive in the new world of mobile. Guida particularly wanted to talk about IgniteUI, a set of JQuery controls which developers use either for web applications or for mobile web applications wrapped as native with PhoneGap/Cordova.

“The majority of the market is looking at doing hybrid apps because it is so expensive to do native,” Guida told me.

Infragistics has also moved into the business iOS market, with SharePlus for SharePoint access on an iPad, and ReportPlus for reporting from SQL Server or SharePoint to iPad clients. Infragistics is building on what appears to be a growing trend: businesses which run Microsoft on the server, but are buying in iPads as mobile clients.

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Other products include Nuclios, a set of native iOS components for developers, and IguanaUI for Android.

I asked Guida how the new mobile markets compared to the traditional Windows platform, for Infragistics as a component vendor.

“The whole market’s in transition,” he says. “People are looking at mobility strategy and how to support BYOD [Bring Your Own Device], all these different platforms, and a lot of our conversations are around IgniteUI. We need to reach the iPad, and more than the iPad as well.”

“There’s still a huge market doing ASP.NET, Windows Forms, WPF. It’s still a bigger market, but the next phase is around mobility.”

What about Windows 8, does he think Microsoft has got it right? Guida’s first reaction to my question is to state that the traditional Windows platform is by no means dead. “[Microsoft] may have shifted the focus away from Silverlight and WPF, but the enterprise hasn’t, in terms of WPF. The enterprise has not shifted aware from WPF. We’ve brought some of our enterprise customers to Microsoft to show them that, some of the largest banks in the world, the insurance industry, the retail industry. These companies are making a multi-year investment decision on WPF, where the life of the application if 5 years plus.

“Silverlight, nobody was really happy about that, but Microsoft made that decision. We’re going to continue to support Silverlight, because it makes sense for us. We have a codebase of XAML that covers both WPF and Silverlight.”

Guida adds that Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are “great innovation”, mentioning features like Live Tiles and people hub social media aggregation, which has application in business as well. “They’re against a lot of headwind of momentum and popularity, but because Microsoft is such an enterprise company, they are going to be successful.”

How well does the XAML in Infragistics components, built for WPF and Silverlight, translate to XAML on the Windows Runtime, for Windows 8 store apps?

“It translates well now, it did not translate well in the beginning,” Guida says, referring to the early previews. “We’re moving hundreds of our HTML and XAML components to WinJS and WinRT XAML. We’re able to reuse our code. We have to do more work with touch, and we want to maintain performance. We’re in beta now with a handful of components, but we’ll get up to 100s of components available.”

It turns out that XAML is critical to the Infragistics development strategy for iOS as well as Windows. “We wrote a translator that translates XAML code to iOS and XAML code to HTML and JavaScript. We can code in XAML, add new features, fix bugs, and then it moves over to these other platforms. It’s helped us move as quickly as we’ve moved.”

What about Windows on ARM, as in Surface RT? “We fully support it,” says Guida, though “with a straight port, you lose performance. That’s what we’re working on.”

mobile, software, tablets, windows

Will you buy a Surface Pro? Here is why and why not

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Microsoft has announced pricing for Surface Pro, its own-brand tablet running Windows 8. Quick summary:

  • 64GB is $899
  • 128GB is $999

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UK pricing has not been announced, but if it follows the pattern of Surface RT we can expect around £720 and £799.

These prices include a free Surface pen, but not a Touch or Type keyboard cover. Since this is one of the best features of Surface, you can add around $120 or £100 (a little more for the Type cover) to the price.

Here’s why you don’t want a Surface Pro:

  • Unlike Surface RT, this tablet runs any Windows application, most of which do not work well with touch control. So you will need that keyboard and trackpad or mouse, making it an awkward thing versus an iPad or, in some ways, a traditional laptop.
  • The spec is a long way from cutting-edge. Screen is 1920×1080 pixels, versus 2048-by-1536  on a cheaper Apple iPad. Core i5 has been around a while. Storage spec is poor – even 128GB is small by current standards, my Samsung Slate from February had a 256GB SSD – and the cameras seem no better than the basic ones in Surface RT. 4GB RAM is also minimal for a new Windows machine.
  • This thing is not cheap. With the keyboard, it is nearly double the cost of a Surface RT, and you don’t get Office 2013 thrown in – Home and Student is around $100 or £85.
  • Microsoft is including a pen. Why? It does not clip into the Surface so you will lose it, and a pen, while fantastic for taking notes or sketching in tablet mode, is less good than a mouse or trackpad for most other operations.
  • Battery life half that of Surface RT: ouch.
  • Do not compare this with an iPad. It only makes sense if you want or need to run Windows. It is even less like an iPad than Surface RT.

A failure? Not necessarily. Here is why you do want a Surface Pro:

  • It is a little bigger than Surface RT, but much smaller than the average laptop, even with the keyboard cover, and it is all you need on your trip. I find laptops bulky and awkward now.
  • Performance will be much better than Surface RT. I presume it better my existing Samsung Slate, which has an older Core i5, and that is already a zippy performer.
  • The Surface is well made and designed. The only problem I am aware of with Surface RT is fraying keyboard seams, which I hope will be fixed in later production runs. The flip-out stand works well and the keyboard covers are excellent.
  • That USB 3.0 port is a big asset.  Of course Surface RT should have had this as well. You can attach as much storage as you need with great performance, or other devices.

The question is this: what other laptop or Windows 8 slate will be better than a Surface Pro, all things considered? You will easily find a better spec for the money, but when you evaluate the complete package Surface Pro may still be a winner.

That said, we have not yet seen Surface Pro and my judgment is based on combining what I know about Surface RT with my experience of the Samsung Core i5 slate.

The internal storage limitation is my biggest concern. 64GB is hopeless and 128GB still too small. There is a microSDXC card slot, and a sizeable card will be pretty much essential, again increasing the real-world price.

microsoft, professional, windows

Microsoft’s Design Language – Tiles and Chromelessness – Prospects for Windows 8

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Among the most illuminating sessions at Microsoft’s BUILD conference earlier this month was Will Tschumy’s presentation on the Microsoft Design Language.

Tschumy says that Microsoft began a new focus on design back in 2003 (think Office Ribbon). Then came Windows Phone and Metro (only he did not call it that), and now:

Microsoft is the only organization with a single, consistent design language across each screen we touch

he explained., noting that Xbox as well as the phone uses this same design language.

So what is it? The core idea, he says, is “content before chrome”. This is an old idea, which Google drew attention to with its 2008 web browser called Chrome – a playful title for something which properly should have been called Chromeless. Chrome sported a minimal user interface, putting the focus on the web content, and laying the foundations for web applications where the browser disappears and you forget that you are looking at a web page.

This is actually consistent with Google’s approach from its earliest days, when the Google home page was just a search box and a couple of buttons – a purity of design now spoilt by a menu bar and nagging ads, but you can still see it.

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But I digress. What has Microsoft done with the concept? A good example is to compare the SkyDrive “Metro” app with the same folder in Windows File Explorer. Here is Skydrive:

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and here is Windows File Explorer:

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Or possibly:

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if you are like me and prefer the “Details” view.

The point here is that the “Modern” SkyDrive app has a high ratio of content to chrome, and large icons which preview the content where possible make the content stand out, whereas in File Explorer there is more UI. Of course this is the Windows 8 File Explorer which is also influenced by the same design language. My Details view, which I like because I get higher information density, is closer to an old-style computer approach where the focus is on the number of bytes in the file above what the image happens to look like.

Mixed feelings them, but I do understand what Microsoft is driving at. Spend some time with Microsoft’s Surface RT – no, not on the desktop, on the Metro side – while using some of the better new apps and you begin to appreciate the idea.

Tschumy spelt out five design principles, though only three of these seem to be substantial:

  • Pride in Craftsmanship: fluff
  • Be fast and fluid: Performance matters
  • Authentically digital: not skeuomorphic
  • Do more with less: minimalism
  • Win as one: fluff

No mention then of the “signposting” inherent in the metro transport signs which gave Metro its now-forsaken name, and in fact discoverability is a weakness of Microsoft’s design language; it seems hard to create a UI that is both “content before chrome” and highly discoverable. The common functionality encapsulated in the Windows 8 Charms bar, where features like Search are handled by a UI that is the same in every app, is one attempt to fix this, though first you have to learn how to use the Charms bar. Note the number of users who thought the Wikipedia app had no search function.

There is also a visual aspect to Microsoft’s design language, which Tschumy does a good job of explaining. Align to a standard grid, he said, unless you need to deviate from it for good reasons.

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From here we get the tiled look which characterises Metro and which certainly has merits; it tends to be clear though not always beautiful.

Understanding the rationale behind these design principles helps to make sense of new Microsoft products such as Office 2013 and Visual Studio 2012, both of which have been met with mixed reactions on the grounds that they look a bit washed-out, the user interface is hard to focus on. The thinking is that this helps the content, which is what you care about, to stand out more.

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That said, I am not convinced by this approach in the context of a productivity tool like Office or Visual Studio. You may care more about the content; but if you want to change the content, then you also care about the tools and want to find them quickly. Scroll bars that fade into the background are great, until you need to scroll the document.

It is also interesting to browse the sample templates in Excel 2013. I grabbed the above screen from there, which seemed to illustrate the design principle of content before chrome, but in other cases I notice that the designers have gone for a washed-out look in the content as well.

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This makes no sense to me, other than that the designer, observing the fade-into-the-background theme in the chrome, decided to match the content to it in order to get a consistent appearance. Now you cannot see the content or the chrome – uggh! This is what happens when you try to get a very large company working together on a common but somewhat counter-intuitive vision; not everybody gets it.

Which brings me neatly back to Windows 8. I mentioned the Surface RT above; I will be writing more about this, but I do find it a delightful device and one which expresses the Windows 8 and Microsoft Design Language vision better than any other aside from perhaps a Windows phone – unfortunately I have not yet got my hands on a Windows 8 phone to review but hope to do so eventually. It is also a flawed device of course, partly because the performance is less than “fast and fluid” in some cases (like Excel), but mainly because the apps are lacking.

It does seem to me though that Windows 8 has great potential and brings something new to the tablet world. Unfortunately there is uncertainty about whether either Microsoft or its OEM and retail partners have the will and the vision to get past the current hump of unfamiliarity and immaturity for that potential to be fulfilled. Microsoft has spent eye-wateringly huge amounts of money marketing Windows 8 and Surface RT; but I do not think that money has been spent strategically, it has just been thrown at the usual agencies. Many are still flummoxed by what Windows 8 is for, and that is apparent even amongst the OEMs that are manufacturing and selling it.

What will now happen post-Sinofsky, the man whose balls of steel brought Windows 8 to market? In his memo noting the appointment of Julie Larson-Green as head of Windows engineering, Ballmer says:

Her unique product and innovation perspective and proven ability to effectively collaborate and drive a cross company agenda will serve us well as she takes on this new leadership role.

The highlighting is mine. A cross company agenda is exactly what Microsoft needs; but if the new Windows leadership is less determined than the old, it could equally easily pull apart rather than together.