Thread: Microsoft Release announcements.

Comment highlighted in yellow: More than I thought.

Intel's Clover Trail chip isn't optimized for Android

New Atom processor is built to support Windows 8; plans for supporting the Google OS are still unclear

By Agam Shah
July 23, 2012 05:20 AM ET
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IDG News Service - Intel isn't actively porting Android to work on tablets based on the upcoming Atom chip code-named Clover Trail, which is purpose built for Microsoft's Windows 8, according to a source familiar with the company's plans.
Initial tablets using Clover Trail will launch later this year, and will coincide with the release of Microsoft's Windows 8, which is also expected later this year. Intel has said 20 Clover Trail tablet designs are in the works, and the companies launching tablets will include Acer.
Intel has worked closely with Microsoft to tune tablets with Clover Trail chips for Windows 8 OS, which has a touch user interface. A handful of Clover Trail tablets have been shown running Windows 8, but none have been shown running Android.
Intel is a big backer of Android, but the source did not disclose what direction the company would take on Android OS for tablets. A prototype tablet with another Intel Atom chip code-named Medfield has been shown running Android, and Vizio is expected to use the chip in an upcoming tablet with a 10-inch screen, which is also expected to have the Android OS.
The Medfield chip is also being used in smartphones from Lenovo, Lava International and Orange. Intel continues to work closely with Google to tune Android for Intel Inside smartphones, and Motorola Mobility, now a part of Google, will start selling x86 smartphones in the next few months.
Intel is placing big bets on Clover Trail and Windows 8 to grow in the tablet market, where it has a minimal presence. Microsoft has announced Windows RT for tablets with ARM processors, which dominate the tablet market. Intel's first dedicated Atom chip for tablets, code-named Oak Trail, was launched last year and is being used in a few business tablets that run the Windows 7 OS.
Apple's iPad rules the tablet market, and Microsoft's Windows 8 is being seen as a big threat to Google's Android OS. Though successful in smartphones, Android has failed to break Apple's dominance in tablets, tasting success only through a few tablets such as Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire.
Some major device makers such as Acer and Asus, which currently offer Android tablets, have also announced Windows 8 tablet-PC hybrids with Intel's Ivy Bridge processors. An exception is Dell, which is putting its full weight behind Windows 8. Hewlett-Packard, which abandoned WebOS, said its next tablet will also be based on Windows 8. Lenovo has showed a ThinkPad tablet running on Windows 8.
Intel is keeping its OS options open for mobile devices. The chip maker has said it would evaluate Windows Phone OS for smartphones, and is actively supporting Tizen OS, which is being developed in collaboration with Samsung and other companies.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I reckon the Surface will be well received, certainly in my company.

That would make this fool the only one so far - reviews on the Surface are in, and as can be expected from Microsoft, it's a disaster:

Why I’m Returning My Microsoft Surface RT | Brent Ozar

Why I’m Returning My Microsoft Surface RT

Do not buy a Microsoft Surface RT yet.

I’m typing this with gritted teeth. My 24 hours with the half-baked Surface have been a frustrating challenge, a mix of love and hate. I want want want this to work, but one problem after another have led me to come to the conclusion – a temporary one at least – that this thing just isn’t ready to ship.

The Hardware is Unbelievable

Every time Apple unveils a new gadget or laptop, my jaw drops and I wonder how they pulled off executing their industrial designs. Their v1 designs look so beautifully put together, not a mishmash of plastic parts and lids like the PC counterparts. Every now and then, a PC maker will bring out something similar, but it’s the very rare exception rather than the rule.

The Surface RT is Microsoft shoving their hardware partners aside and saying, “Lemme show you how this should be done. Pay attention, kids.”

This tablet hardware doesn’t just compete with the iPad – it bypasses the iPad in many ways that are significant and valuable for me.

I plugged in my USB presentation remote and it just worked.

I plugged in a 64GB micro SD card with all my presentations and files and it just worked.

I popped out the kickstand and started typing and it just worked. Well, almost – if there’s one significant compromise in the Surface RT, it’s the kickstand. You get two and only two positions for the kickstand: open and closed. There’s no adjustments. I think the kickstand angle was designed for airplane use by short people, because the screen hardly goes back at all. It’s probably perfect for Danny DeVito when he puts it on the seat back tray in coach class, but for me on a desk, it’s too steep.

The built-in front-facing camera for Skype is angled so that it’ll work great when the kickstand is open, but again, only for Danny DeVito, or maybe for people who want to show off their chests in Skype.

There are other hardware compromises, but they’re pretty small. The speakers are laughably quiet; I fired up one of my favorite movies, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and I couldn’t even hear the actors’ dialog in the opening scenes. Not couldn’t understand – couldn’t even hear it. The magnetic power cord doesn’t snap in with authority, but rather requires careful positioning. The volume up/down buttons are exactly opposite the USB port, so when I plug in USB devices I often push the volume up/down by accident.

But who cares? I HAVE A USB PORT! Oh, Steve Jobs, I understand that you were a design deity, but I really needed that USB port, and I didn’t want a stupid dongle to get it. The iPad has a USB dongle available, but it was useless to me because I needed it for my presentation clicker at the same time I also needed video out, but I couldn’t use both simultaneously.

The Type Cover (the one with real keys) just works. I’ve got big hands that often struggle on undersized keyboards, but I can type very quickly on the Type Cover. So quickly, in fact, that I can outrun Microsoft Word on the Surface. I get the feeling that the Surface RT’s CPU or Word code just can’t keep up with my typing. Here’s an example video:

But that’s not a hardware problem – and it’s time for us to talk about the ugly problem with the Surface RT.

The Software is Also Unbelievable - BAD!

The hardware makes promises that the software can’t deliver – and the ability to type faster than Word can digest is a great example of that. Sure, I understand that the shipped version is “Microsoft Word Preview,” but you can’t deliver software like this. It’s a recipe for returned products – and frankly, that’s exactly what I’m going to do with the Surface RT, return it.

Word’s problems aren’t limited to slow typing. Once you’ve banged out a document, saving your work is another adventure:

I can understand problems with Word because it’s a new piece of software that Microsoft has never released bef – wait, hold on. I’m being told by my staff that Word is not a new program, and has been out since the 1980s. If I want to see a v1 program, they’re telling me to look at the Mail app. Alright, let’s give that a shot:

After waiting over a minute for the machine to boot and launch the mail app, I got a blank gradient screen. User interface 101: if the app needs to be set up on the first launch, offer to do that, please. Folks from Twitter suggested that I swipe out from the right side and click Accounts, Add, and I did, but the Surface just sat there as shown in the video. Eventually, after setting the unit aside and going on with my day, I noticed several minutes later that it popped up and said it couldn’t detect the email servers for brento@brentozar.com. User interface 102: when you’re doing something, say something.

Verdict: Wait for the Surface Pro

The Surface Pro comes out in a few months. The hardware design is very similar, but heavier, thicker, and with a “real” processor that requires a fan. Yes, those are drawbacks, but they come with a very, very powerful advantage: the Surface Pro will run real Windows 8. This means (hopefully) none of the buggy Windows RT problems, and perhaps more importantly, a full stable of applications.

See, the Surface RT only runs Metro (whatever) apps, of which there are woefully few. I didn’t even get to the point of testing the very few that I found – forget it, because the built-in stuff is so incredibly bad. The lack of apps wasn’t a problem for me – I explained why I preordered a Surface RT – but the quality of the built-in apps was.

The whole point of the Surface RT was supposed to be a tablet that’s ready for work. It’s not. Don’t touch it.

Update Oct 27th 7:43PM

After getting linked from HN and Reddit, I’ve gotten a bazillion comments that boil down to “You should have updated Office.” Yes, if only I could have figured out how. Since this post went live, Microsoft has explained how to get it:

For Windows RT Surface users, the update can be had by:

Head to the Control Panel version of Windows Update, not the Metro-accessible version that you use for more everyday settings changes.
Fire up a search for ‘Windows Update,’ and select ‘Install optional updates,’ instead of ‘Windows Update’ from the list of results.
If no updates are available, have the device run a check. If there are, then get going right away. The update is titled “Update for Microsoft Office Home & Student 201[3] RT Preview.”
Select it, and install.
Reboot.
Emphasis mine. I had no idea that there were multiple places for Windows Update on the same tablet. One tablet, but multiple places to get Microsoft updates? And we’re not even counting the Windows Store here. This just isn’t realistic to expect end users to find this buried treasure.

Other commenters have suggested that the Office updates apply automatically overnight – they do not. I’d left my Surface RT plugged in overnight, but even so, that only lets automatic updates apply, not optional ones like this Office update.

And of course, keep in mind that I still don’t know if these updates fix the problem – they certainly don’t fix the camera or mail problems, both of which were already updated through Windows Update.

Update Oct 28th 8AM

Yesterday this got posted to a bunch of news sites. I was out shopping with Erika when I got a tweet saying I’d hit the front page of HackerNews, LoopInsight, and Reddit, plus getting linked to from comments at CNet and Techmeme.

Here’s what that looks like in Google Analytics:


HERE COME THE HATERS

Yesterday was supposed to be a fun shopping day, just Erika and I out looking at furniture and clothes before my trip out to DevConnections and the PASS Summit. Increasingly, though, I kept turning to my phone and typing frantically, trying to explain things to commenters. My stress level went through the roof, and eventually I realized that being out and about was probably the best thing that could happen. I stopped trying to keep up, and just went back to my life – taking Ernie for a long walk, going out for dinner, reading the paper.

Yesterday was frustrating as all hell.

I’m a geek. I’ve been using computers since my first Commodore 64, then writing code in Topspeed Clarion, VBscript, Java, and .NET before switching over to Microsoft SQL Server database administration. I know bugs. I’ve coded bugs. (That’s probably all I’ve ever coded, come to think of it.) I’m used to poking around to discover workarounds to get things to work. I’m very used to doing updates to devices before I start working with ‘em, and I repeatedly did updates on the Surface RT trying to get it to work.

I’m not a zealot. I use both Microsoft and Apple gear, and while a lot of my SQL Server friends rant against cloud-based and NoSQL databases, I like those too. I’m all about using whatever works best – or to be more specific, whatever sucks the least. No software or hardware is perfect, although I’ll be the first to tell you that the Surface RT’s hardware comes pretty darned close to being perfect for 2012 tablets. The iPad isn’t. I hate that Apple continues to burden their products with wacko connectors, and now they’re even changing the connectors. Give me a freakin’ USB port, memory card port, and video out port, and let’s call it a day.

I really, really wanted the Surface RT to work. I need a lightweight backup PowerPoint device when I’m on the road presenting at conferences. That device needs to show PowerPoint presenter view while driving an external projector, while being plugged in for electricity (some of my sessions are 8-9 hours long), and take a presentation clicker. Keynote Remote doesn’t cut it because it loses reception in noisy radio areas like big conference rooms. The iPad only has one miserable dock connector or Lightning port, so it can either drive video OR be plugged in, but not both. The Surface RT looked like a great answer to this problem.

I’m fair. If I’m going to complain about something, I want to have proof. I can’t just say, “Surface RT suxxorz” if I get frustrated. Rather than just return it and call it a day, I restored the device from scratch and tried the setup experience again. (Remember, I’m a former developer, so I’m used to trying to reproduce bugs.) I recorded videos of it in action to prove what was going on.

But none of these mattered yesterday. Even with the restores, even with recording video of the problems, I got hammered. Hundreds of commenters on all kinds of sites said it was my fault.

Last night, I went to bed with a plan. I’d drive down to the Microsoft store, buy another Surface RT, film the unboxing process, show how hard it is to find the behind-the-scenes desktop update panel on your own, and find out if it fixes the Skydrive and keyboard problems. (I already know the Mail updates don’t fix the login/freeze problem, because I’d done those before filming the videos.)

This morning, I woke up with a better plan. I’m moving on. I don’t think there’s anything I could do to convince the hard-core fanboys out there that the Surface RT has problems – because I realized that most of the commenters don’t even own Surfaces. So many of the comments were flat out wrong, like saying there’s only one place for Surface updates and that Windows RT doesn’t have a desktop mode. I think I’ve done a fair job of documenting the problems I ran into, and I’ve burned enough of my weekend time on it.

And no, I’m not heading down to the Apple store to buy a new iPad, either. I’m still using a first-generation iPad 1, and believe me, it’s just as flaky as the Surface RT is. There’s no good presentation solution, the keyboards pale in comparison to the Surface’s, and many apps are crashtastic.

Find Me This Gadget

I don’t have a single right answer for my gadget needs yet, but the fun part about being a geek in 2012 is that the options are nearly endless. The journey of finding the right gadget is just as much fun as the destination, and I’m looking forward to giving the next gadget a shot.

Here’s my non-negotiable requirements:

Tablet so I can use it without a keyboard in cramped coach class flights
VGA output – can be via a dongle
Ability to charge the battery, show VGA out, and use the presenter mouse all at the same time
USB port or long-range Bluetooth (over 50 feet range) to work with a presenter mouse
WiFi – speed doesn’t really matter
Lightweight – under 2 pounds, because I’m carrying this as a secondary backup presentation device, not a primary laptop
At least 5 hours of battery life in airplane mode working in productivity apps
Some kind of cloud file sync app that runs in the background – ideally Dropbox, because I’m already using that, but if I had to add another app into my rotation I’d be okay with that
Last, and maybe most importantly, present these PowerPoint slide decks (28MB zip) in the fonts & layout shown in their corresponding PDFs – I put that together from a few conference-required deck templates. No, you can’t just present from the PDFs – I want to be able to make live updates to the slides while I’m onstage. People often ask great questions, and I edit the slide deck right there to include the answer, and then I give away the slide decks.
Here’s my nice-to-haves:

While presenting, show the PowerPoint presenter view on the tablet monitor (shows presenter notes for each slide, plus the next slide)
3G radio – bonus points if it works outside of the US
SD card input – can be via a dongle
Keyboard case
Priced under $1000
Got a solution that’s available to buy today? Tell me in the comments.

Update Oct 28 7PM: Microsoft Confirms

It’s not completely official yet, but it appears that Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft’s President of Windows Division, agrees that the Word typing problem is a known issue and another update is forthcoming.

Everybody who called me incompetent, please take your time in apologizing. I’m sure my blog would fall over immediately if all of you apologized at once.

Update Nov 1: Other Bloggers Confirm

The real-world reviews are coming in, and they’re not good. Here’s a very long and detailed review from Chris Pirillo:

Enjoy being just another sucker to Microsoft. Sure hope you enjoy ads in your face.

Windows 8 is just another way for Microsoft to show you ads | Owened by Owen Williams

Windows 8 is just another way for Microsoft to show you ads

I don’t know why the mainstream media hasn’t covered this more, but Windows 8 isn’t just Microsoft’s big new Operating System that is going to somehow change the way we think about computing, it’s also now an advertising platform designed to sell you, the user.

There hasn’t been that much coverage on this, but Microsoft is heavily pushing their new advertising platform which just happens to be the OS that you paid for. This isn’t really widely used yet, but the effects are already obvious in many of the bundled Metro UI applications already displaying ads.



But what does that mean for me?!

Well, this isn’t the first time that Microsoft has shown ads to users that actually pay for their services. Last year, when Microsoft launched their new dashboard for the Xbox 360, ads were in tow. Many thought they would disappear if you subscribed to Xbox Live (you know, an additional cost of $10/month) but nope, they don’t disappear at all.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel great having paid to buy an Xbox 360 and then paying monthly to play games online and still having advertising shoved in my face. It doesn’t seem right, nor is it fair, but it still happens.

The future is ads

Thus is the tale of Windows 8 now too. You pay for the OS license (even in the Enterprise) and the ads still exist. You subscribe to Microsoft’s new Xbox Music service and the ads still stay.



Unfortunately, this is only the beginning of this story too. Right now, Microsoft’s official applications have some basic advertising in them, but I’m worried about what comes next. Ads while I send email? When I’m searching my files? There needs to be a way to turn this off.

I suspect this move could be a sort of test for the company, with them thinking that perhaps at a later date Windows could become a freemium model, or discounted by advertising. They would – in theory – be able to make the OS completely free, thus dominating the desktop space in a perpetual manner.

Either way, I don’t like the future. Advertising is already shoved in our faces in things that we’ve paid the full price for, with no way to remove them and across every medium we interact with daily. We can’t get away from it, and now, it’s fundamentally on every device you use, every day.

It’s easy to fix. Let us opt out. Give us an option to pay our way out of the advertising. Amazon did it when they were blasted over the new Kindle, so follow their lead. Be the good guys.

Do you want to be the product being sold? You decide.

Oh, this is fine:

Microsoft Surface Touch Cover splits within days, some users complain | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Microsoft Surface Touch Cover splits within days, some users complain
Early buyers of the new tablet complain that the edge that attaches to the computer comes away, requiring replacement

Microsoft Surface Tablet Touch Cover Defect Blown out of Proportion? : Books : Books & Review

The Touch Cover to Microsoft's first ever tablet, the Surface RT, suffers from a crucial defect.

I guess that's why HarryBarracuda finally got fired....

Another Microsoft success story:

Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice & Power Users (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)



Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice & Power Users (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, November 19, 2012

Summary:
Hidden features, reduced discoverability, cognitive overhead from dual environments, and reduced power from a single-window UI and low information density. Too bad.
With the recent launch of Windows 8 and the Surface tablets, Microsoft has reversed its user interface strategy. From a traditional Gates-driven GUI style that emphasized powerful commands to the point of featuritis, Microsoft has gone soft and now smothers usability with big colorful tiles while hiding needed features.

The new design is obviously optimized for touchscreen use (where big targets are helpful), but Microsoft is also imposing this style on its traditional PC users because all of Windows 8 is permeated by the tablet sensibility.

How well does this work for real users performing real tasks? To find out, we invited 12 experienced PC users to test Windows 8 on both regular computers and Microsoft's new Surface RT tablets.

Double Desktop = Cognitive Overhead and Added Memory Load

The Roman god Janus; Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; even Batman's arch-foe Two-Face — human culture is fascinated by duality. We can now add Windows 8 to this list. The product shows two faces to the user: a tablet-oriented Start screen and a PC-oriented desktop screen.
Unfortunately, having two environments on a single device is a prescription for usability problems for several reasons:

Users have to learn and remember where to go for which features.
When running web browsers in both device areas, users will only see (and be reminded of) a subset of their open web pages at any given time.
Switching between environments increases the interaction cost of using multiple features.
The two environments work differently, making for an inconsistent user experience.
Lack of Multiple Windows = Memory Overload for Complex Tasks

One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the product's very name has become a misnomer. "Windows" no longer supports multiple windows on the screen. Win8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a small part of the screen, but none of our test users were able to make this work. Also, the main UI restricts users to a single window, so the product ought to be renamed "Microsoft Window."
The single-window strategy works well on tablets and is required on a small phone screen. But with a big monitor and dozens of applications and websites running simultaneously, a high-end PC user definitely benefits from the ability to see multiple windows at the same time. Indeed, the most important web use cases involve collecting, comparing, and choosing among several web pages, and such tasks are much easier with several windows when you have the screen space to see many things at once.

When users can't view several windows simultaneously, they must keep information from one window in short-term memory while they activate another window. This is problematic for two reasons. First, human short-term memory is notoriously weak, and second, the very task of having to manipulate a window—instead of simply glancing at one that's already open—further taxes the user's cognitive resources.

Flat Style Reduces Discoverability

The Windows 8 UI is completely flat in what used to be called the "Metro" style and is now called the "Modern UI." There's no pseudo-3D or lighting model to cast subtle shadows that indicate what's clickable (because it looks raised above the rest) or where you can type (because it looks indented below the page surface).
I do think Metro/Modern has more elegant typography than past UI styles and that the brightly colored tiles feel fresh.

But the new look sacrifices usability on the altar of looking different than traditional GUIs. There's a reason GUI designers used to make objects look more detailed and actionable than they do in the Metro design. As an example, look at this settings menu:


The bottom of the Windows 8 settings menu on Surface RT.

Where can you click? Everything looks flat, and in fact "Change PC settings" looks more like the label for the icon group than a clickable command. As a result, many users in our testing didn't click this command when they were trying to access one of the features it hides.

(In that task, we asked users to change the start screen background color. As a further problem, the very command label had misleading information scent for some users; they thought of the Surface as a tablet, not a "PC.")

We also saw problems with users overlooking or misinterpreting tabbed GUI components because of the low distinctiveness of the tab selection and the poor perceived affordance of the very concept of clickable tabs.

Icons are flat, monochromatic, and coarsely simplified. This is no doubt a retort to Apple's overly tangible, colorful, and extremely detailed "skeuomorphic" design style in iOS. For once, I think a compromise would be better than either extreme. In this case, we often saw users either not relating to the icons or simply not understanding them.

Icons are supposed to (a) help users interpret the system, and (b) attract clicks. Not the Win8 icons.

Low Information Density

The available advice on designing for the "modern UI style" seems to guide designers to create applications with extraordinarily low information density. See, for example, the following screenshots:

Start screens from the Bing Finance (top) and Los Angeles Times (bottom) apps for the Surface tablet.

Despite running on a huge 10.6-inch tablet, Bing Finance shows only a single story (plus 3 stock market quotes) on the initial screen. The Los Angeles Times is not much better: this newspaper app's initial screen is limited to 3 headlines and an advertisement. In fact, they don't even show the lead story's full headline and the summary has room for only 7 words. Come on, this tiny amount of news is all you can fit into 1366 × 768 pixels?


Los Angeles Times - California, national and world news - latimes.com in the tablet-mode browser.

Visiting the newspaper's website in Internet Explorer gives you much more information, though it's unfortunate that the site doesn't exploit the real estate offered by the widescreen aspect ratio on the Surface (and many full-sized computers). The website shows 9 stories (and 3 ads) in the same space as the 3 stories offered by the Metro app. Plus we get full summaries of the top articles.

Yes, big photos are nice. Yes, spacious layouts are nice. But you don't have to be a fanatic follower of Edward Tufte to want a bit more "data ink" on the screen.

As a result of the Surface's incredibly low information density, users are relegated to incessant scrolling to get even a modest overview of the available information.

As it turns out, users didn't mind horizontal scrolling on the Surface, which is interesting given that horizontal scrolling is a usability disaster for websites on desktop computers. Still, there's such a thing as too much scrolling, and users won't spend the time to move through large masses of low-density information.

Overly Live Tiles Backfire

Live tiles are one of the UI advances in Windows 8. Instead of always representing an app with the same static icon, a live tile summarizes current information from within the app. This works well when used judiciously. Good examples include:
Weather app showing current (or predicted) temperature and precipitation
Email app showing the subject line of the latest incoming message
Calendar app showing your next appointment
Stock market app showing the current market level
Unfortunately, application designers immediately went overboard and went from live tiles to hyper-energized ones. To illustrate ...
Quick, without reading the caption, which apps do the following 4 tiles represent?


Live tiles for (clockwise from upper left): Urbanspoon, Los Angeles Times, Newegg, and Epicurious.

Newegg is the only app that includes its full name in the tile. When we asked participants to use the other apps, they couldn't find them. This on a new tablet with only a few applications installed. We know from our user testing of other tablets and mobile devices that users quickly accumulate numerous applications, most of which they rarely use and can barely recognize—even with static icons that never change.

The theory, no doubt, is to attract users by constantly previewing new photos and other interesting content within the tiles. But the result makes the Surface start screen into an incessantly blinking, unruly environment that feels like dozens of carnival barkers yelling at you simultaneously.

Charms Are Hidden Generic Commands

One of the most promising design ideas in Windows 8 is the enhanced use of generic commands in the form of the so-called "charms." The charms are a panel of icons that slide in from the screen's right side after a flicking gesture from its right edge (on a tablet) or after pointing the mouse to the screen's upper-right corner (on a computer).
The charms panel includes features like Search, Share (including email), and Settings that apply to whatever content the user is currently viewing. In principle, it's great to have these commands universally available in a single, uniform design that's always accessed the same way.

In practice, the charms work poorly — at least for new users. The old saying, out of sight, out of mind, turned out to be accurate. Because the charms are hidden, our users often forgot to summon them, even when they needed them. In applications such as Epicurious, which included a visible reminder of the search feature, users turned to search much more frequently.

Hiding commands and other GUI chrome makes sense on small mobile phones. It makes less sense on bigger tablet screens. And it makes no sense at all on huge PC screens.

Furthermore, the charms don't actually work universally because they're not true generic commands. In our test, users often clicked Search only to be told, "This application cannot be searched." Enough disappointments and users will stop trying a feature. (Also, of course, it violates basic usability guidelines; that is, you shouldn't tease users by offering a feature that isn't actually available.)

Finally, not all users understood that the commands are context dependent and do different things on different pages.

Many other features are initially hidden and are revealed only when users perform specific and often convoluted gestures. For example, all of our users had great difficulty with an extraordinarily basic task: changing the city in the weather app. Obvious gestures, such as clicking the name of the current city to change locations, didn't work. Users' difficulties were exacerbated by the fact that the "Modern" GUI style doesn't indicate which words and fields are active and/or can be changed.

What's the long-term usability of the hidden features in Windows 8? We might expect users to grow accustomed to the need to reveal the charms and other non-visible commands, even though this imposes additional cognitive overhead on using the system. That is, people must think to do something, rather than being reminded to do something, and thus users will sometimes neglect useful Win8 features.

Also, the familiarity bred by long-term use might be counteracted by the fact that well-designed websites have trained users to expect important features to be shown directly in the context in which they're needed. You simply can't design a website with hidden features and expect it to be used: website features are usually ephemeral, meaning that they must be explicitly represented if they're to gather any use.

Thus, people's experience with the web exerts a powerful pull in the direction of expecting visible features. It remains to be seen whether the Surface tablet's physical presence creates enough of an opposing pull to remind people to look for hidden features when they're using Surface apps.

Error-Prone Gestures

The tablet version of Windows 8 introduces a bunch of complicated gestures that are easy to get wrong and thus dramatically reduce the UI's learnability. If something doesn't work, users don't know whether they did the gesture wrong, the gesture doesn't work in the current context, or they need to do a different gesture entirely. This makes it hard to learn and remember the gestures. And it makes actual use highly error-prone and more time-consuming than necessary.
The worst gesture might be the one to reveal the list of currently running applications: you need to first swipe from the screen's left edge, and then immediately reverse direction and do a small swipe the other way, and finally make a 90-degree turn to move your finger to a thumbnail of the desired application. The slightest mistake in any of these steps gives you a different result.

The UI is littered with swipe ambiguity, where similar (or identical) gestures have different outcomes depending on subtle details in how they're activated or executed. For example, start swiping from the right to the left and you will either scroll the screen horizontally or reveal the charm bar, depending on exactly where your finger first touched the screen. This was very confusing to the users in our study.

Windows 8 UX: Weak on Tablets, Terrible for PCs

As mentioned in the introduction, Windows 8 encompasses two UI styles within one product. Windows 8 on mobile devices and tablets is akin to Dr. Jekyll: a tortured soul hoping for redemption. On a regular PC, Windows 8 is Mr. Hyde: a monster that terrorizes poor office workers and strangles their productivity.
Although Win8 has usability issues on tablets, there's nothing that a modest redesign can't fix. In fact, usability could be substantially improved by revising the application guidelines to emphasize restrained use of active tiles, higher information density, better visibility of key features, and many other usability guidelines we've already discovered in testing other tablets.

(I was stunned to see the Architectural Digest app for Surface replicate a host of well-documented usability bloopers, such as not making the cover headlines clickable. Swipe ambiguity ran rampant, and users were often lost in this app's confusing combination of vertical and horizontal scrolling. All of this could have been avoided by reading reports we have published for free. I can just barely understand companies that ruin their user experience because they don't want to pay $298 to find out what the usability research says. But to create a bad app to save no money seems a puzzle.)

I have great hopes for Windows 9 on mobile and tablets. Just as Windows 7 was "Vista Done Right," it's quite likely that the touchscreen version of Windows 9 will be "Metro Done Right."

The situation is much worse on regular PCs, particularly for knowledge workers doing productivity tasks in the office. This used to be Microsoft's core audience, and it has now thrown the old customer base under the bus by designing an operating system that removes a powerful PC's benefits in order to work better on smaller devices.

The underlying problem is the idea of recycling a single software UI for two very different classes of hardware devices. It would have been much better to have two different designs: one for mobile and tablets, and one for the PC.

I understand why Microsoft likes the marketing message of "One Windows, Everywhere." But this strategy is wrong for users.

I Don't Hate Microsoft

Because this column is very critical of Microsoft's main product, some people will no doubt accuse me of being an Apple fanboy or a Microsoft hater. I'm neither. I switched from Macintosh to Windows many years ago and have been very pleased with Windows 7.
I am a great fan of the dramatic "ribbon" redesign of Office (we later gave several awards to other applications that adapted this UI innovation), and I proclaimed the Kinect an "exciting advance in UI technology." I have many friends who work at Microsoft and know that it has many very talented usability researchers and UI designers on staff.

I have nothing against Microsoft. I happen to think that Windows 7 is a good product and that Windows 8 is a misguided one. I derived these conclusions from first principles of human–computer interaction theory and from watching users in our new research. One doesn't have to hate or love a company in order to analyze its UI designs.

I'll stay with Win7 the next few years and hope for better times with Windows 9. One great thing about Microsoft is that they do have a history of correcting their mistakes.

more reasons to stay with stable and usable WinXP

best User Experience to date,