hopefully they've given the management team who pushed the "modern interface" onto the world, the same shed+shotgun treatment. (afaik this is the same team behind the birth of the 'ribbon'...)
Microsoft picks up shotgun, walks 'Modern apps' behind the shed
Microsoft looks to have decided that the “modern” apps it gave the world with Windows 8 were a confusing mess, at least in the case of Skype, and will replace it with normal, boring, desktop Skype. “With the upcoming release of Windows 10 for PCs, it makes sense to use the Skype application optimized for mouse and keyboards …
COMMENTS
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Saturday 13th June 2015 03:35 GMT joed
I've never had a "pleasure" to use "modern" version of Skype as desktop version was easily available. I bet sure that there's fewer metro Skype that Media Center users (it also died behind MS shed, BTW, this place is littered with corpses).
If anyone installed modern Skype it had to happen by mistake. It's standard routine for Windows 8 users to remove all traces of Metro junk of their machines after initial login to the system.
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Friday 12th June 2015 08:01 GMT Schultz
Giving the user what he wants...
How come it took MS years to find out that the big unified touch interface is a piece of S**T when it took me only 2 hours to come to the same conclusion? And I am usually not fast to make up my mind. Now if they'd consider removing the Ribbon I might even return to a halfway modern version of their office software. Best hand it over with that complimentary copy of Windows 10, thank you very much.
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Friday 12th June 2015 16:42 GMT Amorous Cowherder
Re: Giving the user what he wants...
1) They had invested a GDP sized amount of money into it and couldn't kill it off without justifying that to the shareholders, so they have to pilot this doomed course right into the jagged rocks, having jumped off the boat just before it crashed!
2) They're MS, they can make people do things the MS way...well they used to be able to but in these modern times, people power seems to carry a lot of weight. Companies are learning quickly that with everyone now online and communicating all the time ( as these companies demanded that we do! ) that people power is even stronger when we're united against a common enemy.
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Saturday 13th June 2015 02:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Windows RT users – both of you
Here too. I even use Modern in my user account in Windows Server 2012 R2, touch screen (20") or no (30" quad-HD). Solitaire if nothing else. 20" is on a long ass cable run to my bed for those days I'm bedridden due to pain. The on-screen keyboard is pretty nice as it matches my hands.* I've never had a problem ripping out the desktop complete down to replacing explorer.exe. I've left Windows 8 and 2012 alone whereas everyone else was off into the bit bucket. Modern is a 2-D dock and docks, contextual menus, and virtual desktops are standard here since Windows 95. Actually before that on a multiple operating system device which happened to run Microsoft since 1986 my way. Over a decade, that machine had way over $15K invested in it and it devoured pretty much any operating system on the planet. My new setup finally starts to do the same again.
* voice command is waiting in the wings as I steadily degrade to quadraplegic staus. On the bright side, I'm supposed to be dead as of 2005. Not that they have any right to pat themselves on the back. My doctor always says, after refusing any kind of treatment (level 10 pain or suicide attempts), "you're a bright boy, you figure it out." It's a wonder that more Veterans haven't ever taken to go "Postal" on our VA. (It's not their fault. System, idiot politicians, and now that marijauna is being legalized, a bunch of fucking DEA agents micromanaging VA doctor's prescriptions. Sorry. I'm pretty much livid about all of this.)
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Friday 12th June 2015 08:15 GMT DrXym
Nothing wrong with the modern interface
It's perfect for touchscreen devices like tablets and phones and some apps put it to really good use. Netflix has a nice interface in Windows 8 and the email app is pretty good too.
Perhaps Skype was a bad example although I wouldn't know because when I installed it refused to go any further unless I tied my Windows Live account to my Skype ID. It's one thing to ask (nicely and optionally), it's quite another to force me to do it and I resent consolidating IDs without a good reason. The desktop app didn't care so I used that instead.
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Friday 12th June 2015 11:36 GMT Sgt_Oddball
Re: Nothing wrong with the modern interface
There are things missing from the mail app though. (same with Outlook on Android) namely folders and rules.
I like have all my eBay receipts in one folder and other odds and sods filtered out into others but the mail app is missing what's been perfectly functional for the 10+ years through the Web site. (and yes I know it's passe to have any ms email account but it's been going for 17 years and I'm loath to push that many emails elsewhere.)
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Friday 12th June 2015 08:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
Never enough..
beta testers, how many million of us does MS have? but still it takes years for something obviously ill considered to be changed.
I've only fired up desktop Skype a few times in the last few years when checking where to enter settings for supporting others (I mainly use skype on a landline/skype dect phone).
I tried the Modern app a few times and simply thought if this is the future interface and the DECT handset stops working I'm going to find something else, just not worth trying to work with those gui decisions.
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Saturday 13th June 2015 08:00 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Never enough..
"beta testers, how many million of us does MS have? but still it takes years for something obviously ill considered to be changed."
Perhaps they are harking back to the original meaning of beta test -- the software is pretty much in its final state but we need to find the rest of the bugs. It's far too late by then to be thinking about architectural changes. You will see bug fixes and you will probably see cosmetic changes, like moving buttons around or trying out a few new colour schemes. Hmm, actually, that does pretty much describe the last six months of the Windows Insider Fast Track.
The real question is just how they went so badly wrong in the meetings that decided on the original architecture. I mean, how did *any* group of people who have used computers before reckon that is was acceptable to have hidden UI, or for half the necessary controls to be in one "control panel" and the other half to be in another, or (as already mentioned above) to use the same UI on a 4-inch touchscreen as on a multi-monitor mouse-and-keyboard setup?
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Friday 12th June 2015 09:58 GMT Andrew Jones 2
I was originally quite happy with the Modern Skype - and then I started to realise that I wasn't getting messages as soon as they were sent - the delay averages around 10-15 minutes. Once I switched back to the modern app all the delayed messages would come through and then when I went back to the desktop they would continue coming through for about 5 minutes and then start becoming delayed again. I had to give up and install desktop Skype.
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Friday 12th June 2015 11:30 GMT Warm Braw
Anecdotally, at least, this seems to be a problem with Modern Apps in general. I don't have Windows 8, but a couple of people I know have complained of having only intermittent access to email through the "modern" client - sometimes it works, sometimes days can elapse before email appears. No errors reported, of course. The only fix that worked was to install a "proper" desktop client.
The web seems to be littered with complaints about Modern Apps getting "stuck". This does seem counter-intuitive, given that the framework is supposed to make developing interactive network-based applications easier and more reliable. Can't help feeling their demise might reduce Microsoft's support load significantly.
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Saturday 13th June 2015 07:20 GMT James Anderson
What support load. The reason the web is littered with posts about "modern" apps freezing, not loading, disappearing etc. is that there is no effective support from MS. After the first couple of attempts you ignore the "MS"posts on google and look for "joe_the_geeks" blog as they have some real answers usually involving hacking registry entries and running powershell commands.
Currently along with a few thousand other users I cannot access the "Store" application. MS don't seem to care (I never buy anything) and neither do I really ( the machine is set up in "Windows 7, but without the 10 minute boot up time" mode).
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Friday 12th June 2015 11:24 GMT Crip-tonight
Windows 8 interface
I would suggest that the main problem with Windows 8, and any other touch-screen-style OSs, is the focus on apps.
Users in a workplace are document-centric, not app-centric. They look for "this invoice" or "that customer proposal" or the other "minutes from that boring meeting we had with the lawyers several months ago that we'd completely forgotten about but is suddenly the most important document in the business."
They don't care (sorry, shouldn't care) which app a particular document opens in. Users don't open Word and then go searching for the document they need. They search for the document and it opens in whichever app is the default.
I do see that Skype might be an exception but for the whole OS to focus on apps is misguided, at least in a workplace.
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Friday 12th June 2015 12:18 GMT Tim 11
Re: Windows 8 interface
Thank you thank you - this is what I've been harping on about for years.
Why on earth do new versions of Windows group the windows together by app, meaning 2 clicks (or at least one hover followed by a click) are required to switch documents even within one task.
Personally I have the taskbar on vertically down the screen, with small icons+text and "never combine", and I use 7TT (highly recommended) to group windows together by task. It really frustrates me when I have to use someone else's PC and go back to the default way of doing things.
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Saturday 13th June 2015 08:07 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: Windows 8 interface
"Why would you ever have to "use someone else's PC". "
Because you both work for the same company and they've asked you to help?
Because they are your paying customer and they've asked you to help?
Because they are family and they've asked you for help?
My day job is writing software and yet I still find myself in these situations at least once a week. I'm a big fan of people who don't customise their Windows PC to the point where you wonder whether they've started using an obscure Linux distro. I'm also in the habit of wiping and restoring test machines every few days and I always test on a bog-standard installation of Windows because that's the only assumption I can make about how my customers' machines will be set up.
The "personal" part of personal computing is slightly evil.
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Saturday 13th June 2015 05:33 GMT Christian Berger
Re: Windows 8 interface
Well I don't even think that's the fault of the touch interface, but the business model set by Apple where the owner of the phone gets a cut of all app purchases. The owner of the phone mostly cares about them as that's where the money is. It doesn't matter what the user thinks as users usually don't own their phones.
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