Rumor: Microsoft Has Split Windows Group into Two Teams?

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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For those of you who feel like skipping Windows 8 altogether and just sit in the shadows until Windows 9 makes the scene, rejoice. The word is out that Microsoft has already split its Windows team into two groups: one will continue work on improving Windows 8, while the other team members have already begun working on Windows 9. Your salvation is at hand. :D

Now the well-known insider leak website WinUnleaked.info (free registration required) has posted up word, via unnamed sources, that the Windows development division has officially been split up into two teams.
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Unless the "improving" is the removal of that eye-sore previously known as Metro I really don't give a damn.
 
Someone needs to talk M$ into porting DirectX to Linux. One can dream. . .
 
It seems to me that for the last decade+ Microsoft has been doing things good in every other release. Windows 2000 was the first all 32 bit Windows and wasn't great but XP fixed it's foibles. Vista kinda sucked but it's mistakes were largely taken care of in Windows 7. I have zero confidence that Windows 8 is going to hit it out of the park since there is a lot of new there but I might be interested in the fixed version that comes after it.
 
The UI formerly known as Metro, lol. I rather learn OS elements of Win8 which will obviously carry over into future versions of the OS like Vista did. I took some getting use to, but even Vista was a pleasure after some tweaking.
 
PeaKr said:
Someone needs to talk M$ into porting DirectX to Linux. One can dream. . .
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There was a DX10/11 layer that was being made for Linux. Due to lack of activity, it was recently scrapped.

one-does-not-simply-meme-generator-one-does-not-simply-install-linux-4ade56.jpg
 
Dwango said:
It seems to me that for the last decade+ Microsoft has been doing things good in every other release. Windows 2000 was the first all 32 bit Windows and wasn't great but XP fixed it's foibles. Vista kinda sucked but it's mistakes were largely taken care of in Windows 7. I have zero confidence that Windows 8 is going to hit it out of the park since there is a lot of new there but I might be interested in the fixed version that comes after it.
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Funny you say it like that...Win2K was hard to pry from people's cold dead fingers when XP came along. XP wasn't usable until after the 1st Service Pack.
 
Skripka said:
Funny you say it like that...Win2K was hard to pry from people's cold dead fingers when XP came along. XP wasn't usable until after the 1st Service Pack.
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Neither was 2K if you tried to do much of anything that was not MS Office, or light server related. 2K was a great workstation OS, but by the time it was really a good home consumer OS, Xp had already caught up to, or surpassed it.
 
Dwango said:
It seems to me that for the last decade+ Microsoft has been doing things good in every other release. Windows 2000 was the first all 32 bit Windows and wasn't great but XP fixed it's foibles. Vista kinda sucked but it's mistakes were largely taken care of in Windows 7. I have zero confidence that Windows 8 is going to hit it out of the park since there is a lot of new there but I might be interested in the fixed version that comes after it.
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Try something new then Fix it and perfect it on the next redesign, repeat.
 
MS has been doing this for years in the sense that work on their next OS is already being started when their newest one is released.
 
IMO, sooner than later, Windows will be subscription only (when that happens, *nix will finally take off as a mainstream desktop alternative)

the W's 8 team will show all the other W's teams how it's done
 
jstnomega said:
IMO, sooner than later, Windows will be subscription only (when that happens, *nix will finally take off as a mainstream desktop alternative)

the W's 8 team will show all the other W's teams how it's done
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Huh? How will that help Linux out? I've actually been wanting a subscription option for Windows for a while, which is what I've sorta been using Technet for.

Pay a reasonable yearly fee, get access to a selection of Microsoft software that's always kept up to date for a specific number of PCs. Stop paying and you stay on whatever version you're currently on.

I'd be all over that if the prices are cheaper than buying boxed copies for all my machines.
 
Dwango said:
It seems to me that for the last decade+ Microsoft has been doing things good in every other release. Windows 2000 was the first all 32 bit Windows and wasn't great but XP fixed it's foibles.
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Uh, what? XP was a security train-wreck when it first launched...

And you totally forgot about Windows ME, which launched between Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Dwango said:
Vista kinda sucked but it's mistakes were largely taken care of in Windows 7.
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They didn't actually change a whole lot between Windows Vista and Windows 7. There was some optimization, and a user interface overhaul, but the backend stuff which effects compatibility and stability remained largely unchanged.

By the time Windows 7 had rolled around, WDDM 1.0 drivers had finally matured to the point that things were nice and stable (and once you have a WDDM 1.0 driver, it's not hard to bring it up to WDDM 1.1 specs). Windows 7 launched with the benefit of OEMs having a crapload of time to test their drivers on Vista.

Install Vista today, with modern drivers, and it behaves pretty much identically to Windows 7 (the user interface aside). It COULD have behaved that way on launch-day if OEMs like Nvidia had their acts together.

Dwango said:
I have zero confidence that Windows 8 is going to hit it out of the park since there is a lot of new there but I might be interested in the fixed version that comes after it.
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Well, take this into consideration. The two versions of Windows considered the biggest failures to date ARE NOT considered failures due to changes made to their UI. They were considered failures because of a lack of stability and a lack of compatibility.

Windows ME was the first. It shipped out with a beta version of Internet Explorer pre-installed which was fairly buggy and crash-prone. The shell in ME had web integration that made use of the Trident rendering engine. Instabilities in the included version of IE caused the shell to become unstable and crash regularly. There were also compatibility issues resultant from the version of MS-DOS included with Windows ME being stripped down.

It's worth noting that ME is actually pretty decent once you update Internet Explorer to the most recent version; the shell immediately stabilizes and behaves itself. Given the choice between Windows 98SE and Windows ME I'd likely choose the latter due mostly to the fact that Windows ME includes Windows 2000's network stack, which allows it to function on modern-day Windows networks (where as 98 SE fails completely)

Windows Vista ended up in a similar boat due to the massive changes in security policies and the entirely new driver model. Programs built for XP that simply assumed they had administrator privileges system-wide would attempt to write to folders now owned by the user they were currently running as, causing them to crash or misbehave in other ways. Drivers were woefully immature leading to some pretty serious crashes (and these crashes were bad enough that the driver-restart mechanism built into Windows Vista and Windows 7 couldn't recover from the crash).

As I mentioned above, the situation for Vista improved greatly in the two years following its initial release. Nothing wrong with using it as a daily-driver OS from a security or stability standpoint, and most compatibility issues have been ironed out (and those that haven't remain in Windows 7 and Windows 8, anyway).


Now, lets take a look XP... it launched with horribly broken security, fairly high system requirements compared to Windows 98/2000/ME, an obvious lack of backwards compatibility with older hardware and software, and possibly one of the ugliest default Windows themes to date... I mean seriously, people foretold the doom of Microsoft when Windows XP launched, expecting it to be another Windows-ME-Like failure.

Microsoft diverted resources from the Longhorn team to correct the situation. Features that were supposed to be slated for the next version of Windows were instead back-ported to Windows XP. The security center, firewall, overhauled wifi networking support, windows file protection, and a host of other features that REALLY didn't fit with Microsoft's service-pack standards were rushed into XP as quickly as possible to save face.

Know what? It worked... and it worked too damn well. Windows XP SP2 could almost have been launched as a new version of Windows (just needed a UI reskin, honestly). Unfortunately, the delay caused by the diversion of resources is part of what caused Vista's launch-day troubles.


Compared to all of the above? Windows 8 has it easy. It's built on top of a stable codebase, it's using the same driver model as the last two versions of windows, it's using the same security model as the last two versions of Windows, software compatibility is almost identical to Windows 7, and it's launching on-time with full OEM support for new hardware form factors. The ONLY sticking point is the UI... I just don't see that killing Windows 8 when previous versions of Windows managed to be successful with much more serious issues.
 
Too bad Windows 9 and all follow-ups will be Metro-like... MS is NOT gonna split into Metro and non-Metro OS makers. There was an article about it couple weeks back. So no reason to rejoice. Either fully embrace Metro or start learning Linux...
 
Doesn't MS do this with every OS release? Split the group to do fixes and to start the next one?
 
Dwango said:
Windows 2000 was the first all 32 bit Windows and wasn't great but XP fixed it's foibles.
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Um, what? Get your history straight!

And what do you mean "wasn't great"? 2000 finally brought technologies like power management, USB support, and Plug'nPlay over to the NT family. No longer did one have to sacrifice new hardware compatibility for the sake of stability and security.

Gaming (especially DOS gaming) was subpar on Windows 2000, however XP wasn't too much better when it was first released. If you wanted to run your DOS/Win9x era games you either had to endure the compatibility issues on those OSes or dual-boot into Windows 95/98.
 
mzs_biteme said:
Too bad Windows 9 and all follow-ups will be Metro-like... MS is NOT gonna split into Metro and non-Metro OS makers. There was an article about it couple weeks back. So no reason to rejoice. Either fully embrace Metro or start learning Linux...
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I wouldn't be surprised if MS hedges their bet though, most smart companies do. If three years from now when they are ready to launch Win 9 the tablet situation is still booming and convergence between phones/tablets and laptops/desktops is high then they will stick with Metro and everyone will likely be happy with it since they will optimize it around the convergence paradigm. However, if tablets falter (especially their own) and convergence is still developing they may allow for switching between UI's optimized to their platforms (in three years I am sure they can code some elegant way to switch the UI that is user friendly and intuitive). As for me, since Win 7 is running well for me I will wait until the first service pack or Win 8 adds a "killer" gaming feature before I consider my need to upgrade ;)
 
kbrickley said:
I wouldn't be surprised if MS hedges their bet though, most smart companies do. If three years from now when they are ready to launch Win 9 the tablet situation is still booming and convergence between phones/tablets and laptops/desktops is high then they will stick with Metro and everyone will likely be happy with it since they will optimize it around the convergence paradigm. However, if tablets falter (especially their own) and convergence is still developing they may allow for switching between UI's optimized to their platforms (in three years I am sure they can code some elegant way to switch the UI that is user friendly and intuitive). As for me, since Win 7 is running well for me I will wait until the first service pack or Win 8 adds a "killer" gaming feature before I consider my need to upgrade ;)
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The problem with a convergence of devices is that there will still be an wide variety of input; keyboard/mouse/touch and whatever else comes up. Having a single OS to stretch across all of these in a seamless fashion means having an OS that adapts to the usage pattern and not something like Metro where touch is favored heavily or win8 where it's a blob of one or the other. A sort of "smart" OS that recognizes what's plugged into the USB56 port that changes it's desktop interface accordingly. Win8, though it stretches across devices (Metro does, rather) doesn't do this very well at all.

There's still hope for MS but they have to get their head out of their ass and realize that forcing people into a streamlined environment so they can make a larger profit will only deter a good percentage of users. Unless the people who spearheaded win8 aren't on the project and making the decisions, I've no hope for anything better.
 
MS have always liked money. If you wonder about Win8 and Metro - they like money more now. The 360 and the way they run it and everything on it gave them a taste for making outrageous amounts of money.

Windows 9 in 2-3 years would be timed right for the next Xbox, so maybe..
 
I think Metro (or whatever Microsoft is calling it) is getting a lot of bad press, some of it not earned. I agree that its a big change from Windows 7 but between making use of windows hotkeys to move around and the fact that you can *still* live mainly in the desktop if you so choose, I don't see the big deal.

That said, I think Microsoft did make a mistake in not at least giving people the option to live in a legacy shell; to opt out of the new UI if you will. I suspect that internally there was probably debate about this, but for better or worse this new UI is the direction Microsoft wants to go so we'll see I guess.
 
I find Windows 8 hard to use on a laptop with just the touch pad. There are also some inconsistencies in shortcut bindings; where you would expect, for example, the esc key to get you out of an options page, it doesn't.
There were also a lot of apps that I had where the text on buttons, fields, etc would not fit correctly (cut off on the bottom, too long to fit). I'm sure this is configurable somewhere, but that shouldn't be required to do.
I put the Win 8 RC on my laptop and where Win 7 ran perfectly fine with low CPU usage, Win 8 is constantly cranking my cpu up for seemingly no reason; my fan is almost always on at full throttle. I gave up trying to resolve some of these issues and reverted back to Win 7 on the laptop (didn't install it on anything else); it just wasn't worth all the hassle even though I liked some of the new features (the new process manager was awesome).
 
Isn't this just normal?

Because Win8 is already developed, it's time for some of the employees to start working on something new.
 
DCRussian said:
I find Windows 8 hard to use on a laptop with just the touch pad. There are also some inconsistencies in shortcut bindings; where you would expect, for example, the esc key to get you out of an options page, it doesn't.
There were also a lot of apps that I had where the text on buttons, fields, etc would not fit correctly (cut off on the bottom, too long to fit). I'm sure this is configurable somewhere, but that shouldn't be required to do.
I put the Win 8 RC on my laptop and where Win 7 ran perfectly fine with low CPU usage, Win 8 is constantly cranking my cpu up for seemingly no reason; my fan is almost always on at full throttle. I gave up trying to resolve some of these issues and reverted back to Win 7 on the laptop (didn't install it on anything else); it just wasn't worth all the hassle even though I liked some of the new features (the new process manager was awesome).
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One thing that did change a lot from Windows 8 RC to RTM is track pad support. Not all existing hardware supports it but there's actually a number of gestures that approximate a touch screen. On my Lenovo x220t convertible tablet I can swipe from the right side in to bring up the Charms Bar and swiping from the left in will switch Metro apps and track pad just feels much more responsive than in Windows 7. The track pads in most Windows 8 devices will have much more gesture support and should be the best track pads ever to grace Windows devices.

Not sure about the issue you're seeing with text on controls, never have seen that. I have seen a service on some Windows 8 installs prior to the RTM that would start eating up CPU, not pegging it or anything, but like a 20% hit, that I had to kill now and then. I've not seen that at all in the RTM yet on any of my machines. I think I'm seeing a bit better battery life actually, particularly the more I use the Metro browser.
 
I wonder if Windows 9 will be yet another Windows Vista Service Pack?

I hope MS still remembers how to make a NEW OS?
 
Unknown-One said:
Huh? How will that help Linux out? I've actually been wanting a subscription option for Windows for a while, which is what I've sorta been using Technet for.

Pay a reasonable yearly fee, get access to a selection of Microsoft software that's always kept up to date for a specific number of PCs. Stop paying and you stay on whatever version you're currently on.

I'd be all over that if the prices are cheaper than buying boxed copies for all my machines.
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that didn't take long
 
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