Here’s some visual eye candy that gives you feel for what Redmond is thinking in terms of the UI design of Windows 8. My reaction: holy crap.

It looks likes the cable box remote control.

I noticed this with a chuckle from some guy commenting on the Windows 8 UI article…

I very much prefer the Windows ribbon, which hides when not being used, and when needed, gives me easy access to the options I have available to me. I dislike using Finder on OSX, I’ve always thought it was difficult for some reason.

Finder difficult?  Crikey, mate, the only way to get more elegant and easy than Finder is to go iOS and not worry about file management!

I suspect “for some reason” is that he never really tried it or spent any time on it.

The graphic is from Fortune Magazine.  You can find the original (and much more readable) version here.

So this is Win 8? What a piece of crap. Whoever designed this and whoever approved this should be fired and face a lifetime ban from the computing and design industries.

Disclaimer:
I hated the ‘ribbon’ the first time I saw it, had to use it for a few months, hated it even more. I do not use Office. I do not recommend Office. OpenOffice for all of it’s faults is easier to use BECAUSE it does not have that illogical, cluttered and obscure ribbon with the thousand tiny icons EXCEPT the one for the function I want.  It literally took me ten minutes to find Print the first time I needed it.

What’s wrong with menus?

They’re organized and if laid out correctly work very well. Even better would be (and it’s something I’ve wanted for a decade or more) is the option to customize my menus the way I want. Oh sure I stumbled a bit going from OS-9 to OS-X. I grumbled a bit, but I adapted because dispite the detail changes it was still a good way to organize commands. But this is beyond bad. Beyond incompetent. Beyond awful. Beyond terrible.

It’s…it’s…
I don’t know if there is a word to describe this monstrosity.

John:  Cook will not forgive you for exposing his Auburn photos.  You can expect to banned from all Apple Stores.

Who would have expected a UI like this from a company who thinks up something like the Milan?

Boggles.

I prognosticate that Win 8 will look no more like this than Ballmer will ever look normal. The background screams for pastel, say pink.

This is reading conspiratorial. Three tries at giving crap a bad name.

John:

Great piece by Bob Sutton. I agree with his list of 5 indicators of trouble ahead, with the following caveat for number 3 (departure of senior execs). One should not be discomfited if there is turnover in near-term, as a new CEO takes over. Granted, Tim Cook has had years of experience with the current leadership, but a few of these might use Cook’s formal assumption of leadership as an opportunity to move on or get out.  I would only be concerned if these execs are replaced primarily by outsiders (e.g. Pepsi execs) who do not know the business or have not been steeped in Apple’s culture. I think, particularly for a still relatively small company (number of employees) like Apple, culture is important.

The Doc Searls piece on Google and Google Wallet is thought provoking. I concur with Searls’ assessment that neither Facebook, nor any other of Google’s potential competitors in this space, have Google’s market infrastructure, with the exception of Apple, although Google’s may be more readily scalable. 

Regarding the Windows 8 interface, I almost think someone is having a laugh at bloggers’ expense, until looking at the msdn page regarding ‘improvements in Windows 8’. The subtitle, ‘Building Explorer’ involuntarily made me hear Danny Elfman’s ‘Making Christmas’ in Tim Burton’s ‘Nightmare…’ Definitely time to wake up.