Windows 8 public beta released

[Harmonic]

Why should I be forced to do anything when I pay them money for supposedly new better product?

There are no technical reasons why they could not have kept Start buttin in desktop and avoid making people go to Metro if they do not want to. Frankly this tulip was started with Office 2007 and that Ribbon crap and now same attitude towards paying users has moved over to main OS.

There are no technical reasons why the Start button should've been introduced in the first place, lots of people complained about it and the "Fisher Price" interface. In fact there's no technical reason for a GUI so let's go back to DOS and MS Word 5.
Microsoft are changing the interface to meet changing customer requirements and surprisingly there are more Joe Public users who might find using the same UI across phone, tablet and PC easier than there are moaning IT bods who just want the UI to stagnate because they are change averse.

[d000hg]

Anyway, since this is technical I'll try a more technical question or two...

1)Have MS released an ARM demo of W8 yet?
2)Will we be able to write native (i.e. C++, WinRT) code that can compile for ARM and x86, or is ARM limited to HTML5/Silverlight apps? I expect if the former, you'll clearly have to compile for x86 and ARM targets (like compiling 32/64 bit now) but even so this would be very neat.

[stek]

Whatever happened to Windows RG?

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flas...sheep.com).swf

[VectraMan]

A little bit of digging on t'net got me there.

• Use VirtualBox GUI tp clone Win7 to Win8 (only 'cos I want to keep my Win7 installation intact)
• Create a new disk of the required size in VirtualBox
• Make sure the VBoxManage app is in your path (I'd already done this)
• Open up a command prompt and navigate to the directoy where Win8.vdi and the new Win8-bigger-disk.vdi is

• VBoxManage clonehd Win8.vdi Win8-bigger-disk1.vdi --existing

• In the VirtualBox GUI, remove Win8.dvi
• Start 'er up- Contrary to what I said before, there is now a desktop icon "Install Windows"
• Follow the prompts

If I could have been arsed to look it up, I could have done all that from the command prompt.

Why didn't you just install W8 in a new VM? That's what I did.

[VectraMan]

2)Will we be able to write native (i.e. C++, WinRT) code that can compile for ARM and x86, or is ARM limited to HTML5/Silverlight apps? I expect if the former, you'll clearly have to compile for x86 and ARM targets (like compiling 32/64 bit now) but even so this would be very neat.

That's my understanding. It's C++/CX which is pretty similar to C++/CLI in that it mixes native code with a managed like system when interacting with the OS. So that'll mean dual compiles, and of course for some things you'll need a bit of #if'ing.

But they also have a .NET (not Silverlight) API, which makes you wonder why they didn't just do .NET for everything including C++. I guess they decided .NET had too large a performance overhead.

So on the plus side, it might generate some demand for those of us with C++/CLI experience.

[Sysman]

Why didn't you just install W8 in a new VM? That's what I did.

That bit escaped me. They didn't offer me an image to boot from.

Perhaps I'll try it again.

I've seen others complain about performance in VMs but haven't really found it too bad myself up until now. I've given Win8 Preview gobs of memory and it's still way too slow. I'll try it on a faster machine and see if it's OK there.

[Sysman]

That bit escaped me. They didn't offer me an image to boot from.

Aha! Found the ISO dpwnload page.

Tools and SDK here.

[d000hg]

But they also have a .NET (not Silverlight) API, which makes you wonder why they didn't just do .NET for everything including C++. I guess they decided .NET had too large a performance overhead.

I assume because C++.net is quite different from regular C++ (right?) - millions of 3rd-party and open-source libs are in cross-platform plain C/C++ and (my understanding is) these would not compile under C++.net without source modification... unsafe blocks around pointers and what have you.

Never used C++.net so could be off the mark on that, but I'm certainly keen on as near "real" C++ as possible.

[VectraMan]

I assume because C++.net is quite different from regular C++ (right?) - millions of 3rd-party and open-source libs are in cross-platform plain C/C++ and (my understanding is) these would not compile under C++.net without source modification... unsafe blocks around pointers and what have you.

Never used C++.net so could be off the mark on that, but I'm certainly keen on as near "real" C++ as possible.

Yes it's C++ for native code, with a load of extra stuff bodged into the language (like ^ for pointers, and % for references) for doing .NET stuff. You can either mix and match native code with .NET (which is where the benefit is), or use it in pure mode for .NET only (in which case you may as well use C#). I've used it for interfacing .NET applications with complicated COM components and native libraries, and from the opposite end, including .NET controls in native Windows apps.

I was surprised given Metro is all new anyway that they've invented a new, and slightly similar technology to allow native apps to run alongside the system that allow .NET apps to run rather than use the one they already had. But I guess saying ".NET" would scare off some developers.

[AtW]

AtW you're clearly a 'nuts & bolts' coder, not a UI guy. It comes across in everything you say and until you hired someone a while ago, it was also very evident from the M12 website too.

We do not sell user interface - our product is data and 95% of time goes into making sure data is the best. We do listen carefully to our users also and make changes when it makes sense, compared to last few years number of our users who were unhappy about our GUI gone down, so we clearly moving in the right direction.

If I had product in which user interface is very important I'd make sure that even if some new "paradigm GUI" is launched then even if it is on by default it should be possible to easily revert to old one, especially given that they did not completely remove desktop.

I say it categorically - for an established mature company maintaining user base is more important than going into something new that would piss off existing customers. Keep Windows metro tulip on the phones, tablets and don't piss off existing customers.

For all that and office Ribbon I blame solely one person - Sinofsky who I hope will be fired out of a cannon to outer space in the very near future