Everyone hated the Windows 8 environment, for the exact reasons that they hated WinCE. Or, I guess, the inverse. The Windows Mobile UI was actually pretty nice. The tiles model gave you something that nicely combined the behaviour of widgets and app icons on Android. There were a lot of nice touches. For small touchscreens, it was a nice UI. I think Windows Phone is probably the mobile OS UI that I've hated the least.
But putting it on a desktop was a disaster. It kind-of worked on touchscreen laptops.
It might be nice to have something like it for mobile Linux devices, but this doesn't seem to be doing tiles as Windows did, they're just the app icons.
It's funny to look back on history and see such a clear and vivid about-face in design and expectations. In 2012 every tech company was going "desktop/laptop computers are obsolete, we're gonna have phones and tablets and do everything on them, maybe you'll have a real computer for occasional special-case stuff". In 2018 everyone was going "turns out people who type for a living need real keyboards, and lots of people type for a living, and UIs that work well on small screens suck on big screens and vice versa. Wellllll.... shit."
Windows Phone dying was indeed sad, it always seemed like a promising underdog. But MS seems to kill off its promising underdogs.
Apple has done almost the opposite. One of the things that made the iPhone successful was that they didn't use the same UI toolkit on it. You could share all of the code between macOS and and iOS except for the UI. But, because AppKit and UIKit were different meant that you needed to think a bit about how your UI should work on a touchscreen device. But now, they're shipping Catalyst, which means that you can take an iOS UI and make it work on macOS but it doesn't act or feel like a macOS app.
I was expecting this to be something that recreates the Windows 8 desktop style. Always been a fan of how it looks, with just a bit of depth and translucency combined with flat, strong colour.
[OP] yokljo | 15 hours ago
Just what I always wanted! But seriously, I think it's pretty neat how someone with a bit of passion can create a working desktop environment.
david_chisnall | 13 hours ago
Everyone hated the Windows 8 environment, for the exact reasons that they hated WinCE. Or, I guess, the inverse. The Windows Mobile UI was actually pretty nice. The tiles model gave you something that nicely combined the behaviour of widgets and app icons on Android. There were a lot of nice touches. For small touchscreens, it was a nice UI. I think Windows Phone is probably the mobile OS UI that I've hated the least.
But putting it on a desktop was a disaster. It kind-of worked on touchscreen laptops.
It might be nice to have something like it for mobile Linux devices, but this doesn't seem to be doing tiles as Windows did, they're just the app icons.
icefox | 11 hours ago
It's funny to look back on history and see such a clear and vivid about-face in design and expectations. In 2012 every tech company was going "desktop/laptop computers are obsolete, we're gonna have phones and tablets and do everything on them, maybe you'll have a real computer for occasional special-case stuff". In 2018 everyone was going "turns out people who type for a living need real keyboards, and lots of people type for a living, and UIs that work well on small screens suck on big screens and vice versa. Wellllll.... shit."
Windows Phone dying was indeed sad, it always seemed like a promising underdog. But MS seems to kill off its promising underdogs.
david_chisnall | 11 hours ago
Apple has done almost the opposite. One of the things that made the iPhone successful was that they didn't use the same UI toolkit on it. You could share all of the code between macOS and and iOS except for the UI. But, because AppKit and UIKit were different meant that you needed to think a bit about how your UI should work on a touchscreen device. But now, they're shipping Catalyst, which means that you can take an iOS UI and make it work on macOS but it doesn't act or feel like a macOS app.
David_Gerard | an hour ago
I know several people who had Windows phones (Nokias of course) and loved them but gave WM up because there just weren't any apps for it.
strugee | 7 hours ago
I found this bit hilarious:
Even the person who's like, "yeah everyone else hated Windows 8 but I liked it, actually" thinks this design feature was useless.
That being said: kudos to this person for recreating a UI they liked! I'm a fan!
nortti | 12 hours ago
I was expecting this to be something that recreates the Windows 8 desktop style. Always been a fan of how it looks, with just a bit of depth and translucency combined with flat, strong colour.