alt Hacker NewsThe smooth, tile-based interface of Metro/Modern UI of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone are underrated in my opinion. It was simple, fast, and focused on touch. While I didn't have a touch-based Windows 8 laptop or tablet at the time, I had a Windows Phone, and I enjoyed using it more than any other device I've had since.
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Live tiles are nearly universally praised in retrospect, but it might be a case of hindsight bias [1]. The video [2] brings up some problems of the concept and why no other company copied the concept.
The problem MS created was WP7 was a technical dead end: a feature phone OS with a Silverlight UI, which was almost impossible to bypass, hurting third party support a lot.
WP8 was a far "better" OS, but it came with higher system requirements more comparable with Android.
Google never got enough crap on for their stunts with youtube in that era though.
Yeah I agree. It was a little weird without a touch screen, but at that point I was not navigating the start menu visually with a mouse anymore anyway.
Windows phone was great. I think I got it when Android was still growing up. I liked the focus and the speed for sure.
Microsoft's bread and butter is no longer OSes, I think, and it's unfortunately starting to show.
This. The “mobile-ization” of desktop interfaces is a bane on current computing. The metaphors of work between desktop and mobile devices are wildly different.
Obligatory car analogy: a mechanic working in his shop has a completely different set of tools available than if he was going into the field to fix a car.
> The ... UI of Windows 8 and the Windows Phone... underrated in my opinion. It was ... focused on touch.
That's why it was rated low. Most people were using this interface on PC's and laptops, without a touchscreen, where a touch-focused interface does not make sense. Maybe it was good choice for Windows Phone or Windows Tablet, but people were not rating it based on that experience. The very idea of using a single UI for both a touchscreen-oriented and no-touchscreen, kbd-and-mouse computers is the most problematic aspect of it.
> It was simple
No, it wasn't simple. There was the simple part, but things not integrated into the simple part were a hodge-podge of previous Windows versions' UI. Now, I like some of the previous Windows versions' UI, but putting a simple veneer on something does not make it simple; if anything, a little more complex.
> It was fast
The fact that an OS UI in the 2010s or 2020s need to be commended for being fast is kind of sad. Plus - I don't believe it was that fast. Did you try running it on, say, a 15yro machine relative to the Win8 launch time? i.e. 1998? Even with a 10yro machine I believe it was kind of sluggish.
I had an Android phone and my friend had a Windows Phone. I wanted to get a Windows phone but by the time I came around to needing a new device it was already killed off. Too bad.
I unironically loved my Windows Phone, it was great to develop for too coming from a WPF background at the time