Microsoft Claims it Killed the Start Button Because You Didn't Want it

http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Claims+it+Killed+the+Start+Button+Because+You+Didnt+Want+it/article25060c.htm

by followmylee • 14 years ago

11 28 14 years ago

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Abraham Lincoln

thedillio• 14 years ago

No, no, no Microsoft, the start button was fine. We just didn't want 7 ways to turn off the computer...

Toshio• 14 years ago

Many years ago, I rejected the start button and the OS surrounding it, and switched to Linux.

nnnnni• 14 years ago

I upvoted you, but you probably switched to KDE, GNOME, or some other WM/DE with a "Start Menu button" equivalent.

ramibotros• 14 years ago

So brave.

gouranga2• 14 years ago

I used both. RH5.2 had fvwm which had a start button as well back then.

It's just a logical thing to do.

Spooky23• 14 years ago

I think that they're right on this one. Since Windows 7, I may have traversed the start menu a couple of times a month. I use pinned apps on the taskbar or Start menu front page for frequently accessed stuff, or use search.

Keep in mind that for most users, they are not running many applications anymore.

Zirro• 14 years ago

The issues are most likely to appear with users who go straight from Windows XP to 8. They are not familiar with the ability to search among applications and files, nor with the concept of pinning shortcuts to the taskbar.

Considering the marketshare XP still has, and that these users are likely the ones most resistant to change, this may turn out to be one of the largest problems Microsoft will face with Windows 8.

I am not saying that legacy-concepts should delay innovation, but it can't be denied that Windows has many users who aren't interested in learning new ways to work with their computer.

esbwhat• 14 years ago

xp had this concept too, it was just disabled by default. In fact, I remember it being enabled by default in windows 98. My memory may be tricking me.

stan_rogers• 14 years ago

XP had the Quick Launch bar, which I find a lot handier than pinned applications (they take up less room). I guess it depends on the user, but I operate wearing a lot of different hats (and, unfortunately, a lot of similarly-named applications), and the XP start menu is a lot handier for me than either Win7's version or the Win8 preview I tried.

I know: that's "anecdote", not "data", but if anybody had bothered to ask me, they'd have a firm data point telling them that the lowest common denominator (no need to be pedantic, the phrase has acquired a different meaning outside of mathematics) should never be the only way. I can barely tolerate Win7 on a day when I'm feeling of a particularly generous spirit; I'll be giving Win8 a pass.

mistercow4• 14 years ago

I have always enjoyed how Microsoft likes to adopt good features from other OSes and rename them. No no, you're not "adding apps to the dock", you're "pinning apps to the taskbar". This is definitely completely new and not in any way a case of Microsoft showing up at the party 10 years late.

WayneDB5• 14 years ago

Excuse me, but Windows had a Taskbar before Apple had a Dock. Windows also had Quick Launch shortcuts before Apple had a Dock as well.

So, Apple is the one who showed up late to that party.

Furthermore, the Taskbar works nothing like the Dock and it looks nothing like the Dock.

kolinko• 14 years ago

I'm sorry, what? Next had a dock IIRC, and it was released before Win95.

whateverer2• 14 years ago

Now, now. You can't claim that they aren't similar, because the concept here is unifying both launchers and task lists, which was what distinguished docks from task bars before.

They have different features, yes. Their animations are very different, that's actually where most of the differences lie, yes. But now, as far as task/window management goes, they are pretty much the same thing.

I wouldn't hesitate to call Gnome Shell's activity bar thingy a dock, for one, even though it wouldn't matter; the dock doesn't have the same prominence that environment as in Windows or Mac OS X.

Still, I don't see the problem with them retaining their traditional name for their UI element, given that the new taskbar was still an evolution from the previous one.

Now, with respect to the interaction, MS is mostly following the trend here, as most are converging towards search for launching, and with the reduced task management of smart phones, I would expect that developers would now be encouraged to make their apps save and restore their states without the user's intervention, and thus applications where you actually have to do the clean up, save, close, start, open, repeat cycle would also become rarer, so that those session-restore features that some DEs have would actually start to be used, further downplaying the actual launching of applications.

mistercow4• 14 years ago

>Excuse me, but Windows had a Taskbar before Apple had a Dock.

Of course they did. But the Dock was used quite differently than the taskbar (it is primarily used to hold shortcuts, not to show you what is open), so it made sense to rename it in that case. But Microsoft seems to rename things just so they can feel unique. Don't get me wrong; I don't think it's some horrendous crime, or that it's unethical or anything. I just think it's funny. Apple has, of course, been known to do the same thing. For example, it was rather silly how before Lion, they insisted on referring to all perfectly ordinary 802.11 WiFi technologies as "AirPort", and how they wrapped OpenAL in the most cursory of framework boilerplate and called it "Core Audio".

>Windows also had Quick Launch shortcuts before Apple had a Dock as well.

And Apple had the Launcher three years earlier than that. But the Launcher wasn't the Dock, and neither were Quick Launch shortcuts. Pinning to the taskbar, on the other hand, is the Dock, almost to a T.

Orf_• 14 years ago

I'm inclined to trust Microsoft with this one. They clearly have the data to back this choice up - why would they disable it if it was getting used?

I personally use it a lot as a glorified run prompt (type program name in, press enter) but whatever, I can adapt.

steverb• 14 years ago

As far as I can tell, that works exactly the same in Windows 8. Hit the win key, type the first few letters of a program name, hit enter.

k33n• 14 years ago

They actually claimed nothing of the sort. That statement is a pretty liberal interpretation of what Microsoft said.

Microsoft is simply saying that the Start Button in its current form was not compelling enough to provide any long term value to the user that they couldn't get by simply pinning things to the task bar. They evolved the Start Menu. They didn't kill it.

falling• 14 years ago

it became common, when companies design something the techies don't like instead of just sticking to what they are used to, to call it "they think they know what I want better than I do", forgetting that's the whole point of design.

Microsoft Claims it Killed the Start Button Because You Didn't Want it

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