On 19/10/2014 1:06 PM, Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 10/19/2014 5:06 AM, Roderick Stewart wrote:
On Sat, 18 Oct 2014 15:45:13 -0400, Neil
wrote:

We've still got those wretched tiles. It's possible to avoid them
unless you accidentally select something wrong, then you stumble back
into a screenful of them. And they're still there in Windows 10, in
the Start menu. Microsoft seem determined at all costs to get us using
tiles whether we want them or not. What's wrong with a list?

Microsoft most likely doesn't care whether YOU use tiles or not.
However, much of the world has changed the way it is working, and folks
with phones and tablets have shown to be not the least bit interested in
"lists" as a UI. Just ask Blackberry.

Then we should use an operating system suitable for phones and tablets
on phones and tablets, and an operating system suitable for desktop
PCs on desktop PCs. There's no reason why they have to be the same.

Even as far back as the Palm OS,
users have been pretty clear about their preferences for a GUI, and
today, it's a no-brainer that it's the only thing that WILL sell.

Thanks to the near monopoly position occupied by Microsoft, for many
people in practice it's the only thing available. If it's the only
thing selling, that's why.

Luckily it's not the only thing selling on Ebay.

Metro/Modern is the integrating UI for those devices and having "the app
that you know" available on the desktop can't be that hard to
understand, can it?

I don't find it hard to understand that a phone works like a phone and
a computer works like a computer. Trying to make them both work the
same way seems pointless and can only end up with a compromise.

I think it's a good thing that, even in 8.1, you can choose to use Tiles
or avoid them entirely.

While I had Windows 8.1 on my laptop, I tried to choose to avoid the
tiles entirely, but it wasn't easy. I'd still occasionally stumble
into a screenful of them, or some unfamiliar application that filled
the screen and was difficult to discard.

Rod.

That is the biggest drawback to Windows 8.1. Once you open a Metro
program in in nearly impossible to close that program. YES MS brought
the Upper X to close the Window, but that does not close the program.
Working with a mouse exclusively the only option is to kill it in the
Task Manager. If you hit the Windows Key on the key board it will get
you out of most Metro programs.


Doesn't ALT-F4 close them?

--
Bob Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK

Did you hear about the cow that liked jazz? It mooed indigo.