In many cases it looks and feels like Windows 7 (which I love, aside from the generic Windows annoyances), but where it’s different it just sucks (I’ll go into a bit more detail soon).

It all comes down to how you interact with the machine: Every machine has it’s own input and output methods and various sensors that allow you to interact with it (I/O, if you will). These include your display, mouse, keyboard, printer, camera, speakers, microphone, etc.

It’s obvious that when two machines have different means of I/O they demand different interaction methods. Compare your smartphone with your tablet. Aside from a larger screen, they’re not too different:

• Touch sensitive display
• Hardware buttons with similar functionalities
• A soft keyboard
• Various sensors (G-Sensor, accelerometer,GPS, Camera, etc.)

It is natural that you interact with both in pretty much the same way: You touch, tap, drag, shake, rotate, flick, etc. On the tablet you have more screen real estate, so you can optimize your visual elements layout, but you interact with them the same way.

Now compare either of those devices with your PC (desktop or laptop):

• You have a significantly larger display (rarely touch-sensitive)
• You have a physical keyboard
• You have a mouse

You can’t interact with this machine in the same way as you would with the tablet or the smartphone: Your monitor is most likely not touch sensitive (and if it is, most apps just interpret the various gestures as mouse movements), the position of the display isn’t exactly optimized for touch interaction, you can’t rotate it, and so on. This is a pretty simple concept, at least it is to me, but Microsoft just doesn’t seem to get it.

Visual Cues

There needs to exist a visual cue in order for the user to interact with a UI element via the mouse. Otherwise the user may never find this functionality simply because that tiny mouse pointer gets lost in the millions of pixels on the screen. The Windows 8 desktop area has a few areas that react to the mouse without the slightest cue until your mouse enters the said areas. This makes so much sense on a table (tap a corner of the device and something pre-determined happens), but it can be a surprise (often annoying) to the user. Why is there a difference? Because you make a conscious decision when you tap, but when your mouse happens to travel through this forbidden zone it doesn’t necessarily mean that you meant to trigger an action. Instead of a fairly static desktop on which I can do work, I end up with random shit popping up here and there just because I happened to move my mouse pointer a bit.

UI Metaphors

The other major UI principle that has been raped by the Windows 8 team is the notion of System Metaphors. A UI methaphor is an element/area in the UI that behaves similar to an actual real life object or concept (something familiar to the user). Examples of UI metaphors are: Desktop, File, Folder, Slide to unlock, swipe to turn page, flicking an item aside to remove it from a list, drag & drop, … you can think of a few more on your own. How does Windows 8 violate the desktop system metaphor? By Expecting you to swipe using your mouse! Don’t get me wrong, these metaphors aren’t set in stone. Every once in a while someone comes up with a new metaphor that doesn’t seem so obvious yet makes so much sense, but this sure as shit ain’t one of those instances!

The screenshot below is what I get when I start my Windows 8 VM:

What does this icon represent? It means nothing to me!

Click anywhere on the screen and it scrolls up just enough to partially reveal your locale before quickly dropping back down, which makes you think you didn’t quite do something right … or that there was a malfunction. After the initial WTF moment you try and slide it up manually with the mouse because it almost slid itself, but couldn’t quite finish the motion. Viola! You have a sign in screen (which is blandly simplistic and ass ugly, let’s hope it’s a work in progress)!

Go on, sign in! The next abomination is waiting for you in the form of … wait … did I mention that you log in to Windows live instead of YOUR BLOODY PC? … anyway here’s the next dose of nastiness:

Who came up with the ugly ass tiles idea? Consistency is a key aspect of a good UI and these ugly tiles are an anti-pattern! Look at the Pinball FX tile: it sticks out like a sore thumb! Now notice the Google Chrome tile: it looks so out of place, it simply doesn’t match the rest of the damn screen (granted, it’s made to work with older Windows versions).

What happens if I install a bunch more programs on this damn machine? Let me guess … I’m going to end up with long ass scrollable list of these hideous tiles and I bet I’ll have to swipe to scroll! (Accidental discovery: Click on the bottom right and you’ll get a zoom button. Again, no visual cue)

Oh look there’s a Messaging tile … let’s see what they’ve done with MSN/Live/Whatever Messenger:

What the fuck is this and why is it taking up my entire screen? All I wanted to do was to ask Bob if he’s down for lunch and get back to work while Bob replies.

Everything that I’ve tried so far sucks and I’m not talking about polish, I know it’s a preview. The user experience just plain sucks.

It probably wouldn’t be as bad on a tablet, but as far as desktop computing goes, this is garbage.

I do believe that tablets will replace PCs for most computing tasks, but this doesn’t mean that you have to make my PC behave like a tablet! There still are things that are just easier with a keyboard and mouse (such as programming for the said tablets).

Microsoft obviously doesn’t get it because:

1. Ballmer goes on camera and says Windows 7 (a gorgeous desktop OS) is just fine for touch only tablets: Steve Ballmer on why Windows 7 is fine for tablets (believe me, it isn’t!)
2. Their next iteration of Windows seems to be designed solely for 7″-10″ tablets and completely ignores the vast screen real estate on my 22″ monitor!

Dear Microsoft, it’s OK to have two builds: make a light, mobile-optimized version of the system core and then put a small team of UI designers in charge of the mobile UI. First you try to push a desktop optimized environment on a tablet and now you want to push a half-assed tablet optimized UI on a desktop environment? Oh … and why the hell can’t I log out and shut down at the same time?

Why? SANDBOXING!!!

Oh … and one more thing (since it’s the asshole’s birthday today)
Google has a bouncer on the Android Market: Every app that you submit (free or paid) is scanned. If your app is caught to be shit, it never makes it to any handset (and you, as the developer of the malware piece of shit will get flagged as the asshole that you are). That right there takes care of a good chunk of the crap apps and the assholes who develop them (at least if you get your apps from the Market).

That is all.

Here's what I think about "fragmentation"

If you’re familiar with Android you’ve no doubt heard the phrase “Fragmentation” and if you have any significant knowledge of Android, you know that it’s not a real issue (less than 5% of my code addresses ‘fragmentation’).

If you’re not familiar with the phrase, it’s basically the sum of the following expectations:

• a single-core 500MHz device from 4 years ago should have the capabilities of a brand new dual-core 1.2GHz handset.
• Today’s dual-core 1.2GHz handset should sport the same 320×480 display of the single-core 500MHz handset of 4 years ago
• All handsets have the same aspect ratio and resolution
• All handsets provide the same sensor hardware (accelerometer, GPS, etc.)

Here’s the most recent example of half-assed paid-off bloggers/sites hanging on to “fragmentation” for lack of anything valuable to write. If your time is too valuable to waste on nonsense & garbage, let me summarize the article for you:

Kindel is a 21-year veteran of Microsoft who was Windows Phone’s chief developer …
left Redmond   in August, and in a December … Kindel said Windows Phone has failed … Now, he has turned his attention to Android … Kindel wrote … ”the fragmentation of Android is severe” … The search giant is “pissed as hell that Apple is so successful,” … Google followed the flexible and open-source model. … ”That model is like crack cocaine for the likes of Samsung and HTC,” Kindel wrote. “They have had years to get addicted to it and, from their perspective (selling boatloads of devices) it’s working just dandy for them.” … Kindel’s comments come one week after Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt appeared at the Consumer Electronics Show and argued that Android is not fragmented but “differentiated,” …

So, in short, Kindel worked on WP7 (Windows Phone 7) at Microsoft, he failed, quit, got bored, and is now jealous of Android’s success because open source is bad. Why is it bad? Well … Samsung and HTC (NOT Microsoft) are selling boatloads of Android devices while Microsoft was hoping that they’d pick up WP7. Even after Schmidt clarified the Android ecosystem (Google makes money on the ads not the platform), this failure, Mr Kindel, still went on to publish his garbage.  Seems like Mr. Kindel has been having “routing” problems as of late … packets destined for his brain somehow end up routing via his ass.

The truth is that you will stop hearing about “fragmentation” when the Republicans and Democrats stop blaming each other and instead try to fix the problem. You’ll stop hearing it when the name “Honda” isn’t heard in a “Ford” commercial. You’ll stop hearing it when the skinny mac guy appears alone in the ads telling you why he’s so good instead of just saying that he’s better than the fat PC guy. You can come up with more examples. You’ll never stop hearing it as long as it continues to grow as it has. You will hear it for as long as the competitors and fanboys need the crutch.

“For years, Canada’s Big Three ‘tri-opoly’ have been acting like squirrels preparing for a 50-year winter. They hoard spectrum to keep others from giving consumers an affordable choice and Canadians have been paying the price for their self-serving interests for far too long.”

Please, sign the petition here and have your voice heard. This affects all Canadians:

You’re with the big3

They’re willing to pay billions to gobble up these wireless spectra. This cuts into their profit margins. Guess who has to make up for it? YOU, Sucker!
You Lose.

You’re with the new entrants

You don’t even have a cell phone

The people and businesses that you deal with use mobile services and if their costs go up, they’ll eventually pass those costs to you. You will end up paying more for everything.
You Lose.

Take 30 seconds and sign the petition and maybe we’ll actually see some fair competition here in Canada. Do nothing and watch and WE ALL LOSE.

I’ve made my choice, but it’ll take more than just me to make a difference. Give the big 3 the boot and the new entrants a chance. I switched to Mobilicity over a year ago and I am MUCH happier than I ever was with Rogers.

Stop the Squeeze here:.

The thing is that you shouldn’t care whether you’re running on a tablet or a phone. The real question you need to ask is whether the current device has the ability to support my feature.

The question of whether a device is a tablet or a phone often boils down to whether or not it supports telephony. Let’s say you have a viral app and you want to enable the users to send out SMS messages to their friends promoting your app. To do this, you don’t really need to know if you’re running on a tablet. All you need to know is whether the device is capable of sending SMS.

here’s a small piece of code that lets you do just that:

/**
* Determines if the current device has telephony capabilities
*
* @param context
* Context through which to access the telephony service
* @return true if the device has a phone radio, false otherwise
*/
public static boolean hasTelephony(Context context) {
    TelephonyManager telMgr = (TelephonyManager) context
        .getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE);

    if (null == telMgr)
        return false; // no telephony

    return telMgr.getPhoneType() !=
        TelephonyManager.PHONE_TYPE_NONE;
}

Comments, corrections, and improvements are welcome

I’ll edit this post soon with a bit more about me, but until then, Cheers