I know members are free to post, but I ask please if you can simply stick to the topic at hand. This thread isn't about market numbers or anything financial. The focus here is on Windows 8 and its development which can be compared to the OS X Lion which was released not long ago.
Anyways getting back on topic:
It's interesting to read some of the comments on the Office for Mac palette that was used in previous version. I have to say at someone who was never familiar with Office for Mac, I found it rather confusing and never got accustomed to it. But that's probably because I never used it as much as I did the Windows version of Office. I could see how it was like the Ribbon, but with more flexibility. But it still felt awkward to me, buttons sometimes too small, palettes often felt like clicking on file menus and just a strange experience overall.
With Explorer, there will be some major screen space savings when hiding the Ribbon. And in reality, the Ribbon is for those who don't use keyboard shortcuts. Anyone who has been using Windows for a while now should be familiar with basic keyboard shortcuts. Imagine having the Ribbon hidden, there's a lot more visible and yet you still keep the File path and some of those basic features like Back, Forward, Refresh, and Up.
Talk to me about confusing and I can point you to OS X Lion Finder. I'm still getting used to it but I can't stand the way items appear on the left side. It just feels all very cluttered. But to be honest, I haven't been using Lion too long so I'm sure I'll get used to it over time.
But moving on to other features:
There's apparently another feature MS is adding: the ability to mount ISOs. Pretty cool and seemed like a no-brainer as soon as they allowed users to burn ISOs in Win7. OS X already has this built in so it'll be nice to finally have it available in Windows.
Also they are also improving the Copy, Merge dialog boxes (read more here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/...ement-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx ). OS X up until recently didn't even have a Merge option. MS has had this feature for a while now but I have to admit in Windows 7 it has often gotten confusing to pick which file to pick. Based on the screenshots, I love the level of information you get:
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I think it becomes a lot easier to pick which files you want when you get it visually lined up in columns like this. Although it might also get confusing if you have folders with same name.
And I like how they're improving the Copy dialog box as well. OS X keeps it very simple (which isn't bad or good) but outside of the progress bar and the number of files, it's hard to say what's really going on. But I do like how file transferred are stacked up on top of each other when multiple transfers are going on at the same time. MS is doing something similar here:
Basic view:
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Detailed view:
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