Will Windows 8 benefit Sony Vegas Pro?

[Stephen Mann]

In my opinion, and from the beta releases I’ve seen, Windows 8 is going to be a colossal disaster that will make Windows Millennium Edition look good. Microsoft’s target market is the tablets and phones – not the enterprise users.

Historically, even-numbered versions of Windows really sucked.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Dave Haynie]

I completely agree.

Microsoft has a cyclical habit of doing extremely self-serving Windows releases, annoying users, then switching momentarily back to something more user-oriented. Once that’s again successful, they’re back to the “just for Microsoft” thing.

Look at Windows ME (or, as most techies called it, Windows 98ME). There was absolutely no good reason for this OS’s existence, and many reasons Microsoft shouldn’t have done it. For one, the old MS-DOS-based Windows was such a kludge by then, they broke two things for every one bug fixed or feature added. But MS makes lots of money selling a new OS with new hardware, roughly every three years. The “unified” consumer/pro Windows wasn’t ready, so they put out ME. The problem wasn’t so much that it was Windows 98SE with some bug fixes, but that just about everything they tried to do to make it seem fresh and new just make it flakey.

XP, of course, was that unified OS, and that in itself was very useful to end-users. They did a visual tweak to the look at feel, but lots of improvements under the hood. Professionals could now play games if they desired (or programs that used the DirectX stuff that would never be put into Win2K), consumers got an OS with a stable foundation. All good.

Vista swung back.. the main reason for it: it was time for a new OS. Since they didn’t really have a great number of things to offer consumers, they put in a bunch of things that would make the platform seem attractive. They filled it up with DRM so Hollywood, Inc. wouldn’t be frightned off… no concern for the performance effects that had on unprotected stuff. They rather arbitrarily changed around the user interface… I actually liked some of the visual design decisions, but not the huge list of bugs and performance problems. They promised real 64-bit support, but that was very slow and limited.

And then Windows 7, to pretty much get the ideas of Vista right. And a few things consumers actually could use: fully supported 64-bit OS, networking improvements, performance improvements, lots of polish, nothing in yer face, and at least some real attention given to stability. They also got the security stuff better… not as good as something like Ubuntu Linux, but Vista’s security model was so invasive, most people just ignored the dozen dialogs you had to ok to install a program.

And now it’s Windows 8, and this is all for Microsoft. They’re actually kind of in a panic. Just as they more or less slept though the Web revolution and had to use their might in an “Embrace and Extend” move (fairly successfully at their peak), they’re not realizing that mobile computing is likely to have a large impact on the desktop. Like, it won’t be long before the average consumer won’t need a desktop PC at all. And they’re nowhere in mobile; they actually lost market share in 2011.

So they flipped the old Microsoft strategy around: Windows 8 is “Extend to Embrace”… in short, they’re going to push as much of the mobile interface onto regular desktop users (and the accompanying locked-in App Store, etc… just like Apple), in an effort to popularize Microsoft’s vision for Mobile.

At beast, this has no direct effect at all on the Vegas we all know. Vegas is a Win32/64 program; Win32/64 is little changed in Windows 8, far as we know. Their big push is this all-new set of APIs, WinRT, which live under the Metro interface (that tiles and doesn’t-fit-the-screen stuff they first debuted on the Zune). Metro is a completely new OS, essentially, designed for phones, tablets, and touchscreen devices.

Here’s the thing: the touchscreen is a COMPROMISE. No one gives up a mouse or puck or graphics tablet for a touchscreen on the desktop. The touchscreen and touch-based UIs are useful enough for media consumption when you’re using a pocket or small book sized device. I’d read email and occasionally write it on my Galaxy Nexus “phone” or Notion Ink Adam tablet, but if I was doing any significant writing, I’d bust out a keyboard. Maybe a mouse … and yeah, you can actually drive the Nexus via Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, though it’s kind of silly unless it’s also connected to a monitor. The touchscreen is an inferior interface — there’s nothing it does better as in interface. System-wise, it’s much easier to take with.

But it’s also kind of the latest fad, and so Microsoft is pushing it on the desktop. They’re also de-evolving the UI, thinking in terms of using the whole screen for an app… again, that’s a compromise for a 3.5″ – 4.5″ screen… totally inappropriate for my dual 1900×1200 24″ monitors. As touch would be, even these were touchscreen monitors. Using a good mouse, most of your wrist motions are small-motor motions, very precise, and at least hopefully well supported by your desk, your squishy mousing armwrest, whatever. Reaching across a full screen is nearly all large motor… inaccurate, and if you did this all day, tiring. Very different than that same UI on pocket-sized screen.

And Apple’s already doing the same things. I though they were doing it a bit better, but I just read a critique on Gizmodo on Apple’s latest “Mountain Lion” release. It’s generally pretty hard to find any publisher-pundit coming down too hard on Apple, because they all use and love Apple systems. But when you hear things like this:

I’ve been using Mountain Lion for more than a week now, and I got the same feeling I got from Lion: Scott Forstall—Apple’s own Doctor Moreau—is still pushing for an ungodly desktop/iPad hybrid. This is not the future; it’s a patched up genetic experiment anchored in Apple’s past and present successes.

Well… that’s pretty strong, at least this side of “PC World”. And Apple actually has a real case for this: as much as they seem to be somewhere between de-emphasizing the pro user and dropping her entirely, they’re actually kind of booming in the Mac business, thanks to the iOS coattail effect. So making over MacOS in the image of iOS isn’t a horrible idea given their business, as long as you don’t start inflicting table/phone compromises where they’re not needed.

It may also be the only way Apple keeps MacOS around. This is also what worries Microsoft. Apple’s always been an interesting competitor… no matter what they did, nearly from the dawn of the Mac, they could barely break the 5% point, and never made it to 10% of the PC business, even for an afternoon. But in 4Q2011, Apple sold more iOS devices than every Mac ever sold. Ever… all the way back to 1984. You can imagine what Microsoft might be thinking… particularly when there were even more Android devices sold in that same quarter.

-Dave

[John Rofrano]

[Stephen Mann] “In my opinion, and from the beta releases I’ve seen, Windows 8 is going to be a colossal disaster that will make Windows Millennium Edition look good.”

Yea, the real question is: “Will Windows 8 benefit anyone using a PC?” Microsoft really has nothing new to offer and they’re heading in the wrong direction by trying to make a large desktop PC behave like a tiny mobile device. They just don’t “get it” and as Dave said, they’ve learned nothing from ignoring the internet and have been caught with their head in the sand again.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Bruce Brent]

Stephen, Dave & John, thank you for each of your inputs. Much appreciated by me as well as the rest of those who might have been interested in this subject.

[Stephen Mann]

I will be installing the public beta on a test system and I’ll write a review of how well or not it works with Vegas.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Thomas Roell]

The good thing is that one is not forced to switch to Windows 7.

What’s more worrying is that Microsoft seems to force this Metro UI thing onto us throu multiple backdoors, like the upcoming next version of Office.

[John Rofrano]

[Stephen Mann] “I will be installing the public beta on a test system and I’ll write a review of how well or not it works with Vegas.”

Awesome! let us know what you find.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Dave Haynie]

Another thing about Windows 8, it’s not just the user interface. The most in your face chances are certainly this Metro user interface — the thing that seems to have survived the cancelled Zune media players.

But that’s just the surface. The real news is WinRT — essentially, a whole totally new OS under the hood. The Windows NT kernel was designed long ago to host multiple “API servers”, which are essentially nearly complete and separate operating systems. Everyone knows the Win32 parts that came over from Windows 98, and eventually grew into 64-bit versions as well. There has always been a second one, the POSIX API, which is a UNIX-like interface that made it easy to move UNIX programs over, primarily for Windows Server use, but it’s alive in every Windows system today.

So WinRT is yet another API, another nearly complete OS in fact. Microsoft is going to be pushing this as the future of Windows, though how much, I guess we’ll see. But they seem to have spent so much time on WinRT and merging the desktop with the not-yet-even-real tablet market (and their tiny phone market… Microsoft’s sales on Windows 7 Phone for 4Q2011 were beaten by both Apple and Android… just one good day’s worth of either system’s sales), that they don’t seem to have done much of anything for the existing desktop market.

I plan to try the preview at some point, just to be able to speak more intelligently about it, but I’m very skeptical about this being very useful for desktop users. I know that both Ubuntu Linux and Apple have been pushing “small computer” UI ideas onto the desktop. Ubuntu’s experiment, really more of a push for netbooks than tablets, has been pretty soundly rejected by most Ubuntu users. And Apple’s latest merging of iOS ideas, while not as severe as what Microsoft has been doing, has been praised with words like “hodge podge”, “train wreck”, and “has Apple lost their ability to innovate”… and those are from the Apple-friendly press.

Frankly, I have no need for my phone or tablet to run the same OS as my desktop. I also don’t need my power drill and my table saw to have the same user interface, or my lawnmower versus my bicycle. I think “the right tool for the job” is still an important concept.

-Dave

[Olivier Marot]

Hiii

Goood news

My Veags don’t work with Win 8 no picture no plugs no export !!!
Goooood ! 😉
Ohhh I knoow very well all in informatic and Win 7 and Mac !

So happy with my nex computer Asus R900 VS note Book and this so good Win 8 !

lol

OM