timppu: Hence, bi-systems like ASUS Transformer. My gf uses it more than I do (I bought it for her after all), and sometimes she likes to use it as a tablet, and sometimes with the keyboard dock station as if it was a laptop (with a touchscreen, if needed). It even recognized USB mice quite ok, which makes it work even more like a traditional laptop.
Such systems could be quite interesting, but I'd expect that if widely adopted they'd end up filling a pretty wide variety of roles and uses, requiring the the UI be quite flexible and customizable. We may see such a UI get developed, but from what I've seen I don't think Win8 is it.
Arkose: You're applying old-style thinking to a new-style app model where these concepts no longer apply.
So wanting options in order to easily deal with unintended or unforeseen cases is now "old-style thinking"? If there's been one constant when it comes to computers it's that nothing ever works completely as planned 100% of the time. There are always edge cases, weird bugs, conflicts that seem completely nonsensical but still exist, etc. If you're going to tell me that there will be no such issues with Metro then you might as well tell me that it also shits gold and farts rainbows- your credibility will be about the same either way. Giving the end-user as much power as possible over their system makes it easier to deal with such issues, along with making it easier for users to deal with things that may not be a bug, per se, but which just bug them. Taking away features or making it more difficult to do certain things then simply responding "Oh, you won't actually need to do those things you want to do" is a major step backwards.
At the end of the day it comes down to this- the computer is not smarter than me, it does not know what I want better than I do, it needs to do what I tell it to do, and it needs to be as easy as possible for me to tell it to do things.
AndrewC: Because users don't have to close apps in Metro, just as they don't close apps on their mobile phones or tablets, they just move away from it and the app gets suspends then closes.
How is this not a better model than what currently happens with regular users: ten dozen applications left open with only one being used, but all of them using resources.
The problem is that this model makes the assumption that the computer knows better than the end user, which invariably results in various degrees of user frustration. I can definitely see an advantage to having the
option to have Metro apps automatically suspend and close, even an advantage to having that as the default option, but there also needs to be the option to tell the computer not to do that, that the user should be in full control of when apps get closed.
orcishgamer: It's just silly. No Darrk, AndrewC is correct, you most likely will be unable to outdo the OS at resource provisioning. This is actually an improvement. That OSes can actually do this these days should be something to be happy about. But most techies I speak to are stuck in the mud. Hey, I used command line a ton more than normal folks, I get the appeal, I really do. But I'm not unrealistic about exactly what my limitations are.
OSes have certainly gotten better at managing resources, but they're still far from perfect. There still always needs to be the option to basically tell the OS "You're fucking things up, do things this way instead." Design the OS to manage resources as best it can, make this as invisible and as smooth as possible, make it the default setting, but have the option available for the user to change the behavior if the default behavior just isn't working well for them. This means that some users will fuck things up (but that's on them), but it also means that other users will be much less annoyed.
