If someone had filmed me using trying to figure out how to eject a floppy disk from a Mac as a first time user, the results would have been similar - but the video would have been significantly longer.
Using a new operating system takes some getting used to. But first time use isn't the relevant metric for an activity which one will do for years and in which one engages for productivity.
The metrics should match the expected learning curve - i.e. F16's are not designed for toddlers.
The thing is, this isn't a first-time user. The guy in that video is a Windows user. The expected learning curve should be short and shallow, because he should theoretically be dealing with incremental changes and not a completely alien system.
But he's sitting down at a new version of Windows and using it as if it were his first time using an alien OS. In other words, the metrics are completely at odds with what should be the expected learning curve.
What criteria are you using to determine an appropriate expected learning curve?
Is an operating system upgrade supposed to be like transitioning from a 2008 BMW 3 series to a 2011 BMW 3 series?
Or is it o.k. for the learning curve to be like transitioning from a 2008 BMW 3 series to a 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan where the brake, accelerator, and steering wheel remain the same, but all the other controls, the instrumentation, and cabin layout are different?
Any change has a learning curve which can feel steep at first. I've personally experienced it when changing browsers among IE, firefox, chrome, and Opera (never mind mobile versions) even though they all pretty much work the same way.
And my father makes the same face when he has new email from someone he doesn't know.
If you've made such a transition, you will find you have to adjust to the headlamp controls moving from the right side stalk to the left side on the console and being replaced on the right side stalk with the wiper control which is on the left side stalk in the other car.
Seat controls, speed control, radio adjustments, door lock operations, etc. all also change.
Not to mention that you can't get a Grand Caravan with a clutch and no sensible person would get a slush bucket in a 3 series.
Disclaimer: MSFT employee working closely with Windows 8
I speak as a former programming team member from a very high ranking school in the SE Region according to the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest regionals.
"He's also been primed to expect a difficult task by his annoyingly condescending son. I'm not at all surprised that he struggled with it."
This has an enormous effect on a person's ability to solve problems. I learned this one day speaking with one of our coaches. I took what I recall to be a 1000 or 1100 point TopCoder Level 1 problem and told him it was "easy". I was being sarcastic, but he took me seriously and efforted more at the problem because it was "easy". He even postulated a few theories on how to solve the problem in our conversation. He said the reason he even did that was because I told him it was easy. Had I said it was hard, the results may have been different.
> But first time use isn't the relevant metric for an activity which one will do for years and in which one engages for productivity.
Having to abandon all the skills you had in muscle memory for years and lern an entirely new set of clues, moves and small, day-to-day tricks surely wont increase your productivity.
This is basically like changing your keyboard layout (which is running unchanged for approx 150 years, btw) every two-three years when the "new version" comes out. Or like remapping all your Emacs/Vi keybindings with every "new version". shudder
It is clear an simple: MS has basically declared the desktop dead (not profitable enough), and Windows 8 is supposed to encourage (i.e. force) current Windows devs to write tablet-compatible apps, which is where MS sees the profits of the future.
It is a bold, incredibly ballsy move, they're putting all their crown jewels (the UI familiarity, the backward compatibility, the Win32 API, the developer community, the stability required by enterprise customers) on the table for the ONE BIG BET.
And it is not even likely that they'll win. The market is already pretty saturated and mature where they want to go. It is not a vacuum, where they can get in and become the only system provider like they were on the IBM PC. Even if they get in, it will be nothing more than the proverbial foot in the door, nothing more. I absolutely cant imagine this going well for them. You only make giant bets like this if you're either absolutely confident that you'll win because you can accuretely predict the future, or if you're absolutely insane.
>"Having to abandon all the skills you had in muscle memory for years and lern an entirely new set of clues, moves and small, day-to-day tricks surely wont increase your productivity."
In the short term perhaps.
Over the long term, I have found that switching OS's [or browsers] makes me more productive because I don't continue using all the beginner inefficiencies I was in the habit of using.
An example from switching browsers is learning to use the middle button to open a link in a new tab I picked up when switching to Opera a few years ago rather than using the right click context menu as I had been doing for years.
It took me the better part of a decade to move the task bar from the bottom of the screen to the left side. The value of starting again as "an experienced beginner" should not be dissmissed.
> You only make giant bets like this if you're either absolutely confident that you'll win because you can accuretely predict the future, or if you're absolutely insane.
That's very true, when my dad first tried to use a mac (after being a windows user for many years), He was totally lost for days, until I gave him a little tutorial on the basic stuff. So to me what this video shows is that windows is trying to do a very drastic change on their interface, thats all.
I agree with you that people shouldn't always expect things to be simple with no learning whatsoever. But every major desktop operating system has some concept of an app launcher that is generally very simple and intuitive to access. Being able to figure out how to access that or get back to "home base" shouldn't require any training. That's a pretty major flaw in my opinion.
Also making the app launcher (metro) a modal window that covers up all of your work is idiotic on a PC. It's a tablet convention, there's no need to cram it down our throats when we're on a PC.
Criticism of the OSX version of Finder was widespread and harsh. Criticism of Ubuntu's new interface has often been similar (not to mention The Ribbon). Heck, if one went by comments from command line gurus here on HN, it might seem as if the utility of GUI's for widespread deployment was still an open debate.
The integration of the Metro interface with the desktop PC requires a paradigm shift, but in the long run it will probably prove better to have done sooner than later because of the benefits it affords developers directly, and thus users indirectly.
I think their valid points and I like seeing Microsoft really going out on a limb. There's just something about the app launcher taking over the entire screen that feels wrong on a PC, though.
If you were to pin all of your main apps to the task bar then conceptually it's not too far off from the OSX dock plus launchpad concept. I really find no use for the launchpad on anything but a tablet so that's probably why I feel the same about Metro.
Using a new operating system takes some getting used to. But first time use isn't the relevant metric for an activity which one will do for years and in which one engages for productivity.
The metrics should match the expected learning curve - i.e. F16's are not designed for toddlers.