...and one of the many reasons why Ballmer being gone should be a good thing.

Ya, we all use touchscreens- except I'd bet that the average desktop / laptop setup with touchscreen is no more than 5% at this point- just your typical keyboard and mouse setup. Ironically, the touchscreen setups that do run windows are for primarily for specific software, like at kiosks, atms, etc, and they are running xp, or 7.
I just saw a story about the headache banks are tackling now because 95% of the atm machines in the world run off xp, and it is no longer supported by MS- which means that they have to scramble to update quickly because the last thing you want is your banking system vulnerable and no longer supported for patches and updated!

Of course this isn't new news, and I don't feel bad for them, they've had years of notice, and pissed away transitioning time to avoid this stupidity!

On a sidenote, I wouldn't envy Cook's position or job security at Apple. Even if he does a fine job, the expectations are reality of sustainable growth were never going to keep at their meteoric pace.

Seems like there's some chippiness and intra-department squabbling among the higher up division heads, and the name that keeps popping up the most with other Apple talent and managers is Jony Ive, Job's golden apple boy , and head of design, etc.

I'm actually questioning not if, but when he will be handed the reins and the company's head. He seems to be acting rather cavalier and little bothered lately about worrying if or whose toes he steps on.





I believe HP in the last 2 or 3 days, announced that they are going to offer windows 7 as an option on their new laptops. PC sales have taken a big plunge, and it's believed that being forced into 8 is causing some to put off buying in the interim until 8.2 or 9 becomes available to restore some of the 7 "classic" layout and interface.

Please don't pay that kind of money.

Download the installer, and buy a key from www.reddit.com/r/softwareswap for 20 or 30 bucks.

*Speak of the devil...

http://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/01/23/2arareha.jpghttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/01/23/6ehu6a9u.jpghttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/01/23/4yvudaqu.jpghttp://img.tapatalk.com/d/14/01/23/yzyda4u4.jpg

If this ends up legit, 99% of the hostility about 8.x will evaporate in one fell swoop of an update downloaded install, and all of about 30-40 minutes to silence the year + of backlash.

I don't get it. Windows 8.1 has been out for a long time now.

Yeah and you still need a third-party program such as Start8 or Classic Shell to get the Windows 7-style start menu back.


The start menu in those screenshots is a piss-poor imitation.

I'm assuming it's a incremental update, and they just aren't bumping the release number up to 8.2.
(8.1.5 or 8.1xxx or something like that? )

Probably, if this is a real update, they will have this update and maybe 1 service pack, like late 2014, in between now and when they are expected to put out the RC of windows 9 many are saying will be slated for Summer of 2015.

The word is one of the perks their Build tech conference will include will be a 1st build release of 9. Subsequently after that got out the event sold out in a flash.

Before you do that you should really try Classic Shell or Start8. They fix the major problem with Windows 8 and they are a lot cheaper than $175.

Windows 8.1 didn't really fix the major problem with Windows 8. It's like some smart-ass at Microsoft decided that if everybody was demanding a START button, he'd give them a completely worthless START button as an act of defiance so that he could say "THERE'S your goddamn START button!"

The START button in Windows 8.1 is worthless. Windows 8.1 may make some minor changes to Windows 8, but that's it.

Used Windows 8 at work. ****ing terrible so we got them install Windows 7 instead.

LOL. Change is hard.

If history has taught us anything is that XP was great, Vista was shit, 7 was great, 8 was shit, 9 should be.... SHOULD BE..... great....

Bought the wife a new touch screen laptop for christmas. She likes the touch screen, tablet style OS feel and look.

she needed a more power than a tablet. Was thinking here ya go, the windows OS for you............. hated it. No start button? Really? How do I get all those damn apps where I want? Remove the ones I hate?

Just bought Start8 and fences. Now I have a happy camper.

I think I am the only person in the universe that really likes Windows 8. Well, myself and my 8 year old daughter.

Windows 8 is SUPER easy. It may be too easy and that is where a lot of the frustration comes from, if you ask me.

Doesnt bother me at all. I only do general internet surfing and use my PC as a media center.

Yeah, it pretty much goes all the way back to 95 (and maybe even further, but I don't know much about pre-Windows 3.1 systems):

95 - Dramatic overhaul of the OS, but pretty buggy.
98 - Much more reliable. Not a ton of new features comparatively.
ME - Abortion in terms of reliability. Started toward a more visually pleasing GUI.
XP - Brought the stability of the NT branch into the GUI of the consumer branch.
Vista - Revamped a lot of the OS. Buggy as hell.
7 - Didn't change much. Works great.
8 - Pretty reliable, but horrible GUI integration and rollout.
9 - Much better implementation of whatever they're trying to push us toward so that it doesn't seem so awkward?