A Windows 8 World?
I upgraded my iPhone's IOS the other day.
Guess I'd been out of the tech conversation loop, as I was expecting just another behind-the-scenes upgrade, though I should have been suspicious when the install took so long. When it finally rebooted I realized I must have fallen asleep, and Rip Van Winkle-like, awoke 20 years later to find myself in a new visual world.
Now, while I haven't gone from Windows 7 to Windows 8 (when it comes to operating systems, I am a late-adopter - you wouldn't want to be the first to have Vista, now would you?), I have seen it. And frankly, I've seen enough of it to be unimpressed with the graphics. Still, that's generally not enough to keep me from making a change if the overall performance of the technology is superior to a previous version.
But with Windows 8, it seems that a huge part of the change is the graphics - or maybe better put, it's the integration of the graphics into the whole user experience. Borrowing shamelessly from Apple's push, pull, pinch, slide approach to interacting with its iPad and iPhone, Windows 8 has more or less become a touch-interface. I'm not totally sure what I think of that, given that a lot of what I do is either typing or graphic work, neither of which work out really well without some real feedback - it's the old "feel of the pencil," or "response of the keyboard" that helps a writer or an artist with tasks. Turn it all into sliding, and it becomes a little too gamelike for me, or am I just showing my age?
While Windows 8 may have borrowed a lot of the gesturing from Apple, it's big, flat, primary color graphics belongs to Windows 8 alone - except that now it's everywhere I look!
Back to my iPhone upgrade story: when my phone rebooted, I was in Windows 8 land. Gone were the puffy little text balloons; missing was the 3D marshmallowy feel of everything Mac. The fonts are now even skinny and... LARGE. Boxes dominate. Things are hiding in expand-collapse views rather than the traditional Mac-ish sliders. Even the sounds are new and different!
But there's more.
It so happened that I was watching a television commercial later that evening - something I don't do often if I can help it - and I realized that graphically speaking, the world has adopted Windows 8. All the graphics on the ads are big and flat and bright. I feel a bit as though I'm in kindergarten. And it gets...worse.
Then I was doing my "second screen" thing - that is to say, looking at my iPad while watching TV - and stumbled across a men's fashion site. Ye gods. The men are dressing like Windows 8! Bright, tight clothing that looks as if it were designed for the guys kids - and cut to suit someone way smaller! Red pants, jackets with a single button *this* close to popping as the fabric strains across even a flat tummy, shoes that appear as though a kid did get turned loose with a magic marker on great-grampa's white bucks.
As much as I was stunned by the intensity of the change - wasn't it just this spring and summer when the world was full of swirls and soft, earthy colors and butterflies? - was the suddenness of it all. While I say it was this spring and summer, I'd swear it was just last week when the design world had us on a completely different path. Or maybe I did go to sleep for if not twenty years, then at least twenty weeks!
At any rate, I'm reasonably sure it's the fault of Windows 8.
And I can still remember DOS.
Guess I'd been out of the tech conversation loop, as I was expecting just another behind-the-scenes upgrade, though I should have been suspicious when the install took so long. When it finally rebooted I realized I must have fallen asleep, and Rip Van Winkle-like, awoke 20 years later to find myself in a new visual world.
Now, while I haven't gone from Windows 7 to Windows 8 (when it comes to operating systems, I am a late-adopter - you wouldn't want to be the first to have Vista, now would you?), I have seen it. And frankly, I've seen enough of it to be unimpressed with the graphics. Still, that's generally not enough to keep me from making a change if the overall performance of the technology is superior to a previous version.
But with Windows 8, it seems that a huge part of the change is the graphics - or maybe better put, it's the integration of the graphics into the whole user experience. Borrowing shamelessly from Apple's push, pull, pinch, slide approach to interacting with its iPad and iPhone, Windows 8 has more or less become a touch-interface. I'm not totally sure what I think of that, given that a lot of what I do is either typing or graphic work, neither of which work out really well without some real feedback - it's the old "feel of the pencil," or "response of the keyboard" that helps a writer or an artist with tasks. Turn it all into sliding, and it becomes a little too gamelike for me, or am I just showing my age?
While Windows 8 may have borrowed a lot of the gesturing from Apple, it's big, flat, primary color graphics belongs to Windows 8 alone - except that now it's everywhere I look!
Back to my iPhone upgrade story: when my phone rebooted, I was in Windows 8 land. Gone were the puffy little text balloons; missing was the 3D marshmallowy feel of everything Mac. The fonts are now even skinny and... LARGE. Boxes dominate. Things are hiding in expand-collapse views rather than the traditional Mac-ish sliders. Even the sounds are new and different!
But there's more.
It so happened that I was watching a television commercial later that evening - something I don't do often if I can help it - and I realized that graphically speaking, the world has adopted Windows 8. All the graphics on the ads are big and flat and bright. I feel a bit as though I'm in kindergarten. And it gets...worse.
Then I was doing my "second screen" thing - that is to say, looking at my iPad while watching TV - and stumbled across a men's fashion site. Ye gods. The men are dressing like Windows 8! Bright, tight clothing that looks as if it were designed for the guys kids - and cut to suit someone way smaller! Red pants, jackets with a single button *this* close to popping as the fabric strains across even a flat tummy, shoes that appear as though a kid did get turned loose with a magic marker on great-grampa's white bucks.
As much as I was stunned by the intensity of the change - wasn't it just this spring and summer when the world was full of swirls and soft, earthy colors and butterflies? - was the suddenness of it all. While I say it was this spring and summer, I'd swear it was just last week when the design world had us on a completely different path. Or maybe I did go to sleep for if not twenty years, then at least twenty weeks!
At any rate, I'm reasonably sure it's the fault of Windows 8.
And I can still remember DOS.
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