Items tagged with Sinofsky
Here's a twist nobody saw coming: Steven Sinofsky, the President of Windows and lead architect on Windows 8 has announced his resignation from the company. That's an abrupt change considering that Sinofsky had been floated as a possible replacement for Ballmer in certain circles and his helming of Windows 8 was seen as a project that could reinvent Microsoft. "I am grateful for the many years of work that Steven has contributed to the company,” Ballmer said. “The products and services we have delivered to the market in the past few months mark the launch of a new era at Microsoft. We’ve built an incredible foundation with new releases of Microsoft Office, Windows 8, Windows...
Read more...
We've been looking forward to Windows 8's Consumer Preview for months. This, after all, is Microsoft's big chance to show what they've been working on and unveiling bit by bit for the past year; a chance to evaluate the sum total of changes and advancements baked into the next-generation operating system. We'll discuss some of the features of Metro and Desktop (aka Classic) separately, but our overall focus will be on how the two environments interact with each other. Metro, Microsoft's new UI, is bold, a dramatic departure from anything the company has previously done in the desktop/laptop space, and absolutely great. It's tangible proof that Redmond really can design and build its own unique...
Read more...
We've been looking forward to Windows 8's Consumer Preview for months. This, after all, is Microsoft's big chance to show what they've been working on and unveiling bit by bit for the past year; a chance to evaluate the sum total of changes and advancements baked into the next-generation operating system. We'll discuss some of the features of Metro and Desktop (aka Classic) separately, but our overall focus will be on how the two environments interact with each other. Understanding Metro: Metro, Microsoft's new UI, is bold, a dramatic departure from anything the company has previously done in the desktop/laptop space, and absolutely great. It's tangible proof that Redmond really can design and...
Read more...
Last week, Windows 8's head developer, Steven Sinofsky, published an 8,600-word blog post describing virtually every facet of Windows 8's development, including the hardware Microsoft has used for system testing and simulation. One of the major bullet points of the announcement was the following: WOA includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These new Office applications, codenamed “Office 15”, have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption, while also being fully-featured for consumers and providing complete document compatibility. (Emphasis original). It was always a given that Microsoft Office...
Read more...
For most of the 27 years since the first portable computer was announced, computer power use has been treated as a function of the underlying hardware. Even today, OS-level power optimizations are discussed in terms of whether or not the operating system properly supports the low-power operating modes of the CPU. The idea of optimizing the operating system to ensure minimum power consumption isn't something that Microsoft devoted much attention to, at least not until now. Over at the Building Windows 8 blog, team members Sharif Farag and Ben Srour have posted a discussion on how Windows 8 differs from previous versions in terms of minimizing power consumption. The new data builds on previously...
Read more...
One of the aspects of the current Windows Task Manager UI that doesn't scale particularly well, even on existing systems, is the CPU Usage monitor. Trying to track more than four cores quickly devolves into a game of "find the thread." The more cores you have, the less useful information the panel conveys. The 60s moving average CPU utilization line goes from a useful point of reference to a massive tangle of updating graphs, only a handful of which contain information that's actually germane to the task at hand. Windows 8 replaces the old view with a new, color-coded 'heat map' grid of data that scales much more effectively to handle large data sets. The image above shows Windows running on...
Read more...
The Windows 8 Start Menu Screen is shaping up to be a bone of contention between Microsoft's engineers and those following the company's Building Windows 8 blog. In a series of recent articles, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky delved into the history of the Start Menu (the basic concept is 16 years old) and discusses its various shortcomings. Part of the impetus for a re-think comes from Microsoft's own research, which shows that Start Menu usage declined dramatically from Windows Vista to windows 7, thanks in considerable part to the debut of taskbar pinning. Windows 8's Start Screen does away with classic Start Menu functionality and replaces it with an entirely different model. Microsoft believes...
Read more...
Earlier this year, Intel software VP Renee James caused a kerfluffle between himself and Microsoft when he claimed Microsoft's upcoming OS wouldn't support older x86 applications when running on an ARM processor. Microsoft, in response, called his characterization "factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading." ...Except, apparently, it wasn't—at least, not as far as ARM/x86 compatibility were concerned. During a Q&A session this past week, Windows division President Steven Sinofsky clarified the relationship between the two architectures: We've been very clear since the very first CES demos and forward that the ARM product won't run any X86 applications... We built a great deal...
Read more...
Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky has published an update to the Building Windows 8 blog in which he sheds light on how Windows 8 treats the GUI differently than any previous version of the operating system. One of the concerns surrounding Windows 8 has been whether or not the operating system's new 'Metro' UI would supplant the more conventional GUI and whether or not users would be able to switch between the two. Microsoft has already demonstrated an updated version of Explorer's UI structure, as partial proof that the company is devoted to preserving both the old and new presentation methods. According to Sinofsky, Windows 8 will treat the desktop as an optional environment. He notes that the company's...
Read more...
