The Charms bar is eliminated
Another unnatural aspect of Windows 8 is the Charms bar, which takes search, device access (printers, scanners, and monitors), sharing, and settings configuration out of the apps using them and into an independent element you have to call up each time you want it. This requires users to move outside of a Metro app for these common functions — it’s also unfriendly and unnecessary.
So Windows Red kills the Charms bar.
Instead, there are Search, Share, and Settings buttons standard in every app’s control bar, both in Windows Red Pro and Windows Red Mobile. The Share button, by the way, extends the sharing notion from social apps and cloud storage to include printing, screen mirroring, and screen placement (on devices connected to multiple displays). Essentially, it absorbs the features of the Devices charm.
The Charms bar’s PC Settings controls, which managed Metro-wide preferences, are part of a separate Settings app in Windows Red Mobile. In Windows Red Pro, the PC Settings controls not already duplicated in the Control Panel are moved to the Control Panel for a unified OS settings environment.
Live tiles and Metro apps are incorporated into the Windows Desktop
If Windows Red Pro were merely a better version of Windows 7, there’d be little hope that the Microsoft platform would ever transition into the new generation of computing that Apple’s iOS points to. Fortunately, Microsoft can move Windows forward on the PC.
One way is to let Metro apps — both from Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone — run on the Desktop like any other apps. (Because Windows Phone 8 shares a common core with Windows 8, Microsoft’s engineers should be able to support Windows Phone apps on PCs and other Intel-based devices.) It’d be a great boon to Microsoft’s desktop and smartphone ambitions.)
So in Windows Red Pro, Metro apps run in application windows, using the keyboard and mouse instead of gestures and the onscreen keyboard. They’re accessed from the Start menu like traditional Desktop apps, and they can be pinned to the taskbar like Desktop apps. This is a more sensible way to transition PC users to the Metro approach.
When running in Windows Red Pro’s Desktop, Metro apps change their UI slightly. The App bar that appears at the bottom of the screen in Windows 8 Metro and Windows RT (and thus in Windows Red Mobile) moves to the top of the screen when running in Windows Red Pro. That keeps parallelism — important for a consistent user experience and motor memory — with the equivalent menu bar in Windows Desktop apps.
For Metro apps that also have a Control bar (at the top of the screen in today’s Metro environments), the Control bar appears under the App bar when running in Windows Red Pro. Again, that’s parallel to the Ribbon’s placement in Windows Desktop apps.
The second way to introduce Metro into the traditional PC environment is to incorporate the live tiles introduced in Windows Phone and adopted by today’s Metro. Thus, Windows Red Pro has a pullout Live Tiles tray that contains the live tiles for all installed Metro apps that have them. It’s similar in concept to the pullout Running Apps bar in Windows 8, which shows live tiles of running apps.
The Live Tiles tray in Windows Red Pro has a handle so that you know it’s there, and you can drag a tile out of it to the Desktop to keep it always visible there. The Live Tiles tray also provides quick access to any notifications you may have missed.
The user experience is simplified and rationalized
Microsoft’s complex overlaying of the Windows Desktop and Metro environments is an outrageous imposition on users. Windows Red gets rid of that. But other complexities in both the Windows Desktop and Metro also need to go.
As previously mentioned, Windows Red Pro consolidates the Control Panel and PC Settings controls into the single Control Panel. It also streamlines the confusing, multiple interface approaches in the Windows 7 Control Panel.
For example, we adopted Metro’s simple list of individual panel groups, so it’s easy to change panels. Those panels organize their controls in panes, similar to OS X’s System Preferences, so you won’t face a clutter of settings windows as happens in the Control Panels of Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Also as previously mentioned, we ended the jumping back and forth between apps and the Charms bar by eliminating the Charms bar and moving the search, sharing, devices, and settings functions into the apps themselves.
We also dropped the Running Apps bar in Windows Red Pro, even though Windows 8 had it. After all, the task bar serves the same function, so there’s no need for a duplicative Running Apps bar in Windows Red Pro.
All versions of Windows Red provide a visual cue for each pullout tray. Today’s Metro requires users to know to swipe or click in one of the sides to open basic controls such as the App bar, Control bar, and Running Apps bar. These features are too fundamental to be made part of a hide-and-seek game.
In Windows Red Pro, the handle for the Live Tiles tray is always visible, so you know something’s there. In Windows Red Mobile, there’s a handle each for the Running Apps bar, the App bar, and the Control bar, so you know they’re present.
Finally, we adopted the innovation in Stardock’s ModernMix app as part of Windows Red Pro, providing users a way to group items — folders, files, and apps — however it makes sense to them. These items continue to reside in their folders, but the groups exist independently of the folder hierarchy, so you can have all manner of collections that make use of aliases to those resources.
In Windows Red Mobile, we enhance the Snap View function that lets two apps run side by side by letting users adjust that division through a slider. Windows 8’s Metro environment fixes one app to 75 percent of the screen width and the other to 25 percent, which aren’t always the best divisions. Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8.1 “Blue” also provides an adjustable slider for Snap View, which we’re glad to see. But we’re dubious about its splitting of the screen into four windows — on a tablet, those windows are simply too small to be useful. So Windows Red doesn’t do that.
Tablet users get a real Microsoft Office, Desktop users get the People app
Rather than create a tablet-savvy version of Microsoft Office for Metro, Microsoft made a few tweaks to its existing Office version, such as a full-screen mode. It’s a really bad experience on a touchscreen. To make Office run on Windows RT tablets, Microsoft essentially created a runtime version of Office that exists outside of the RT operating system.
It’s not clear why Microsoft has no true Metro version of Office. Perhaps it’s afraid that a Metro version — which would be priced much cheaper, as mobile apps always seem to be — would undercut its highly profitable Office sales and staunch one of Microsoft’s big income flows. But the lack of a realistic mobile version of Office only depresses demand for mobile Windows, which will depress Office sales as people adopt other mobile OSes running other office productivity apps like Apple’s iWork or Google’s Quickoffice. Microsoft needs to bite the bullet and build Office for Metro. On the Windows Desktop, Office 2013 is great; Office for Metro needs to be great, too.
Microsoft did create one compelling app for Windows Phone that it wisely brought to Windows 8: the People app, which runs in Metro. It combines contact management and social networking, so you can go to any contact and participate in their social conversations in one place. It’s a smart idea that originated in the defunct Palm WebOS, was adopted by the short-lived Microsoft Kin, and performed well in Windows Phone.
Although the Metro People app could run in Windows Red Pro’s Desktop, we believe the app deserves to be a native Desktop app because it is so useful. As a Desktop app, it could be enhanced with capabilities such as group messaging, support for multiple simultaneous conversations, and perhaps some sort of Google Hangout-like video clustering. Integration, or at least symbiosis, with Skype and Microsoft Lync is also a natural Desktop extension.
Windows Red should be Windows 9
Microsoft almost never admits a mistake — it’s even more arrogant than Apple in this regard. Microsoft doesn’t change its public plans either; for example, despite nine months of growing concerns over Windows 8 and Windows RT before official release, Microsoft shipped its new OSes as is, with zero adjustments to the chorus of criticism.
Fine — Microsoft will release Windows 8.1 “Blue” this fall, with all signs indicating merely cosmetic changes. Users will again avoid Windows PCs and Windows tablets, ceding even more ground to iOS and Android. It’s inevitable that 2013 is a lost year.
But Microsoft could aim to adopt Windows Red in 2014 — maybe by spring — and call it Windows 9. It need not say Windows 8 was a failure, just as it never admitted the Vista fiasco. It can simply move on to the “even better” Windows, as it did with Windows 7’s release.
Sooner would be better, given Apple’s continued work on iOS and Google’s on Android — the only two operating systems whose adoption is growing in any real way. At some point, it will be too late even for Microsoft despite its vast legacy user base, as BlackBerry discovered in a similarly disastrous slide.
Microsoft, please swallow your pride and take off your blinders. Take InfoWorld’s Windows Red plan seriously, and save Windows for the long term.
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