Windows 7? No arm in it

When personal computers were new, we all needed them desperately despite cost and hassles, to empower us as individuals. Business and individuals were at the mercy of Microsoft, and had to buy whatever they wished to let us have.

As the desktop computer has matured, we, the consumers, have choices and can make judgments as to how we want to work and easy to learn and use.

Microsoft had better quickly learn to offer consumers what they need, what they want...and not just another something that "looks" like what they want and need. More and more people are getting the idea that Microsoft does not listen to what we want, and just doesn't have a clue as to what we need. The market is theirs to lose.

The most interesting aspect of Microsoft's position at the moment is the almost complete disconnect from its customers.
The size of the problem is nicely illustrated by headlines like <a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/microsoft_windows_7_we_already_hate_it">Microsoft Windows 7? We Already Hate It</a>, which regardless of the facts about W7 -- still unknown -- is a fair reflection of the sentiment of not just febrile journalists, but real people too.

Even if that is, as Microsoft would undoubtedly claim, a problem of perception, it's a real problem of perception. After Vista, people are fed up of the chasm between the Microsoft spin machine and what they find on their desktops.

It's reminiscent of an old king, surrounded by sycophantic courtiers, who keeps issuing new and ever more unpopular laws to quieten his rowdy, increasingly rebellious subjects. The laws have the opposite effect, and he complains all the time about the ungrateful peasants, but none of those around him dare tell him what's actually going on.

Two seperate issues really, firstly the whole guerilla arm is a red herring. Think about it, it would cost very little to develop a stand that would allow a screen to be pulled forward and down, and the screen rotated to just over the top of a keyboard. It couldn't be done with a light pen and a CRT but with modern flat screens it can, creating a very pleasant working position.

So with it being an eminently practical proposition, the only question is why do it? The reason is simple, its how people work. When you walk through a wood and you want to feel the texture of a tree you run your hand across it. You don't have to, you could hold a twig and run that across the bark, it would do the same. People want to feel, to touch things They prefer direct, not indirect contact.

The keyboard and mouse act as a barrier, sometimes very necessary, but still a barrier. If they aren't needed, why not remove them? I keep thinking of the old argument, why do you need a GUI tool when the same thing can be done with the command line? Because most people can't use it, don't want to use it and shouldn't have to. When I design web pages, I'll often find myself thinking “I need to move that there, that up a bit” and while I'm doing that I'll find myself tracing the movements on my monitor. Does it help? Not really, but it is natural. How often to you find yourself doing that? For those who have commented on usability, when you have someone showing you what they want to do, do they use the mouse or simply point to the screen? Most people I know just point to the screen, and only the very experienced users sometimes the mouse.

All IT types today have spent thousands of hours with the mouse and keyboard and can use them well, however as computers evolve, why do people think the way we interact with them can't?

Our office only upgraded all its CRTs to LCDs within the last 12 months, so anyone who expects us to replace our LCDs with touch- sensitive *anything* in time for Windows 7 (say, 2010) must be dreaming...

I've just spent a long time on the phone to someone trying to help them out with a problem - a process made infinitely harder by them using a GUI instead of a command line. There are plenty of solutions that make certain classes of problem harder...

As for pointing on screen: yes, for lots of people this is better. My mother has a tablet PC; she never learned to use a typewriter and thus this is a godsend to her. She's just as happy with a mouse, though, and for anything text-based there's absolutely nothing that works nearly as fast as a keyboard.

Yet this is neither here nor there. We've had touch-capable systems for decades. It's not that nobody thought of using them on PCs - far from it! - but that they never worked particularly well. The only reason Microsoft has revived the idea isn't because it's done some research that's revealed some great secret we've missed all these years -- if it had, then surely it would have demonstrated this -- but because it's Bill Gates' pet and he's rather annoyed that the iPhone is so popular. (I've worked for companies which have been badly damaged by charismatic CEOs having this sort of obsession.)

But really - it's not impressive, and it's not wanted. And it's not the first time that a MS technology has been <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/smartdisplay/default.mspx">completely off-kilter</a>, no matter what the PR machinery says.