“If”
its honest a boon for gamers as microsoft now actually has to spend more effort making windows betters for gamers then spending all of its effort on windows for arm and AI. one of the things windows as an OS lacks is that the handheld experience is actually trash, and the OS is a resource hog for a handheld device
imo the metro take of windows 8 wasn’t the wrong approach for its intended market(tablets) it’s just forcing it on desktop/laptop users as well as a boneheaded decision.
They need to stop forcing windows changes for ALL users, including to the users that can’t use said features properly (as it was designed with touch screens in mind, and not everyone had touchscreens). Same idea with the more recent stuff involving Recall. not everyone has AI capable pcs, so its dumb to include the change to all users that will exist on the main branch of the OS, and would apply down the line to windows handhelds as well, who will likely not need recall as a feature as its using up resources. And im not like a person whose like fully Anti AI either, it just has its specific userbase that may need it, and there are others (like with a windows handheld case) that should not have it at all, as it is likely a detriment to battery if enabled by default.
Honestly the metro design language didn’t look particularly attractive for touch screens either. I knew someone with a Nokia Windows Phone, the interface seemed… clunky. Quirky but not in the right ways.
It has to cater to mice and fingers, and so ends up with the lowest common denominator. Can’t have information density because of the butter fingers, can’t have neat swiping gestures because of the mice and especially trackpads. So, big squares and huge buttons, repeat ad nauseum. Like a DUPLO set.
Surely the UI/UX designers and Microsoft knew this, but I guess Ballmer had his way. Meanwhile Valve didn’t have to contend with cranky executives, so they just slapped Big Picture on top of KDE and let use decide when to switch between console mode and desktop mode.
Competition is always great. To be fair, Windows wasn’t really designed with a handheld game console in mind as its target distribution platform. SteamOS, at least its current version, was designed for that exact purpose. Would definitely welcome a more lightweight Windows to come from this though, not just for handhelds but just regular desktops too.
That “If” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. Really interested to see where SteamOS goes in the future.
It’s easy to understate what an unusual project SteamOS is. It represents over a dozen years of work from some of the industry’s finest, is funded by a private company, yet is open source and free for everyone to use. “I’m pretty happy that we’ve managed to find a balance that’s beneficial to everyone, while still being able to help this PC ecosystem in this way,” says Griffais. “I’m really happy about that.”
I can’t wait to try it
See that’s how you get people to like you more. Not whatever the hell social media CEOs keep doing.
