Sunday, February 12, 2017

Cosmetic change, from Microsoft? Because Windows 10 has to justify itself, and because smaller screens without many separate open windows suggests the cosmetology?

This screen capture within this Ars Technica article. Busy background desktop images, no desktop icons, with busy images not showing whether a display monitor has uneven single color integrity, brighter corners, dimmer corners, or any other unevenness? When Win-7 support is shut down, if I live that long; there has been that urge all along to try Linux. Whatever Linux might look like and offer, pick your distribution if not Ubuntu or Mint, at that time.

Microsoft has gone beyond the home workstation OS on every desktop, to enterprise and cloud as key revenue generating cash cows; phones, not too hot, for Microsoft. Apple got there first and Android costs less for the equipment vendors. And have you yet bought your smart watch and VR headset? Why not? What is wrong with your lemming urge, when advertising stokes and strokes it?

UPDATE: Stoke and stroke, in Ars content, beyond advertising:

Windows 10 presently uses a design language known as MDL2 (Microsoft Design Language 2), which is an evolved version of the Metro design first introduced with Windows Phone 7. Both Metro and MDL2 put an emphasis on clean lines, simple geometric shapes, attractive typography, photographic imagery, and minimal use of ornamentation. Both heavily borrow from responsive Web design concepts. Google's Material design language builds on similar themes, adding transitions and animations to better show how pieces of information are related.

The new Microsoft look is named Neon. It continues the evolution of Metro—it retains the emphasis on clean text and a generally flat appearance but adds certain elements of translucency (which the company is calling "acrylic") and greater use of animation and movement. Additional new elements are "Conscious UI," wherein an acrylic element might change depending on what's behind the current app, and "Connected Animations."

A fashion statement some at Microsoft design headquarters might envy, not for outdoors grizzly country.