The story of Microsoft and the towel



  • Remember when the Windows 8 logo was announced? How horrible it was? How it lacked any form of identity? Well Microsoft is hard at work at destroying every they build up over the past decennia, so how other than completely ruining your own identity with a new, crappy logo, devoid of any passion or feeling?

    [img]http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/imagenormal/1345731927.png [/img]

    To be fair, I guess it's "kind of ok", but I liked their old logo much more. Also the squares look so unimaginative.

    Accompanying video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzkZWvAJUr0



  • At least they found that chunk of "o" they misplaced. They must have been looking for it forever!



  • @pbean said:

    Well Microsoft is hard at work at destroying every they build up over the past decennia, so how other than completely ruining your own identity with a new, crappy logo, devoid of any passion or feeling?

    I think you a word there.



  • I don't know... I think it's pretty cool. Very sleek and slim, it meshes well with the "Metro" look of Windows 8.

    On another note LOL at that Atari cartridge looking 1980-81 logo.



  • I'm noticing a pattern here:

    Windows:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

        

     

     Google Chrome:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

          

     


  • FoxDev

     @El_Heffe said:

    I'm noticing a pattern here:

    Windows:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

        

     

     Google Chrome:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

          

     

    They're just following Apple, who went monochrome in 1998, and shiny in 2003.

     



  • @curtmack said:

    At least they found that chunk of "o" they misplaced. They must have been looking for it forever!

    I don't know who came up with this broken O design but I find it ugly.

    It's even uglier than the old Sun logo



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    I don't know... I think it's pretty cool. Very sleek and slim, it meshes well with the "Metro" look of Windows 8.

    On another note LOL at that Atari cartridge looking 1980-81 logo.

     

    Heh, I had a K-7 tape with that logo. I guess they didn't sell many cartridges with it, K-7 was more popular with computers, wans't it?

     

    The similarity with the new Chrome logo isn't by chance, it also isn't a copy.  That's a well known phenomenum called "fashion". That's why nobody cared about the 80-81 logo at the time, but now we think it looks bad.



  • @Mcoder said:

    hat's why nobody cared about the 80-81 logo at the time, but now we think it looks bad.
     

    I wonder if it inspired this:




  • @El_Heffe said:

    I'm noticing a pattern here:

    Windows:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

        

     

     Google Chrome:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

          

     

    Except that's not the chrome logo. That's the chromium logo, which is an open source version of Google Chrome. They are not the same thing.



  • @Ben L. said:

    Except that's not the chrome logo. That's the chromium logo, which is an open source version of Google Chrome. They are not the same thing.
    You're right.  I got the wrong one.  It's the same logo, just different colors.  It should be this:

    Chrome:  Old <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

        

    Either way, it continues the pattern of making logos flat and boring.



  • At least Chrome's logo is more complex than Microsoft's "I just learned MS Paint" logo. Although most first MS Paint creations are more complex than "hurr durr colored squares"...

    i do have to say, flat simple icons are better than the catastrophe that was XP graphics.



  • Apparently they've had this idea for quite a while already: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw-GGT6900s



  • Oh man! I don't even want to imagine how much they paid to whoever did this thing.

    Funny thing, this is the Microsoft -previously known as Metro- Windows 8 UI StyleTM logo, so it got the longest name ever for a logo.



  • Am I the only person who thinks monochromatic vectors actually look better then pseudo-3d glossy icons?



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    I don't know... I think it's pretty cool. Very sleek and slim, it meshes well with the "Metro" look of Windows 8.
    Microsoft is pegging its entire future on Metro and glass, so this new logo is not entirely a surprise.



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    It's even uglier than the old Sun logo
    I like Sun's logo, and think it's pretty clever, unique and instantly recognisable . It reminds me of this sort of tiling:

    @MiffTheFox said:

    Am I the only person who thinks monochromatic vectors actually look better then pseudo-3d glossy icons?
    No, you're probably not. But I wouldn't go full monochromatic. I think Chrome's new logo — as shown in El_Heffe's post — strikes a good balance.



  • @Zecc said:

    I like Sun's logo, and think it's pretty clever, unique and instantly recognisable .
     

    Yes, but it doesn't have to be so hilariously ugly to accomplish those things.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    I'm noticing a pattern here:

    Windows:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

        

     

     Google Chrome:    Old  <font face="courier new,courier">--></font>  New

          

     

     

     Erm, that last one is Chromiums logo, the fully open variant of Chrome.

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Zecc said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    Am I the only person who thinks monochromatic vectors actually look better then pseudo-3d glossy icons?
    No, you're probably not. But I wouldn't go full monochromatic. I think Chrome's new logo — as shown in El_Heffe's post — strikes a good balance.

    Yeah, I think we've gone too far into monochrome territory, especially with the notification area / system tray icons. Fortunately, by the time I've adjusted to them, and come to prefer them over more colorful icons, everyone will switch back, and I can start complaining again.



  • Speaking of ugly monochrome, has anybody tried Visual Studio 2012? It's all monochrome, except for the two parts that have color. You try (and fail btw) to get your eyes adjusted to the low-contrast colors and then the bright spots just step in and blast your eyeballs out.

    Bad colors, the-style-that-is-no-longer-Metro is everywhere, no window border, no button borders, and since it seems to be built on WPF general drawing performance is horrible since I have some piece of crap 16-shader GPU in my system. The worst part is I felt they finally got the UI right with VS 2010 and now they've thrown that away because of all the PHB's weird fetish with Metro Windows 8-style UI.

     

     


  • FoxDev

    @mott555 said:

    Speaking of ugly monochrome, has anybody tried Visual Studio 2012? It's all monochrome, except for the two parts that have color. You try (and fail btw) to get your eyes adjusted to the low-contrast colors and then the bright spots just step in and blast your eyeballs out.

    Bad colors, the-style-that-is-no-longer-Metro is everywhere, no window border, no button borders, and since it seems to be built on WPF general drawing performance is horrible since I have some piece of crap 16-shader GPU in my system. The worst part is I felt they finally got the UI right with VS 2010 and now they've thrown that away because of all the PHB's weird fetish with Metro Windows 8-style UI.

    image snipped for sanity reasons

    I remember running the VS2012 beta for the first time - I thought my monitor/graphics card had broken. Then I noticed that the taskbar was still in colour.

    What's even more inexplicable is the VS team did this, while the SQL Server team changed the SSMS 2012 UI to match VS2010.



  • @RaceProUK said:

    What's even more inexplicable is the VS team did this, while the SQL Server team changed the SSMS 2012 UI to match VS2010.

    Why do you think this? MS teams are independent and a synchronized theme has never been a goal.


  • FoxDev

    @serguey123 said:

    @RaceProUK said:
    What's even more inexplicable is the VS team did this, while the SQL Server team changed the SSMS 2012 UI to match VS2010.
    Why do you think this? MS teams are independent and a synchronized theme has never been a goal.

    Either you misunderstand me, or my previous post was part brain fart. I'm happy the SQL team made the change, but wish there was a VS2010 skin for VS2012.



  •  I googled "VS2012" and I got this.


  • FoxDev

    @dhromed said:

    I googled "VS2012" and I got this.

    I know it's a piss-take, but Edit and Continue has been supported in 32-bit code for some time now - I know VS2010 can do it, probably VS2002/3/5/8 too.



  • @dhromed said:

    I googled "VS2012" and I got this.

    The screenshots are of VS2008 though.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @RaceProUK said:

    @dhromed said:
    I googled "VS2012" and I got this.

    I know it's a piss-take, but Edit and Continue has been supported in 32-bit code for some time now - I know VS2010 can do it, probably VS2002/3/5/8 too.

    No shit. It was saying that you could finally do it with 64-bit code (hint: look at the accompanying dialog). Seriously, though, is there something inherently different with the x86-64 architecture that prevents this, or has MS just not put in the effort to make it happen?



  • @RaceProUK said:

    @mott555 said:

    Speaking of ugly monochrome, has anybody tried Visual Studio 2012? It's all monochrome, except for the two parts that have color. You try (and fail btw) to get your eyes adjusted to the low-contrast colors and then the bright spots just step in and blast your eyeballs out.

    Bad colors, the-style-that-is-no-longer-Metro is everywhere, no window border, no button borders, and since it seems to be built on WPF general drawing performance is horrible since I have some piece of crap 16-shader GPU in my system. The worst part is I felt they finally got the UI right with VS 2010 and now they've thrown that away because of all the PHB's weird fetish with Metro Windows 8-style UI.

    *image snipped for sanity reasons*

    I remember running the VS2012 beta for the first time - I thought my monitor/graphics card had broken. Then I noticed that the taskbar was still in colour.

    What's even more inexplicable is the VS team did this, while the SQL Server team changed the SSMS 2012 UI to match VS2010.

    VS2012 is definitley ugly.  Apparently though a lo of graphic designers I know actually prefer the look and think it make us all more efficient....

     As for SSMS in SQL Server 2012, Its now actually built on top of the VS2010 IDE.  Its not actually a seperate application but uses the same shell.  Much like BIDS in SQL Server 2008 R2 ran on top of VS2008. 

     


  • FoxDev

    @boomzilla said:

    No shit.

    *gives boomzilla a chill pill ;)*

    @boomzilla said:

    Seriously, though, is there something inherently different with the x86-64 architecture that prevents this, or has MS just not put in the effort to make it happen?

    Probably a bit of both. I know 64-bit Windows has fancy tricks like address space relocation and data execution prevention, but I can't recall if they apply specifically to 64-bit processes or not.



  •  @boomzilla said:

    @RaceProUK said:
    @dhromed said:
    I googled "VS2012" and I got this.

    I know it's a piss-take, but Edit and Continue has been supported in 32-bit code for some time now - I know VS2010 can do it, probably VS2002/3/5/8 too.

    No shit. It was saying that you could finally do it with 64-bit code (hint: look at the accompanying dialog). Seriously, though, is there something inherently different with the x86-64 architecture that prevents this, or has MS just not put in the effort to make it happen?

    No idea what the particular reason is, but I bet Data Execution Protection prevents this feature from working with 64-bit code without some OS trickery. DEP is designed to prevent this exact thing from happening, so there's probably some OS hooks involved to flag the code block as a data block, alter it, and reflag it as code.

    Of course I'm not sure what about 32-bit code would allow this; maybe 64-bit Windows doesn't enable DEP on 32-bit debugging applications, but does on 64-bit apps, because reasons?

    Edit: Actually, I just realized a more likely explanation - a JIT compiler for 32-bit code that Microsoft never bothered updating to work with 64-bit code until just now.

     


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @curtmack said:

    Actually, I just realized a more likely explanation - a JIT compiler for 32-bit code that Microsoft never bothered updating to work with 64-bit code until just now.

    Uh, does that mean they've actually done it? A quick look at their What's New page doesn't seem to mention it. They finally seem to have added 64-bit JIT'd javascript for IE10, so maybe they'll eventually get VS to work properly with 64-bit code. I have to think that given current architectures, there'll be a lot of demand for this.


  • BINNED

    I think that while Google has striked a nice balance with the flattened Chrome logo, Microsoft has gone way too far with the simplification. It looks like nothing at all.
    Also, the new font is so boring, the old Microsoft font at least had a distinct feeling to it. Like the o blending over with the s.

     

    Regarding the new VS: This is just so horribly ugly, whoever is responsible for it should be shot. I'm not using photoshop, colors don't distract me from my actual work. And WTF is it about ALL CAPS? Did they ever try to read a full page with all caps words and wonder how difficult it is to read that??



  • GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT

    MICROSOFT'S WINDOWS 8 TEAM CAME FROM THE 1980S

    THE GREAT THING ABOUT WINDOWS 8 ISN'T THE UI

    IT'S THAT THE SYSTEM CONTAINS TIME TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY™®© WHICH CAN BE USED TO INCREASE PROCESSING SPEEDS BY 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000%




  • The "ft" ligature looks nice at least.


  • @RaceProUK said:

    I remember running the VS2012 beta for the first time - I thought my monitor/graphics card had broken. Then I noticed that the taskbar was still in colour.
    On behalf of deuteranopes everywhere, thank you for encouraging the spread of crayolaware.



  • @da Doctah said:

    @RaceProUK said:

    I remember running the VS2012 beta for the first time - I thought my monitor/graphics card had broken. Then I noticed that the taskbar was still in colour.
    On behalf of deuteranopes everywhere, thank you for encouraging the spread of crayolaware.

    The C3C (Crayola Color Consortium Consortium) suggests at least twelve distinct shades of each primary and secondary color be used in any given application. Gradients do not count as they are not exciting enough. Unless they're rainbow or that really shitty "dirt and sky-like color" gradient that everyone uses in PowerPoint 2003.



  • Y'know what most of the messages of this thread remind me off?

    "Get off my lawn! And uphill both ways!"



  • @Rhywden said:

    Y'know what most of the messages of this thread remind me off?

    "Get off my lawn! And uphill both ways!"

     

    To be fair, the new logo's typography is just a standard font without any adjustments whatsoever, and the window grid is pretty much phoned in.

    My favourite is the XP logo. It retains the distinctness of the wavey window flag while somehow being utterly simplified, which is a popular definition of perfection.

    I do like the new spinner. The irregular acceleration of the dots has a life to it.

     



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    @curtmack said:
    At least they found that chunk of "o" they misplaced. They must have been looking for it forever!

    I don't know who came up with this broken O design but I find it ugly.

    It's even uglier than the old Sun logo

     

    I always found the Sun logo to be pretty witty and clever (yes, ugly, but the cleverness compensates for it, IMO)

     



  • @SEMI-HYBRID code said:

    (yes, ugly, but the cleverness compensates for it, IMO)
     

    It's a logo, not a brainteaser, for pete's sake.



  •  Yeah I'm with you all about the new looks of Microsoft's products with the ALL CAPS menus, the buttons which have lost all shape and the silly colour scheme. Do you know that button in Windows 7 in the bottom right corner to show your desktop? It took me a while to realise that it's still there in Windows 8 (in the non-Metro UI thing), but you can't see it at all because both the panel and the button are entirely flat. One prime objective of a good UI is that it's discoverable: you don't have to go looking for things to discover they exist. And Windows 8 fails that in every respect (also with switching back to the Metro interface from the classic UI thing). And the ALL CAPS menus just shout at you and it becomes annoying in literally 0.1 seconds.

    I don't quite dislike Windows, nor Microsoft, I loved Windows XP and Windows 7, I think Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 (haven't used 2010), and Office 2000-2007 were spectacular products, but they're really ruining it all. Some might say we just have to get used to it, and over time we'll start to maybe like it, but if my first emotion after seeing these kind of UIs is utter disgust, I'm not sure if I even want to get used to it, and sincerely doubt I would ever like it.


  • BINNED

    @dhromed said:

    To be fair, the new logo's typography is just a standard font without any adjustments whatsoever, and the window grid is pretty much phoned in.

    You're probably the right one to ask this: Do you know which font that is?
    It doesn't look particularly nice even for a stock font, IMO. Not like the fonts that are generally considered "good" for corporate logos, like I dunno, Garamond and such.

    The old one looked so much more distinct.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @pbean said:

    Yeah I'm with you all about the new looks of Microsoft's products with the ALL CAPS menus

    I heard this was done to make the Turkish localization easier.



  • @topspin said:

    You're probably the right one to ask this: Do you know which font that is?
     

    Segoe. It's pretty awesome in smallish, low-dpi cleartype-rendered situations (such as UI) and doesn't have the strange reduced ex height in the C-family introduced in Vista.



  • @dhromed said:

    Filed under: Corbel Calibri Candara Cambria Consolas

    By your powers combined, I am Captain Microsoft Typography!



  • Inspiration for the new monochrome VSStudio logo:








  • @pbean said:

    Some might say we just have to get used to it, [...]
    That's what manager of mine said, after I complained that Microsoft Sharepoint has an absolutely attrocious UI from the usability point of view. "You have to get used to it." I pointed out that we're in the 21st century.

     


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