Fixing Windows 8, Part 5: Built-in Apps

Yes, I completely agree with an option to automatically download and install app updates.

I definitely agree about Windows store app. It's absolute garbage. Functionality I'd like to see in it are basically motivated by features of Apple app stores. App charts + developer pages listing all apps by a particular developer would be the top two things I'd like added.

Photos app: I need it to be able to optionally respect the order I have setup on online photo albums. At the moment, it just seems to rigidly display photos in chronological order.

Music app: I need it to support scrobbling to last.fm, or else I'll continue to use Spotify or iTunes.

Mail / Calender / communication: My issue with these is broader than the apps themselves. A better system-wide notification system is needed that integrates well with the desktop.

Paul: It would be useful if you could write an article explaining how customers can send user feedback/suggestions to Microsoft. It is not at all clear how to do this, compared to, for example, the Apple feedback page. It is not even clear if Microsoft actually want user feedback.

Here's some other things I think they need to add (yes, some of these are specific requests but here goes):

Calendar: Support Facebook Events. The Windows Phone Calendar app shows Facebook Events in the calendar and allows you to tap those Event appointments to view the guests and wall. Why this isn't on Windows 8, I don't know. The Win8 Calendar app should be at feature parity with the Windows Phone version IMO.

People: Allow editing of the Contact Pictures for each person. Windows Phone allows you to edit them, while Windows 8 (and Outlook.com) don't allow editing, so you're stuck with the Facebook or Messenger avatar that contact supplies (if they even do at all). Again, feature parity with Windows Phone please. Groups support would also be nice (synced from Windows Phone).

Windows Store: Needs the ability to click on the name of an App Publisher to see a list of all the apps that the Publisher has in the store. AGAIN, this is possible in Windows Phone.

I agree wholeheartedly. MS needs to set an example for others to follow. Kind of like they did with the surface. There are a lot of good ideas, but some of them are not executed to their full potential. Like Paul has said, The biggest pain I experience from windows 8 is the fact that you must go in to the store to update.

I'm hoping some of these things will be addressed in SP1.

I think what the mess boils down to is that:

1. Microsoft's own engineers were working with a brand new SDK driving a brand new stack using new language features and development tools. Microsoft hasn't learned how to create great apps in its brave new world, yet.

2. Microsoft's UI designers have gone crazy with the new design language. Despite their move towards austerity, they just can't bring themselves to accept that tons of wasted space is just that. They haven't yet accepted that apps aren't brochures.

3. Microsoft's program managers had their own move to austerity in terms of feature set. Android's success is built in Google's acceptance that it's better to err towards more power over less power. That used to be what made Windows so popular, and Android has taken the mantle and deserves its success.

One inexcusable problem is the lack of basic editing in the Photo app. Can't lighten or darken or crop.

A friend who just bought a new Dell xps 10 laptop was stunned and disappointed that she couldn't edit a photo and wanted to return her PC. I told her about windows essentials Photo Gallery app and she is very happy with that. You're welcome Microsoft.

IE dispiritedly needs a downloads manager.

There are also a few more apps I'd like to add. Most people rarely use these (and there are much better alternatives in the store) but we all expect these for when we need them.
- Calculator (perhaps with advanced functionality such as graphing... like Microsoft Mathematics)
- Paint (for those times we need a make a picture for any reason)
- Notepad/Wordpad/StickyNotes (There is actually no native apps for taking notes)
- Snipping Tool (for metro)
- And pretty much everything in the Accesories tab from the old startmenu

I don't think Twitter and Facebook really need native apps. I have an Sprint Arrive (I'm waiting for Sprint to get their act together) and I downloaded a Facebook app but I don't use it. I go to my peoples hub and read the content from there. I didn't even download a Twitter app. Maybe I'm one of the few that finds what Windows Phone does to be fine. Windows 8 does something similar but its not as nice as the way Windows Phone does it. It actually took me a minute to figure out how to view my notifications from Facebook and Twitter on Windows 8.

Paul: My question is how long will it take Microsoft to begin to address these issues and improve the Windows 8 experience? Given the speed of the market, I don't think they have much time to begin to demonstrate it can move with alacrity. Given the differences in ecosystems, Microsoft can't wait a year. They need to roll out substantive improvements much more frequently (quarterly?), at least until the ecosystem is more equivalent to its competitors.

Mail in RT needs POP3 access, I know there is a work around, but seriously, having to use a kludge to make mail work on a tablet? MS really need to start looking at making life easier for customers rather than expecting customers to carry the workload for MS.

It's not just the features that need to be on par with their Windows Phone équivalent, the overall expérience should be close enough too. There, we often do not get the feeling are working, so to speak, on the "same" app when using Windows 8 or WP8. Of course the apps there aren't (and obviouly can't be)the same on each plateform but IMO they should look like very close cousins and be more coherent throughout the ecosystem. So, starting with more cross-division development between the Window 8 and WP8 teams would be a good starting point...

Absolutely agree we need first-class native Facebook & Twitter apps. And instagram for those who still use that service (as well as instagram integration in the photos app).

Mostly, apps need better import facilities. Someone switching from google services, apple, android, icloud, amazon, etc... they should be able to easily import all their contacts in a very straight-forward and obvious way (a friend's experience trying to set up Windows Live Mail 2012 and get contacts into the system was eye-opening in how difficult and non-obvious it was).

Calendar needs to be able to integrate and use and sync with any other calendar out there... apple, google, outlook, etc. And it needs to be more flexible... why can't you make appointments for "every other week"? Or "Second Thursday of every month"? And why can't you set a second reminder? Or specify any arbitrary time for the reminder? (5 hours before? 8 hours before? 27 1/2 hours before?) I find the current options EXTREMELY limiting, and almost never what I want or need.

And yeah, it's kind of disgraceful that the mail app is so far behind the Windows Phone mail app... which I find superior to iOS Mail in most ways, actually. The only thing I really want is a 'Mark All As Read" feature, so I don't have to mark as read every email I get individually if I just want to.

The photos app needs ways of renaming folders in the app, and shuffling photos between folders in the app (i.e. the ability to organize photos as well as display them)... at least for local images. And more editing options too. Maybe a way to "plug in" filters and editing tools the way the camera lets "lenses" plug in?

But the biggest thing that needs to be done is Microsoft Account management. I just set up my parent's with a new Windows 8 PC. I created a Microsoft account for them (a new outlook.com address that they'll likely use only for this purpose). But when trying to get them hooked up to the store and to Xbox music and video, it auto-created a gamertag with a ridiculous name. WHAT?? Why wasn't it at least based on the Microsoft Account ID? Or why didn't it give me an option? It then said I could easily change it for free by going to xbox.com... which I did, but couldn't figure out for 20 minutes of hunting around how to freakin' change the gamer-tag. Which I finally managed. Sheesh. That was a royal, and totally pointless, pain. But beyond that, they DESPERATELY need to allow users to merge Microsoft Accounts... for example, someone who signed up with an email account a long time ago, but now wants to use an Outlook.com email address for their Microsoft ID (since you get more benefits and integration from using a Microsoft Hotmail/Live/Outlook email address)... but don't want to lose all their old history, etc... Being able to switch account IDs, merge different accounts, etc., is not at all possible now, and this lack of functionality is endlessly frustrating, especially to those trying to switch to this platform that may not set things up exactly right the first time.

Microsoft seriously has to make it easier (to the point of being a no-brainer) for people invested in other ecosystems to switch to windows ... as well as make it easier to people to use windows while maintaining their use of existing ecosystems (where it makes sense). It has to be very low-friction, low-frustration, and easy to switch, or people aren't going to.

HI,
I have some addition to these feature suggests, and they are very important for other countries then US.
1. in India, still we are not able to access XBOX music and videos ( we can use iTunes and google video and music services in india )
2. In photo app, I am not able to directly share photos to faceboook, I have to use facebook site to share photos..
3. if I copy past some print screen image to mail then it loose its accuracy... its a draw back.
4. in desktop mode, if I want to share one folder with my skydrive, then I am not getting that option in RIBBON
5. Many sites are not working properly on IE Metro, even this site also, the add popup that comes while loading this side - misses cross button and user has to wait for long time, other sites have same problem with ie . Even desktop IE is not as fast as crome.
6. I have one comfusion, IF Metro start screen is main user interface, and desktop is just an APP, then why in Metro app many things are missing ( example - file explorer , IE is not good, for every thing I have to switch to desktop mode, for control panel etc.. )
7. If this os is metro OS then why APPS are not efficient to fulfil these basic needs .. like explore files and folders , create them ( file explorer ) ... I am giving one example... my mom works on win 7 and after upgrading to win 8, she is even not able to find desktop ( she wants to see photos .. that are saved in drive D, photo app is not showing any thing ( like picasa - which scan all the photos in pc ) and desktop is messed up with other apps and its a mess of tiles so she was not able to find that out and want me to downgrade the os to win 7.
Why MS ( very experienced in developing great OS like Win 7 ) does this type of stuff. clustered, lots of apps and scrolling, no consistent performance.. etc etc.
It needs lots of improvements, I am waiting for mature OS .. as a fan I am using this.. previously I hoping to have windows OS in my phone but what MS has done, put windows phone on top of win 7...

Quite agree Paul. You'd think Microsoft would want to show off their new OS and put more effort into having the included apps show it off. Instead all people see is what is missing.
Why split things as well.
Video, photos and music don't need separate apps. Messaging is useless. Calender should be with Mail, of course Mail should have far more functionality. News, Sports, Finance should be combined.
Anyway it is a mess, a good thing that some of the 3rd party apps give us what Microsoft couldn't or doesn't want to.
For me the Music app has stopped showing most of the artwork, I think it was the last update. Frustrating as hell.

"I complained earlier this year that the inclusion of ads in certain apps that ship as part of Windows 8 cheapens the OS, and it does."

I just had an interesting - and by interesting I mean face palm - experience in this general area.

I'm primarily a Linux user, and after that a bit of Mac OS. I run Windows for exactly one program at work. But with Win 8, I got interested in Microsoft again, started paying attention, signed up for a few things. (I even used a Win 7 phone for several months.)

I'm impressed by how Windows integrates things, using my log-on email. I rely on Gmail and Google Drive, but have been impressed by SkyDrive and outlook.com.

Anyway, I signed up for an outlook.com email address, and decided I wanted to get rid of the ads, which feel more obtrusive to me than do their Gmail counterparts.

But when I went to give Microsoft $20 of my money to make the ads go away for a year, I got what was to me an inscrutable error message, demanding that I have a live ID and an open inbox, and that if the message persists, I should report it.

Somehow, foolishly, I thought that actually having the email address meant that I was registered or acknowledged by the Microsoft system. Apparently not.

Except...the next day, logging in from my office, the same exact run at Microsoft worked.

No big thing, but for someone who has gotten used to systems that are pretty seamless - Google has never made me jump through any hoop even remotely similar to that one - it's frustrating. It's like there's a shiny new face on Microsoft, but the old Soviet Union-style bureaucracy is just below the surface.

My only other point is this: for those of us who are primarily personal users of Outlook, SkyDrive, various Win 8 apps, etc., it would be nice if there were a way to pay a modest flat fee each year to get rid of all the advertising at once, along with whatever other bonuses Microsoft could include. A '$50 gets you increased mail storage, some extra SkyDrive space and no ads' would be worth it to me.

Paul, when I set-up WIN8 I only kept the DESKTOP, GAMES, NEWS, and STORE apps, populating the startscreen with stuff I actually use , I was wondering which ones you actually kept for your own use?

I have always been baffled at Microsoft's lack of cross platform coherency. It improved last year with the expansion of metro, but there is (as always) a long way to go until the Windows ecosystem is appealing as a whole. It always gets almost there and then a new device or version of Windows happens.

I have to agree on the Xbox apps - those things are just not ready for prime time, or day time or even that overnight daypart when pretty much nobody watches. It is somewhat baffling trying to figure out how Microsoft means for us to use them. The choice of the weird pop-up window when you select artists is odd and doesn't seem that user friendly. The bigger pain though comes in the vidieo section - how many hundreds of yards of scrolling do we have to do to get through various offerings? Its crazy! The whole things is decidedly unfriendly and not fun...and managing an extensive collection is godawful.

The store doesn't drive me crazy but I can understand people's feedback on the endless tiling. I'd be curious how apps at the far right hand side of the store do in terms of sales/downloads. I don't see the store layout as the worst thing in the world but it doesn't really make me want to explore either.

And 100% agree on the ads issue. I would love to be able to pay once to get rid of ads for the year or however long.

I agree with you 110% that the starting point should be Windows Phone apps. In fact I would go much farther than mere feature compatibility.

Since Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT share a common core, and run on the same ARM processors, I think the built in apps should be identical right down to the source code level -- they should be develop once run anywhere apps. At the recent Build conference MS highlighted the things needing to be changed from one environment to another (primarily in the XAML code). These shouldn't exist. MS should modify Visual Studio to provide additional tooling so that dev once run anywhere is the norm.

There should then just be one app store for phones, devices, and PCs just like there are for the Google Play and Amazon app stores.

Paul, what is the status of Outlook like Tasks in Windows 8 and RT? Any word on this feature?