That's exactly what they've done. Mesh became the SkyDrive desktop app. It lets you get remote access to your PC (either files or remote desktop), as well as sync with the cloud.
I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new design works really poorly with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the web page becomes really really small. (I'm not usually one to complain just because things changed, I didn't like the mystery meat icons either, but I can get over something trivial like that.) It just doesn't work.
I couldn't really figure out where else to go, but OWA 2010 doesn't have these problems, so I went to Office 365 for my own domain (and forwarded Gmail). I never thought I'd pay for email but considering how vital mail is, having real support is a nice piece of mind.
I remember how awesome webmail seemed in 2003 (when I switched from Outlook to Gmail), but now that I've gone back to Outlook, I see all the awesome stuff that I was missing. This is really not to credit Outlook though, I'm sure Gmail (threading) influenced them greatly in the past 8 years. I know you can just use Outlook+Gmail, but sadly IMAP isn't nearly as good as Exchange.
Since there is no mention of Firefox 'Metro Style' for Windows 8, should one gather that it won't happen during 2012? I realize they just announced that they're starting it, but I assumed it would come sometime around the launch of Windows 8.
There's an overshoot buffer. Move past the corner and then slide back to invoke the tip in the bottom left. For the charms, move past and then swing your mouse up into the middle. Kind of like a U shape.
Bob at home is probably not upgrading his 5-year-old computer to Windows 8. Upgrades are something like 10% of all Windows PC's. It's common in the tech world to upgrade, but for most people, a PC is a PC and it comes with software for its lifetime.
Actually, you can Ctrl+Shift+Click anywhere on the Start menu in Windows 7 to get this menu, not just the power button. In Windows 8, it was also added to the ctrl+shift+click menu on the taskbar as well.
Ctrl+Shift+Click (and sometimes just Shift+Click) works all over Windows Explorer to provide extra context menu options. For example if you Shift+Click on a jumplist program item, you'll get more options on that menu as well (Run as admin (Ctrl+Shift+Click on the taskbar icon to invoke this as well)).
There's even more new in Win8 (I don't have Win7 handy to test on, not sure if these were in there too): Shift+Right-cclick will give you 'Open in new process' and 'Open command window here.'
Edit: Thanks SquareWheel - you're right only Shift is needed for 'Open Command window here' and some other options.
I can't believe you're being downvoted, this is exactly why progressive enhancement can't be abandoned. As someone with poor vision, I've found most of the crap HN thinks is 'cute' to be completely unusable. The modern web is a huge pain to use, it was actually /better/ in 2005 than it is now, from a usability perspective. This is very scary, considering the renewed emphasis on good UI/UX.
The saving grace is that the 2012 internet has excellent mobile sites (they suck on mobile with user-scalable=0 or maximum-scale=1, but on a desktop browser things flow excellently).
Sadly you're sane understanding doesn't jive with the HN echo chamber, but you're spot-on. The web is more than just tech demos.
I don't believe the iOS sandboxing would allow for V8, though. Isn't this the same problem as "my third party app WebView is slow because it doesn't support Javascript JIT"?
This is what I'm getting at. I don't believe most people are so laser-focused on a single one task that they have nothing else to do but read HN. If you have one and only one thing to do, you still might as well attempt to complete some facet of it. If you really can't find things to fill your time, perhaps you have a different problem. I don't see how reading HN is less frustrating than reading documents. It sure makes a nice excuse, but it's nothing more than an excuse to waste time.
Maybe I don't get it since I have a BigCorp job, but I've always got tons of little things I can do, if/when I want to. That sure seems like significantly better use of the companies time. Making the argument that "well this shouldn't happen!" is hardly solving any problem.
Interruptions are a fact of life, embrace them when they can't be avoided.
We all know that context switching is bad, and it's tough to switch so much, but did Ed really have nothing else to do? He seems bothered by what the boss was asking him, yet he blows most of the 3hrs not working on what he said he needed to work on originally? That just doesn't add up to me.
I get the point, and it's definitely true, but I spend those idle minutes doing mail and other short tasks. I don't see how one can justify "well I'm waiting for you so I'll just not work for a while."
Is this common outside of the computing industry? What do other people do in their 'in between' time?
I'd never searched anything like this before, and I'm not using the Bing bar or anything. I didn't even try it in Google first (I did try it after, obviously)
http://serverfault.com/a/23684