I predicted that Windows 8
would be dead on arrival last year, but it’s flopping even more than I thought
it would be. So, why has Windows 8 been such a failure? Here’s my list:
1. Metro, aka Modern: An ugly, useless interface.
I said it before, I’ll say it
again: Metro, or whatever you want to call it, may make an OK tablet interface,
but it’s ugly and useless on the desktop. It requires users to forget
everything they ever learned about Windows and learn an entirely new way of
doing things for no real reason. To quote a popularly held opinion, Metro is
“awful.”
True, you can use a more
traditional Windows interface, but you know what would have been a lot better?
If Microsoft had just kept the Windows 7 Aero interface for the desktop version
of Windows 8 and give up this idea that the Metro touch-friendly interface is
for every device.
2. Windows 8 brought nothing innovative to the desktop.
Can you tell me one new thing
that Windows 8 brought to the desktop that was truly innovative? Exciting?
Engaging? I can’t. Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7, but that’s about it –
and that dual interface mess makes it slower for practical purposes.
3. Developers hate it.
As a developer, I can
personally vouch that Windows 8 is not winning any awards with developers /
programmers. Even I could have told you programmers wouldn’t like throwing out
their hard-won .NET, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows
Presentation Foundation (WPF) expertise to work natively on Windows 8. Gabe
Newell, co-founder and managing director of video game company Valve, said it
best: “Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.” He then
started moving his Steam game empire to Linux.
4. Legacy Windows 7 users aren’t moving.
We saw this happen before with
Vista and XP. Then, as now, the new operating system – Vista – was not better
than the old operating system – XP – so very few people moved to it. We’re
seeing it again now. I even witnessed someone in Future shop become irate when
he was informed he couldn’t buy a PC with Windows 7, and refused to purchase a
PC with Windows 8.
In addition, in an economy
that’s still not moving forward quickly, who really wants to move from
tried-and-true Windows 7 to new, expensive Windows 8 PCs? As Sterne Agee
analyst Shaw Wu observed, the $500 to $1200 price tags slapped on Windows 8
hardware makes it “uncompetitive” in a world where people want iPads and
Android tablets.
5. Tablet, smartphone, and desktop competition.
If you are going to buy a new
computing device in 2013, chances are it’s going to be an Apple iPad, an
inexpensive Android tablet, or a Chromebook. The PC desktop isn’t dead, but
it’s not very profitable either – and Windows 8 isn’t helping PC sales.
Microsoft has to know this. If
Microsoft does indeed start selling, or rather renting, Microsoft Office for
iPad, you’ll know they’ve seen the light. Microsoft’s future then will not lie
in operating system and application sales, but in services.
And Windows 8? Like Vista
before it, Microsoft will re-release an older version of Windows, Windows 7
this time instead of XP, and start talking about wonderful Windows Blue, the
next version of Windows, will be.
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