I got this question in my inbox after I wrote and posted this article about Windows 9 allegedly being under development:
Hello. I was wondering why you think that Windows 8 failed the way it has?
Thanks!
Thanks for the question. Here’s my $0.02 worth. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments section.
With Windows 8, Microsoft in a massive way changed the desktop environment that everyone who has used a Windows PC since 1995 understood how it worked. It’s got two modes. A quasi-desktop mode that is sort of like the Windows that everyone on planet Earth is used to, and the Metro user interface mode with the tiled interface that you find in the Surface tablets and Windows 8 Phones. The problem is that neither mode is good and you can’t switch between the two easily. Not to mention that the OS will sometimes make the decision to switch between the two on a whim. That can and will drive you nuts after a while. In short they created an OS designed around tablets and then put it on desktops and laptops. What I think they were trying to do was to get the desktop OS to drive tablet and smartphone sales seeing as they had similar user interfaces. But it clearly hasn’t resonated with users.
On top of that, they tried to introduce the sort of walled garden that we’ve seen with Apple by having their version of the App Store. They wanted the same thing Apple has with iOS (and to a lesser degree, OS X) where they want a cut of all sales and the ability to dictate what can be installed. That too doesn’t seem to be resonating with users.
Net result? All of that ended up being a #fail. Nobody is buying Windows 8 computers (or if they are, they’re downgrading them to Windows 7 as all of my corporate customers are) and Surface tablets and Windows 8 Phones aren’t exactly setting the world on fire. Thus it will be interesting to see what Microsoft does to fix all of this.
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This entry was posted on January 14, 2014 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hey IT Nerd! Why Do You Think Windows 8 Failed?
I got this question in my inbox after I wrote and posted this article about Windows 9 allegedly being under development:
Hello. I was wondering why you think that Windows 8 failed the way it has?
Thanks!
Thanks for the question. Here’s my $0.02 worth. Feel free to agree or disagree in the comments section.
With Windows 8, Microsoft in a massive way changed the desktop environment that everyone who has used a Windows PC since 1995 understood how it worked. It’s got two modes. A quasi-desktop mode that is sort of like the Windows that everyone on planet Earth is used to, and the Metro user interface mode with the tiled interface that you find in the Surface tablets and Windows 8 Phones. The problem is that neither mode is good and you can’t switch between the two easily. Not to mention that the OS will sometimes make the decision to switch between the two on a whim. That can and will drive you nuts after a while. In short they created an OS designed around tablets and then put it on desktops and laptops. What I think they were trying to do was to get the desktop OS to drive tablet and smartphone sales seeing as they had similar user interfaces. But it clearly hasn’t resonated with users.
On top of that, they tried to introduce the sort of walled garden that we’ve seen with Apple by having their version of the App Store. They wanted the same thing Apple has with iOS (and to a lesser degree, OS X) where they want a cut of all sales and the ability to dictate what can be installed. That too doesn’t seem to be resonating with users.
Net result? All of that ended up being a #fail. Nobody is buying Windows 8 computers (or if they are, they’re downgrading them to Windows 7 as all of my corporate customers are) and Surface tablets and Windows 8 Phones aren’t exactly setting the world on fire. Thus it will be interesting to see what Microsoft does to fix all of this.
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This entry was posted on January 14, 2014 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.