Microsoft "mea culpa" on Windows 8 UI...

[SoonerDave]

Microsoft is announcing a U-turn on its controversial Windows 8 UI, as noted in Microsoft prepares U-turn on Windows 8 - CNN.com. The OS maker is going to release an update to Win8 later this year to correct "key aspects" of how the OS is used.

This is one of several news articles appearing on various sites confirming what many have suspected - that MS is admitting a huge tactical error in forcing the touch-centric Metro-monikered interface on keyboard-and-mouse oriented PC's. The UI problem is already being compared in many circles as one of the biggest marketing blunders by a major American corporation since New Coke some three decades ago.

The revision to the OS that will apparently restore at least some substantial measure of the traditional desktop interface is due to be released in what was termed an "undated" OS update in the coming weeks.

Personally, I am delighted to see this happen. Forcing the Metro (although they don't call it that "officially" anymore) interface on a keyboard PC was about as dense a notion as it would be to force a keyboard-driven interface on the XBOX. Ballmer will likely take a hit for the failure.

Given the market's march toward tablets, the UI tweak may not do much to stem the drop in PC sales..

[MikeLucky]

Cue Sweet Brown...

Thank you LORD JESUS... Tiles on my PC? Ain't nobody got time for that!

[jerrywall]

I never understood the 8 hate. I use is and like it, and so does my wife, who's nowhere as computer savvy as me. I use/view the metro view as an enhanced start menu. I live in desktop mode, but when I need to launch something, I hit the windows key, type a couple of letters, and hit enter to launch. Much the same way I used the start button in windows 7. Add in the improved stability, and the way it makes use of the screen, and I like it.

I'll admit, I did switch to a touchpad mouse, as well, and it really, REALLY, works well with that. The gestures are intuitive, and I don't have the hand cramps I used to.

[MikeLucky]

I never understood the 8 hate. I use is and like it, and so does my wife, who's nowhere as computer savvy as me. I use/view the metro view as an enhanced start menu. I live in desktop mode, but when I need to launch something, I hit the windows key, type a couple of letters, and hit enter to launch. Much the same way I used the start button in windows 7. Add in the improved stability, and the way it makes use of the screen, and I like it.

I'll admit, I did switch to a touchpad mouse, as well, and it really, REALLY, works well with that. The gestures are intuitive, and I don't have the hand cramps I used to.

I agree that it's really not any different... the main problem is that very few people utilized Windows in the way you described. And, with Windows 8 they were all forced to.

Really, to me, this boils down to a bad decision on the part of Microsoft. It wouldn't have taken any extra effort or resources to build it the way they did and offer a "classic" mode as always. Feel free to advertise and market towards the new UI all you want. But, instead they chose the "round peg, square hole" approach and said "you have no choice." THAT is their failure in my eyes.

[venture]

I'm still holding back on installing it. I will probably finally give in with this news. Biggest hit to me right now is I can't design in VS2012 using any of the metro themes without having Win 8 running. Which is dumb, but whatever. :-P

They should have done a more gradual move to the new interface. Gradual transition.

Windows 3.1x to Windows 95 was some what gradual. You got rid of the DOS interaction on startup (unless Windows was set to autostart). However much of the rest of the interface was the same. Win 95 just brought in the start menu and toolbar but everything else was still there should people want it.

Now I am using Server 2012 on another box which has the metro theme, so I'm not completely sheltered from it.

[kelroy55]

I still think XP was the best one so far.

[SoonerDave]

I'm still holding back on installing it. I will probably finally give in with this news. Biggest hit to me right now is I can't design in VS2012 using any of the metro themes without having Win 8 running. Which is dumb, but whatever. :-P

They should have done a more gradual move to the new interface. Gradual transition.

Windows 3.1x to Windows 95 was some what gradual. You got rid of the DOS interaction on startup (unless Windows was set to autostart). However much of the rest of the interface was the same. Win 95 just brought in the start menu and toolbar but everything else was still there should people want it.

Now I am using Server 2012 on another box which has the metro theme, so I'm not completely sheltered from it.

We've gotten so frustrated with the bugs and glitches in VS2012 that we've come *that* close to rolling back to VS2010 more than once, particularly in the project types VS2012 no longer supports (and those issues have exactly nothing to do with the UI). As much as VS2010 seemed a pretty nice, mature, tested development product, VS2012 seems a real kluge.

[venture]

We've gotten so frustrated with the bugs and glitches in VS2012 that we've come *that* close to rolling back to VS2010 more than once, particularly in the project types VS2012 no longer supports (and those issues have exactly nothing to do with the UI). As much as VS2010 seemed a pretty nice, mature, tested development product, VS2012 seems a real kluge.

I haven't had too many issues with it, but I mainly just deal with C# programming so the projects I'm working on aren't all that intensive. I did like 2010 a lot but so far not too many issues with 2012.

[SoonerDave]

....But, instead they chose the "round peg, square hole" approach and said "you have no choice." THAT is their failure in my eyes.

Bingo.

This was a marketing mistake born of an attitude rooted in the last twenty years of Microsoft-dominated computing - "We're MS, we can force you to update."

The rest of the world finally said, "No, you can't."

[venture]

I still think XP was the best one so far.

XP was pretty solid. Worked out a lot of the kinks of 95, 98 and that travesty ME. Vista was garbage. Windows 7 has done pretty well as well, IMO.

[MadMonk]

Cue Sweet Brown... Thank you LORD JESUS... Tiles on my PC? Ain't nobody got time for that!

I want the like button to work so much for this post.

I'm glad they are tweaking Win8. I really like the speed and stability of this release, but I just couldn't stand the Metro interface on a PC or non-touchscreen laptop. Now, if they will just apply some interface tweaks to Server 2012, I'll be a much happier IT guy.

[Stew]

Why in the world is Steve Balmer still in charge? He has to be one of the worst and most shortsighted CEO's ever. Good grief he predicted the iPhone would fail and saw no use for the iPad. When is the last time Microsoft dazzled anybody with any of their offerings aside from the Xbox which was more of a blind squirrel finding an acorn than innovation.

What a waste.

[SoonerDave]

Why in the world is Steve Balmer still in charge? He has to be one of the worst and most shortsighted CEO's ever. Good grief he predicted the iPhone would fail and saw no use for the iPad. When is the last time Microsoft dazzled anybody with any of their offerings aside from the Xbox which was more of a blind squirrel finding an acorn than innovation.

What a waste.

A few things come to mind on this note....

First, I don't think Microsoft has ever been thought of as a richly innovative company. Second, Ballmer is going to take a hit for the Win8 fiasco, but the real result won't be seen until the "end game" of the Surface RT and "Windows Blue" is realized over the rest of the year. I don't think either of those can gain the traction MS wants them to have. Third, keep in mind that even Bill Gates is deluded into thinking that the world is going to drop their iPads and Android tabs to go back to PC devices. I realize he's not "in the company" anymore, but its reflective of the world view MS (and that means Ballmer) still possesses.

If the Surface tablet and Windows Blue don't do as well as expected, it may well be the end for Ballmer. In all honesty, a debacle like the Win8 UI (which in my view was a pointless and completely avoidable mistake) should be enough to cost him his job, but it probably won't. At least not immediately. It would have been one thing had MS made a gamble on something really technically relevant, but the dreaded Flyin' Purple Tile Interface sure wasn't that. If MS had tied it to something with a legitimate value proposition, it might have written a different story.....

[jerrywall]

100 million sold W8 licenses probably buy him plenty of leeway.

[venture]

I was going to say Google should just take them over and be done with it, but in reality Google is more or less moving to make them irrelevant. At least Google seems to still have that innovative bug in them that makes them continue to develop crazy new things.

[venture]

100 million sold W8 licenses probably buy him plenty of leeway.

It's easy to sell a flashy new product that is overhyped, when you have a "no returns allowed" policy that blocks anything from coming back.

[jerrywall]

Regardless, from a board perspective they see numbers and dollars.

[SoonerDave]

100 million sold W8 licenses probably buy him plenty of leeway.

Yeah, hoping that maybe half of them represent actual users rather than OEM bulk licenses on products getting dusty in warehouses somewhere. I'm sure that's what Ballmer is hoping, while simultaneously trying to prevent everyone else in the tech world from watching his company turn tail and fix this pointless UI issue that was entirely of his own doing. This isn't about raw license sales. Its about Microsoft's position in the market going forward. Right now, they're dealing with the least relevance they've had since the dawn of the PC era. And they don't quite know what to do when the world doesn't say "How high?" when MS says "Jump." This is their first taste of that particular bitter pill.

Again, this isn't about the Win 8 UI per se. It's about the tactic used to introduce it. He could have leveraged this as a great nuanced transition effort for MS, but chose instead to make it a hammer. The hammer ended up hitting him on the foot.

I think the media observation likening this to New Coke is very apt. Doesn't matter if tech types like you or me "like" the new UI, its about how the market perceives it, and the market has perceived it and the method it was introduced negatively.

[Stew]

It's easy to sell a flashy new product that is overhyped, when you have a "no returns allowed" policy that blocks anything from coming back.

Don't most new PC's sold come with a windows license. I'd think the question is how do the license numbers this year stack up with previous years. I have no reference to gauge if that is a good number or not. Also, on its roll out they were practically giving the upgrades away.

[jerrywall]

Windows XP Slow To Take Hold

Users cling to old Microsoft operating systems - CNET News

I just laugh that up thread we have folks talking about how great XP is. The reaction to XP and the changes in it were exactly, if not worse, as the windows 8 reception.

The fact of the matter is, whenever MS introduces a major change to their OS, people lose their sh*t about it. And usually, after one or two patches/service packs, people get used to the system, and start to like it, and then they go nuts and hold petitions "Save XP" and resist changing to the next thing. We'll have to see what the long term results are.

As for comparing, the 100 million licenses is the same as 7 was in it's life cycle at this point. So take that for whatever it's worth.

[SoonerDave]

I was going to say Google should just take them over and be done with it, but in reality Google is more or less moving to make them irrelevant. At least Google seems to still have that innovative bug in them that makes them continue to develop crazy new things.

Saw an article just the other day that suggested for the first time there was tangible evidence in the market that Google's apps (GoogleDocs) were adversely affecting MS Office sales. That's why Windows 8 license sale numbers mean next to nothing in this case; Office is the cash cow, and if someone is really starting to threaten it, all the Purple Flyin' Tiles in the world aren't gonna fix it. That you've now had to go back and make the Win 8 interface usable to, well, the masses, shows that you're (way) out of touch with your market.

[bchris02]

I never understood the 8 hate. I use is and like it, and so does my wife, who's nowhere as computer savvy as me. I use/view the metro view as an enhanced start menu. I live in desktop mode, but when I need to launch something, I hit the windows key, type a couple of letters, and hit enter to launch. Much the same way I used the start button in windows 7. Add in the improved stability, and the way it makes use of the screen, and I like it.

I'll admit, I did switch to a touchpad mouse, as well, and it really, REALLY, works well with that. The gestures are intuitive, and I don't have the hand cramps I used to.

Even Vista had its fanboys.

[venture]

Don't most new PC's sold come with a windows license. I'd think the question is how do the license numbers this year stack up with previous years. I have no reference to gauge if that is a good number or not. Also, on its roll out they were practically giving the upgrades away.

Yes. Though many OEMs are still offering Win7 to consumers (which is rare, for business it is normal) so people aren't forced into it. Of course we are also seeing massive drops in new PC sales. HP is getting absolutely destroyed right now in the consumer market.

Windows XP Slow To Take Hold

Users cling to old Microsoft operating systems - CNET News

I just laugh that up thread we have folks talking about how great XP is. The reaction to XP and the changes in it were exactly, if not worse, as the windows 8 reception.

The fact of the matter is, whenever MS introduces a major change to their OS, people lose their sh*t about it. And usually, after one or two patches/service packs, people get used to the system, and start to like it, and then they go nuts and hold petitions "Save XP" and resist changing to the next thing. We'll have to see what the long term results are.

As for comparing, the 100 million licenses is the same as 7 was in it's life cycle at this point. So take that for whatever it's worth.

By the time XP hit SP1 and especially SP2, it was a very stable OS to the point that people bypassed Vista completely.

Saw an article just the other day that suggested for the first time there was tangible evidence in the market that Google's apps (GoogleDocs) were adversely affecting MS Office sales. That's why Windows 8 license sale numbers mean next to nothing in this case; Office is the cash cow, and if someone is really starting to threaten it, all the Purple Flyin' Tiles in the world aren't gonna fix it. That you've now had to go back and make the Win 8 interface usable to, well, the masses, shows that you're (way) out of touch with your market.

Exactly. Office is where their money was and changing the model (in some respects) to offer Office 365 and charge monthly fees for it shows they are losing their position. Though I will say I enjoy Excel 2013. You actual get workbooks to open in multiple windows! Only took 20+ years. Outlook on the other hand is terrible.

[SoonerDave]

Yes. Though many OEMs are still offering Win7 to consumers (which is rare, for business it is normal) so people aren't forced into it. Of course we are also seeing massive drops in new PC sales. HP is getting absolutely destroyed right now in the consumer market.

HP tied its fortunes to Windows 8. The fact that they really are getting crushed right now is a testimony to what "new license sales" don't tell about the relative health of the broader PC market.

By the time XP hit SP1 and especially SP2, it was a very stable OS to the point that people bypassed Vista completely.

Vista had to be one of the oddest ducks MS has ever released this side of Bob. Not even close to ready for prime time, part of me wondered if it was some macabre test of MS' ability to shove any piece of junk out the door and make people think they should get it

I will say that I think Vista was technically much further behind the eight-ball than Win 8. Vista was a glitchy, buggy mess, whereas Win 8's failure was as much in marketing decisions as anything else.