Can Microsoft Afford To Lose With Windows 8?

snydeq writes with the opinion that Microsoft can afford Windows 8 failing on the desktop. From the article: "Windows 8 is an experiment that may well fail, but Microsoft will cull invaluable feedback for Windows 9 in the process, long before Windows 7 runs out of gas, writes InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp. 'Can Microsoft really afford to alienate one of its biggest market segments for a whole product cycle? In a word: Yes. In fact, doing something this risky might well be vital to Microsoft's survival,' Yegulalp writes. 'Microsoft needs to gamble, and right now might well be the best time for the company to do it. The company needs to learn from its mistakes as quickly and nimbly as they can — and then turn around and make Windows 9 exceed all of our expectations.'" Microsoft has managed to weather several OS flops (Windows Me anyone?) thanks to their domination of the market, but with Android gadgets and iPhones becoming pervasive can they pull it off again?

Comments

Cycles

[Vahokif]

This has happened before, and it will happen again.

Re:Cycles

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is their MO. They make a whole ton of breaking changes every-other-generation, and then make a decent product for the next generation. My parents' computers over the last 15 years or so: Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows Vista (the unstable versions). The good versions have been Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 7. Windows 8 is on track to be terrible.

Re:Cycles

[datavirtue]

Whatever....we just need a decent file system. The data is getting out of control. Hundreds of thousands of files everywhere, and that is just on my home PC. We need full-blown customizable meta-tagging (with default templates for certain types of files) on data with easy search methods. We also need an easy way to force network users to to fill in certain meta-data (with logging and reporting) or no savey.

Re:Cycles

[arth1]

Don't forget Windows 2000, which many preferred over XP because of its stability and lack of bells and whistles bogging it down.
It may not have been a big consumer hit, because there never were any cheaper "home" versions. But it was a big hit for businesses and power users.

Nor NT4, which was a workhorse for a long time.

I'd include Windows 3.11 too, which, crappy as it was, didn't have the stability problems of 95, and was thus used well beyond its EOL.

Re:Cycles

[hairyfeet]

Preach brother! When i saw the demo of WinFS I was like "Hell yeah! Finally! Woo hoo!" so naturally it got cut. The new search in Win 7 is nice but when you saw what they were going for with WinFS...wow. Imagine having the OS scan all your videos and note details about them so that you could find any picture or video by just typing in a detail about what's in it. If the OS couldn't make heads or tails or wasn't sure on initial scan it would just ask you some questions and put your answers in the DB, just too damned cool.

As for TFA? Lets cut through the bullshit, okay? this don't have a damned thing to do with innovating shit, it has to do with MSFT getting bitch slapped across mobile by Google and Apple and they are now trying to throw a Hail Mary that has the stench of fail written all over it. Anybody remember WinMo? anybody remember their stupidity of putting a little teeny tiny desktop on it, complete with start button? well some PHB decided that since that was a failwhale the answer wasn't to keep mobile and desktop separate, you know, like those companies that are smacking the shit out of them? Nope the bright idea is jam the smartphone UI, with its full screen one at a time little fart apps crap and all, jam that shit right onto the desktop, so "Hey they'll get stuck with it and when they learn the WinPhone way they'll buy our ARM phones and tablets!" except of course they WON'T buy MSFT phones and tablets as there is no damned point. People buy Windows to run windows programs which don't run on ARM. MSFT made its bed with Wintel and now they are stuck lying in it. Hell at this point the smarter move would be to release a phone OS called metro that didn't have the words Microsoft or Windows anywhere near it!

As for why you are seeing articles like this? Its called damage control. it looks like some are actually getting through to some of the PHBs that jamming a smartphone onto a desktop, which is the most lamebrained idea to come out of MSFT since Bob, miiiight not be such a good idea, hence the damage control. they are too far along now to stop without looking like fools so rather than admit they fucked up they are gonna shat it out and then start on win 9 which people will actually buy. Mark my words the OEMs get downgrade rights almost from the start if not the very release day, Wintab tablets will end up on Woot! for touchpad firesale prices, and MSFT will either have to spin off mobile or accept the fact nobody wants windows on ARM. Without Wintel they simply don't have the apps, they don't have the support of the devs, they don't have the network effect of millions of units already in people's hands. in other words they sat on their asses too long and missed the mobile boat.

Re:Cycles

[TheLink]

I think Microsoft will survive. The desktop is here to stay (for at least for a decade).

And the options are:
a) Windows 8
b) Windows 7
c) OS X
d) Desktop Linux

Most corporations will skip Windows 8 just like they skipped Vista. As long as Microsoft doesn't go nuts and stop selling Windows 7, people will continue to use Windows 7.

OS X is great for some people (15-20%?), but so far at least in my office more people prefer Windows 7. To the extent of installing it on their MacBooks! Other people - my friend installed Windows 7 on his Mac too! As for me, I've got a Mac on my desk and I use it mainly via ssh. OS X's GUI doesn't suit my workflow, I'm the sort of person who keeps 30+ windows open at work.

If your tastes are in line with "Steve Jobs and Team Apple" then OS X is great, wonderful even, otherwise in their opinion "you're holding it wrong" or something.

In contrast if you don't like the new Windows 7 interface you can go back to "classic mode" (not completely nowadays though).

Desktop Linux is a sad joke. The things the developers do sometimes make me wonder if they are paid by Microsoft to sabotage Desktop Linux! Vista and Windows 8 would have been great opportunities for Desktop Linux to gain marketshare in the corporate world. But time and time again they keep coming up with stuff that makes Microsoft's crap look good - just look at masses of disappointed people here being "forced" to switch distros. How long did it take for the Desktop Linux "saboteurs" to get even fundamental stuff like sound working? I half expect someone to chime in that it still doesn't work!

Re:Cycles

[Green Salad]

With Windows ME, there were few viable (compatible) alternatives, just Win98 and Win2000. That is no longer true and now I see switching.

When MS-Office switched to the ribbon interface and killed off our productivity, our agency's CIO took a hard look at Google's subscription services for email and Docs for office apps. It took a few years, but now everyone is using g-mail and collaborating under google docs. We're shipping fewer documents around in email and now we're in the habit of just granting permissions to the documents rather then sending them.

Now that we've used docs and g-mail, I'm realizing how poorly MS-Office apps integrate and how distracting their interfaces can be. When I share a doc, the enterprise-subscription-version of Google docs suggests names based on my organization and g-mail correspondence. Somehow, I just don't see Microsoft doing something that elegantly. I expect to have turn off a bunch of silly defaults and play whack a mole with pop-up animated notifications every few seconds, interrupting my thoughts to tell me another piece of spam has hit my inbox. Would I like to send a return receipt to the spammer right now?

The point is, there's actually decent competition and it doesn't have to be a similar offering, it just has to frustrate your users less and absorb their existing repository of documents easily. We're very deadline and speed-oriented. 90% of my co-workers don't care about new features, or want a new interface to learn. They just want to get stuff done quickly without a lot of fuss. Google offered that while making email searching much more powerful than the Outlook/Exchange equivalent.

Our younger-generation workers are already familiar with g-mail and Google docs because it was free. Outlook/Exchange/bing is comparatively complex to the generation that grew up with minimalist Google products.

To take root, Windows 8 had better be simpler than Android to be productive in and configure. If not, Windows will alienate us as easily as they did with the ribbon interface in introducing us to Google docs and helping us reduce our (Windows) file servers in favor of hosted apps and storage.

Windows ME?

[rbowen]

I read every day about how Apple has won and everyone had an android phone, but in the real world, the people who say "what's slashdot?" also don't remember Windows ME or Microsoft Bob. And a computer is a Windows machine and you write Word docs, and you "make a PowerPoint" for a presentation.

Sure, people complain about Windows, but macs are just too weird and, after all, it's just a tool.

At least in this school district, they've trained another generation who thinks that computer == Windows.

Re:They alienated a major sector before

[Spad]

I don't know, Windows 8 is one hell of an interface shift from Windows 7; if you think you had trouble with users getting lost when you switched to Office 2007 with the Ribbon, just wait until you take away their start menu and their desktop.

Re:They've pushed the Trendy boat out too far now

[DrgnDancer]

They're trying to copy Apple's use of a partial mobile UI in places on Lion and Mountain Lion. The big difference is that Apple realized most of their core users wouldn't want to use a Mobile style UI most of the time, so they basically made it a thing that you could do, but not the default. Even then a lot of people don't really see the point. I can't say that I've ever used Mission Control, and I'm honestly a bit miffed that they sacrificed my virtual desktops to put it in. Still, it's not much of annoyance (beyond the loss of virtual desktops) that's it's there, since I don't have to use it. Microsoft went the step further (and I think the step to far) of making Metro the default UI. Worse, you can't every really entirely get a "classic" UI. You can run the desktop as an app, but from what I've seen it almost feels like a virtual machine or remote desktop deal. You almost feel like you're not running on the local hardware.

They go out of their way to show you that you're "supposed" to be using Metro. The idea seems pretty insane to me.

Re:The "Tick, Tock" cycle of design

[SlashV]

Except Win 2000 wasn't a Tock, Maybe you meant Me?

Just tried Windows 8 Server a few hours ago

[bertok]

I figured that I'd just do what I did with Vista, and run the server edition of Windows 8 instead of the consumer edition, so that I can have all the new capabilities without the tablet UI.

No such luck.

I ran up the beta and got a few things up and running on it, and it's just mind-blowing to experience how horrendously unusable it is first hand. This is the server edition, mind you, and it had animations, things sliding around, the start menu is gone, and some notification popped up that said something like "tap here to view details". Tap? On a server? Are you kidding me? Everything is a tablet now?

The strangest thing is that the PowerShell 3 command line is so fantastically good* that I almost don't care that they've fucked up the GUI, but for most people any improvements are going to be swamped by the atrocious user interface.

They've stuffed up everything. Things like the new Server Manager look pretty, but it does odd things like adding new menu items after a delay. After clicking some item like a server role, at first maybe only three or four menu items would be shown, so you think, ah well, nothing I can do here... and then after two seconds more menu items appear out of nowhere. If you're like me and click fast, you can miss critical things because some idiot decided to lather on the WinRT asynchronous APIs without any thought to the impact on usability. It's one thing if a placeholder changes after a delay, but to keep structure hidden until an arbitrary delay is a huge design flaw. And why the fuck is it asynchronous in the first place, anyway? Why aren't menu items known ahead of time, like you know... in all other software ever made by man?

Everything has cute tiles now, none of which are big enough to show their text content, so you find yourself having to choose between "Active Direct...", "Active Direct...", or "Active Direct...". It doesn't help that the icons are all cool and Metro and lack distinguishing characteristics.

I love the nested scrollbars, where the horizontal and vertical scrollbars are attached to two different controls with different sizes, where one of them can be used to scroll the other scrollbar into an invisible location.

Of course, everybody has covered the idiocy of Microsoft deciding to eliminate the Start menu, but on Windows Server it's particularly bad because there's a vaguely similar looking icon in its place! If you don't click exactly in the corner of the screen, you launch Server Manager instead, which is not a lightweight app, and can take a while to launch even on an SSD. Expect to learn quickly from your mistakes, because you'll be punished for making them. A lot.

I still haven't figured out how to quickly get a list of all start menu items, without first searching for something and then erasing the search term so that everything matches. I'm sure there's a better way, but it's not obvious to me.

Some of these things might be a bit nitpicky, but from what I've seen the flaws are pervasive, and it's a bad sign that even the most commonly used GUI screens have glaring usability problems despite having what appears to be final layout and artwork.

It's one thing to grumble and have to get used to something new and different if it's better, but it's a whole different story when I'm forced to get used to something that is not only objectively worse, but also totally inappropriate for the type of product: "tap here" on Windows Server Datacenter Edition tells you everything you need to know about Microsoft's myopic vision.

*) While they've added some impressive features to PowerShell 3, they've fixed none of the bugs. For example, (Get-ADUser "invalidusername" -EA SilentlyContinue) still throws an exception even though it was told to fail silently. This bug affects a lot of different things and was reported to Microsoft back when PowerShell 2 was still beta! I'm going to whip my crystal ball out and predict that this bug will not get fixed until, lets say, PowerShell 5 Service Pack 2, at which point nobody will care because we'll all be using Apple computers and Google cloud services instead.

Re:The "Tick, Tock" cycle of design

[Theophany]

I think you mean ME was a crock, not a tock.