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Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft
CWmike writes with this excerpt from Computerworld: "Steven Sinofsky, the executive in charge of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and the driving force behind the new OS, is leaving the company effective immediately, Microsoft announced late Monday. Sinofsky was also the public face for Windows 8 and its new Metro interface, posting constant updates in a Windows 8 blog that charted its development. His last post, fittingly, was entitled 'Updating Windows 8 for General Availability.' The OS was officially launched at the end of last month. According to the All Things D blog, there was growing tension between Sinofsky and other members of the Microsoft executive team, who didn't see him as enough of a team player. But Microsoft's official position is that the decision was a mutual one. Sinofsky had only good things to say about his former employer." Also at SlashCloud.
Windows 8 is going to have some hiccups, but above all else, it's going to be a huge success.
There will be a little bit of delay as Microsoft gets Windows 7 out of the way.
The reasons Windows 8 will be a huge success:
1. It unifies the desktop and mobile under a single OS and, more importantly, development environment.
2. It has many under-the-hood fixes which allow Windows to slip past the aging win32 model, which is so successful it has become crippled. But since MSFT owns WinXP, it can always sell you virtualization to emulate your old apps within the new OS. This is inevitable; it's how Apple handled its transition to OS X and now it's an industry standard.
3. They've gotten over the moron factor. Apple used to be able to claim its GUI was so simple a child could use it, in contrast to Windows which was "complicated" and Linux which was "hard." Windows 8 is braindead simple as a GUI and has let wizards take over many of the less intuitive tasks of computer maintenance.
4. Microsoft has revamped its pricing scheme to (a) compete in the mobile market and (b) try to fix the unholy mess of crapware installed on new PCs by vendors.
5. Building on that point, Microsoft has basically squashed rampant security problems, although there will surely be hiccups, and by using its app store model has reined in the chaotic array of software people run on its OSes.
Sinofsky is leaving at a point of triumph, after which there will mostly be fixes and adjustments, and he will now be able to go on to a new, bigger gig somewhere as a big shot. Next step is for him to try for CEO at his own tech company.