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Windows 8 Killing PC Sales
yl-roller writes "IDC says Windows 8 is partly to blame for PC sales suffering the largest percentage drop ever. 'As if that news wasn't' troubling enough, it appears that a pivotal makeover of Microsoft's ubiquitous Windows operating system seems to have done more harm than good since the software was released last October.' According to a ZDNet article, IDC originally expected a drop, but only half the size."
There hasn't been a damn thing in the last several years worth upgrading for. Gamers and developers aside, there has been nothing at all interesting happening in the PC world.
I'm still on a 2.0ghz C2D laptop and had no intention of upgrading anytime soon.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
According to the original data, Apple sales dropped 7.5% as well. 's good to see that Windows 8 is killing Apple as well!
Back in the Windows ME days there were no viable options for business to go to, except for NT which many were already using. They can't afford a colossal mistake every other OS release anymore. At this rate, they'd be better off keeping Windows 7 for twelve years, or however long XP went without a replacement. At least then they wouldn't be losing market share.
An "important note" at the bottom of the ZDNet article explains that much of this drop is caused by the rise of convertible tablet PCs that run a PC operating system, which IDC counts as tablets, not PCs. Gartner appears to count them as PCs if they run a PC operating system, not a smartphone-derived, all-maximized-all-the-time operating system like iOS or Android.
Windows is bad enough, but Windows + Ballmer is a disaster. MS could save itself with some new management.
Organization? You must be joking..
I have had Windosws 8 since before it came out (somehow my school got it a couple days before release...) and I can honestly say that I wouldn't recommend this to anybody. The new start menu, without a touch screen computer, is absolutely ridiculous. I found that I would go to my desktop as soon as I started my computer, and never use the start menu, ever. Sure, startup is fractionally faster, but the interface I would give a score of 2/10. I had to make desktop shortcuts just so I don't have to navigate through the cryptic menus just to shut down or restart. Speaking of the interface, Microsoft should seriously fire the people who are responsible for this garbage. Windows 7 was amazing. It was fast, sharp, and easy to use. Now Microsoft is going in a different direction, trying to make Windows 8 too easy. Like seriously, how the fuck am I supposed to use these native apps on a day-to-day basis? The interface is obnoxiously minimalist and is WAY too much hassle for the everyday user. I have a nice chuckle every time I see the Windows 8 commercials on tv about using their Surface Pro's in a work environment. No person in the technology industry in their right fucking mind would buy one of those to use for work. Soon, I'm gonna downgrade to Win7, and I recommend everyone else to do the same. Not surprised at all that Win8 pc sales are down, it only makes sense. Shitty product = shitty sales.
If I buy a new PC (I did buy one instead of build last year before windows 8 came out- for a quick gift to a friend in need) I would not hesitate to buy one with Windows 8 on it. I know how to install a program that'll make it friendlier for every day use. Or if I want I can put 7 back on it or a linux distro if I want. But for the average person, I see nothing but frustration from people.
PC makers need to give options. 7 or 8 should be available. People will say that Linux should be available too, and I won't disagree, but I don't think it will give an overall good user experience from most PC makers. But that's not what this is about.
This is about MS forcing vendors to force their customers to be guinea pigs for windows 8's new paradigm that totally sucks. Sales are down? GOOD. Maybe they'll get the message:
THE NEW WINDOWS 8 GUI SUCKS.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
"People won't switch to Linux/Android/whatever because they don't want to have to learn a new system."
Microsoft: "I know, let's make everybody learn a new system!"
Suddenly they've given their core customers a reason to look at their competition that they didn't have before.
The "definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result" quote is only applicable if you "did the same thing" more than once and got poor results.
Windows 7 was working. People would have upgraded eventually. It wouldn't have been a blowout, but this is a mature industry now. You can't expect blowouts unless you really innovate. In other words, Microsoft was getting good results, "did something different" and got poor results. The saner course of action is to go back to what they were doing, namely working on making their desktop robust, working to make it more secure, maintaining as much backward compatability as possible, and maintaining their Office suite and other products that have solid traction at corporations.
If they wanted to get into mobile the "sane" way, they should have parallel tracked it like the X-box. When they introduced the X-box, they didn't turn the desktop experience into a console experience. That was their fundamental error--deciding that a mobile UI with lots of eye candy was the future, and imposing that on the rest of us.
As for going OSS/FS, it's like telling Apple to release their OS separately. The response to that is "Apple is a hardware company", likewise, "Microsoft is a software company". Of course neither company is "pure" hardware or software; but they both get their "bread and butter" from one or the other.
Definition of insanity? Doing something different just for the sake of it, especially when that something is contrary to your historicly successful business model and you are sitting on more than enough cash to help you make much better plans.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
PCs are now like refrigerators. They are not obsolete, they are (for most people) essential household appliances. Just like your refrigerator, you don't need to replace your PC every year. Your PC may not last 10-15 years like your 'fridge, but 5 years is perfectly reasonable. Just like your 'fridge, you only need to replace your PC if it breaks, or goes out of style.
The "death of the PC" has been overhyped. The PC isn't dead, it's just mature. Sales will stabilize at a sustainable level, barring some radical innovation. I'm a little afraid that people are really going to screw up the refrigerator trying to make it into something it isn't, trying to solve a problem that is unsolvable.
OBTW, this will happen with mobile devices also. Mobile devices get beat up a little more, so they will tend not to last as long, but in the not two distant future the only legit reason to upgrade your phone/tablet will because the old one broke. I know several people still using the iPhone 3GS (4 years old).
It is the one two punch of abusive bloatware, and people having many needs met through mobile that have knocked the PC to the ground and then the kick to the face that a 5 year old machine is fine for most people's needs.
Basically everyone who buys a nice machine from wherever boots it up and is presented with a pile of icons and popups that confuse/scare/annoy the crap out of them. Usually the browser is infested with "helpful" toolbars. The search engine has been redirected this way or that. And some crap like Norton pops up and tells them that they are going to die if they don't give them money. The Apple PC market is doing OK and I think that people are willing to pay the huge bucks because they turn the damn thing on and it works, no threats, no weirdness. I am not saying that the Mac is way better but that people would basically be just as happy turning on their Windows machine and being greeted with a default one icon for connecting to the internet unimpeded, no Asus Game world, Trial this or trial that.
Then there is the fact that most people are consumers not generators of content. Thus a tablet or larger screened smart phone will get them all the cat videos they can eat. These smartphones aren't cheap and thus will eat up many people's technology budget.
And lastly there is the point that many people who have a PC of some sort can keep it running and running. If they have a laptop their mobile phone might have reduced their porting it around and increased its lifespan even to the point where they don't care that the battery has 5 minutes of life when unplugged. If they have a desktop then the lifespan is even better seeing that most repairs (if any) should cost less than $100. My mother is using a desktop running Linux that is about 8 years old. She has a nice keyboard, nice mouse, nice B&W laser printer, and a nice monitor so she is quite happy. It runs gmail and can play youtube videos at full screen; an upgrade would be a foolish waste of money.
In the past people upgraded their computers because they had some application that really wouldn't run on their old computer. Now about the only non professional (Photoshop, IDE, etc) application that demands an upgrade is the OS itself. So if you need an OS that can run a browser and some sort of Office Suite then why would you upgrade your OS.
In the past I can remember getting Windows 95 and bouncing around when it booted up for the first time. It was such a vast improvement over 3.1.1. Then when I finally had a machine that could handle 2000 I was happy again. XP waited for a long time until some application or another wouldn't run and then I left the Microsoft embrace so got to largely avoid Vista on. Even with the Mac about the only reason I have upgraded my OS is that the latest versions of XCode wouldn't run on the slightly older versions of the Mac OS.
As for games I just about lost my mind when I finally got a 3DFX card. But if anything gaming is probably the last thing keeping people buying the latest and greatest in the PC market. Personally I have long given up making my PC game friendly. I have an XBox for that.
Personally if I were running MS beyond looking past a world where the OS and office suite drive the bus I would have a super research project where you create the killer app that requires that you have a PC with 100GB of ram and a crazy new processor.
But maybe this whole PC dying thing is missing the point. Way in the past an IBM PC "killed" my commodore 64. And apple seems to be racing, with other, to a smart watch goal. This will mean that your average person will have a computer on their wrist, a computer in their pocket, computers in their car, computers in their work, multiple computers hooked up to their TV, and maybe(or maybe not) a computer on a desk at home. Yet if we scroll back say 13 years to the dot com boom most people had at most 1 computer that they paid well over $1000 for and a home network was exotic.
Look, PC sales are on the decline. This we all know. So MS decided to tackle tablets in a big, audacious way in order to increase their relevance in the post-PC era. And it might have worked...
HAD THEY NOT BEEN SO ARROGANT AS TO REMOVE THE GODDAMNED START MENU AND FORCED OLD PC HARDWARE TO USE THEIR TOUCHSCREEN UI!
Seriously, how difficult would it have been to do a quick hardware check upon install and say "hmmm, it looks like you have a keyboard, mouse and non-touchscreen monitor. Let's make Metro an icon on the classic desktop and boot to explorer.exe with a mouse-friendly start menu by default."
Personally, I think Windows 8 offers several welcome improvements over Win7. I installed the OS, downloaded and configured Classic Shell, and haven't so much as whiffed a Metro screen in at least 2 months on my PC. It's great for me, but I'm not your average Windows user! The masses are clueless and if you give them enough reason to dislike your product, you're doomed.
MS, you successfully borrowed Steve Jobs' arrogant decision-making skills, but failed to deliver on the other half of the equation: an overall better user experience.
is now the vast majority of non-business computing users.
They want:
(1) Web (95% of needs)
(2) Office (5% of needs, and even then, only at a very rudimentary level)
Didn't you notice when all of the big-box stores shut down and the software aisles at the Wal-Marts and Costcos got emptied out? Yes, there was a time when people had a shelf full of CDs and DVDs that they wanted to install on their "next computer."
Those days are long gone.
The baby boomers in my extended family are happy to be free of the complexity. They tell "remember when" stories about how hard computing used to be, and how confusing computers were before you could just do everything that you needed to do online, in Firefox (most of them switched to Firefox during its heyday and are now solidly married to it, even if other options have become competitive). Most of the things that used to be standalone applications they now do online:
- Email (Google replaces Outlook)
- To-do (Todoist, Toodledo, etc. replace Outlook)
- Calendaring (Google replaces Outlook)
- Contacts management (Google replaces Outlook)
- Personal data management (Evernote replaces the file system)
- Reference (Wikipedia replaces endless varieties of CD-ROM encyclopedias)
- Entertainment (Social Gaming and YouTube replace CD-ROM gaming and multimedia)
- Document editing (Google replaces Office)
- Digital photos (Flickr/Facebook+Smartphone replace assorted "old" consumer digital photo apps+USB digital camera)
- Music (Pandora replaces MP3 collections on hard drives)
I teach a bunch of college kids at local U, and have done now in two states over the better part of a decade. In 2006, kids showed up with Thinkpads. Now they show up with iPads.
In 2006, departmental policies often still required hardcopies of submitted work and installs of university-site-licensed educational software. These days, assignments are required to be submitted through online portals (Blackboard, Canvas, etc.) in digital form and devices like iPads are the *suggested* college study equipment. The Real Serious students get a bluetooth keyboard and the Pages app, but most of them type onscreen into Google Drive to do their work.
Seriously, the applications argument is dead—just like the PC. Specialized fields and roles will still require it, but I suspect that over time even those will go the way of the dodo as mobile devices get more and more processing power and more and more users move to them—which will tend to produce as web apps or mobile apps those things that used to be PC apps.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Computers just aren't as fast without the turbo button.