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Windows 9 Already? Apparently, Yes.
Nerval's Lobster writes "A little over a year after Microsoft released Windows 8, and a mere three months after it pushed out a major update with Windows 8.1, rumors abound that Windows 9 is already on its way. According to Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows, Microsoft will begin discussing the next version of Windows (codenamed 'Threshold,' at least for the moment) at April's BUILD conference. 'Threshold is more important than any specific updates, he wrote. 'Windows 8 is tanking harder than Microsoft is comfortable discussing in public, and the latest release, Windows 8.1, which is a substantial and free upgrade with major improvements over the original release, is in use on less than 25 million PCs at the moment.' Microsoft intends Threshold to clean up at least a portion of Windows 8's mess. Development on the latest operating system will supposedly begin in late April, which means developers who attend BUILD won't have access to an early alpha release—in fact, it could be quite some time before Microsoft locks down any new features, although it might double down on Windows 8's controversial 'Modern' (previously known as 'Metro') design interface. Yet if Thurrott's reporting proves correct, Microsoft isn't abandoning the new Windows interface that earned such a lackluster response—it's betting that the format, once tweaked, will somehow revive the operating system's fortunes. With Ballmer leaving the company and a major reorganization underway, it'll be the next Microsoft CEO's task to make sure that Windows 9 is a hit; in fact, considering that rumored 2015 release date, shepherding the OS could become that executive's first major test."
Metro on servers is a big turn off but MS will be slow to accept that server admins have different GUI needs. Sure core is catching on some but the GUI users will stick around until forced to use powershell.
The problem isn't GUI users, its the fact Powershell is complete shite.
All this time I cant get a basic instruction on how Powershell works without getting a 500 page book. Learning Linux and AIX wasn't this hard (granted the Linux training covered a lot of the AIX ground).
Also you have to deal with different versions of Powershell, I once spent an entire day constructing a Powershell script for Exchange 2007 only to find out it required Powershell v3 and only v2 was installed on 2008 by default. It was easier to get management to give up on the idea then go through change control to get Powershell updated.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
the gradual removal of control,
Tell me about it. Going from XP to W7 was horrible with things being hidden or removed. I'm still able to do things much more quickly in XP than in 7, the response is snappier in XP than 7, the list goes on.
W7 was a mess, 8 is a nightmare. I don't want to imagine how bad 9 will be.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Windows 7 did move around a bunch of things, especially in the control panel. And of course this followed suit with the registry which impacts group policy - this means that you had to have two GPOs (one for XP, one for W7) to do something as basic as setting and enforcing a screen saver. Talk about a manageability mess.
My experience with Windows 8 was horrid. Yes, Metro is very annoying to a desktop user, but they've just plain removed things from Windows 8, like the ability to remove a saved wifi connection. There's no GUI way that I could find to remove it, I had to use the terminal to list and remove a saved connection using netsh. What the hell were they thinking? And this is just ONE example that I've noticed with Windows 8.