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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."
Well, it works for Apple...
It makes Apple money now but in the long run it hurts them. Apple can never really be a business OS because there simply "isn't the option for that" and that's where the stable money is. The consumers they are courting are fickle and will abandon their brand when something trendier comes along.
Me, I can't wait until I can get me a touch screen for the desktop and have 3 ways to input -keyboard, mouse and touch. I love that aspect about my Surface Rt-3 ways to input.
Ok, that confirms it. Claiming you like the Modern UI on a PC that *doesn't* have a touch screen means you are clearly a MS shill.
Face it - the UI was designed for a touch screen, just like iOS or Android. Trying to use *any* of those with just a mouse and keyboard would be (and is) a disaster. They basically greatly sacrificed usability for the most widely used operating system in the world to make it look more like a struggling mobile OS. If you think about it that way it may go down as one of the worst business decisions in the history of computing (jeopardizing the entire company in an experiment).
The most telling thing for me was at a Microsoft-sponsored dev conference where the speakers were giving tutorials/demos for developing Metro apps in Visual Studio. EVERY time they had to switch between the Metro app and Visual Studio they had to follow this serpentine procedure of navigating to and clicking 3 buttons. If there was a quicker way to do it, NONE of the MS employees seem to know how
Bullshit! Not only bullshit, but flaming, smelling, foul bullshit at that! "Power users" wont touch "Metro" with a 10 foot pole.