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Windows XP Falls Below 25% Market Share, Windows 8 Drops Slightly
An anonymous reader writes: Despite support for Windows XP finally ending three months ago, the ancient OS has only now fallen below the 25 percent market share mark. To add to the bad news for Microsoft, after only nine full months of availability, its latest operating system version, Windows 8.1, has lost share for the first time.
For desktop browser share, Chrome is up, taking mostly from Internet Explorer and Firefox. For mobile browsers, Safari continues to fall while Chrome maintains strong growth.
From the article:
Microsoft will likely one day struggle to woo users off Windows 7, just like it is currently trying to do with the headache that is Windows XP.
I wonder if Microsoft is learning the wrong lessons from their "good" versions. They're having a hell of a time getting people to leave them. In the future, if people hate the version they're on, they'll be much more likely to buy a new version in the hopes that it's better. Brilliant!
That's the only think I can think of to fully explain Windows 8, and why even now they're refusing to admit that Metro apps are a steaming turd on top of an otherwise competent OS. The only idiots who like using those "apps" are the ones who would probably be better off with a tablet or smartphone instead of an actual desktop computer, for whom the actual power of a desktop is apparently wasted.
Ok, maybe I'm just a bitter throwback who's resentful that my desktop is being marginalized. Maybe it's also because I hate the new skeuomorphic design aesthetic. What's wrong with gloss, gradients, transparency, and attractive animations, or even a bevel or link here and there so we can actually tell something is clickable rather than playing mystery-meat navigation? I swear, everything is going flat-shaded, blocky, ugly, and indistinguishable, all because that's now the new "hip" look.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Trying to be Windows is what will be the death of Linux. Easy to use? KDE, GNOME, and Unity are all very easy for the average user to use. Local libraries near me have Linux (an Ubuntu variant IIRC) installed on all the PC's there. Users have no issue getting online, using the card catalog, watching Youtube, etc. It all works fine. We have a small collection of native games via Steam, and it's just a matter of time before a major publisher (Blizzard, would you please release your internal WoW client to the wild?) puts out a major title that runs on Linux.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Not really. 7 is supported until 2020, and from previews, it looks like 9 is going to be just like 8 in all the aspects that people hate. It's more of the "hey, phone's touch interface on on desktop can be made to work (and we want to use it to stop our phone strategy from being a trainwreck that it is)".
I suspect that 7 is the new XP in that it's currently the most functional desktop OS in windows family, matched only by XP in usability and functionality. So in a way, it is a good news for microsoft, as it means that it's desktop domination and income from "microsoft tax" isn't going anywhere.
It's bad news for microsoft because it continues to show that their design paradigms, with which they are sticking for 9 btw, are an abysmal failure. And while they have five more years to produce replacement for 7, it's not looking like they have the people who want to. Instead they are still focusing on leveraging desktop dominance to push for marketshare in mobile by destroying the desktop windows.
And as long as 7, the last actual version of windows designed for desktop exists, any such attempts will likely fail just like 8 did. Because there will always be a much better alternative to whatever "mobile OS interface on desktop" version of windows microsoft will continue to try to peddle. As we have seen with 8, even forcing OEMs not to offer 7 at all in favour of the newer OS doesn't fix the problem.
I bought a laptop soon after 8 came out. Of course, I hated the tiles... and installed classic shell and told it to boot to the desktop. After that, I don't understand what all the complaining is about. When I finally, after over 10 years, rebuilt my desktop a couple of months ago, and XP was retired (I had XP Pro), I got 8.1 Pro... installed classic shell, and don't understand what all the complaining is about.
Sure, 95% of the time I'm using Linux anyway, but I installed 8.1, the software I use to do work when I have to write stuff for Windows, and I don't understand what all the complaining is about.
My experience... again, after installing classic shell, is much like 7, only smoother and a few different ways to access certain things (like control panel) that you rarely use anyway... and it's not worse, it's just different.
So the only complaint really is that you need to install something like classic shell, but since I need to spend time customizing out of the box linux distributions, too, I fail to see the problem.
I'm serious... I really want someone to explain to me why they think Windows 8/8.1 is so bad (once you get rid of the tiles/apps paradigm by using classic shell and going straight to desktop). I'm not a Windows fanboy, I'm writing this on Linux, and mainly use Linux out of choice... but it seems to me people are just jumping on the hate bandwagon for anything new. I get that desktop and tablet experiences are different, and companies (not just MS) should stop trying to force feed us a single UI paradigm for all platforms... it doesn't work, but like the last few versions of Ubuntu, if you don't like it, you can tweak it to where it works for you.
Please refrain from feigning pity for "Joe User" that can't figure these things out for themselves... that's not who any of us here are, and most of us have little sympathy for Joe User otherwise.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Well if programming for OpenGL is more difficult and requires elite skills just to be passably decent, that's a huge knock against OpenGL.
You're approaching this like a college student rather than like an engineer.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I'm typing this on a nine-year-old Dell Latitude D410 running Windows XP. I've got a current version of Firefox, current versions of all of the plugins I use on a regular basis
Your fully patched browser and plugins still make heavy use of operating system DLLs, and those DLLs are no longer getting security updates. This puts you at risk.
Continuing to use old hardware is fine, as long as the OS is updated and secure. I have a similarly old machine that I put Linux on.
I'm afraid your highly modded comment might make non-technical people think using XP to browse the web is still OK. It's not. Even with a fully updated and patched browser.