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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.
I read the very short article, so you don't have to.
Windows is the bulk, at 91.68%, of that Windows 7 is 51.22%
Mac is 6.64%
And overall, Linux is 1.68%
Microsoft just needs to make an OS that delivers what end-users actually want, with a solid XP emulator so people can continue to run their mission-critical stuff that still requires it.
8 and 8.1 were arrogant attempts at pushing on to end-users a GUI that Microsoft thought they should want, for reasons that did not benefit the end-users at all but did benefit Microsoft quite a lot (in theory, that is).
Microsoft can win by viewing end-users as its clients (heresy, I know), getting back in touch with what they want, and delivering. Until then, expect continued weirdness.
It looks like this count is coming from someone monitoring what OSs they see in use. That being the case, it must be greatly under-counting Windows 8 and Win 8.1, since while they may be on many more computers, they are unusable.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If Windows XP runs better than Windows 7 on your legacy PC, consider trying Xubuntu or Lubuntu. The apps you currently use under Windows may have Linux equivalents or may work under Wine.
A question, and please give this some thought before answering...
If something does what its user needs it to do, then how is it outdated?
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, and just about the only thing the laptop won't do well is full-screen flash video at high res, but that seems to be more a function of the poor implementation of flash than of the computer itself, and even with only 2GB RAM it's still faster than the four-years-newer Atom-based Ideapad S10-2 with Windows 7 that we got free with my wife's then-new computer. In some ways it's superior in that when my fancy Linux box's graphics broke I was able to use the serial port on the docking station to TTY in to the Linux box to work on it with just a null-modem cable, didn't need anything else.
For web surfing this old thing does just about everything that I need it to do, with the licensed OS that came with it, even with the original amount of RAM and the original hard disk drive. So, why should I change this? Because Microsoft wrote shitty code full of holes and now refuses to fix those holes?
This machine doesn't go out of the house, and at home it's behind a firewall. I've got noscript, flashblock, adblock, and https everywhere installed, so it'll be very difficult to infect it through the web browser. without a compelling reason to change it, why would I spend my hard-earned money on something that won't be used for more than I use this thing for now? It's for when I'm lounging on the couch being lazy.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
8.1 might be a huge step up, but it doesn't matter. People remember the UI disaster that was Windows 8, and figure 8.1 can't be that much different. It has such a bad reputation, they'll need to call it something else to sell it at this point. Would you even consider having a doctor give you Cancer.1, or would you hear the question and immediately get yourself a new doctor without even finding out what Cancer.1 was?
If something does what its user needs it to do, then how is it outdated?
The user wants the operating system to work. In order for it to do that, it has to not be vulnerable to common threats, and it has to be compatible with common technologies. The former fades quickly, the latter typically a bit more slowly but it's still an issue. If you wanted filesystems over 2GB or USB support you had to "upgrade" to NT4. If you were otherwise happy with 3.51 you know how distressing that move was. Stability went way down in NT4. Not when using it as a desktop, but definitely when using it as a server.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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'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.
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.
Skeumorphism - the use of design elements that mimic real life objects with similar functions, is actually the opposite phenomenon from the flat, light-on-pastel design trend. Though I fully agree with you - both of these UI philosophies have been severely overused.
A bit of googling will turn up plenty of articles analyzing the history of the skeuomorphism-versus-flat debate particularly at Apple, which I would argue has been one of the biggest influences in UI design over the last few years. Basically, the loss of skeuomorphism advocates such as Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall led to the pendulum swinging completely in the other direction, and many gimmicky and dated interface elements such as notes apps that look like real paper and a game center that looks like a cheap felt billiard table have been stripped away. But - what to replace it with? Well, everybody wants to stay on top of the latest design trend, and Microsoft and others seem to be migrating to flat designs, so flat it is.
Although you could argue over who copied who, essentially what you have is Microsoft and Apple in a race to see who can flatten their interfaces and strip out any traces of skeuomorphism the fastest. Sure, it looks trendy, but it's reached the point where we are sacrificing usability and accessibility in order to have the most "modern" design. Here's where I have a problem with the whole thing: computer interface elements have been pretty consistent over the last 20+ years or so. Everything behaved as expected and usually acted pretty consistent between operating systems. This is great for users, since they can focus on the task rather than the tools needed to accomplish them, and using the interface becomes second nature. To those who *design* computers rather than *use* them, this is a problem - you want the bling to be noticed. The old way of doing this was to show off your new hardware by making the UI flashy, bright, colorful, inviting - basically by ramping up the skeuomorphic elements to 11.
The problem is, the novelty of this wears off fast, and these interfaces quickly become dated. Now, flat is in, and anything that even remotely resembles skeuomorphism is stripped out. I have a number of problems with the current trend:
1) interface elements are hidden or played down, making them hard to find. Often it's hard to tell if I'm just not looking hard enough for that feature, or if it has been removed altogether.
2) It does away with conventions that have been standard for decades. This means that every time designers go wild designing a new interface, users have to spend time and effort learning a new way to accomplish a task.
3) It's less accessible. Razor thin text is hard for some people to see. Pastel on white and white on pastel text may look "hip" but can incredibly difficult to read. Interface elements that are marginalized can be hard to hunt down if the user doesn't know where to look.
4) It's inconsistent. Some programs hide buttons and scroll bars, some do not. Some use vastly different elements for simple actions such as "close window" so that the user is left guessing at the function of a UI element.
My prediction is that in a few years, "flat" will look as equally dated as skeuomorphism does now.