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New Windows Coming In Late September -- But Which One?
snydeq (1272828) writes "Nobody seems to know for sure whether 'Threshold' and 'Windows 9' will be one and the same or separate operating systems, reports Woody Leonhard in his roundup of insights on Microsoft's forthcoming OS plans, expected September 30. 'Many people think the terms are synonymous, but longtime Chinese leaker Faikee continues to maintain that they are two separate products, possibly headed in different directions. Neowin Senior Editor and Columnist Brad Sams appears to have access to the most recent test builds, possibly on a daily basis. He doesn't talk about details, but the items he's let drop on the Neowin forum leave an interesting trail of crumbs.' Either way, the next iteration of Windows will have a lot to say about the kind of Microsoft to expect as Satya Nadella cements his leadership over the flagship OS."
Our company has a Premier Support account manager at Microsoft, and I can't even get a straight answer out of him, so either the communications are really screwed up about this or they're being very tight-lipped.
I'm guessing that this is part of their new "no frozen releases" cloud-enabled release cycle. It's no secret that Microsoft wants people off the on-premises software because they want to collect recurring revenue. Constantly rolling in new features is going to be the way they get customers used to the idea. Apple does it with iOS, and most people (consumers) are comfortable with constantly-changing software. Businesses are a whole different story.
I still am trying to figure out how Microsoft is going to support enterprise customers with the constant release of patches plus feature changes. (August's Internet Explorer patch broke Java on enterprise desktops, and while it's a good idea for consumers who never update the bug-ridden JRE, it makes for a lot of headaches. There is no end to crappy IE-only, JRE 1.4-only, hastily thrown together "enterprise" Java applets.) Speaking as an end user computing person, targeting master images around SP1 of an OS release has been a pretty good standard. Service Packs or at least Update Rollups have been a convenient point to stop the integration work at, make all the desktop apps hang together, and concentrate on regression testing of patches. Without these big milestones anymore, it's going to get harder to roll out a stable platform for people.
Microsoft's in an interesting spot. They could just ignore business customers and force everyone onto the cloud, which I doubt they'll do right away. I also doubt they'll have the courage to backtrack and give people back all the features in Windows 7. However small it is, they now have a whole App Store ecosystem to support, and it's apparently going to be even more important since they're merging Windows and Windows Phone. Whatever happens, I'm sure someone has said that Windows 9 is going to have to be a huge hit with both the desktop and the tablet crowd. 8.1 is now usable with keyboard and mouse...hopefully Windows 9 will allow desktop-only users to not have to switch between Metro and desktop to do things like use the control panel. I hear the Charms thing is going away-- that's a huge help for desktop users. I think if Microsoft actually listened to customers, then they'll be in a good spot. Traditional desktop users don't want change as drastic as the 7-to-8 transition -- you have to introduce stuff like this slowly. Everyone hated the Ribbon in Office 2007, and some people still do, but most people are used to it now.
I think my #1 feature request would be to put Aero Glass back into the OS, plus better theme support in general. The 2D Windows 2.x look is really awful if you're not on a tablet. The OS under the hood is actually quite good...unfortunately performance and stability enhancements don't sell licenses.
You can buy such a computer direct from Microsoft. They call it Microsoft Signature.
Yes in fact Windows 8 did a face plant at it's introduction. Just look at the interface - did an ADHD sufferer design it? It's awful. I mean Windows has long had a tiling option but that just took it to ridiculous extremes.
Something else to note about Microsoft OS's. Odd numbered versions tend to be the most stable - the even numbered are flaming pieces of crap starting with NT4 and then Vista, and Win 8. XP (5) and Win 7 were ok though.
Yes, the new Tile interface did scare a lot of people off, including the enterprise. It works well with a touch screen but sucks for anyone without it. However, there are number of inexpensive (under $10) and free utilities that fixes the interface so that you boot to the desktop and never see it. But... most consumers wouldn't be smart enough to know this. They were forced to use the new UI.
If you take a step back and look at the latest phones and tablets, the majority of them have tile interfaces in some form or another. So, it looks like some form of tiles will be here to stay. That being said, it doesn't make it a useful UI for a desktop or laptop without touch.
Windows 8 and 8.1 has been just as stable and is faster than Windows 7. You could argue that 8.1 is the odd version, though...
You actually trust that uninstalling the crapware leaves a clean slate?!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And yet one of the things "fought for" by OEMs during the antitrust battles was more freedom to do shit with OEM installs.
So which would you prefer - more freedom for OEMs, or more freedom for MS to restrict OEMs?