MS to scrap Windows 8 (rumour)

ThemeOne

This is a non-story. Microsoft will have been planning Windows 9 for years.

Yes, it'll be interesting to see what they do with the interface but I'd bet it won't simply return to the Windows 7 look. After all, the ribbon in Office was never ditched no matter how hard people begged for it, or demanded a choice to run the old-style menus instead.

londonTiger

ianders wrote: »

Normal cycle for recent OS's

Vista - 2006
7 - 2009
8 - 2012
9 - 2015

xp had a loong life

WTFH

londonTiger wrote: »

xp had a loong life

Not much different than the others. It was 4 years until Vista was released - since then all the others have been on a 3 year cycle, so no big difference there.
Vista is slated to go EOS in April 2017, aged 11.
Win 7 is EOS in January 2020 - 11 years.
Win 8 is January 2023 - 11 years.
XP managed 12 years. Not much different, and all the dates would prove that this is a non-story.

prowla

I don't particularly care about the alleged improvements in the underlying OS; Windows 8, and 8.1 are unpleasant places to work, the muddled together user interface metaphors with inconsistent behaviours, font sizes and "tap here" instructions to people who don't have touch screens. There is no texture to the very flat display, and the associated metro-ized MS Office is very hard on the eye. The right-click on the start icon for a menu makes it slightly easier to use, but is so obviously a bodged-on after thought which is again inconsistent (why right-click for actions, when that previously meant bring up Properties?).

Windows 8 phone is as dull and lifeless as the Windows 8 OS. iPhone and Android are far better places to be.

Windows 8 on a tablet might work, but I tried it and bought an iPad.

Windows Server 2012 also uses the Metro UI, but they've given up on using the GUI in various places and you have to use the PowerShell command line for a lot of management activities. Maybe Microsoft sacked their User Interface team?

In attempting to produce an OS which works on computers, tablets, and phones, Microsoft have simply produced something which isn't very good on any of them.

Windows 8 is not modern,it is not a brave step forward; it is simply a very badly designed system.

Good riddance to Windows 8, but if Windows 9 stays flat and doesn't re-introduce Aero effects, then I'll be using Linux as my main OS.

BTW, on the hit-miss-hot-miss releases, I didn't mind Windows 98 and quite liked Vista; it's just that Windows 7 came along and was really good.

londonTiger

WTFH wrote: »

Not much different than the others. It was 4 years until Vista was released - since then all the others have been on a 3 year cycle, so no big difference there.
Vista is slated to go EOS in April 2017, aged 11.
Win 7 is EOS in January 2020 - 11 years.
Win 8 is January 2023 - 11 years.
XP managed 12 years. Not much different, and all the dates would prove that this is a non-story.

True but windows XP probably had the longest life utilised. Peopleactually used it up to its EOS and beyond. Can't be said about vista, windows 7 looks likely to last long as well.

People have been saying it for ages, you can't use the same os for both desktop and tablet. The os should be purpose built for each platform.

Lum

Well if the rumours about the next Windows release (be it 8.2 or 9) bringing back the start menu and allowing you to run Metro apps windowed then MS might actually be on to something.

The kids today really do like their mobile apps and are perfectly comfortable doing a lot of things on a small screen that the likes of you or I would only do as a last resort.

Since they're most likely going to end up with Windows on their home and/or work machines, being able to sign into their Microsoft account and use those exact same apps (free or paid) may well be a unique selling point that encourages them into the Microsoft ecosystem.

Problem is that by this point most folk are pretty heavily invested in either the iOS or Android ecosystems, the only ones that aren't are those who simply don't care for smartphones or who are still holding out on Blackberry or Symbian.

The irony of all this though, once you start windowing Metro apps, you've basically recreated the concept of Desk Accessories that the Atari ST had back in the 80s!

securityguy

prowla wrote: »

In attempting to produce an OS which works on computers, tablets, and phones, Microsoft have simply produced something which isn't very good on any of them.

It's not obvious how they've managed to screw it up quite so badly, and there's a book in a serious analysis of the situation. Is the problem kernel, userspace, UI, marketing, what? Apple have two product ranges (iDevices and Macs) which look wildly different, but which share a common kernel.

iOS 7.0.4: Darwin Kernel Version 14.0.0: Fri Sep 27 23:08:32 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2423.3.12~1/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8960X

OS/X 10.9.1: Darwin Kernel Version 13.0.0: Thu Sep 19 22:22:27 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2422.1.72~6/RELEASE_X86_64

From a developer's perspective, there's a major stack of differences, but porting an application from OS/X to iOS (ie, from Cocoa to Cocoa Touch) has the benefit that it forces the developer to consider the differences in the capabilities of the platforms. Apple aren't (yet) showing much interest in touch-screen iMacs, for example. And Apple don't market their systems on the basis of them sharing a software platform: iOS and OS/X are branded separately.

Architecturally, the NT kernel isn't wildly different to the XNU that powers both OS/X and iOS, and certainly has a less chequered history and is less of a bitsa assemblage of stuff that came to hand. It's a very sound kernel; recent versions of Windows Server are genuinely excellent, and there's not a lot wrong with the desktop versions either. The laptop versions are a bit heavy on battery compared to alternatives, but that's not a major issue for most purchasers.

But Windows on non-PC hardware (Surface, phone, whatever) has been an utter disaster in the market, with a market share you can regard as homeopathic. The Surface Pro / Surface RT debacle is a classic Microsoft "never mind the shareholders, what matters is my product's success" screwup where they would rather have two products fail than one product succeed massively.

Apple know full well that iPad is killing the low end of their laptop sales (hence why there's no equivalent of the iBook any more) but don't mind, because the total sales of iPads and laptops is massively higher than their laptop market five years ago. Apple are happy for Apple Product A to cannibalise Apple Product B, just so long as A+B today is more successful than B yesterday. They don't have to appease OEMs and other third parties.

But Microsoft can't push a truly successful Surface because of the politics with laptop manufacturers and other Windows licensees. So they have a half-finished, badly marketed product like the Surface RT, which confuses the message about another half-finished, badly marketed product like the Surface Pro (and hands up who thinks the bloke selling them in PC World understands the difference?) because the alternative would be !!!!ing off Dell and Asus over Ultrabook sales.

C_Mababejive

A friend bought a new lappy with Windows 8 on it. Its hard to buy one without it these days. I always say that the hallmark of a good product is that you can pick it up and more or less use it from the get go,intuitively to do basic functions. Now I'd say im pretty good on the IT front but i had a play with it and struggled badly.After an hour,i put it down and gave up. Friend has same issue.

Can windows 8 be setup for an xp type interface rather than the tiled/app malarky thats going on?

securityguy

Lum wrote: »

Since they're most likely going to end up with Windows on their home and/or work machines, being able to sign into their Microsoft account and use those exact same apps

Younger users are much less upset by having to use different applications in different contexts. So the great selling point of the Surface Pro, that you can take a full Windows experience and run it on a tablet, turns out to be a _lot_ less compelling than Microsoft's brainstrust (most of whom are not from the tablet generation) thought.

And in the situations where Microsoft do have a massive market advantage by owning the dominant application (Office, mostly) they have squandered that advantage by using it to prop up the Windows monopoly. A lot of enterprise desktops run Windows simply because they need to run Office, and if Microsoft understood that Office and its ecosystem (Sharepoint, Exchange) are their crown jewels, they'd be able to make vast amounts of money. For example, suppose Microsoft sold iOffice for iOS and Android at £200 a pop, £100 for students, talking to a custom version of Sharepoint that needed a £100 a pop CAL or to a cloud service that cost ten quid a month, applications included. They would have to buy scuba diving equipment to let them breathe in their offices rather drowning in money. But they won't do that, because the Office BU within Microsoft is still subordinate to Windows, and Office is a means to an end (selling Windows licenses).

The Windows monopoly is very fragile, because for a lot of productivity use tablets are starting to seriously pressurise desktops and desktop replacement cycles are now much, much longer. The Office monopoly is a lot stronger (for a start off, there's much less competition) but might not be strong enough to sell Surfaces. That's a sort of perfect storm for Microsoft: users start going to Android and iOS because they like the hardware, which forces them onto non-Office productivity solutions, which then makes them question why they're running Office on desktops. If you're old enough to remember how minicomputers nearly IBM, there parallels are quite interesting.

Lum

C_Mababejive wrote: »

Can windows 8 be setup for an xp type interface rather than the tiled/app malarky thats going on?

Yes, I wrote a huge post about this ages ago:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4323561

securityguy wrote: »

Younger users are much less upset by having to use different applications in different contexts. So the great selling point of the Surface Pro, that you can take a full Windows experience and run it on a tablet, turns out to be a _lot_ less compelling than Microsoft's brainstrust (most of whom are not from the tablet generation) thought.

To be honest, I thought the most compelling feature of the Surface Pro is that it will satisfy the boss's desire for a shiny tablet while still being able to most of the legacy crapware that most corporates are dependent on and can never upgrade.