Leo Laporte may have officially proclaimed the death
of Windows 8 last year but Microsoft made it official this week. The operating system previously known as
"Threshold" has a real name, "Windows 9" and a real release
target, April 2015.
According to Paul Thurrott,
Windows 9 is meant to be everything Windows 8 wasn't. For one thing, the desktop will regain its
prominence as will the Start Menu. Metro
2.0, as it's called, will be somewhat deprecated as more of a windowed app
instead of a GUI mandate.
The bones have been rolled and the Shaman was right, Windows
8 couldn't succeed in spite of its futuristic aspirations. It's not that Windows 8 is a flawed operating
system, it's not and its performance and security underpinnings are second to
none in the Windows world. But that
GUI...That collection of pulsating tiles that consumers were forced to swipe
away just to get to their email spelled doom for the Windows known as 8.
Metro isn't a bad idea and I still hold firm to the belief
that one day we'll see a workforce happily swiping, typing and talking to their
monitors as easily as they send a text message now. I get it Microsoft. You were trying to push the concept of a
Kiosk operating system that was not only visually attractive but with all those
annoying menu bits out of the way.
Microsoft saw how consumers eschewed scrolling down menus
and tiny keyboards on their smart devices for simple taps and swipes. The proof still exists with the success of
Apple and Android devices while Blackberry languishes for all but the most
faithful.
But it didn't translate well to the office. With a stated 25 million copies sold with
most of those likely pre-installs on new PC's (whose sales numbers were already suffering,) Windows 8 just wasn't going to fly with the
bean counters.
Incompatibility with legacy applications, an interface
inconsistent with current workflows and no real justification to move from
windows 7. When you consider that many
businesses are still just in the throes of moving off of XP, the picture becomes clear.
Windows 8 was an operating system ahead of its time if not
its market. Consumers may be used to
scratching and tapping away at their smart devices but not their PC's. They still expect that "legacy"
experience and that translates to corporate America as well.
That's why 8 failed, If the Fortune 1000 isn't buying it,
you just have to call a Microsoft operating system dead.
Windows 9 is a pullback from the brink. Still, in the long run the great experiment
will cost them little. There was no
upstart, no competition waiting in the wings to unseat the giant from its
throne. Apple? the enterprise is more
nuisance than market to them. Expect OSX
to disappear into an API for IOS within the next 10 years. Linux?
If corporate customers won't tolerate a tightly integrated kiosk
experience they won't stomach the wild West of an open source operating system
either.
At this point the best thing Microsoft could do to advance
Windows is to split the development between consumer and business releases again. If you want one interface across all
"consumer" devices then by all means do it. Let it grace the likes of phones, tablets and
yes, consumer PC's. Just don't try to
force it down corporate America's throat.
People don't like to be forced to do anything. They need time to get used to it. Windows 95 brought the desktop to the next
step in its evolution. It was more about
clicks than menus and command lines. Consumers got used to that and were soon
demanding the same from their business PC's.
Thus came Windows 2000 which was really just windows NT with a facelift
and some beefier networking bits.
It was all about the interface and customers both corporate and
consumer asked for it.
That's the key,
consumers have to feel like it's their choice.
If they want to be told what's good for them they'll buy an IPAD.
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