Windows 8, finally a flop?

Article first published as Windows 8, Finally a Flop? on Technorati.

"We can call it now, Windows 8 is a flop" Said the unofficial "President of the Internet" Leo Laporte on his Sunday This Week in Tech podcast.

 

Citing the generally frigid reception by consumers to the latest Windows operating system, most pundits will point to the radical change to a touch centric interface.  The question that hasn't been asked is: is it really a case of outright rejection of the Windows 8 Modern (Metro) interface or just bad timing.

It's no secret that sales of Desktop PC's have been declining over the past few years and the rise of portable devices like the IPAD and the Smartphone have largely been responsible for it. 

After all, if you just need to get your email and do some web browsing even the cheapest tablet will do. It's also no coincidence that most tablets also happen to occupy the same price point as entry level PC's with the added convenience of portability.

So it's no mystery that Microsoft went all in on an interface that favored touch.  As much as the pundits may hate to admit it, the days of the desktop are numbered.  The popularity of tablets has shown that.  Still, is it reasonable to expect anyone to compose a novel on an  IPAD or an ASUS tablet?  Of course not but that's a temporary condition. 

What's surprising is that the tech pundits, those champions of all things new and techie don't see it.  Forgive me if I sound like a futurist but I don't think it's a stretch that gestures, predictive keyboards and voice will be the primary input devices by the end of the next decade. 

That's the future Microsoft was betting on.  Unfortunately, OEM's weren't exactly on  board with Windows 8's new interface and released hardware that couldn't leverage the touch based UI. 

Corporations, long the bulk of Windows sales, had deferred upgrade cycles and many had only recently deployed Windows 7.  To corporate IT departments there was no compelling reason to put their users through another round of upgrades so soon.  Doubly so when you consider the learning curve of the Windows 8 UI without a touch screen.  Pairing Windows 8 and traditional PC hardware was just never going to fly in cubicleland.

If you want to say Windows 8 is a flop you'd be justified to blame it on the new UI but not because it's necessarily a bad design.  OEM's had been warning Microsoft since the spring of 2012 that they wouldn't have hardware ready to take advantage of the new touch UI.  When October came around most chose to release hardware meant for Windows 7.  That resulted in making Windows  8 seem more cumbersome than revolutionary and virtually guaranteed its failure.

 The Band-Aid solution  from many OEM's was to  graft a third party extension that returned the Start Menu to the Windows 8 desktop.  If that's not an option for you the open source Classic Shell and Stardock's Start8 can offer the same functionality.  None of these options are supported by Microsoft by the way.

You can also blame Microsoft for muddying the message. 

If you want to see the purest representation of what Microsoft was after with Windows 8 look no further than the Surface RT.  Trouble is, RT isn't Windows 8.  RT has more in common with Windows phone than Windows 8 but to consumers it looks the same. 

That leaves them confused and ultimately frustrated when they find out they can't run Windows applications on something that looks like Windows.  Worse, Microsoft has done little to correct the bad perception.  Even amongst howls to either bring back the beloved "Start Menu" or allow booting directly to the desktop instead of into the tiles (as was possible in the consumer preview) Microsoft has turned a deaf ear.

Until now, that is.  There's a rumor that the next update to Windows 8 due in August and called Windows Blue (or Windows 8.1) may allow booting directly to the desktop and see the return of the Start Button (but not the Start Menu).  At this point, however, it's still just rumor. 

In the end if Windows 8 has failed it had little to do with the operating system itself.  This was not another Vista as many blogs decried in the months leading up to the launch of Windows 8.   in fact most pundits  now admit that it's actually a faster and more secure OS than its predecessor.  Rather it seems to have more to do with OEM's resistant to change and a mixed message from Microsoft.

Perhaps Windows 8 will only find vindication through the lens of history.

Sinofsky May be Out But Don't Expect the Same of Windows 8

If you're one of those folks that cheered the departure of Steven Sinofsky last week from Microsoft you may be anxiously awaiting the return of the good old days.  Surely the Start button will make a return and all this business about tablets and touch screens will go the way of Vista.

Don't count on it...

Sinofsky may have ruled the Windows division of Microsoft with an iron fist but he didn't operate in a vacuum even if other Microsoft divisions thought so.  Change was going to happen even if it was going to be painful and potentially risky to Microsoft's relationship with its customers.

That the basic Windows interface had remained unchanged over the last two decades wasn't lost on Steve Ballmer and other Microsoft Executives.  The popularity of touch devices from competitors like Apple and Android showed the direction of the market.  The design of Windows 8 was the response. 

Sinofsky's laser focus on Windows after his installment as division president in 2009 and success with the Windows 7 launch gave him the credentials to move Windows forward.  To many, his removal so soon after the launch of Windows 8 suggests that Windows 8 is a failed product destined to go the way of Microsoft Bob.  Steven Sinofsky was not Gabe Newell, however.

Job performance has never been a problem for Sinofsky but jealous protection of his division was.  Windows has always been the most visible Microsoft product with Office running a close second.  Not coincidentally, both products Sinofsky and his team had intimate involvement with.  Sinofsky was known to exercise complete control over his products to the exclusion of all else.  Much to the dismay of other product teams within Microsoft that were used to a culture of collaboration, Sinofsky's actions proved to be divisive.  A rift that's expressed itself with similar looking but largely incompatible products under the Windows 8 banner.

His departure isn't a reflection of the success of Windows 8, rather it is a symptom of Microsoft's new product strategy.  Touch interfaces have proven themselves as more than a fad with the popularity of tablet devices and smartphones.  Even Apple's desktop staple, Mac OSX, has taken up second position to IOS devices like the IPad and Iphone.  Before Windows 8, Microsoft's only entry into this market was the lackluster Windows Phone and tablet editions.  Neither of which were high water marks for Microsoft's "Windows Everywhere" mantra championed by Steve Ballmer.

Windows may still be the centerpiece of the new strategy even going so far to add  Windows"panes" to the Microsoft logo but Windows development could no longer be done in isolation.  The vision for Microsoft was to have a unified experience across all devices from PC's to toasters.  Sinofsky's culture of separation ran counter to it.  Cloud services and hosted applications can help smooth over the rough spots but ultimately come up short of truly having Windows Everywhere.

There's no denying that touch interfaces are the future of computing.  Just as we wouldn't think of using a typewriter to compose our documents it won't be long till a swipe and tap are more commonplace than a mouse click.  Windows 8 tries to meet that future demand before consumers know they have it.  The fact that the vision borrows a page from Steve Jobs is no accident.  But where Jobs enforced a unity of vision throughout Apple, Sinofsky's focus was not so global when it came to Windows' place in Microsoft. 

Over the next year expect Microsoft to work hard to correct that error.

The new revenue stream

Originally published on Technorati as "The New Revenue Stream."

Remember way back before the Iphone or the I anything for that matter?  Those were the days when we went out and bought a piece of technology and whatever else we needed for it and Boom! we were pretty much done.  When we wore it out we went and bought a new one.

Getting a cell phone was a pretty simple proposition.  You picked the device and how many minutes you thought you'd need and paid your bill every month.  Now you'd be hard pressed to find a phone without features you'll never use but are charged for anyway.  Not to mention overage charges for data or unlimited plans that really aren't unlimited either cutting you off or degrading your service over a preset limit.

Everything's a subscription now.  Seems like you never stop paying.  Services like Netflix started it.  Used to be you'd pay a small subscription fee and get your choice of DVD's every month.  What made them successful was the elimination of late fees and the highway robbery of the chain video rental stores.  Now it's streaming movies at 8 bucks a month to any device that can use the service.  Even if you don't use it.

Yes, it's wonderful that you can go to Itunes and just buy the song you like for 99 cents and leave the rest of the selections on the curb .  Of course you've bought a lesser quality version of the song for roughly the same price as the same song on CD but hey, it's in your Itunes now, so long as you don't lose your password...

You can even subscribe to Microsoft Office 365 to essentially "rent" the use of office applications.  Too bad if you miss that monthly payment and want to open your Word document.

I can go to carbonite.com and back up my computer to the cloud automatically, for a fee of course.  That fee goes up if I have more than one computer and/or external device to back up by the way.

Gee, used to be I got a backup program with my operating system or I could get a better one and that was it.  I didn't have to subscribe to anything.

Buy an IPAD or an Iphone and you're not likely to have much fun with it unless you visit the app store which generally involves a purchase or subscription depending on what you choose from it.  Oh, and don't forget that 2 year contract and/or ridiculous initial cost of the device.

Let's not forget that our workplaces will have limits on our bandwidth and most ISP's impose bandwidth limits on how much data you can use per month.

Too bad if you were backing up you Terabyte Hard drive to Carbonite...

The point is that more and more products seem to be introduced whose very design is to work with this subscription model.  Product features tend to be stripped down for the sake of it.  Even the latest version of Windows dumped their email client in favor of the useless free Windows Live suite or online applications such as Hotmail or Gmail.

 I wonder when they'll dump notepad...

Yes it's true that application suites were prohibitively expensive but if you didn't need to be on the cutting edge you could always find a deal on the previous version.  You didn't have to keep paying for it either.   It seems we've been led to believe that the a la' carte model lowers the barriers of entry to productivity and recreational apps but the truth is that we're just spreading out our buying patterns. 

With every app you buy you end up on another mailing list.  There's also this false ubiquity that anything in the cloud is secure and accessible.  Yes, it may be so long as you pay the subscription.  Let's also hope they don't go out of business taking your data with them.  Read the Terms of Service,  if they're gone, so's your data...

There's nothing wrong with making applications more accessible but to rely on the subscription model and the cloud exclusively  is dangerous.  I'd hate, for example, to lose the ability to update my resume if I had to cancel my office 365 subscription after losing my job. 

I sometimes chafe when I hear some pundit advocating how the cloud should be our primary data repository.  Really?  You have that much faith in a web page with an e-commerce portal to secure your data? 

I can't accept that a commercial entity has my best interests at heart thus I have no faith in the assumption that they do.  Yet when I look around I see a consumer mindset that accepts the premise as reasonable. 

Whatever happened to Caveat Emptor?  I guess they don't teach that in schools anymore...

Shiny Objects, Dull Minds....

I hold two beliefs,  one is that technology  will never stop advancing and the second is that human beings will always gravitate toward shiny objects. 

Crows like shiny objects too.  It's been suggested that they take them to attract a mate.  Hmm, maybe that's why all the geeks feel the need to get a new Smartphone every 6 months. 

I watch a lot of technology podcasts where all the Uber geeks and tech pundits get all misty eyed over the latest bit of techno kitsch.  I t never fails.  They anxiously await the latest whatever and when they get it in their hands they fawn over for about 15 minutes;  playing with every button, adjusting every setting and trying out every new feature.   

Then the facade starts to crack.  It could be a change in how a feature works or even the removal of it entirely.  It doesn't really matter, you can always tell by the look on their face.  It goes from a happy kid on Christmas morning to a blank stare.

The end is always the same.  Unless the thing catches fire in their hands there'll be allowances made.  Phrases like, "They'll fix that in an update" or "This is an early production model" 

We're supposed to dismiss the deficiency and focus instead on the promise of this great new thing even if it's to our own detriment.  

Smartphones are a perfect example.  It's not enough for your phone to make calls anymore.  It has to be able to surf the net, update Facebook and entertain you with a game or a movie.  It's almost as if there's some grand plan to cause the world to develop Attention Deficit Disorder.

 I still find it amazing that people went so nuts over the Iphone when it had so many issues like being chained for two years to a horrible data network, high cost, call quality and usability problems.  Still , even if you had a bad experience with the phone it still managed to check off all the items on our shiny object list.

Like the MP3 that's largely replaced the CD ,we tend tolerate a lesser experience  for greater convenience or just the chance to look cool.   There may be a more insidious penalty than that, however.

Technology can be the catalyst for inspiration but it can also be a debilitating crutch .  In his book "The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains" Nick Carr suggests that we may in fact be gradually becoming dumber because of our addiction to connectivity.

It's not so far-fetched an idea.  We don't even care if a phone can be relied on to make a call anymore so long as our Netflix download doesn't buffer too much.   Oh yes and we must be sure that Foursquare knows where we had lunch.  I'm sorry but nobody has the right to know that much about my habits even if I didn't notice your 30 page irrevocable EULA. 

I guess it's too bad if your favorite sushi restaurant is next door to an S&M shop.  If Google maps can't pinpoint my house accurately I suppose I should forget about any hopes of public office.  There are people who believe the president of the United States  has a fake birth certificate.  What hope do I have if my favorite  sushi restaurant is suspiciously located?

It seems we'd rather not use our long term memory either.  It's simpler to just Google whatever it was that we're too lazy to remember.  Google's a godsend then; protecting us from having to spend more than 30 seconds on any stray thought.

Any forum discussion on the topic invariably degenerates into a shouting match ending in a flurry of hyperlinks supporting their point of view.  That's sad.  We're so addicted to the internet that we can't even have a debate without using it.  Are we so enamored with our connectivity that we're becoming incapable of independent thought? 

If a Pulitzer prize finalist believes it's possible then I have to believe that there has to be some truth to it.   But then, I found out about it on the Internet.