Final thoughts on Windows 8: A design disaster

[Liberty]

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/final-thoughts-on-windows-8-a-design-disaster/20706

 

We hear a lot of positive things from MSFT shareholders here, so I thought I'd share something a bit different to avoid confirmation bias. Personally, I haven't tried win 8 so I can't comment, but from screenshots and videos, I would tend to agree with the review when it comes to design/UI. Doesn't mean it won't make a lot of money, though, but I guess not as much as if it had a better design/UI (those huge ribbons of buttons that take tons of space at the top of apps are truly abominations...).

[Guest valueInv]

I agree, they seem to have botched the whole thing. Looking at the UI, it almost tells the story of the political fights that happened in the design of Windows 8.

 

I am reconsidering both my MSFT and NOK holdings. Without NOK they don't have a strong hardware partner on the smartphone side. And if people don't make the switch to Windows 8, they'll lose a chunk of the desktop market. So far, they don't have a play in the tablet market either. Without platform traction, their office applications also become vulnerable to attack.

 

The Yammer acquisition is also a potential negative. Yammer indirectly competes with SharePoint. However, Yammer may not monetize as well as SharePoint. In some sense, its a sign that the world is changing and their moat may not be what it seems.

 

Let's see what they come up with tomorrow. Got my trigger finger on the sell button.

[kmukul]

May be the metro UI of win8 will work on tablet and windows 7 will work on desktop until microsoft fixes it? that doesnt seem so bad?

[Ross812]

Windows 7 replaced XP as the new long term enterprise operating system in February of 2011 with the release of SP1. The Metro UI of windows 8 is going to throw a lot of consumers for a loop when they first use their new laptop, but I never viewed Windows 8 as being a relevant enterprise OS. Give Microsoft a little time, say 2016 (2017 with the Service Pack) to produce something relevant for businesses. I think most businesses upgrade hardware on a 3-4 year cycle and every other cycle should be accompanied by an OS upgrade. Windows 8 will be Microsoft's effort to get the bugs in their tablet and phone interfaces ironed out as well as building an online software distribution store (ala the Windows app store). With that said I sold my ditm msft leaps in the $32 range. It is worth more that $32 but Windows 8 is far from a home run imo.

[Liberty]

Windows 7 replaced XP as the new long term enterprise operating system in February of 2011 with the release of SP1. The Metro UI of windows 8 is going to throw a lot of consumers for a loop when they first use their new laptop, but I never viewed Windows 8 as being a relevant enterprise OS. Give Microsoft a little time, say 2016 (2017 with the Service Pack) to produce something relevant for businesses. I think most businesses upgrade hardware on a 3-4 year cycle and every other cycle should be accompanied by an OS upgrade. Windows 8 will be Microsoft's effort to get the bugs in their tablet and phone interfaces ironed out as well as building an online software distribution store (ala the Windows app store). With that said I sold my ditm msft leaps in the $32 range. It is worth more that $32 but Windows 8 is far from a home run imo.

 

I don't know. That's what might happen, but I'm pretty sure that Microsoft never intended for the enterprise to stick with Windows XP for a decade and not upgrade..  It happened because you can do that with perpetual licenses and because Windows Vista sucked so much, but I'm pretty sure that if Windows XP had been followed a few years later by something much better, that many more would have gladly upgraded. I don't think MSFT ever says: "Let's make something that the enterprise segment will hate, we'll do something that works for them in 5-10 years".

[rkbabang]

I've never used W8, but from the screenshots and descriptions I've read it looks like a perfectly functional OS for small-touchscreen devices (i.e. tablets & phones).  I think what Microsoft is about to discover is that the user interface requirements of a small-touchscreen device do not work on a larger screen w/ mouse and keyboard type device, and visa-verse.  This seems like it should be obvious, but apparently Microsoft thinks they can do one GUI to fit both types of devices.  I don't think it will work.

 

Of course Microsoft could solve this problem quite easily in W8 SP1 with a choice of selectable user interfaces, similar to the different window managers that sit on top of Linux (Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, XFCE, etc).    They wouldn't need 10 or 20 choices like Linux has, they would just need two. Call one Metro and the other Traditional and let the user choose the the preferred GUI for each device and even switch back and forth between them as you can in Linux.  I agree with this article and others I've read, in its current form Windows 8 looks non-functional on a PC or laptop.