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Windows 8 has been the operating system to split opinion. While many people hate the interface changes, there are a select audience who claim it was a good move forward for Microsoft. Sadly sales figures have verified the poor response from the end user and the operating system has failed to drive PC sales in 2013.
While we can debate the pros and cons (and have done many times already), it is always interesting to hear from leading people in the industry. One such person – Robert Rutherford believes there is nothing wrong with Windows 8, but that the company are more a victim of release time, rather than any major issues with the code, or interface.
Robert Rutherford, managing director of specialist IT consultancy, QuoStar Solutions, said “Windows 8 was a failure of timing, not of design. Microsoft has set itself up in 2013 as a source of creativity and innovation, the problem is that the new vibe doesn’t yet gel with what users know and expect from the brand. On this occasion Microsoft pushed the envelope too much, but the time for these innovations will come. It’s important that Microsoft keeps doing what it’s doing to provide a challenge to Apple’s creative dominance.
On the commercial side, many businesses rely on Microsoft for their IT solutions whilst Apple focuses its energies in the consumer market. IT teams will be looking ahead to the raft of technologies that Microsoft has lined up for the remainder of 2013 with an interest undiminished by the failure of the Windows 8 interface.”
Kitguru says: Windows 8, a victim of timing rather than design?
No, Mr. Rutherford, it was not a failure of timing. It was definitely an utter failure of design. Metro is an abomination on desktop and merely on par on phone and tablet compared to Android and IOS.
You see, the businesses plan is to go direct through the Metro store on all platform, including PC, phone, tablet and console. A closed ecosystem in the cloud where you don’t own anything, you only rent the right to use, for a limited time. Recurrent, monopolistic tactic at its best.
They market this Metro thing as an innovation. The pretty Fisher Price dysfunctional interface fooled no one. MS tried to force this down the user’s throats and now it’s backfiring at them like it was Armageddon.
The only way out for Microsoft is to start listening to their customer base and 100% remove ANY trace of Metro in Windows Blue 8.1 for desktop. Anything short of this will simply precipitate the fatal agony at the end of the death spiral Windows 8 is currently firmly engaged in.
Excuses, Excuses. Win 8 would have been a winner if the arrogant b-turds at MS had only provided an option to select the traditional desktop or Metro interface. The basic software is sound: an evolution of Win 7; but the “my way or the highway,” marketing has doomed it to a niche. Hopefully, MS has realized its “New Coke” mistake and will provide the sotion in its next release of Blue. If not, MS and Balmer should look forward to a stockholder strike suit for their mismanagement.