Microsoft Prepares Rethink On Windows 8 536
jones_supa writes "Microsoft has confirmed to be preparing to reverse course over elements of Windows 8. 'Key aspects' of how the software is used will be changed when Microsoft releases an updated version of the operating system this year, Tami Reller, head of marketing and finance for the Windows business, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Referring to difficulties many users have had with mastering the software, she added: 'The learning curve is definitely real.'"
While this decision is generally being framed as a frantic backtrack for Microsoft, it comes as the company has recently passed 100 million Windows 8 licenses sold. Clearly they see this as more of a course adjustment than bailing water from a sinking ship. Microsoft also plans to preview the update called 'Windows Blue' in June.
The betting pool is now open... (Score:5, Interesting)
...prediction: They'll lash in a start button but still try and force the user to go through Metro first.
Windows 8 haters had the right of it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, when one has to Google on another computer for instructions on how to bring up the damn (well hidden) address bar in the browser, you know your "intuitive" design is bad, bad, bad. Luckily I already knew about the (equally well hidden) active corners of the screen to bring up the Start screen, Desktop and Charm bar,so I did manage to get around, sort of. Trying to find some essential system settings proved impossible until I ended up installing StartIsBack, which gives me the start menu and old desktop upon boot; after that I could access the old style control panel. Windows 8 is just fine and dandy... Now that I have it working just like Windows 7. Honestly, the Metro interface is not that bad on a mobile device with a touch screen, but it has no place on a desktop PC.
Sure, all new UIs will require some learning. But never, not since Windows 3.11, have I had such a hostile experience from a new OS.
Re:100 million Windows 8 licenses sold (Score:3, Interesting)
Or they don't buy computers, if the computer comes with Windows 8 . . . which is what the PC manufacturers have been complaining about.
Or they buy tablets.
On that "hairyfeet" had an interesting theory (in another thread) that is worth repeating:
Microsoft is rich enough to survive another Vista or two, but many PC manufacturers are not. If Microsoft does nothing to make them happy again, they may get desperate and push Linux in earnest.
So there is some risk for Microsoft of losing dominance in their main market if they overdo it with pushing the UI formerly called Metro ;-)
Re:good (Score:2, Interesting)
A friend of mine bought a new laptop after using XP for 10 years. She hated Windows 8, so I let her borrow my Windows 7 laptop until she can find one. She likes 7, and I would imagine her sentiments are quite common. I like 8, but I can understand the frustration some people have with it, especially after watching her try to use it. I would not be surprised at all if Blue allows you to run 8 much like 7 since there must be a lot of people like my friend.
Re:Lies and statistics (Score:4, Interesting)
Nearly 4% in 6 months isn't bad especially when you consider the lower demand for PCs in general. Also, some portion of the XP and 7 users will never upgrade so the potential growth for a new OS is even lower. It's already the fourth most popular OS.
That 100 million Windows 8 numbers are misleading (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:good (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I went back to Windows 7 because I didn't like the constant switching / start screen.
The thing was that the start menu really was nearly entirely obsolete. None of its features really made sense.
Want to run a command by typing its name name?
Win+R, type away
Want to actually search for something? The start screen makes more sense then the smallish non-resizable start menu window.
Want to get to the control panel, logoff, etc? The charms bar was perfectly fine (if nonobvious). And has a hotkey of its own (again non-obvious)
The actual hierarchical start menu? Worthless legacy cruft that has been more or less replaced by search anyway.
All that was left was the smart recent applications/recent documents stuff which was almost covered by pinning apps to the taskbar.
To 'fix' windows 8, I'd
restore the start menu button (hot corner makes no sense)
When the start menu pops up, you get back the smart 'recent applications / recent documents', and the ability to pin applications to it, and the search box.
Except the search box is simple, only looks at program names, and document filenames. That's it. It doesn't look at email, or inside documents, or music... for deep searching for that, I'll use the start screen search, or even more likely the dedicated application anyway (for email, music, photos etc)
And a button to bring up the full start screen.
And another one to bring up the charms bar.
And make shutdown a direct option so you don't have to logout first, but that can be on the charms bar... i don't care. I don't shutdown more than once a day anyway, and many shut down once a week or less.
Then make hotcorners entirely optional in desktop mode.
That's really it. No "All Programs --> " on the start menu. if you need something from that go into the full start screen. No "Games" or "Music" or "devices and printers".
The resulting "start menu" is just a little taskbar gadget for quick search and application launching.
my 0.02
Re:mature response to a corporate stumble (Score:4, Interesting)
To be fair when people did not like where Gnome and KDE were going they had the choice to pick up where they left off and roll their own.
Which some people did. Some users followed. Some distributions picked up speed due to what they did.
With Microsoft your only choice is to bitch. You can not take the windows 7 source and stay on that path and update as you will.
what? (Score:5, Interesting)
100 million sold? Or 100 million packaged with laptops, PCs and tablets forced down the throats of unwitting users that definitely would rather have had windows 7 had they any clue?
The most hilarious part of this whole debacle on Microsofts part is that we recently decided to upgrade from WinXP to Win7 finally... and as part of that a few people said "hey, why don't we just go for Win8 while we're at it?" so they put together some focus groups of generally non-tech savvy employees to see how long it would take them to get a grasp on how to do their jobs using the new OS. One of the security guys in charge of the project is a big apple fan and argued we needed a control... and wanted to use OSX... management thought it wasn't such a bad idea, but of course, we're NOT switching to Apple any time soon so instead they used Redhat. Win7 was easiest for them to pick up of course... but Redhat beat Win8 by a country mile. There were many in test that never got Win8 to work for their jobs. I wasn't privy to all of the hurdles they found and what-not. But it's pretty staggering to think MS screwed up their UI so much that a bunch of our least talented salesmen were more capable of using Linux that it.
When are they going to realize it's not the UI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Metro Metro Metro! That's what the media is focusing on, but it's not the real reason Windows 8 failed.
W-8 failed because Microsoft thought they'd be able to screw their developers the way that Apple's been screwing iOS developers since day one. Going full walled-garden for the Metro UI while at the same time effectively forcing developers to abandon Silverlight and Flash due to concerns about long-term viability meant there really was no compelling reason for a developer to bother with Windows 8. My company, a manufacturer of population-based analytical software that runs on a massively-parallel database, basically abandoned Windows as a development platform. In the middle of a product cycle.
Those MSDN/Visual Studio/Team Foundation/etc. licenses will never happen. Now, at great expense and risk, we've decided to go down the HTML5+Javascript path for the front end. It sucks. It sucks so badly that there's not a person in the shop who doesn't want to abandon the project altogether. But at least it will be portable if it ever gets built. It'll take two years longer than it would have if Microsoft hadn't screwed us over, but that's the price of doing business I guess. (The JBOSS backend is painful too, but not to the degree that an HTML5/Javascript front-end is.)
Yet, all that could have been avoided if Microsoft hadn't hit the Greed button and tried to force the Metro UI down its developers' throats. We have no confidence in Microsoft EVER being a viable development platform again. Not when key components could be pulled out from under us just because they want to impose a UI tax.
And I know I'm not alone. I've heard the same story, read the same story, watched the same story unfold all over the internet.
Microsoft used to field the best damn development and application platform in the industry, hands down. It still does, actually. But unfortunately, I can't risk using it. And because of that fact, there's very little chance that I'll ever bother considering it in future efforts.
And THAT's why Windows 8 failed and any attempt to revive it will fail as well.
Re:The betting pool is now open... (Score:5, Interesting)
I must be the only person who actually prefers the metro menu thing. I don't think I could go back to the small and horribly ordered (unless you spend the tedium of organizing it constantly) menu again. I like having all my main programs organized and displayed prominently. The metro screen is the best thing they did in Win 8, really (outside of making SD and Network transfers less idiotic).
Metro apps are still mostly crap, and they still need to make the whole OS feel less "tacked on", and work on UI and app consistency, though.
If this update is $15-20 I'll grab it. If not... I don't mind Win 8.
Re:The betting pool is now open... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsofts snot does not always turn to honey.
Zune ... failed
Play4Sure .. failed
WinCE .. failed
Win8 Mobile ... failing
WinRT ... failing
Surface ... failing
xbox/xbox 360 ... if you uncook the books and stack up all the costs and losses releated to the xbox line they are still a decade from turning a profit.
search ... still losing money after more than a decade.
MS is sure their future in the consumer market is tied to the 30% take the get with an app store. This means
1. The Modern Intreface must be maintained.
2. The legacy desktop and non-app store installation must go away.
3. The start button must go away to facilite point 1 and 2.
Re:Anonymous Coward rethinks Frosty Piss (Score:3, Interesting)
It'll be a step forward for them (Score:2, Interesting)
I think Win 8.1 will be a great step forward for them. Not only will it fix most of the things consumers hate about Win8, it will be timed to coincide with Bay Trail and Haswell, and possibly will tie in with XBox "720" (whatever it will be called). It'll never make fans of the slashdot crowd, but it could well become a major market success. Ridiculing Windows and Microsoft has never seemed to matter very much.
I usually sprinkle in some gratuitous criticism of them and their products as it seems standard protocol for slashdot, but that has gotten tiresome. Win 8.1 and their other products might well be a very strong play this year.
Start screen is the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Against my advice, my parents bought a Windows 8 machine so I've had a fair bit of chance to play with it and to hear from a couple of "typical" computer users what their experience with Windows 8 is like.
Everyone who has used that machine *hates* the start screen. While one would think you can "fit more" than with the start menu, in practice what you have is the ability to show or hide the sub-menus as groups of icons. Once you tell it to show stuff you actually *want* (like Games), the start screen rapidly becomes 2-3 physical screens wide. So now not only do you have to drag your mouse all over the place to reach the icons/tiles, you have to scroll the screen/menu to reach them.
My Dad is particularly frustrated with Windows 8. As far as he's concerned, nothing works right except Firefox, and even that ticks him off because he has to scroll all the way over to the right on the start screen to find it's icon.
My Mom is ticked off with the Metro interface on her card games. The "click top and drag down" metaphor for shutting down applets is not intuitive, and without a touch screen, it's also difficult to use. Mom has always had difficulty with "click and hold" aspects of applications because of her arthritis. Most of the time she just gives up because she can't hold the mouse button down long enough to drag it to the bottom of the screen.
Personally what I hate is that there is no actual "windowing" of Metro apps. Everything is full screen. I haven't worked with full screen apps since the days of the 80x24 green screen terminal. I need to be able to access multiple applications at the same time. And the flash from work screen/desktop to start menu literally gives me a headache (I get migraines regularly, and eye strain from this type of interface aggravates them -- I despise Gnome 3 for the exact same reason.)
Windows 8: Epic FAIL!
Re:Windows 8 haters had the right of it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, when one has to Google on another computer for instructions on how to bring up the damn (well hidden) address bar in the browser, you know your "intuitive" design is bad, bad, bad. Luckily I already knew about the (equally well hidden) active corners of the screen to bring up the Start screen, Desktop and Charm bar,so I did manage to get around, sort of..
/rant
What the hell is it with Microsoft's obsession with hiding stuff? Every damn release of a new Windows I have to un-hide more and more things that I want to see, such as file extensions, full file paths, and all directories.
I know! Let's just hide everything!! That would be SO much simpler to use...