Microsoft's big bet: Windows 8's 'too many cooks' problem

ZDNet ^ | 5/22/12 | Zack Whittaker

[illiac]

Summary: Windows 8 has already had too many hands in the mix and spoons in the pot. Microsoft wanted different and its staff all thought “different”. Instead of reaching compromise, Microsoft put everything in to please everyone — but will likely please very few.

Microsoft has only a few months before it releases Windows 8, probably in or around October in time for Christmas holiday sales.

The company knows full well how risky the new design, the user interface, and the decisions it has made will be controversial. In a recent blog post, Windows president Steven Sinofsky opened by explaining the “context” in which Windows 8 will fall in to.

Microsoft wanted Windows 8 to be different and its developers and staff all thought about what “different” could mean. Instead of reaching compromise and a general consensus, Microsoft seemed to put everything in to please everyone — but combined, the changes will likely please very few.

[TomGuy]

Not sure about Office, but I did find an interface program that sort of helps restore some of the XP-like features to file explorer:

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

You might try google search for ‘classic menu’

[Tucker39]

....the wife and ME....is the correct usage.

The words you use should be the same when used TOGETHER as they would be if used separately. So if “...it’s Apple for the wife at home” if used singly......and if “...it’s Apple for me at home” when used singly; then it’s the same when used together, as illustrated above.

Other than that, you done good! ;oD

[Carriage Hill]

If you find out, nav, pls Ping me. I want it back, too.

[null and void]

Thanks.

[null and void]

Why, for the love of God, why? If it ain’t broke DON’T FIX IT.

DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run...

[lefty-lie-spy]

I’m sitting on my laurels to have been ahead of the curve, went Apple from TI 99/4a, bought stock....mmmmmm. Microsoft is deservedly on the way out for being squares and dweebs.

[Justa]

I believe W8 is targeted to the mobile computing market. As in the presumed successor to the desktop and laptop. I think they’re putting it out there early to give hardware developers an OS to develop their hardware to. The end result will be a MS IPAD-like device which replaces desktop and laptops. You just bring it with you wherever you go and connect via whatever network is available.

[Dead Corpse]

All of the shortcut keys are the same. I haven't used the ribbon buttons for a while now. As long as I can still pop a text menu and they don't remap my ctl-alt- commands... I'm good.

Agreed that the mobile interface makes ZERO sense on a desktop. With the prevalence of iPads and other tablet devies taking over for desktops... It does make a certain kind of sense.

[Tzfat]

Being document or task centric is good - but a quick look at Windows 8 (and for that matter Windows 7), and you can see that although the bells and whistles of the Aero interface are gone - the Windows interface is BIGGER (a previous poster mentioned Office 7 - the ribbon did the same thing). Look at OS X and you will see the same focus on tasks or documents - but the interface is SMALLER.

Lesson? Microsoft is all about themselves, not the customer. What they think looks cool is what matters to them... Windows 8 will be a sad end to a great company.

[drbuzzard]

Heck, even 2008 Server indulged the idiocy of changing interfaces for the heck of it rather than to improve things. The entire way of using the GPO administrative application changed. You basically had to completely unlearn the process and learn the new one. What crack smoking moron decided to do that to SysAdmins?

I took a class on writing user interfaces some time ago, and it was a pretty basic rule that you don’t yank the rug out from under users and make them relearn everything without a damned good reason. Microsoft seems to like doing it on a lark.

[wbill]

About every other MS OS is good.

98 Good, ME, not so much.

XP excellent. Vista, junk.

Windows 7 good. Windows 8 will likely be unusable.

[chrisser]

Do you know of any way to restore the classic interface to Orifice 2007?

One of my people described it as Office having an orb-gasm.

I didn't look into any sort of back-compatible interface. This particular upgrade coincided with a bulk machine buy, along with Win7 so we just bit the bullet and forced everyone to make the change.

Part of that reasoning was that since it was the "new" MS-way of doing things, we may as well make them do it once and be done.

Now that the "new way" is being dumped for the "new new way" a few short years later, I wish we would have stuck with XP and O2003 and spent the money on other things.

[6SJ7]

Phone icons scaled up to desktop proportions doesn't work any better than a desktop scaled down to a phone. The two are different tools. It's as if Microsoft wanted one kind of hammer that could be used to drive railroad ties or hang a picture.

[chrisser]

Yeah, their server shenanigans are a whole separate rant of mine. Especially since I have both 03 and 08 boxes in production and have to keep switching between the two (not to mention the convoluted mess IIS turned into).

[null and void]

Yeah. Hindsight is 20/40...

[kevkrom]

So, Since Microsoft is universally hated and Apple universally loved, the obvious question is this -— when is Apple’s operating system going to capture nearly 90% of the market the way Windows did?

Never. Apple does not want to play in the low-margin market, so that will be left to others. Figure 30% market share for desktops is the most reasonable target, but all on the upper 50% of desktops by price. Probably higher market share for laptops, but again, all in the upper half of systems.

The rest of the market.... well, that's Microsoft for now, but don't be too surprised some years down the road if Linux becomes standardized enough to be the OS of choice for low-end hardware such as netbooks, because the price of the OS for something like Windows will be prohibitive compared to hardware cost.

To head that off, Microsoft will have to cut prices and deal with smaller profits on a smaller piece of the overall pie, though they could still easily have a majority of marketshare, but without the profits they're accustomed to.

[Boogieman]

There are plugins that you can install to bring the old menus back. UBitMenu is one of them, but there are others too.

http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

[KarlInOhio]

Phone icons scaled up to desktop proportions doesn't work any better than a desktop scaled down to a phone. The two are different tools. It's as if Microsoft wanted one kind of hammer that could be used to drive railroad ties or hang a picture.

Uggh! Tablets/smart phones are useful for processing other people's data, but they are awful for entering anything more than a minimal amount of data. For example, I love playing music on my iPod Touch, but I could never imagine editing music on it - the touch user interface is just far too sloppy on positioning to do any useful cutting and pasting. It gets a little better with a capacitive stylus, but you don't get the single pixel positioning like you can with a mouse.

Similarly, viewing webpages is wonderful on a tablet (for most sites, some stink on ice without a full screen). But even entering this amount of data and html codes would just be painful. If I'm responding on FR on a tablet, I usually skip quoting other text or putting in any html codes. And even then it takes many times longer to type that it would with a real keyboard.

[fruser1]

Originally (pre-PC) the whole concept of SOFTware was that you could change it without changing the HARDware.

Now, every OS “upgrade” requires significant hardware improvments.

I gave up on this “upgrade racket” awhile ago. I got an extra refurb-XP when Vista came out.

I’m going lower tech because I’m really just not interested in completely updating my stuff just because some company want a new influx of cash.

Same for me on cell phones. I have not and don’t plan on getting iPhone, etc..

[null and void]

See post #37, thanks Boogieman!