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3 decades ago, I heard a Microsoft salesman talk about their products. His sales pitch focused on how Microsoft programmers created multiple ways for accomplishing the same task. For instance, setting a word to bold in Word can be done by ctrl-B, or right click and click bold, or click on the menu and select the bold icon. Their stated goal was to allow people who have various learning styles to quickly adapt to the software.

Microsoft blew it with Windows 8 by eliminating known ways of accomplishing single tasks. They need to return to their earlier programming style.

Microsoft blew it with Windows 8 by eliminating known ways of accomplishing single tasks.

I think that's very accurate. The article references the return of, of all things, a power button. Now, turning the computer off isn't exactly an exotic thing to have to do, and they buried it pretty well in 8.0. Either they were so intoxicated with the datapad/smart phone model of user interface that they were attempting to "train" their users to use old machines under a new methodology, or it was simply sloppy human engineering. At first I thought the former, now I suspect the latter is the case.

That's the sort of thing that comes out in focus group testing if your sample population is large enough to resemble the actual user base. For whatever reason, that one fell through the crack, and it must have been one very large crack. I could be entirely wrong about this but what it looks like to me is inadequate testing.

Microsoft blew it with Windows 8 by eliminating known ways of accomplishing single tasks.

Very good point.

I read an interesting article in the WSJ yestereday that said that Microsoft's problem was its business model, which was always one of trying to destroy the competition (primarily by copying the product clumsily and trying to blow the competitor out of the water by the force of its large installed base, which theoretically will accept the MS copy instead of seeking the original).

I think there's some truth to that. MS is apparently very worried about Google now, which may indeed be starting towards a suite of apps that work with its essentially cloud-based system, so with Win 8, MS completely threw away what it had done well for years and tried to bring in a bunch of cloud stuff and shallow apps on a clunky, unready operating system.

I hope they improve, but many times in the past, MS has thrown away a good program (remember Front Page?) or removed its most important functionalities in an attempt to destroy a competitor. Not a good business model at all.

“Microsoft blew it with Windows 8 by eliminating known ways of accomplishing single tasks. They need to return to their earlier programming style. “

uhh... but they do have multiple ways of doing the same thing. There are keyboard shortcuts and mouse or touch options to accomplish tasks. I have Windows 8 on my non-touch Desktop and I can do anything I could do in Windows 7 as fast and as easy in Windows 8. I literally taught my mothers sewing circle everything they need to know about running their computer controlled sewing machines in 15 minutes.

If a bunch of 60+ year old blue haired ladies can learn Windows 8 in 15 minutes than anyone who is complaining is either stupid or lazy/stubborn/hard-headed.