Windows 8: Is Microsoft flailing? | Hacker News Reader

Windows 8: Is Microsoft flailing?

extremetech.com

29 pointsmrsebastian36 comments

"Dukhon has in effect told current users to “take one for the team,” arguing that eventually, once everyone converts to the new system, and all the developers rebuild their applications for it, everyone will benefit. This arrogantly assumes that everyone is in the same boat as those at Microsoft — addicted for life to Windows and willing to put up with yet more years of change and inconvenience, to get to some future nirvana."

That's exactly the approach that Apple takes time and time again- pushing forward, being innovative, and telling everyone (particularly app makers) to catch up.

When they do it they are being "bold", yet when Microsoft does it is "flailing". I don't understand why.

When they do it they are being "bold", yet when Microsoft does it is "flailing”.

There are two ways to answer that question. One is to suggest that there is no difference between Microsoft and Apple’s design and implementations, and it is simply a question of prejudice.

The other is to suggest that on balance, Apple’s changes pay off positively for users while Miscrosoft’s do not. In which case they are both doing the same thing in theory, but different things in practice.

Are you arguing either of these cases?

It seems clear that there are some differences between Microsoft's designs and implementations and Apple's. But if you compare, say, DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Windows 7, it seems difficult to make the case that Microsoft's changes to Windows have not paid off positively for users on balance over the years. Certainly there have been missteps, but those missteps have, to date, always been overcome over time, and almost never by backtracking to the previous state of affairs.

Perhaps there have been sufficient missteps, though, that people feel they have both license and cause to second guess major changes.

Whether Win 8 itself ends up being successful or not is still an open question, of course. But I will be happy to wager that (A) there will be a major next successful version of Windows, and (B) it will look a lot more like the Win 8 Developer Preview than it does like Win 7.

> DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows XP, and Windows 7

Not that I disagree with you, but it would be fairer to include Microsoft's serious missteps like DOS 4, Windows 286, Windows ME, and Windows Vista.

In addition, it ignores Microsoft's long-standing dedication to backwards-compatibility and attention to legacy customers. Microsoft, and Windows in particular, has always been the safe haven of those unable or unwilling to change.

>In addition, it ignores Microsoft's long-standing dedication to backwards-compatibility and attention to legacy customers

Err what? All the apps still run and run natively. This not even like Apple's move to Intel. It's just the Start menu UI that's being changed. This is more like the Ribbon UI being introduced in Office 2007 replacing the traditional toolbar.

There were predictions then that companies would shift to OpenOffice because the ribbons were too jarring to users. How did that turn out?

My point was more abstract than that. The thread I was in was concerned with how when Apple makes big changes, they are called bold, while when Microsoft does it, they are called flailing.

My point was that the comparison must take into account the culture each company takes toward accommodating the needs and tastes of legacy/long-standing customers. Pulling out one example - the Ribbon in Office, which people still bitch about to this day, mind you - does very little to argue that Microsoft has a tradition of bold changes breaking existing user expectations. Such an argument would need to be much, much stronger.

>he other is to suggest that on balance, Apple’s changes pay off positively for users while Miscrosoft’s do not.

I am curious regarding MS's big changes that you consider that didn't help users, Vista? Office Ribbon? Windows Phone 7?

I’m not saying they don’t help users. I bought a Tablet PC and liked it.

I think its the former. Whether Microsoft's efforts pay off or not is yet to be seen as the OS is not even in Beta yet.

1) Nothing succeeds like success. It settles a lot of arguments in people's minds, and Microsoft's mobile strategy is not succeeding.

2) Microsoft's users are likely more change-averse than Apple's.

3) Over the years, Microsoft has cultivated a reputation that is rather different from Apple's. That directly affects how the two are perceived.

Microsoft's mobile strategy is not succeeding. Microsoft's desktop strategy has been consistently successful for 20 years. So why are they allowing their mobile strategy to seep into their bread-and-butter desktop market?

Microsoft has built a reputation of maintaining a consistent and reliable platform, and bending over backwards for backward-compatibility. Why are they giving play to the avant-garde UI experimentation that, all things being equal, might drive desktop customer back to MS? I've read more than one report of people fed up with Unity or Gnome3 switching back to Win7.

I see the difference at cultural focus of Microsoft vs Apple. Apple is focused on the end-user experience, all technical, design and marketing considerations follow. Microsoft has come from a past where their focus hasn't been directly on the end user, rather it's on sufficient (but not exceptional) user experience in order to sell to businesses and system vendors. Furthermore, I feel like Microsoft has a flow of marketing/sales -> feature lists -> technical development which really detracts from the total system integration focus needed to make the end-user experience, well, magical.

To some extent, Google has a similar disconnect. Their main customer isn't the end-user, it's ad-buying businesses, and, with Android, handset and tablet vendors. Either way, it's not the end-of-the-world, but I think it's a key basis that leads to how the different products of the companies end up in terms of polish and integration.

I think it's just a question of "Will this be a thing, or will this be dropped as a dud?" Microsoft has a history of pushing hard on things (Silverlight comes to mind) and then dropping it a year or two later when it doesn't gain enough traction, so naturally Windows developers are a lot more wary of the "brand new thing".

Additionally, for better or worse, Apple's hardware cycle tends to be a lot shorter than Microsoft's-- the fact that you can't upgrade a system piecemeal pushes people onto the latest and greatest, which means it already comes supporting the software for the same, as opposed to the people still using Windows 98.

I don't see this as a double standard. Instead, it's catering to your audience.

Apple products need to be beautiful. Microsoft needs to be accessible.

It may be simple realism.

If Microsoft doesn't have the brand loyalty of Apple, it is foolish (for it) and annoying (to us) for it to try to leverage loyalty into a willingness to suffer now for the future.

Edit: plus, Apple has earned (or otherwise acquired) a trust level that lets it ask its users to wait for the future. I don't Microsoft has this.

This article basically sums up the opinion I walked away from Build with.

The biggest problem I have with Metro is Microsoft doesn't seem to know how it scales up. When asked how you'd make applications like Office, PhotoShop or even the file explorer their response is "use the old Windows 7 interface with a ribbon". Meaning the only answer they seem to have is to force the user to work with two different usability paradigms indefinitely.

So Metro is more of a Widget platform than it is an Application platform.

That said I'm not sure it matters. I'm part of the .NET community in the 2nd largest city in the US and I literally don't know a single person who has started a new desktop app in the last year (or who plans to start one ever again). Meaning Metro's inefficiencies are probably moot.

I watched build a little bit but never got an impression that Microsoft was ever pushing metro as a ui standard for desktop apps. It was always menat to be for tablet and other mobile apps. If you don't see anybody starting a metro looking desktop app its because it's not suppsosed to be.

That's my point. Users don't want two different UIs. If Metro can't scale up then it will never be an appropriate desktop UI

A must-read: “Fire and Motion” by Joel Spolsky

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

And a not-so-must-read: “Imagine if your house had Windows:”

http://raganwald.posterous.com/imagine-if-your-house-had-win...

I can't help feeling that part of the difference is that, per Feynman, Apple builds MIT Cyclotrons while Windows, like Linux, is more like the Princeton Cyclotron.

http://bit.ly/qUZnMP (directs to Google Books)

Personally, I'm kind of fond of Princeton Cyclotrons.

Agreed, really enjoyed your post. Quick heads up that your resume on your site seems to be down?

I think your post is easier to read than Joel's.

Thanks! Joel’s essential point speaks to developers in the ecosystem, who have to keep up with OS upgrades while simultaneously competing with Microsoft. I was making a much simpler point about using the OS, so of course I had an easier task :-)

Interesting that Joel has chosen Microsoft's ASP.NET MVC as the platform for StackOverflow.

I see companies hosting .NET 4 apps on Windows Server 2003 and running .NET 1.1 apps on Windows Server 2008 R2. Don't need to keep up with the upgrade treadmill if you don't want to.

It seems Microsoft knows that computing is moving more mobile and into touch screens, and they also know that the standard Windows UI doesn't translate too well in those situations, so they made this new metro UI paradigm. In a way they had to do something like that to stay relevant.

Unfortunately, I think they're pushing the Metro UI too hard for Windows 8. Metro UI to me will probably be about as useful as Launchpad is on my Mac with a mouse. (Not at all)

The only difference I see is that all the PR surrounding Windows 8 is about Metro while Launchpad wasn't completely the focus of the Lion PR, and it's also not enabled on by default. You have to start Launchpad from the dock before it affects you in any way. My solution is to just not do that.

I wish Windows 8 PR was mainly focused on performance improvement and then they mentioned, "Oh we added Metro UI too if you want to use it." Better performance is always an easy sell for me, while new UI's I don't need aren't.

I'm very skeptical as well, but Microsoft is not a company without the resources to make something like this work.

Microsoft is the leader in two major markets: browser and desktop. They are losing traction (albeit slowly) and are being dominated in the mobile phone market. This kind of maneuver is obviously the result of a company that knows it's dying.

From a long term point of view, this is probably the right move; mobile and desktop appear to be converging and Microsoft's desktop OS could not be more different than their mobile OS. The same can no longer be said for Apple's Mac OS X and iOS (they're still not the same, but with launchpad and app store, it's not hard to see what Mac OS X is headed towards).

It has the potential to be very good and they could step on a lot of people's toes. It'll be interesting to see how this all pans out for them.

They also are a leader (especially in terms of revenue) in servers. They are strong competitors in gaming, controlling 2 of the major platforms (Windows and xbox). They are the leader in office productivity software (This last one might not fit with the others as well, because it office is not as much of a platform as the others).

It's one of those rare cases where the comments make more sense than the article itself. Those 2% can easily disable Metro's Start Screen and get their Start Menu back.

"Microsoft, instead of dealing with the pain of their existing users directly, has trotted out pages of surveys, charts, tables, and even some college-level calculus formulas to prove why the new system is, in theory, an improvement. It gives you the feeling the whole new interface was designed by computer, or by committee."

The author is very proud of his ignorance and has evidently not used windows. Not worth your time.

You do realize you can turn off the Metro UI, and default to the legacy screen, right?

You can completely turn windows off as well. God bless hyper visors.

My opinion after messing about with the developer preview is that the Metro UI is usesless with a mouse driven setup. I found many things frustrating, as in there was no way I could find to "kill" the piano app in the preview. I had to ctrl alt del to kill it, there was no "X" or "close" or virtual "home" button to press that I saw. Granted, I was running this via virtual box, so its possible that there are some quirks that way. I just dont see a use for a "touch" style ui with a mouse. I have a magic trackpad that I would have loved to try, but I havent installed the boot camp drivers yet.

I couldn't find a keyboard shortcut, but you have to drag from either edge. That motion will bring up the other active windows(?) in your stack, switching you out of the app. It took me a while to figure that one out

For three decades, Microsoft carried the torch of backward compatibility and feature preservation. Unfortunately, this means that Microsoft has willfully cultivated a customer base that is downright curmudgeonly when it comes to forced changes.

Meanwhile, many of the people who might actually tolerate and applaud these changes are already running OSX.

Microsoft will still own the PC platform for decades to come. The only thing is, the PC platform will be only a fraction of the total space.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com