Beta versions of Windows 8 this week lost their nifty Aero user interface, which Microsoft’s top user interface guy now calls “cheesy” and “dated,” though two weeks ago he apparently loved it. Developers are scratching their heads over this UI flatification of what’s supposed to become the world’s most popular operating system. But there’s no confusion at my house: Aero won’t run on a phone.
Look at the illustration to the left. It shows projected growth in Internet devices. Keep in mind while reading this that a PC lasts at least three years, a phone lasts 18 months and nobody knows yet how long the average tablet will be around but I’ll guess two years. Adding that knowledge to these sales projections and we can see that mobile devices (phones and tablets) have become the game in software and whoever has been shouting about that at Microsoft is finally being heard.
This chart suggests that Microsoft’s OS and application dominance will quickly decline if they don’t get a whole lot luckier in phones and tablets. So Microsoft is going all-in on mobile and the bet-the-company way to do that is to make sure the Win8 kernel will run on all three platforms. That’s a common code base from top to bottom, which should make Grand Theft Auto be an interesting phone experience, eh? But since phones still aren’t a match for desktop hardware, that means necessarily dumbing-down Windows a bit to help the merge to converge.
You could run Aero on an ARM-based smart phone, but you might not be able to run anything else. Or you could run Aero on your phone but with half the battery life. Not good.
These beta versions are aimed mainly at developers, of course, and that’s the point: mobile development is now more important than desktop… to everyone.
Microsoft certainly expects (hopes) phone hardware to dramatically improve in the next few months. That’s a good bet. But it also suggests that Windows 8 Phone, if that’s what it is called, will run a lot better on expensive phones than it will on cheap ones. And that’s not a recipe for global domination. Microsoft’s answer, I’m guessing, will be subsidies to smart phone buyers like the $400 PC subsidies we saw in the early broadband era of the mid-1990s.
As a good friend of mine likes to say who knows Microsoft very well, “the Devil always pays cash.”
Gee… First again! Microsoft just figured out phones & tablets are going to dominate? Go figure…… again, MS is late to the table!
Can you see MS Outlook running on a smartphone? It’s going to be seriously ugly and clunky for sure –
And you know this how?
Outlook on Windows Phone has been broken up into its separate parts, email, tasks, calendar, contacts…it works very well. I make a change on my work laptop to a contact or an appointment and it’s on my phone within seconds. Obviously you haven’t taken a close look at Windows Phone.
iOS has definitely influenced the design. Windows XP Tablet was around way before and it just plain sucked. They’ve made progress though. For instance, Office 2010 still has a ancient *FLOPPY DISC ICON* for a save button. Which my nieces don’t get. Granted, it is the largest floppy disc yet (“for touch”).
In fact, gone is the convenient pull down menus in all Office core apps. Instead, we’ve got an obnoxiously large tool bar (“for touch”) that eats precious screen real-estate and will leave you in a cross eyed gaze. That is until you decipher and have memorized the hieroglyphs that were formerly dozens of neatly packed pull down menus. I guess it saves, ironically, the cost of localization by not having to use words to represent commands in their flagship word processor. Instead, more tiled icons (“for touch”).
Meanwhile, the learning curve of using multitouch gestures to stroke, add and calculate spreadsheets in iOS’s “Numbers” is phenomenal. It really makes using Excel feel like an old DOS prompt. I suspect the next generation will know the tablet better then a ‘mouse’.
If Microsoft wants to compete, they are going to have to push “Metro” and trashcan the tradition of backwards compatibility. No more floppy disc icons and running DOS apps. Unlike half assed UI’s running atop old technology. If they want to do it right, they are going to have to create a rift in the developer SDK and push the new and abandon the old. Will that be Windows 8? Doubtful. It’s probably like their ‘every other bad OS’. 95, Millenium, Vista. We’ll have to wait for the 98, XP, 7, Windows 9 for the “done right” version.
I find the ‘Ribbon’ interface more frustrating than anything else.
Aside from wasting space, I waste time searching for commands. Check one ribbon, view each icon, then read each and every label, no luck, repeat with the next ribbon.
When I’m looking for a command, I usually have a rough idea where in the menu the command is (ie. – last menu, halfway down). I can start moving the mouse towards that menu, and if I select the wrong menu, I can quickly and easily adjust with very little mouse effort. Also, I find reading menu top down, left justified easier than across mixed in with icons of varying sizes.
As for the ‘localizing’ arguement, that may save the developer effort, but does absolutely nothing for my benefit. And ‘touch’, well, I guess its less of a concern, as I don’t intend to be productive on a touch interface especially without being able to touch-type (ironic isn’t it).
I also feel its really presumptuous to go out of their way and remove the menus and force me adapt to their preferences. Fine if you want to default to the ribbon, but allow me change back if that’s what I want.
Agree about the ribbon. I hoped after a couple years it would grow on me. It hasn’t, it’s a UI disaster, they should let it die. I wish MS–and others– would focus more on real improvements instead of feature churn.
I disagree. I find the ribbon a vast improvement over the drop-down menus. It only took about two weeks to get used to, and it is now painful to go back to the Office 2003 style menus. I can usually get things done in fewer clicks with the ribbon vs the old menus.
Beta versions of Windows 8 this week lost their nifty Aero user interface, which Microsoft’s top user interface guy now calls “cheesy” and “dated,”
If they would only come to that conclusion about ribbons. No way ribbons are quicker. If people only used 5% of the previous menus, why would they use any more of a ribbon where most of the features are buried several layers deep. Page setup is one of the most irritating as I use it all the time in Excel, yet have to change ribbons and then click on a tiny button in the corner, as if it were an afterthought.
“again, MS is late to the tablet!”
Since cell phones suck, it’s important to find another use to keep costs artificially inflated.
Freudian slip in the tags? “Windos Phone”?
My non-technical 20 something daughter really likes her windows phone (Nokia 700 or something like that). It was inexpensive and very easy for her to setup and use.
Sounds like a good start to me…
You expect existing companies and VARs to standardize their desktops on the UI that your 20 something daughter likes?
Capturing the youth market is the goal of a lot of companies. Marketing to old people is the domain of few.
Except it isn’t this is running “Windows Phone 7”, ths isn’t what Microsoft are taking forward. Essentially Microsoft are killing “Windows Phone 7” and replacing it with “Windows 8”.
These aren’t versions of the same OS this is something totally different just called the same name. It is like Mac OS 9 -> Mac OS X, or Windows ME -> Windows 2000.
Yes these new “version 8” phones will look very similar but this is a reset, and very close to reset that “Windows Phone 7” represented.
Good thing, bad thing? Like the Magic 8 Ball says: “Ask again later”.
For what it’s worth, never really liked Aero. It seemed to repeat the missteps of early Mac OS X, after Apple had corrected them. This new semi-Metrofied look seems quite easy to live with. Not sure about Metro with a mouse, but maybe it won’t be too bad (I keep telling myself). I still find it very poor for navigating the content on the Xbox 360 (Where do you watch the videos you’ve downloaded? Where do you download game demos from?). At least on the PC you can rearrange the “Live Tiles”…
That’s why my son and mst of his friends abondoned XBOX and are now using Playstations. A few years ago it was the other way around.
I think the issue is less the ‘first phone’ than the ‘alpha phone.’ In my household, the ‘alpha X’ decides a lot. Cable TV, Phone Contract (family plan), computer, HiFi equipment (yes, I started with ‘HiFi,’ so I’m sticking to it).
So in my family plan now… there are 4 iPhones, a 5th is on it’s way one my daughter’s phone goes off contract (4 months, likely just in time for me to do the ‘iPhone Shuffle;-)’ ) This followed the iMac, and MacBook and MacBook Pros into the house starting 12 years ago.
If the 20 something is the tech leader in the family, so goes the family, as she is the ‘Alpha.’ I saw a lot of PCs bought that way 20 years ago, even though the usability curve was way too high at the time for 40+ year olds who never mastered typing let alone the concept of a ‘cursor’ (‘that pointy thing’).
A 20 year old often has a lot of time as opposed to money. They will ‘learn’ their device. 40-60somethings (huge concentration of wealth, zero capacity to ‘spend time learning a tech tool, especially as an ‘assistant’ tool), not so much
.
I’m not really interested in mobile computing except as an occasional necessity when away from my “desktop” systems -I’m a gamer, programmer, and web developer and use a lot of computing resources and desk top real estate. The idea of using my 1920 x 1200 screen to use some sad tablet wannabe interface is simply ridiculous.
Not sure how many are out there like me (I suspect it’s not an insignificant number) but I have no plans to “upgrade” to Win 8 from Win 7. Hopefully, once MS realizes that their fundamental appeal as an OS is more tied to resource rich stationary systems and that Apple and Android are unlikely to cede much market share to them they’ll stop trying to feed mobile-wannabe software to users like me with a funnel and hammer.
They do have a well-established track record of decent OS – crap OS -decent OS, so maybe after they finish airing the commercials showing us that we’re morons for not wanting anything to do with Win 8 they’ll develop a Win 9 that doesn’t try to force us to do our computing like we’re some imagined “least sophisticated consumer” group that needed something significantly dumber than 7 or wanted our desktops to behave like multi-thousand dollar tablets.
I couldn’t agree more. When it comes to dumbing-down their OS interfaces, Microsoft is following Apple’s tail lights so closely they’re going to end up in the same ditch.
Apple made this same mistake in OS X 10.7 “Lion”. They dumbed-down their “Spaces” app so it no longer presents a two-dimensional grid of virtual desktops but now only puts them in a line, like iOS. More and more features are only accessible through the Launchpad, like iOS. They’ve started pushing all of their own apps through their App Store and pressuring 3rd party manufacturers to do the same. 10.8 will be even worse — apps will only be available through the app store, everything will be sandboxed, system-wide utilities and hotkeys will not be possible. Microsoft saw all these things and said “Oh! We can do that!” So now desktop PCs will look like giant smartphones and be just as frustrating to use.
Why can’t Apple and Microsoft understand that I would buy a tablet IF I WANTED ONE? But I don’t — I want a computer. I remember a few years ago when Apple used to brag that every version of OS X was faster than it’s predecessor on the same hardware. They used to talk about new features to increase performance, like Grand Central. I guess those days are gone.
So I’ll be sticking with Mac OS X 10.6 as long as I can. If I’m ever forced to upgrade, I’ll probably have to look for a way to “jailbreak” my PC. *sigh*
The implication is that if you are a software company (and I include Apple here), you have to have just one OS and make it work everywhere, but open source OSes will be, or at least can be tailored to the category of the device in question. I would think that Windows would have to remain too bloated for most non-PC devices. This would seem to preclude Windows on any phone or tablet not controlled by Redmond, wouldn’t it? (Obviously Apple fans will pay for a very expensive device that can run whatever Apple wants.)
Well, Apple seems to have managed the whole OS/X & iOS from the same codebase fairly well.
Google seems to have the entire Linux on the server, Linux Android on the phone working very well.
Maybe Microsoft can do it too?
Hasn’t the idea that Apple products are only popular with a small, slavish apple fan base lost it’s credibility in the last few years?
“The Devil always pays cash -“. He prefers to receive payment with a credit card!
1. Aero was never going to run on phones, because Windows phones don’t have the classic desktop interface and they never will. Aero will still be included on all desktop and laptop pc’s and intel-powered tablets. Only the default *theme* will be toned down a bit so the design is a better match with the Metro interface. It’s purely aesthetics. Don’t confuse a theme change with a tech change.
2. Aero isn’t that bad power-wise. It runs on the GPU and it is an easy task for a GPU.
3. Windows Phone is capable to run on quite cheap hardware since April. Nokia made a deal with Microsoft to concentrate on cheap hardware first and they did. Windows Phone already has more market share than the iPhone in Russia and China. No need to subsidize.
4. Yes, Microsoft throws money at it. They don’t subsidize phones, they subsidize app developers.
1. I agree it’s probably aesthetic in part.
2. Offloading to the GPU doesn’t necessarily mean cheap in terms of power consumption, merely performance.
3. The “quite cheap” hardware to which you refer is expensive, subsidized hardware. It’s “cheap” like a $100 smartphone compared to a $200 smartphone ($800 vs $900 when the plan is taken into account).
4. You do realize Microsoft is subsidizing Nokia to the tune of billions, publicly announced, figured into quarterly reports, etc. etc.?
A release candidate with Aero intact has surfaced in China. https://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/windows_8_release_preview_leaks_web_china
More frightening than the potential dumbing down of Windows to me would be the dumbing down of the entire internet to make it more compatible with a 3″ to 10″ touchscreen. I feel the most popular app for tablets will be one that returns the home screen by shaking it like an Etch a Sketch and the most popular app on smartphones will be the one that allows users to contact each other and communicate by voice.
Surprising decision. I’ve been running Windows 8 on my laptop since the consumer preview and the Metro Start screen is simply the thing I skip to get to the desktop. The desktop looks pretty nice as it is, and overall I have to say that Windows 8 is looking superior to Windows 7 in many ways.
However, I’m not crazy about the “Metro” part of Windows 8, and I’m not sure that all of the world’s computer users are ready to forgo their “software” in favor of “apps.” It might seem like a good idea on the surface, but so far Metro feels like a really clunky way to use a computer. If Microsoft tries to push too many people in that direction too quickly, a lot of us may just give up and buy iPads.
I dunno. It seems like Microsoft has already developed shut-down-Aero-on-hardware-with-less-horsepower technology with Windows 7. When I installed Windows 7 on my 2005-vintage Thinkpad, Aero was even shut off by default. No need to get a non-Aero Windows 7 build or anything. Whatever Microsoft’s real reason was to turn off Aero in Windows 8 beta, it doesn’t seem like phones have anything to do with it.
Thanks for writing about this Bob.
I’ve discussed this with some hardened Windows Developers and they don’t get it. Why doesn’t Microsoft develop a tablet/phone only OS and leave Windows on PCs/Laptops as a separate product?
There is this little company called Apple that nailed this idea. They get that the experience on a PC/Laptop is radically different than a phone/tablet.
Any dumbing down of the desktop experience by Microsoft just may require Apple to buy more bank vaults for their profits. And after all these years of failure at mobile does Microsoft really think they have it figured out this time?
Users need their data to be portable, but not necessarily their OS UI. As long as products like Gdrive & Dropbox allow data portability, users can choose to use whatever OS they feel is most appropriate for the form factor they are working on. What users don’t need is to be forced into an inappropriate OS which is the route Microsoft are taking.
I’d say most people with a tablet almost exclusively consume, whereas those who create will mostly use the PC form factor, which is something that is unlikely to change anytime in the near future.
I think Microsoft have made a strategic mistake with Windows 8 because they believed that Apple were about to unify iOS and OSX and felt a need to create an equivalent product. Apple did appear to be heading that way but have now clearly stated that they believe this is an inappropriate direction to take and there will be separate OS’s for small mobile device and desktop/laptop.
Am I right to think that Microsoft is following the lead of Ubuntu’s Unity ( which has been around a few years now) ?
At least with Linux you have the choice to use whatever user interface you want.. and there are plenty to choose from!
I waited for something in a tablet that could run Windows and almost bought a Xoom when the Asus eee slate came out. Phones? I have a phone for that.
One size does not and will never fit all!
Any OS producer who cannot provide a suite of operating systems tailored for different kinds of user or device is not worth its salt.
True, but I think that’s what they are doing. After all, the iPhone platform is basically OS X stripped down and re-engineered to run on a phone. Provided MS can execute on their plan properly, at last they’ll have a unified, scalable, flexible platform that addresses the market from phones up to servers.
That’s something Apple has had in the market for 5 years now.
Frankly, this article and thread frightens me a little. I’m running both Windows XP and Windows 7 Pro (I bypassed the Vista experience). While W7 has some nice things about its UI, When I dig under the hood a bit, W7 already seems like a dumbed-down XP. And W8 will be even more crippled?
I’m a programmer – I like my big flatscreen and need a real keyboard. When I want to upgrade my hardware in a few years, will there be an adult OS to run on it (assuming anyone even bothers to make desktops by then)?
Move to Linux? Sorry, it’s just too futzy to figure out how to bring up applications that aren’t “standard.” And this is from somebody who was a Unix system admin back in the paleolithic era. Maybe if I hadn’t lost my “MS-DOS, Just Say No” button I’d have better Linux karma. But it seems like it may be the only viable option available come the near future…
Damn!
“Move to Linux? Sorry, it’s just too futzy to figure out how to bring up applications that aren’t ‘standard.'”
You haven’t looked at Linux recently, have you? Linking a program to a desktop icon, regardless of whether its a script, Java or C program or a Windows App running under Wine is trivially easy.
The same method works for the desktops I’ve tried and will probably continue to work after a desktop swap: thats true for jumping around between Gnome 2, XFCE and even the horrid, misbegotten Gnome 3.
Actually, I looked at it within the past month. My XP system is dual-booted with Ubuntu/Debian, with an ultimate aim to move my program development to Linux. I wanted to install the SDL graphics system, which I use under Windows, but it blew up into complications.
First I found I needed to get a third party app, “alien” to convert the SDL RPM package to a DEB package. Then I found I would have to download a lot of extra Ubuntu stuff to enable that DEB package. At this point, the learning curve was taking too much time from my project, so I put the whole thing on hold. I’ve since been informed of possible shortcuts, and maybe I’ll get back to the port eventually, but not right now.
In another fiasco, I started translating some *very* simple Windows BAT files to bash shellscripts. I had an experienced Linux friend helping me with this, and as we scrolled through the 5,000 line man page for bash trying to figure out why it wouldn’t let me do things I’ve been doing on XP (and even W98) for years, even he started mumbling nice things about Windows under his breath.
I don’t know if this is all due to the supposed “Unix Priesthood” keeping things dark for the rest of us or whether the reason for all this complexity is more benign, but I’ve always believed simpler is better, and Linux is, in my opinion, not yet ready for prime time.
SDL certainly isn’t ready for prime time. I’ve heard of it, but that’s about all.
I can sympathise with your comment about the bash manpage too: like many manpages its really too terse to be anything more than an aide memoire for a utility you understand. With your background something like the O’Reilly book ‘Linux in a nutshell’ may hit the spot as it assumes good knowledge of at least one other OS. IMO bash scripts are better thought of as simplified block structured programs: put your C hat on when writing them rather than thinking in terms of BAT files.
Simplicity, in the *NIX world, is somewhat different from Windows in that you get a lot of small utility programs that each do just one thing, but do it really well, plus a reasonably expressive scripting language that lets you combine these programs to solve your task. It can all seem impenetrable until you ‘get’ this rather different mind set. It also helps to realise that the main differences between a scripting language (bash, awk, perl, etc) and the regular programming languages is that there is no compilation step for a script and that scripting languages are generally simpler.
Thank your for your considered replies, Martin. I haven’t given up entirely, just postponed for awhile. ;^)
Martin is right when it comes to the concept of Mindset. I moved my entire(well almost) company’s infrastructure from Windows to Linux 2 years back. My team consists of two other sysadmins both of whom had vast Windows experience. After countless hours of training and hand holding they believe the only read advantage Linux scores over windows is that it is difficult to install new applications- which if you think about it for clerical(data entry) users is a herculean task. Even today they will tell me that trying out basic things like iptables and squid is R&D in linux while in windows its advanced because of a flawed understanding that the GUI is superior to the CLI. Two years down the line, apart from savings from licensing costs, even though substantial sysadmin work has come down- the one thing that has not changed is their mindset. The try to troubleshoot problems(upgrading drivers, resotring bad sectors etc) in linux the same way one would on a windows machine(this is in-spite of the fact that one of them attended a Red Hat Certification Course). Hence they still feel that the windows is superior and linux is not ‘advanced’. Personally, I haven’t had anything to do with anything that rhymes with Windows for over two years- but that’s just me.
Linux ego-forks are an unnecessary complication that is holding back the usability and acceptance of Linux. If everyone just agreed on the Desktop-Server-Dev version of one release the world would be a Linux one. However, egos fork. And that pretty much explains why Linux is forked forever.
Anyway I love it for my servers (Centos cause I’m cheap). Windows desktop programming pays the most, for good reason. Mac is old, comfortable jeans without all the hardware-troubleshooting-driver worry.
Well those are the ramblings of a CompSci – Marketing double major ( I know, shut up! The marketing gigs have lots more free beer and loose women.Take that haters.)
Once you go Mac you never go back. I switched (back) to Apple after 20+ years of MS-DOS and then Linux. I just spent too much time fiddling with Linux. Mac was a very welcome change from 15+ years of being a UNIX geek personally and professionally. And I can still be a UNIX geek on the Mac. I’ve NEVER been able to understand what some people think is so great about windows.
Don’t quite get the Grand Theft Auto reference.
I’ve been playing it on my iPhone and iPad for months.
Microsoft (and a lot of the world) needs to learn:
A Desktop is a Desktop
A Phone is a Phone
And what we do on one is not always something we want to do on the other
They both are needed, but for different reasons
THEY SHOULD NOT BE THE SAME EXPERIENCE Therefore NOT THE SAME OS
The 2 different OS’s SHOULD work & play well with each other but NOT BE THE SAME
that’s my 2 cents, waiting on change
Windows 8 and the “ribbon” UI show that Steve Balmer and Steve Sinofsky have become liabilities. Sinofsky developed both of these atrocities and Balmer let me. Both of them need to be fired or retired ASAP.
Not that I’m a huge fan of either of them, but…
Vista and the previous era of products such as Windows Phone, ‘Pen Computing’ and Silverlight were Gates era products. This was the time when Microsoft created space for their competitors to steal the march on them.
More recently Microsoft has started brining out some credible products. Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Metro and so on may not be revolutionary, but they at least have some kind of chance at standing up against the competition. I too have my doubts about Windows 8, but at least they’re doing something interesting.
As for the ribbon, I’ve got quite used to it. Compared to say Pages (which under the hood is fine), with it’s random and ungainly encrustations of toolbars and buttons, it’s a significant improvement.
Silverlight could have and should have been great (the ease of developing a WinForms app with the ease of deploying a web app) but it was crippled having impossibly crappy fonts.
The ribbon UI could have been great too (make common tasks the most obvious to use) but it the implemenation is inconsistent, and too jarring from the previous 10 years of accepted design language.
These are signs of crappy decision making at the top. At this point MS is just being carried forward by its momentum.
Both the Ribbon UI and Silverlight were Gates era technologies.
Sinofsky lead the project but answered to Gates, which is where the buck stopped back then.
You say, “As for the ribbon, I’ve got quite used to it.”
I have to echo Bill’s post farther up the page: Make it the default, fine. But let me get back to the old way.
The ribbon has taken away all my keyboard short-cuts following menu- and menu-item-underlined characters and shriven me of 1/3 of my productivity (at least at the formatting end) in all Microsoft Office tools. Whoever made that design decision deserves to be dismissed for cause. I dread the day Developer Studio is coerced into switching to them as well.
I’ve “gotten used” to the ribbon only in the sense that I know using MS Office will be less productive, less fluid than it ever was. I know the calendar doesn’t move backward, but I miss pre-ribbon versions of Office deeply.
Good grief, does it need to be repeated here? The ribbon is not the central issue, it is MS not giving users the option to disable it.
That’s quite true. But I suspect the issue is similar to letting us bypass the Metro Start Screen and use the old start menu on the desktop part of Windows 8. They are removing the old start menu code completely just to force the old timers, like me, to learn the new interface. That way, when we help the newbies, we won’t start by telling them to get rid of that new fangled start screen. It’s enforced unification similar to the Civil War. Look at it this way: even though we must stumble and curse at the new stuff, we’er still way ahead of the newbies. Sort of like teaching a good carpenter to move on to power tools.
I could see tablets being the least replaced device, as in once every 3+ years. They’re more of an appliance than any other platform–they have a simple purpose and their killer apps are less reliant on the spec upgrades. Plus, they usually aren’t tied to a phone contract, which pushes phone upgrades. And finally you have to figure that some people will simply give up on the platform.
It all depends what we mean by replacement. When I replace a desktop, the old one is basically junk. It may see some later use, but not a lot.
When I replace a phone, my wife gets it, followed by her sister who is currently using my old iPhone 3. All three iPhones I have bought over the last (almost) 4 years see daily use as someone’s primary phone.
So the way I see it, a modern smartphone has maybe a 4 year productive life[1]. That’s not much different from a desktop or laptop. It’s just that their mobility extends to migrating between users.
I expect the hand-me-down effect to be a transitory phenomenon though. I bought an iPhone 4 12 months ago and saw little reason to envy those who bought a 4s 6 months later. Every iteration of the iPhone before had been a major step up, but unless Apple pulls a spectacular rabbit out of the hat this year, I expect to keep my 4 for at least another year, maybe more.
[1] BTW this is one reason I will not consider buying an Android phone. I have got used to free OS upgrades throughout the useful life of a phone. I don’t understand how anyone can think the apalling state of Android upgradability is anything other than flat out unacceptable.
I think y’all are missing Cringley’s main point. In the fairly near future, the desktop PC market is going to be the tail to the mobile/tablet dog. And not a giant tail…think bulldogs.
I work in a public library, and I watch lots of average people struggle with PCs. (When was the last time YOU watched someone who’s never touched a PC before try to sign up for an email account?) There’s an enormous learning curve — one that gets forgotten shortly after a person reaches mastery.
Think of a large group of people (I was tempted to say “a generaton,” but it’s going to be all age groups) who learn to use mobile phones and tablets…and who can then sit down at a desktop. If the desktop has a fairly familiar mobile/tablet-like UI, there’s a diminished learning curve. Yes, the PC can do much more than mobile/tablet, and more complex tasks need more complex UIs…but if similar functions have similar UIs, people will take to them quicker and feel more comfortable.
This group is what the vast majority of PC users in the future will look like. Familiar with mobile/tablet UI, they’ll go shopping for a PC. One has a totally different UI and is intimidating and frustrating. The other has familiar UI elements, and the user can sit down and get things done right away. Which PC is the user going to buy?
When this generation moves into corporate purchasing positions, which PC are they going to order for their company?
Apple knows this — they’re going hog-wild introducing iOS features into OSX. The iPod Nano on my wrist looks like it runs iOS even though it doesn’t.
Face it…most of us who read Cringley are part of the tail, not the dog. We’re going to be a tiny share of the market. Smart designers will move in directions that make things easier and more attractive for the dog, not the tail.
There’s definitely a realignment of the market underway. Apple is parlaying their success in mobile (including iPods) into gains on the desktop. Windows 8 is MS trying to parlay their success on the desktop into gains in mobile.
It could be that Android will end up getting crushed between these two forces. To me the likely outcome is that it will end up replacing Symbian as what runs on a phone if it doesn’t run anything else.
Many of you are thinking the same as I and I’d like to that you all. Mobile OS has different needs from a desktop, and while interoperability between what’s created on them is essential, sharing the same OS is not.
Like many I skipped Vista, but as hardware moved on I had to upgrade and W7 was it. It’s better than Vista, but it’s really Vista polished up. Has anybody heard what you can’t do with a turd?
I’ve already started my move to Mac. I just couldn’t bring myself to buy another W7 machine. Unfortunately a lot of the engineering software I need to run only runs on PCs, but I’m starting to see Linux versions of some being released.
First line should have been:
Many of you are thinking the same as I and I’d like to thank you all.
FYI – phones can do Aero, but only if Aero is ported to OpenGL. Maemo/Android/etc all uses OpenGL, not DirectX. The problem for Microsoft is that DirectX is expensive and power consuming to implement for the video; while OpenGL is relatively cheap, and very desired by the Embedded development community.
What this means is that Microsoft has to first win over the community by getting their software out there (which is an uphill battle); after they think they have that, then expect that they’ll start trying to get vendors to use DirectX enabled hardware instead of OpenGL enabled hardware; shortly after which will be the return of Aero.
Er, Windows Phone seems to run DirectX just fine.
[…] I, Cringely » Blog Archive The dumbing-down of Windows 8 […]
Does Microsoft seriously think this bird is going to fly on tablets or PCs? I’ve tried it on both (including the middle ground, a touchscreen Fujitsu notebook) and it is simply terrible on all of them. It’s so flat that it’s not obvious what you can tap or click on! Consumers are going to be scratching their heads and flocking to Apple. I think Microsoft is in real trouble.
http://jeff-with-a-g.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/8-is-not-microsofts-lucky-number.html
[…] whole long post grew out of this short Cringely article about how Microsoft is dumbing down Windows. Cringely figures that this is being done so that […]
[…] As Cringely reports, this is why Microsoft is dumbing down Windows 8 – to make it a better mobile OS. […]
Bob, is there a bigger version of that chart you can link to? I get the gist of it, but it would be nice to actually be able to read the numbers.
Without a solid definition of what devices are “internet” devices, which geographical area, and how the data were gathered, it’s hard to derive meaning from the chart (except that someone, probably taxpayers, paid a huge sum to gather “data” to demonstrate the obvious).
The labels are unclear but when I zoom I can just make out that the vertical divisions are half a billion units each, and the horizontal divisions are years. Given world population (~6 billion) and a guestimate of the uptake of each platform globally, it seems reasonable to infer that these figures are for annual sales of individual consumer units of each platform type.
“Nifty” interfaces are interesting for about the first 30 hours of use … after that you just want something that gets the work done in a way that doesn’t get in the way.
I have a truck for getting some stuff done — hauling capacity matters and MPG and comfort does not — and a car for getting other stuff done — mpg and comfort matters hauling capacity not so much. The SUV gives you bad mpg and little hauling capacity with not much comfort.
I hope Apple and MS keep the distinction in mind but I think OS/X is on its way to becoming IOS, too. That would be a shame. But they could name that OS — SUV.
It’s just struck me what Windows 8 is:
Windows 8 is a consumption Operating System. It’s not for creating content.
It’s just an operating system. If it does its job, the best you can say is that you didn’t notice it. So I don’t see how it can be “dumbed down.” If that means it won’t include touch screen functions, thank goodness for that.
Aero isn’t on Windows 8 or WP7 because it’s dated. Nothing more. You miss the point and aesthetic of Metro if you think ditching Aero was a performance issue.
One could also say that subway signs, upon which metro is based, are also dated. I expect the current performance limitations of ARM and the desire to unify the appearance with Windows on Intel x86 had something to do with the move toward simplicity on both hardware types.
Everything about Windows 8 is dumb. Period.
Please people, try to use your phone for at least 4 or 5 years, it’s much better for the environment and you’re really not missing out on much.
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All of this flatification is addressing a problem that will not exist for long. That said, those who want a “windows 7 like” experience on a phone or tablet already have a functional albeit not perfect option: Android.
With Intel finally getting off the bench and addressing the mobile market with the Atom Z26xx series and getting better by the quarter, You will have the ability to boot windows 7 from your phone shortly (not that you would want to necessarily). Meaning that compatibility and performance issues for Windows wont last long. Windows RT will be relevant for about a year.
Intel can shrink their CPU’s and SoC’s faster than ARM can agree on anything. Intel is LATE to the party, but as with Core 2, and i5/i7 most will be glad they came. If I can make my phone act like a Desktop when I hook up a keyboard mouse and monitor, or have it act like a phone or tablet, AND I can keep it in my pocket, I will dump android tomorrow.
In as much as I hate Windows 8 x86 on the desktop, compared to android I would welcome it on my phone. What about malware? We have that with Android too, and there are solutions for that and the world still turns.
The grand delusion here is NOT “Updating a style” or “improving performance” it is is the assumption that people will ditch their laptop/desktop completely as in throw it away like rotted vegetables and not ever use a desktop again. That assumption is delusional. Windows 8 make little to no accommodation for desktop users.
You could compare different computing forms (Phone/Tablet/Desktop) to different pieces of furniture in your house. You have a table or counter where you eat or work, and a bed where you sleep and probably a chair where you sit. It is ridiculous to think that you would use one piece of furniture for all of those roles. (unless you had no choice, which also seems to be where MS is going)
In the same way it is ridiculous to think that you would use one interface across all of your devices. The interface will be a jack of all trades, but do none of them well. This is what happens when companies fail to understand convergence. Welcome to Windows 8 the OS we love to hate.
-J
“Windows RT will be relevant for about a year.” That was my thought initially since they want to put Windows on the lower power, longer battery life, that comes with current ARM chips. However, the more I read about Windows 8, the more I see a gradual move to “Metro style apps” which can be easily made compatible with Win 8 on Intel and Win RT on ARM. Also, I sense a time when Intel x86 becomes more power efficient and ARM becomes more powerful. There is a great 12 minute video here intended to show developers how to write programs that can be ported easily to either or both platforms: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Developing-For-Windows-on-ARM
There are also other reasons for the move toward platforms like iOS or WinRT: security and simplicity. People are tired of being their own IT administrator just to run programs. They also want their programs to be vetted and not subject to contamination by other rogue programs taking advantage of OS and application vulnerabilities. These newer platforms are a move in that direction.
Microsoft does make it easy to make a Windows Phone 7/Metro/WinRT app. If you can put together a web page, you can make a simple app in 5 minutes. This is much easier than Android. Also, because Windows RT is based on the Windows NT ARM port of the Windows kernel, porting older apps to Windows RT should be easier. So for anyone who was around the last time Windows supported ARM, the experience should be better.
What has been an exciting change recently is that Intel woke up to the Mobile market.. The Xolo is a solid capable phone running a 64bit x86 single core Atom processor with hyper-threading. With enough RAM, (which is now cheap) you could boot full Windows from the Xolo phone with the same battery life as the android phone. For Intel and Microsoft, that is amazing! The xolo sells for about $200 US. Also amazing. So a tablet running that processor should run Windows 8 x86 just fine and be speedier to boot. That will definitely make things interesting. Extreme tech has a review of the Xolo here: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/127347-going-xolo-x900-intels-first-x86-medfield-smartphone-reviewed
I’m not sure moving to ARM devices will help all that much with security. It will surely help in the short term, but I can’t see it holding out for long.
With the app “vetting” by Microsoft, folks tend to “roll their eyes” so to speak because there is a long line of developers complaining about current windows vetting processes. Remember driver signing? That was supposed to help secure windows. Except, you will have to wait until Microsoft gets to it. That might be 6 months. Corporate developers really hate that. So, often they skip driver signing altogether, and just tell the user to click “OK” anyway. If Microsoft isn’t diligent about its App Store, Developers may not bother with Windows RT devices due to Microsoft hassle.
Add to that that reality that any OS can be hacked. Its all about motivation and time. That, and bragging rights. iOS’s honeymoon will not go on forever and Android already has malware on ARM. Malware developers have figured out that you don’t necessarily have to beat the software or device, you just have to beat the user. Unfortunately, that is all too easy.
At least now iOS and Android will have a serious effort from Microsoft. Can Microsoft leverage its PC platform into Mobile? Can they make cross platform seamless? Will they be able to handle security in the platform?
I guess we start to find out tomorrow. The 18th. We will see.
-J
The phone you linked to is just another Android phone. Sure, the chip may be able to run Windows 7 but they chose not to do that. I’m using a 2009 umpc running Win 7 on an older Intel 1.86 GHz Atom (64 GB ssd, 2 GB ram) which I’d say are the bare minimum specs needed to run Windows seriously.
Yep, its an Android phone, but its Android x86. That is new. Windows Phone 7 is arm only, and Windows 8 and Phone 8 are not out yet so that wasn’t even an option for an x86 Intel phone, The huge issues for Intel x86 in mobile are power consumption and heat. Atoms (specifically the z series) get hot, really hot. Intel has solved that. They are proving they can do it with the Xolo. The new galaxy s3 has 2 GB of ram and ram is now cheap, so I would expect to see new phones with 2 -4 GB of ram. 64 GB of flash can now be had for $36, and Windows 8 runs faster than 7. Before this it was not feasible to run x86 Windows on a phone. With Windows 8 and Intel’s new x86 mobile chips it is not only possible, but I dare say likely that we will see a Windows 8 x86 phone in the near term. Intel has plans for faster dual core atom phones by Christmas. We shall see. Oh, the Medfield Atom version of a Windows 8 tablet is already here. It is made by Asus. Optional keyboard dock and all. ***notice the specs*** See it here: http://liliputing.com/2012/06/asus-tablet-810-packs-windows-8-atom-cpu-detachable-keyboard.html
I think MS is slowly losing it without Bill Gates. He made the company what it is by catering to developers. Gave them robust and easy programming tools to make real deal applications, capable of earning their creators lots of money (or give them lots of fame). These development tools were mostly free at their most useful level with an increasing price tag for goodies like team development options, code obfuscation and so on.
The result: the number of people able to program for Windows exploded, millinos of applications were created which attracted, or rather made the customers stay with the OS that was installed when they bought the PC. Sure, forcing vendors to sell new systems with Windows installed was not nice but that was the best OS anyway due to the sheer number of useful programs for it.
So programmers made Windows attractive and Windows was easy hence attractive for programmers. And I am talking about actual, useful, hardcore applications like for example a disc burning software. 3 months experience with visual basic is enough to make such a program. I am not sure whether even a year of experience would be enough for the same task in Linux or Mac OS.
The previous Microsoft OS for mobiles, the Windows Mobile made the devices look like real computers. They had a desktop, a “start” button, a file explorer, menus, icons, shortcuts… lots was CUSTOMIZABLE. If a single word can describe what a computer is, that word would be “customizable”.
Now let’s turn our attention to the “modern” OS for mobile devices: Android (since it has the largest share). There are ~ half a million apps for it. Approximately 1/5 of those or 100 000 apps have a 5 star rating. Searching for a clock app, the returned results contain at least a hundred 5 star rated ones. Of these not even ONE is able to hide the stock clock from the home screen. So installing any of these still makes your, or at least my device look pretty moronic with two clocks. Now let’s get an actually useful battery display with something as simple as percentage and now we have two clocks with two battery displays.
That is so innovative and future oriented that I really feel depressed for not being able to cheer at the MS’ desperate try to make their new OS at least as dumb as the rivals.
These are not actual computers anymore but artificially limited devices with some expandable functionality. We are witnessing an absurdity where a newer product with less features is being accepted as a better version of an older product with more features.
And finally, the search engine we all love is on top for 2 reasons – a patent on its search algorithm and continuous split testing. They split test everything, even whether a border (for example around ads) should be 5 or 6 pixels wide. Now I really don’t think Microsoft has done any extensive testing on this whole tile garbage. Most likely a chain of execs thought it was the future and so the decision was made pretty much out of nowhere.
I think the (tech) world needs a new genius to come up with an actually fresh idea, another BG or at least Steve Jobs.
BTW, not offering backward compatibility is a sure way of alienating developers since it is wasting their time. People I know were programming freeware for Windows Mobile. Many of them ported their stuff to WM 6.5. Some of them re-ported their stuff to the new Windows Phone 7. Probably none of them will port their stuff to the new Windows Phone 8. So yeah, the marketplace will have hundreds of thousands of apps but they will progressively become crappier with each new OS version lacking backwards compatibility and as such attracting those developers with nothing but lots of free time.
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[…] of panic in Redmond. Microsoft so desperately need Windows 8 to be a huge success that they’ve fiddled it into a likely […]
I am a Windows lifer, but even I suspect that the iPad 3 / Retina Macbook Pro / Macbook Air price drop+upgrade triple whammy may have just conquered the portable computing world. Windows 8 Shmindows 8?
Wow, great article post.Really looking forward to read more. Really Cool.
Wow, an article about two previously developed programs(applications) that MS never owned but were updated slightly in useability within MS latest version of an os. Both these programs(applications) could be used on any os. The need for Microsoft to hold on to it’s PC user base is more than most economic futurist are willing to admit. Longevity of the PC is more like ten years and an upgraded one more like twenty years. sales of “upgrades” and “licensing fees” are far more than most would believe. Business system licenses and IT commercialization is what MS major stock in trade used to be and still is. Phones come and go and do far less, but you have to buy more often. Sales is the order of the day for all modern corporations. The side benefit of this is that MS gets kickbacks from phone companies to promote it’s products. This is the route they have chosen. The modern developments really help MS, but ailenating a big portion of your consumer base just doesn’t make business sense. Who do they think is making the business decisions for IT departments and products now? By the time MS catches up to the devestating loss of customer base it may be too late.