Windows 8 is a flop. It is a painful thing to say about one of the most ambitious operating systems ever released, but the stats don’t lie. It has taken half the OS market share Windows 7 did in its first 12 months (10% vs. 20%) and now the adoption rate is so slow it is barely gaining on its 4 ½ year old predecessor. Finally Microsoft has had enough. This week leaks flooded out that Windows 9 will be formally announced at Build, Microsoft’s annual developer event in April. If true this is an extraordinarily short gap for the company to jump between Windows versions and it is thought Windows 9 will formally go on sale in early 2015 as part of the ‘Threshold’ wave of updates it will apply to its Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox OSes. 9th Life While it has not met commercial expectations, the good news for Microsoft is Windows 8 has already done much of the heavy lifting for Windows 9. It is fast, efficient, stable and has excellent inbuilt security. With this foundation the list above feels far from wishful thinking and Microsoft should be looking to implement them all and much more. Outgoing Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously said Microsoft “bet the company†on Windows 8. It didn’t. With its vast wealth Microsoft took a calculated but affordable gamble. This time things are different. Windows 9 is not coming off the goodwill of a respected predecessor, PC and laptop sales are collapsing against the threat of tablets, Apple is edging ever closer to Mac OS XI and Google is starting to gain momentum in the desktop and laptop space with Chrome OS and Android – both of which are expected to unify during Windows 9’s lifetime. Windows 9 is now where Microsoft bets the company. http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonk...s-9-must-do-to-avoid-flopping-like-windows-8/
The UI on windows 8 makes sense on a tablet, but it is simply annoying on a desktop. They should have just had an option for the 'classic' UI and people would have been much happier with it. On the plus side, it's more efficient than Windows 7 and gives better performance with gaming
*loves my Mac* Vista was the reason I switched to Mac, and Windows 7 and 8 were why I keep my Mac. I am not an Apple fanboy at any rate, should Windows 9 be better than Mac OS, I will change for Windows, or Linux or whatever gets better. But, hell! Since the beginning, the idea was doomed. Optical pen on computer screens? Flop. Nintendo Glove? Flop. Dreamcast and PS2 camera? Flop. Kinect? Flop. Leap Motion? Flop. It wasn't that hard to figure out... Same for 3D, it exists since 60s, it has always been a flop.
I hope they re enable hardware support for directdraw in windows 9, the software directdraw in windows 8 is unbearable and the one reason i still use windows 7 as a dual boot. I did find a way around it using DXGL which is a DirectDraw/Direct3D version 1 to 7 implementation that runs on OpenGL 2.x though having the real thing would be much better since it has it's quirks. https://www.williamfeely.info/wiki/DXGL
I still use Windows 7 as my secondary OS (almost exclusively for gaming) because I want nothing to do with Metro. I don't mind the flat-er design, but building a desktop OS around touch screens just seems stupid to me. If Windows 9 returns to a more traditional desktop layout, I may upgrade (I have legal access to all versions of Windows), but for now I'm sticking with Windows 7. Whatever flaws it might have, Windows is a great platform for gaming.
I will never put Windows 8.x on my pc. Hopefully Windows 9 will return to a more traditional desktop. There's a reason why no other major OS has deviated too far from the traditional interface. Why fix what isn't broken? I've used windows 8 enough to know I hate it and I know you can go to the traditional desktop/task bar but the metro crap is always running in the background, getting in the way. I have Windows 7 as a secondary OS (for gaming and video editing)-- I have Linux Mint 16 as my primary OS because it's faster and easier to use and configure how I want (Linux in general-- I've used ubuntu and fedora also, but Linux Mint works the best for me right now)
Windows XP had it's own touchscreen division, why couldn't Windows 8? Design team suck lately for Microsoft.
In an attempt not to stagnate and become one of the stubborn beardy people in IT I use Windows 8 with the normal UI at work and 7 at home, because I wanted to be ahead of the pack and used to the UI if it was something that sticks. I hope they let me know ahead of time if the old style UI is back [I hope so] so I can start using 7 or 8 with Classic Shell at work.
I use Linux and I used to enjoy tradtional UI "start" menu desktops. Infact I refused to upgrade my UI for the longest time (in Linux your UI is a seperate layer and isn't strictly integrated/married to your OS), But after a while I changed my UI to gnome-shell and never went back. Granted, it takes a little getting used to, but in the end it becomes way faster to use than traditional desktop environments. The same experience has happened to my friends as well. I would assume Microsoft is trying to do something similar, where they radically change the UI to make things feel fresh. Though, unless the changes make sense the idea will be half-baked and end up being worse than the previous.
They wanted to bring polularity to their tablates and phones through Windows. Total failure. I'm pretty sure they knew that touch oriented GUI is terrible for desktop, but thought people are stupid and just accept it (some are).
Meh they are keeping the bloat, metro apps now run on windows in the desktop which is even dumber than the start screen if you ask me I dont know why the fuck ballmer thought it would be a good idea to push windows into tablets, ios and osx are two separate oses and nobody cares
iOS and OS X are separate because Apple internally tried what Microsoft publicly did and they quickly realized it was a stupid idea. So, they ditched it.
