Fear and Loathing and Windows 8
June 6th, 2012This piece is long, but it’s quite a knee-slapper.
I’d love to hear recordings of Microsoft tech support calls when Windows 8 starts showing up in front of “normal” users. My guess is that millions of clueless people are going to buy computers with Windows 8 installed and think that something broke when they see that Metro interface.
Helpdesk queues will be packed with people wondering:
Where’s the desktop?
Where’s the Start button?
Where’s the control panel?
And that’s just for openers. Click through to see what’s involved with turning off a machine running Windows 8, for example. *chortle*
Via: Mobile Opportunity:
My conclusion is that Windows 8 in its current form is very different; attractive in some ways, and disturbing in others. It combines an interesting new interface with baffling changes to Windows compatibility, and amateur mistakes in customer messaging. Add up all the changes, and I am very worried that Microsoft may be about to shoot itself in the foot spectacularly. Even the plain colorful graphics in Windows 8 that looked so cool when I first saw them are starting to look ominous to me, like the hotel decor in The Shining.
…
The most important message I want you to understand is this: Windows 8 is not Windows. Although Microsoft calls it Windows, and a lot of Windows code may still be present under the hood, Windows 8 is a completely new operating system in every way that matters to users. It looks different, it works differently, and it forces you to re-learn much of what you know today about computers. From a user perspective, Microsoft Windows is being killed this fall and replaced by an entirely new OS that has a Windows 7 emulator tacked onto it.
Related: You’ll Hate Windows 8
I’ve never seen a company who is consistently so eager to shoot themselves in the foot as M$. Some of the time, I think they do stupid stuff like this, just because they can.
On the plus side, the rollout of W8 should be a pretty good show, bring plenty of popcorn.
This speech by Cory Doctorow on the ‘war on general computing’ may be of interest here. It certainly got my attention (before ‘apps’ did).
28c3: The coming war on general computation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
…Then today this got my attention;
Podcast 312 – “Occupy the Internet”
http://www.matrixmasters.net/salon/?p=588
http://matrixmasters.net/archive/Various/312-MoglenNetFreedom.mp3
I commented there, if any wonders why I think this speech by Eben Moglen is related.
…I’d never heard of Eben Moglen before & was impressed by what he said.