Heya! I know I haven’t made a post in a while, that’s my own fault. Anyways, remember that failed Windows version that Microsoft made in an attempt to be with the times? Yeah, me too. Here, I’ll discuss a few reasons why Windows 8 was arguably one of Microsoft’s biggest flops ever, and what they could’ve done to fix it.
Start screen
Everyone knows about this. Windows 8, the version that ditched the traditional Windows 7 shell and start menu in place of a start screen. This was.. okay for tablets and phones (Windows Phone was a big hit, even if it didn’t have much market share. Microsoft still regrets shutting it down to this day), but for a traditional monitor and keyboard/mouse system? Absolutely not. It is one of the biggest stringencies that people who used Windows 8 would constantly repeat, because it was a big problem.
How could they have fixed this? It’s incredibly easy: a toggle to switch between the start screen and the start menu, kind of like what StartIsBack does and like how you could switch between the classic start menu and updated start menu in versions prior to Windows 7, which proves that Microsoft does know how to do this and has had the technology in place before. An example using StartIsBack:
Not only does this still fit in decently with Windows 8’s design language, but it would completely eliminate what is the biggest complaint about Windows 8. Remove the Aero remnants still seen in this screenshot, which Microsoft could easily do if they wanted, and it would fit in perfectly. Speaking of Aero…
Removal of the Aero interface
Another huge complaint about Windows 8 was the Metro design language. Everyone hated it and few got used to it until 10 came along, which is when people stopped complaining because they knew it wasn’t going to leave, although Metro (especially 10’s version) is generally worse than Aero was for many reasons.
This was the common opinion when it released, too. A post from an anonymous user on a Microsoft forum, dated November 29, 2012:
No Aero Glass is an absolute deal breaker for me. There is no way I'm installing those ugly flat windows on my desktop. The transparency that is there which lacks blurring is an ugly joke. On a scale from one to ten of how upset I am over this... I'm like 1000000000 seriously considering buying a Mac out of pure out-of-my-mind crazy spite. I cannot even express in words how upset I am over this. There is absolutely zero chance that I will ever install Windows 8 or Blue or any another Windows operating system onto my computer until Aero Glass is returned or something more beautiful is included.
People hated Metro. It just.. wasn’t popular, it didn’t feel natural, and it looked low effort. How could Microsoft have fixed this, you may be asking? Gee, I sure do wonder. Seriously though, the fix was quite simple: keep the Aero theme. It doesn’t matter if it was the default or just another one of the available themes. It just needed to exist and be available. Now, this would be much more difficult compared to the previous issue, where changing start menu styles wasn’t that difficult and was already something that had existed in Windows prior.
But once again, the technology was already kind of there: the High Contrast themes, in a way, were a lot like Metro, and you could also easily switch between Windows Basic and Aero at any time you wished in 7 and Vista. While it would require more work on DWM and making it more modular to make support for this type of stuff, it is totally possible. Maybe Microsoft would just need more time… speaking of,
The software support was super premature
Microsoft had its first party apps sorted out, kinda. But you wanna know who didn’t? Literally EVERYONE ELSE! If you exclusively stuck to Microsoft’s ecosystem, you would probably make do fine on 8, if we ignore all of the other glaring issues it has. But if you relied on any other app and expected it to use Metro, you’d probably have to wait a few years. Or wait forever. Tons of apps had no support. Just a little prior to the release of Windows 8 RTM, McAtkins Online reported 1,004 apps available on the Windows Store, many of which weren’t even “Modern” apps. That’s basically nothing, as far as app support goes.
Say you wanted to use Rhapsody, a huge player in the subscription music scene, natively on your Windows 8 machine. You got this machine on the first day Windows 8 released. You’d have to wait a full 10 months just to get a release on the Windows Store. That’s right, 10 full months. With, say, Windows 7, you didn’t have these types of concerns. Windows 7 stuck to the tried and true, as well as massively matured, Win32 subsystem. But with Windows 8, you’d have to wait a while just to get the major tools and applications that you were already using to release natively. You COULD use the standard Win32 version, if it existed, but this also introduces another problem:
The software ecosystem was also split straight down the middle. The Modern app subsystem and Win32 subsystem coexisted at the same time, creating major consistency problems. Microsoft couldn’t just dedicate exclusively to Modern apps, because then they would lose decades of pre-existing Windows apps and also have to rework a huge portion of the operating system, likely angering many users and potentially causing the jump-ship that we are seeing happening now to happen a decade early. However, they couldn’t just abandon Modern apps either, because basically the entire operating system is focused on them and they bet too much on them to quit now (that’s why they waited to slowly shift the focus away from them with Windows 10).
This creates a fundamental flaw that they couldn’t really fix without just stripping out the Modern app subsystem or the Win32 subsystem entirely, which as previously stated, doesn’t really work. Take Internet Explorer, basically the poster child of this issue. Say you’re new to Windows 8, and you’re still trying to figure this whole thing out. Hey, at least you recognize Internet Explorer, though! You click into it on the desktop and do some research, install Firefox, do whatever you were doing. Later, you’re in the start screen, and you’re fiddling around with the Metro apps, or Modern apps, or whatever these things are called. You click in to Internet Explorer, expecting what you saw earlier, and– WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT??? It looks nothing like what you saw earlier. That’s right, it’s a totally different app! Both use the same Trident engine at the core, but UI and UX wise? Completely different. Don’t worry, it’s the worst of both worlds. With the Metro version, you get the bugs and slow performance of Trident while getting the premature and upsized UI of Modern apps. Yippee!
Here’s an example of it with an older version of the Windows EightForums loaded. Windows Metro does have genuinely good and nice looking apps and use cases, but this is not one of them. It’s like they took a Metro-themed browser for small phones, stretched it out to a tablet size, and then made it mostly desktop compatible. No thanks, Mister Microsoft!
Conclusion
Yeah, that’s a doozy. With Windows 7, one of the most popular versions of Windows (which I am using right now as I write this), it sold 300 million in the first 15 months. What numbers do 8 have to boast? 200 million in the first 15. A whole 100 million less. It even took until early 2013 for it to surpass Windows Vista’s marketshare, which is embarrassingly slow for a Windows version. Anyways, for more failing OS versions and secrets to the tech treasure chest, don’t forget to tune in to the CheeseBlog for more posts. Cya!
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