Why Windows 8 failed

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!

Your IoT devices are your enemy

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are generally considered useful, right? Hell, one could even say made for you specifically. Truth is, though, they do a little more than that. A lot more.

Data for dinner

These devices are very good at 2 things: one, doing exactly as advertised. Two, selling your data to bits. Because these are usually just seen as common appliances, you often use them without thinking. Turn on a light, tap a button on your toaster that makes it toast, open up the fridge, whatever.

Smart devices, because they essentially have a mini computer inside them, and plenty of sensors, track this. See when you regularly flick a light switch, grab the milk from your fridge, put your clothes in the dryer. All of this is harvested, especially if you have an ecosystem of smart devices of the same brand. This can build information profiles on you, which are then sold to whoever is the highest bidder.

Smart devices are often sneaky and chatty little bastards, too.  Because you can’t install a custom Linux distro on your smart microwave, the information flows to and from the appliance and some servers in some dark warehouse in the midwest US completely unseen. They will constantly ping servers with new information and data, slowly giving the manufacturer a general idea of you and your habits.

But whatever will you do? Try out

Starvation

Thankfully, there are ways to figure out what exactly is being sent, and stop it.

My personal favorite way to do this is DNS. Obviously, because your washing machine doesn’t have DNS settings, you can’t set it there, but you can set it on the next best place: your router, or a hotspot.

This is what I do, and have been doing for numerous months. And, wow, it really is disgusting, looking at the DNS logs. I use NextDNS, which is fairly novice friendly while still giving granular console, especially if you’re using the TUI/console app. I’m sure you’ll be just as disgusted as me, once you look at the logs. My DNS profile has every filter and setting on, as well as some more domains in the Denylist, which is a lot when all combined. Works for me, may not work for you. Experiment and find the sweet spot.

When you block the data harvesting domains for these IoT appliances, they usually still work. May lose one or two obscure features, but it’s really nothing to sob about.

Roku is one of the worst offenders. The DNS logs will get bloated, as they will constantly try to phone home to their servers to send lots of disgusting data, including watching habits, ad personalization, and even snapshots of what is on the screen, no matter what it is: the screensaver, a game console like the Wii U, the home screen, or an app like Hulu+. Blocking them via DNS is definitely worth it, next best option is getting a more privacy-conscious smart TV or just ditching the whole smart TV idea and, say, hooking up your computer to the TV.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, convenience comes as a cost, a cost that is constantly changing and becoming more and more worth it to dodge. The line between smart device and surveillance machine (looking at you, Ring) is becoming more and more difficult to spot. Your smart dryer may just seem as a little harmless thing, but when you add up all of the “harmless” smart devices, it becomes a whole lot more dangerous. Anyways, if you want more tips on dodging data and learning about privacy, be sure to tune into the CheeseBlog for another post. Cya!

A collection of fun facts not long enough to make an entire post

Some of these are short, some are long, none of them should actually matter to you—but they all are interesting and weird enough when together to make a full blog post. Most of these are just interesting bugs or things that were never patched out in consoles or games.

Minecraft go map, 3DS go crash

This one is fairly well known already, but one of the quickest ways to crash a 3DS and make it force restart is by clicking something once. To prepare, go to a stronghold, and put your bed there. Specifically, put it in the library if possible. If a library didn't generate, redo these steps over and over into one does. Then, after you placed your bed, set it as your respawn point, and save.

Now, you are ready. Reopen Minecraft for New 3DS, open the world, and spam click every chest as fast as possible. You see, Minecraft for New 3DS makes great use of the lower screen. It uses it for inventory management and maps (that you just so happen to get and keep for free without additional inventory space being used)—but this is its downfall, where the error stems. Anyways, there is a high chance that in one of those chests there is a map. Even though the actual map you use isn't an item in the game, Mojang never remembered to remove the possibility of a map generating inside chests in strongholds for this version. Anyways, if you click the map in any chest (or try to use it), kaboom. Successfully crashed your console.

Minecraft for New 3DS never implemented proper error handling for missing item assets and code because they didn't know it would be a problem. It came with available mods on its proprietary addon store, but these were hardcoded into the game, especially if you downloaded Minecraft for New 3DS with DLC.

Anyways, it is one of the coolest but most interesting ways to crash Minecraft New 3DS Edition with a good bit of backstory behind it.

Mii sleep paralysis??

In Tomadachi Life, Miis normally sleep around the same time you would—sometimes going to bed as early as 6 PM (or 18:00) and usually wake up when the sun comes up, whether or not you have the game open. When they go to bed, it is very obvious they go to bed. Their little window on on the screen showing all apartments will have the curtains shut, and when tapping on their apartment, you can usually see them sleeping and sometimes enter if they are dreaming.

However, your Miis will occasionally get sleep paralysis (as a bug, not a feature). Their eyes will remain open even though the game tells you they are in a sleeping state and none of their animations (e.x. tossing and turning) will properly play, resulting in something resembling sleep paralysis for that Mii. It’ll usually fix itself when you go to some other Mii’s apartment and then back to the original Mii’s apartment, ending the sleep paralysis.

Wii time travel everything kaboom

There was an interesting issue with the Wii that was never patched in its lifetime. It was a calendar overflow glitch, involving setting the date to something like 2099. In doing this, the glitch would occur.

This glitch would essentially softlock you in certain parts of the OS or break features. For example, by doing this, trying to do anything on the Wii Message Board would make it infinitely hang while it was “attempting to fetch” mail or whatever. This may or may not have also caused glitches in time-dependent games like Animal Crossing: City Folk, but I’m not entirely sure because I do not have a copy of that Animal Crossing game to test with.

This glitch was never patched out and remains in the latest version, 4.3, as something you can do. If this bricks your Wii and you can’t change the time settings back, don’t blame me.

Miiverse change? it also go kaboom

There was a weird bug with Miiverse (Nintendo’s proprietary social media on the Wii U and 3DS) where changing your profile picture would sometimes cause Miiverse to crash when you opened it. This bug was exclusive to Wii U, as far as I’m aware.

Rebooting wouldn’t fix this either—it was a bug that was semi-permanent. Once you did it, it would stay forever unless you took measures against it. I have absolutely no idea why it is that way. It might have something to do with a conflict between the cache and the data on the server which causes Miiverse to crash? I don’t really know.

Anyways, the only measure you could take against this bug that was likely extremely problematic is straight up wiping your profile from the console. That’s it. You might’ve been able to redownload games after from the eShop but all of your hard earned save data would be gone, just to fix a bug with Miiverse. Was it really worth it?

Streetpass sucks at counting

Streetpass on the 3DS is known to only allow you to streetpass 10 people at a time, which you would then have to greet in app or if you paid for some other thing in the Streetpass Plaza you could send them to a line with a capacity of 100 people total just to streetpass the next 10.

Why does this cap even exist? Well, it’s pretty simple. Out of the already miniscule RAM available on the 3DS (256 megabytes on old 3DS models or 512 megabytes on new 3DS models), Streetpass got even less of it reserved for all of its operations. This ended up with 10 being the optimal number to work with between storing temporary streetpasses, storing your StreetPass profile, and constantly searching for 3DSes to streetpass.

It might’ve been a little hard to notice then if you were in a rural area and really hard to notice nowadays because of how few and far people who actually still use StreetPass are now, but back then it was really easy to notice when you were at a StreetPass Relay spot, because it would not only hit that 10 limit but it would hit it FAST.

mini fact: new leaf villager go poof but no say… why?

There was a chance in Animal Crossing: New Leaf that if you time-jumped a lot to get exclusive items or benefits and didn’t interact with 1 villager in specific, they would leave without even saying a goodbye to you and the others. Just.. gone. So if you play Animal Crossing, maybe stop time jumping if you do and start interacting with your villagers a little more.

Conclusion

That’s it. Not much else to say. I gave some fun facts. If you want more fun facts like this, then don’t forget to tune into the CheeseBlog soon for another post. Cya!