“I’ve been following Windows 8 closely over the past few months, spending a lot of time not only with the official releases but also with a number of leaked builds, and I’ve had the chance to install the operating system on a variety of hardware platforms, both old and new. However, since my primary working platform is a desktop system, this is where I’ve had the chance to spend the most time with Microsoft’s new operating system,” Adrian Kingsley-Hughes reports for ZDNet.
“I’m now ready to sum up my Windows 8 experience with a single word: awful,” Kingsley-Hughes reports. “I could have chosen a number of other words — terrible, horrible, painful and execrable all spring to mind — but it doesn’t matter, the sentiment is the same.”
MacDailyNews Take: Windows 8ista.
Kingsley-Hughes reports, “On the face of it, Metro UI looks good. It’s new and shiny and refreshing, and it looks like it could actually be quite usable. If you’ve used Windows Phone then the interface feel familiar. Things feel good. And then you start to use it… I just can’t shake the feeling that Windows 8 would be better off as two separate operating systems.”
MacDailyNews Take: Which is exactly the way the smart company did it. Perhaps Microsoft would’ve been better off just trying to copy Apple in their usual half-assed manner and taking their chances in court again, albeit this time in the face of hundreds of Apple patents and without the aid of a poorly-written contract signed by an unprepared sugar water salesbozo.
“Even at this late stage in the game, it still feels to me like Windows 8 feels like two operating systems unceremoniously bolted together,” Kingsley-Hughes reports. “Windows 8 wasn’t born out of a need or demand; it was born out of a desire on Microsoft’s part to exert its will on the PC industry and decide to shape it in a direction — touch and tablets — that allows it to compete against, and remain relevant in the face of Apple’s iPad… There’s a palpable fear that Windows 8 will stumble out of the door. I’m hearing this from people within Microsoft, from the OEMs and vendors, and from others in and around the industry. The OEMs and vendors feel especially vulnerable, and if Windows 8 does become ‘another Vista’ then there will be an industry-wide bloodbath.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Bloodbath.” Now where have we heard that before?
What we said on June 1, 2011, the first time we saw Windows 8:
Our initial impression is that Microsoft, in trying to cram everything into Windows 8 in an attempt to be all things to all devices, will end up with an OS that’s a jack of all trades and a master of none (which, after all, ought to be Microsoft’s company motto).
By the time this hybrid spawn of Windows Phone ’07 + Windows 7ista actually ships, one can only dream where Apple’s iOS and Mac OS X will be! For Microsoft, it’ll be more like a nightmare. Perhaps Microsoft will someday put some scare into Google’s Android/Chrome OS, but only time – and a lot of it when measured in tech time – will tell. We simply do not see the world clamoring for the UI of an iPod also-ran now ported to an iPhone wannabe that nobody’s buying to be blown up onto a PC display.
From what we’ve seen so far, Windows 8 strikes us as an unsavory combination of Windows Weight plus Windows Wait.
Not to mention that probably no one on earth knows how much or what kinds of residual legacy spaghetti code roils underneath it all (shudder). Is Microsoft giving up on backwards compatibility? [They are with Windows RT (Windows on ARM).] …So, people might as well get the Mac they always wanted. If not [as with Windows 8], then Microsoft’s unwilling to do what it takes to really attempt to keep up with the likes of Apple or even Apple’s followers. No matter what, if Microsoft’s going to ask Windows sufferers to “learn a whole new computer” (and that’s exactly how they’ll look at it, regardless of how Microsoft pitches it), millions will simply say, “Time to get a Mac to match my iPod, iPhone, and iPad!”
As if they needed it: More good news for Apple.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Analyst meets with big computer maker, finds ‘general lack of enthusiasm’ for Windows 8 – June 8, 2012
Dvorak: Windows 8 an unmitigated disaster; unusable and annoying; it makes your teeth itch – June 3, 2012
The Guardian: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is confusing as hell; an appalling user experience – March 5, 2012
More good news for Apple: Microsoft previews Windows 8 (with video) – June 1, 2011
