“We’ve been examining and dissecting beta versions of Windows 8 for almost a year,” Woody Leonhard reports for InfoWorld. “From the user’s standpoint, Windows 8 is a failure — an awkward mishmash that pulls the user in two directions at once. Users attracted to the new touch-friendly Metro GUI will dislike the old touch-hostile desktop underneath. By the same token, users who rely on the traditional Windows desktop will dislike having to navigate Metro to find settings and apps they intuitively locate in Windows 7. Microsoft has moved the cheese.”
“Now that Windows 8 has arrived (today for MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and tomorrow for Microsoft Partner Network members and Volume Licensees), the harsh analogies — ‘Windows Frankenstein,’ ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde operating system’ — may be applied conclusively,” Leonhard reports. “While Windows 8 inherits many of the advantages of Windows 7 — the manageability, the security (plus integrated antivirus), and the broad compatibility with existing hardware and software — it takes an axe to usability. The lagging, limited, often hamstrung Metro apps don’t help.”
Leonhard reports, “I can confirm after months in the trenches and talking with many hundreds of testers that anyone who defines ‘real work’ as typing and mousing won’t like Windows 8 one little bit.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft products generate such wonderful reviews!
Let the bloodbath begin!
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)… 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.
Related articles:
Microsoft forced to kill off ‘Metro’ name due to trademark infringement – August 3, 2012
Gartner’s one-word review of Windows 8 on the desktop: ‘Bad’ – July 23, 2012
Ballmer: Uh, yeah, ‘Surface is just a design point,’ you know – July 10, 2012
Microsoft’s Buffoon, er… Ballmer throws down gauntlet against Apple – July 10, 2012
Microsoft reportedly dumps ‘VaporMg’ chassis, will use ‘VaporMg’ only as ‘surface treatment’ – July 9, 2012
Microsoft’s downfall: Inside the executive e-mails and cannibalistic culture that fueled Microsoft’s lost decade – July 7, 2012
HP said to dump Microsoft over Surface; to cozy up to Google Android for tablet efforts – July 2, 2012
Bad news for Microsoft’s iPad killer? – July 2, 2012
Dear Microsoft, Steve Balmer and Bill Gates: What is up with your obsession with keyboards? – June 28, 2012
Jason Schwarz: Top 10 reasons why Microsoft’s Surface is DOA – June 22, 2012
Why I love Microsoft’s vaporware Surface tablet – June 22, 2012
Microsoft’s Surface tablet said to be Wi-Fi only at launch; no 4G, no 3G, no 2G, not even 1G – June 22, 2012
Microsoft outsources Surface assembly to Pegatron; prices above $799 for Windows 8, above $599 for Windows RT expected – June 21, 2012
Acer founder: Microsoft will quit making tablets soon – June 21, 2012
Devastating video shows Microsoft’s Surface event aping Steve Jobs’ iPad unveiling (with video) – June 20, 2012
Thanks to Apple, Microsoft is doomed in the era of mobile computing – June 20, 2012
Why wouldn’t Microsoft let anyone touch its Surface tablets’ keyboard cover? – June 20, 2012
The cost of Microsoft’s Surface tablets – June 20, 2012
Apple’s revolutionary iPad vs. Microsoft’s anti-tablet ‘Surface’ – June 20, 2012
Microsoft’s Surface tablets provokes ‘sense of betrayal’ among Windows PC assemblers – June 20, 2012
Fox News: Copier Microsoft is doomed to fail with Surface tablet – June 19, 2012
Microsoft’s Surface tablet destined to be as successful as the Zune – June 19, 2012
Surface: Why Microsoft’s big mystery turns out to be a big mistake – June 19, 2012
Microsoft’s Suicide, er… ‘Surface’ – June 19, 2012
ZDNet Sr. Tech Editor Perlow: Microsoft’s Surface has catastrophe written all over it – June 19, 2012
Microsoft previews own ‘Surface’ tablet – June 18, 2012
Microsoft touts ‘major’ June 18 event said to showcase Windows RT tablets – June 15, 2012
ZDNet’s Kingsley-Hughes: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is an awful, horrible, painful design disaster – June 8, 2012
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
As usual, MacDailyNews correctly assessed the situation on day one over a year ago.
You guys are good!
Except the part they left out is that this time, Microsoft licensed the Apple iOS (with non-copy clause) patents, and it still came up cacaphonous stew (caca stew, for short.)
I know the patent license is for mobile, but the-technology-formerly-known-as-Metro is the Win 8 mobile OS UI/UX component, right?
Intuitively find settings in windows 7??? Please..
W8
When you read this phonetically, it’s all you need to know.
I like that as much as my all time favorite, “WINCE.”
You know it is bad when the MS founder is touting a new toilet design. Gonna flush that W8 right down the drain…ta da.
@M: you have difficulty finding settings in Windows 7? Pretty sad…can you tie your shoelaces?
Sure! Once you memorize, by rote, the 14 arcane steps to find the place to enable your wireless setup, or the required right-clicks to attempt to connect a second monitor, it’s a breeze!
“14 arcane steps to find the place to enable your wireless setup..”
Actually it is 2 steps (if you want to include clicking ok/pressing enter after entering in a passphrase then it is 3):
1)Double click the wireless icon in the bottom right of the screen.
2)Select the wireless network you want and click connect and if required enter in passphrase.
Sounds like the other steps would be if you were a Mac user making a dogs dinner over nothing and wanting to post complete rubbish.
Oh yeah. It’s that easy. Utter shat!
You’re not just wrong, your dead wrong and full of shit!
Oh it’s all there, if you can find it. Kinda like GM decided to put the steering wheel in the trunk. It’s still there but………….
Yes it is actually that easy.
“…You’re not just wrong, your dead wrong and full of shit!..”
Perhaps someone with a pea size brain such as yours does know what bottom right of the screen and double click means.
So as to not always have to type out the passphrase, how about importing a profile? How about drilling down to allow connection even if the SSID is not broadcast? Why have these things been separated? What ever happened to one stop shop?
Inquiring pea brains want to know.
And for the record, I’d like to retract the FOS comment. Not deserved and certainly misdirected frustration/anger with Windows. Win 7 did not make things easier. Intuitive it ain’t.
You can do both…in the wireless profile properties of a wireless connection you can check the box called “Connect even if the network is not broadcasting its name (SSID)” and then on the same properties window you can export a profile to a USB drive and then import into another PC.
What about setting up an external monitor. There are only 3 steps, but it has to be done about five times before it works right. I’ve seen way too many presentations where the presenter is left with the video running fine on his screen, but not showing on the projector. There may be easy steps, but in many cases it doesn’t work, so the user thinks they are on the Internet, but are actually not, which is the worst failure.
Windows is a fucked up virus. Period.
+100,000 BLN great post
Wow..+100,000!! I must say I am impressed by BLN…an example to all Apple fanboys alike.
The Lord’s Prayer, according to the Bible of Ballmer.
Dear Lord, Mother Mary, Jesus, all that is holy, and the Apostles. Verily I am a fat bastard but let those without sin cast the first stone.
I have committed many transgressions against a UI that a normal person can understand but please forgive me, O Lord, for I am a fat bastard without taste or possessed of a sense of aesthetics.
I offer you my firstborn, DOS, as a sacrifice to make this Metro a success so that the loss of W8 users to the other side won’t be too great such that I am reduced to a rounding error.
a fine autobiographical paean, BLN. Congratulations.
Windows 8 will be a hit among its de facto target demographic group—masochists.
Windows Ache?
MSFT is and has been No innovator!!!!
It is between AAPL & Goog.
I am betting on Apple all the way 🙂
The proof keeps happening for AAPL in hot products and patents collected.
Oh ya, AAPL profits are way Up for years 🙂
2015 = AAPL = $1055
iBuy AAPL 🙂
Anyone who is desperate for a new workstation-type desktop (AKA MacPro) to the point that they are considering switching to HP/Dell etc., should read this very carefully.
I need a new MP, and have said so on here, but I’ll go the iMac/top MBP route before I’d EVER go Win8.
Seriously, the current Mac mini beats the shit out of any HP or Dell offering.
A TURD will is a TURD no matter how much u Polish it.
Hooooooraaaaaaay Monkey Boy!!!!
Microsoft moved the cheese.
Then they cut it.
Sounds as bad as Vista. I’d love it if Apple brought back John Hodgman and Justin Long for a few more commercials.
Write Tim
Most peoples first exposure to W8 will be on a non touch screen device such as a desktop or laptop.
Will a bad experience on these devices put people off from trying a W8 tablet or phone?
I say it will. Windows everywhere might come back to bite MS on the ass.
I remember in Paul Thurrotts review of the new iPad, he said that Apple had bought a knife to a gun fight with regard to W8 tablets.
I wrote a reply, going with his analogy.
W8 is like a musket (Windows desktop) with a laser sight (Metro) bolted on the top.
While the W8 tablets are still getting the wadding and the powder loaded, the razor sharp blade of the iPad has quietly gone around slitting the throats of everyone else.
What’s more the Metro laser sight is mounted at 90 degrees to the Windows musket, making it an unusable mishmash.
Excellent.
I always thought that Paul Thurrotly discredited himself with that review, as he apparently was lazily using a convenient metaphor instead of recognizing the possibility of disruption inherent in properly wielding a blade, as evidenced by James Coburn’s Britt in The Magnificent Seven.
Paul T has no broader vision than Ballmer. He constantly berates anything not out of Redmond. He simply cannot look at anything objectively. Perhaps this is because he has invested too much in the vapor that emmits from Ballmers ass.
So, Windows 8 is being compared to Frankenstein and Jekyll & Hyde.
Fitting, as my forced use of previous versions of Windows has, for some reason, reminded me of Dracula and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
I actually still own an old issue of the cult magazine “Famous Monsters of Filmland”. It’s on the same shelf as the Lon Chaney scrapbook, the autographed Leslie Nielsen photo from “Dracula: Dead and Loving It”, and the “Steve Ballmer and Uncle Fester: Separated at Birth” article from the program guide to the 2000 off-Broadway play “Byte My Baud”.
I’m pretty sure that “Hunchback of Notre Dame” was Windows 7. (That is the MS version of Mac OSX 10.7 == “Lion”.)
Windows 8 would be “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller”.
“Microsoft has moved the cheese”?
More like cut the cheese, heh…
Windows v1, with new wallpaper.
Did you really ever use Windows 1?
I did – for about an hour, back about 1984 or 85. Then I uninstalled it.
It really was that bad.
Geez… I need to snap out of it. Am I ACTUALLY starting to feel sorry for MS? It’s just so pathetic.
Still loving Windows XP! Keep up the great work Mr. Softie.
Why would anyone invest in the crap that comes out of Redmond?
Seriously, every release of Windows over the past 15 years has claimed to be secure. Yet tre same problems persist – albeit reduced. They still can’t get it right. So what do they do? Strap on a cosmetic layer ala Win3.1 on dos. Yeah, that’s a solution!
I’ve asked that Q. at Cornell myself. The answer is obviously because we got a new $60,000,000 Hall paid for by Bill Gates. So shut up and use your ancient Windows XP and like it (which is what most Dells run here).
@Bream Rockmetteller
“14 arcane steps to find the place to enable your wireless setup..”
Actually it is 2 steps (if you want to include clicking ok/pressing enter after entering in a passphrase then it is 3):
1)Double click the wireless icon in the bottom right of the screen.
2)Select the wireless network you want and click connect and if required enter in passphrase.
Sounds like the other steps would be if you were a Mac user making a dogs dinner over nothing and wanting to post complete rubbish.
I tried out Win8 for about an hour with Parallels, and then uninstalled it. However, getting a network connection was a piece of cake; in fact as easy as OS X.
Win8 is awful from my point of view, but connecting to a network seems to be simple.
i bet you wish you could get that hour back!
Windows is a fucked up virus. End of discussion.
@Ballmer’s left nut
Even if that was true it would still be better to use than a Mac.
As an Apple fanboy I bet you have pictures and posters of Tim Cook and Steve Jobs on your bedroom wall? As you open the front door to your house people are greeted with iCardboardCutOutOfSteveJobs so that yourself and other can get on your hands and knees and worship him. They can then interact with iCardboardCutOutOfSteveJobs which is interactive of course because it has Siri installed on it.
APPLE has always thought about SIMPLICITY.
iOS is by far the easiest COMPUTING platform ever seen.
Easily adopted by all age groups. Siri will only make Apples prime directive EVEN simpler.
Meanwhile, Mikeys Cough – Gobble – Slamdung all scramble to figure how to catch up. I think better give up. And do something else.
Cornell Univ. won’t worry about Windows 8. Even with the new Bill and Malinda Gates Hall, our PC’s are mostly still running Windows XP. Proof of the typical attitude of: Give me your big donation money, and we’ll promise to keep using your products even if it keeps us in the Dark Ages in an under-productive mode for years while we subject our employees to 11 year old software because there is no useful progress at Microsoft. But we love Bill’s big wallet. Keep those new buildings and toilets coming our way.
Is this the reason why Cornell is the only Ivy League university ranked outside the top 50 at #51?
Forbes college ranking list for 2012.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/08/01/americas-top-colleges-2/
Bill Gates thank you for pushing PC’s and discouraging Mac use at Cornell:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March12/gatesApproved.html
We’re told:
“Microsoft will be running the email and calendar system, instead of Cornell, which means a lower cost for the university and faster system upgrades…In short, going to Office 365 means Cornell faculty and staff get a better email and calendar system at a lower cost, in support of the university’s need to streamline the costs of administrative systems.”
Linux has crapped out a similar turd in the form of Gnome 3, a completely unusable GUI that is neither fish nor fowl.
Well, on the plus side, Bill Gates is now creating the perfect device to “install” it on.