“Intel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini told employees in Taiwan that Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 8 operating system is being released before it’s fully ready, a person who attended the company event said,” Tim Culpan and Ian King report for Bloomberg.
“Improvements still need to be made to the software, Otellini told employees at a company meeting in Taipei today, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was private,” Culpan and King report. “Microsoft is eager to get Windows 8, the first version of its flagship software compatible with tablets, into computers next month to help it vie with Apple Inc.’s iPad during the crucial holiday shopping season.”
“Intel, the biggest semiconductor maker, is Microsoft ’s closest partner, and Otellini’s remarks echo criticism from analysts such as Michael Cherry at Directions on Microsoft. While Windows is fundamentally sound, the operating system lacks a wide range of robust applications and PC makers haven’t had enough time to work out kinks with so-called drivers, which connect software to such hardware as printers, Cherry said,” Culpan and King report. “‘We are concerned at the level of bugs and fine tuning that appears necessary to get the beta systems we demoed ready for prime time,’ Alex Gauna, an analyst at JMP Securities LLC in San Francisco, wrote in a Sept. 13 note in response to versions of Windows 8 shown at Intel’s recent developer forum.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Windows 8ista. We expected nothing more.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “JCF” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Valve co-founder Newell: ‘Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space’ – July 26, 2012
ZDNet’s Kingsley-Hughes: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is an awful, horrible, painful design disaster – 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
This is me feigning surprise.
And nothing consumers like better than buying operating systems in beta that are not announced as such but as finished products ready for prime time. I feel the heat of pain already.
Surprise? Hell, releasing buggy software is business as usual.
+1
However, it will make a good excuse for how lousy it runs AGAIN. Would have likely been just as bad in 6 months, or any year it was released.
Expect at least one more update for Windows 7 and Vista, with “optimizations” that will actually make these systems slower, so Win8 will stand out better. MS has done similar things before, e.g., when the 486 came out, the next system update actually made code running on the 386 SLOWER.
Now THAT’s funny right there (well, except to those poor saps forced by employers to use PCs on the job).
For Microsoft and for Apple. I’m a huge Apple fan, but the constantly recurring problems of each new OS X release with all the point release fixes prove that Apple does the same.
Yet CNUTJOB is full of anti-Apple BS flooding their site.
Oh, yeah, definitely W8 until you get it just right!!!
And as for Alex Guano, well, he’ll have a Strong Buy rating on Mister Softy soon thereafter despite his feigned (but nonetheless accurate) reservations.
I smell a Vista.
It smells more like ME + Vista only the critics are so much more vocal about how bad it is. Soon the benchmark in bad will be reset.
I can see all the way to the next Vista.
It’ll make Vista look like Windows 95.
Remember, you’ve gotta factor that toxic turd known as Metro into the equation.
Shitastic!
SLAM!
Is this the end of Wintel?
Windows Vista, Windows 7, and now Windows 8. If MSFT doesn’t get 8 correct, then its hasta la vista baby. There aren’t a whole lot of Windows users prepared to beta test Windows for MSFT through 3 consecutive product cycles. A third miss is going to seriously damage MSFT’s franchise product.
A third miss? W7 was one of the best release-day operating systems ever.
As for W8, I’ve been running the RTM preview exclusively on 3 computers for 3 weeks now without a crash or reboot. Seems pretty stable to me. My work are giving me a rMBP next week and that will be running Windows 8 as well.
Commentators seem to fall into two camps with Windows 8: those who have tried it and almost immediately declared it a failure, and those who have spent an hour learning to use it who couldn’t go back to 7. Yes it’s a different way of working, but guess what? I think different. 🙂
This… Is a joke?
@ lordthree
What about apple’s crap maps app???
So Apple releasing an APPLICATION is the same as Microsoft releasing an OPERATING SYSTEM?
One is easy to get around as you just load the MapQuest app or load Google maps in Safari. The other is pervasive across your entire computing experience on that platform. Seems radically different to me.
+1
Gotta love hater logic.
Or OS X 10.0 through 10.2. Those were full of bugs. I tried the RTM and it’s ok. The biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t do much to move the user experience forward. The traditional layer is very much akin to Windows 7 (which is surprisingly good). The Metro stuff seems to be a lot of change for change’s sake. I haven’t ventured to try it on a tablet (why would I?).
Luke,
You can draw *any* trend line you want through a single data point! Going on the assumption that your post is not 100% BS, you are very lucky you’re having such a good experience. However, virtually 100% of what I’ve read (along with the little I’ve played with Win 8 [<100 hours]) states that Win 8 has been rushed out the door and is not ready for prime time yet.
I think everyone needs to remember that Apple worked with ARM chips for their OS releases for over a decade (over 14 years actually) before the iPhone was released. Apple had a lot of experience with ARM, the first iOS was not a rushed product, and it still had a few short comings.
Also, Apple had the Star Trek project running for well over a decade before the switch to Intel chips. Apple had versions of Mac OS running on Intel chips as far back as System 7. While the switch to Intel chips within the last decade was not as smooth as everyone wanted, it was much, much smoother than it could have been — all because Apple had years to see the major glitches before it went public.
Does *anyone* — literally any sane, computer/tablet using person — think that Microsoft can go from absolutely no interest in ARM to a nearly bug free, ready for the public ARM based OS in well under 3 years? No.
Also, unfortunately, taking all that "tablet" stuff and rushing into the desktop OS taints the desktop OS with the worst of both worlds — including a world of bugs.
I expect Win 8 to follow a long line of first out of the box major OS shifts from Microsoft: Win 1.0; Win 3.0; Win Me; Vista; Win 8. Let the tradition continue.
Believe it or not my post is 100% true. I have zero need to lie to strangers on the internet. I’m technology agnostic, I’ll use whatever I believe is the best technology available at the time.
Windows 8 really is a pleasure to use. For every day, real world “productivity” computing the Metro (or whatever it’s not called) interface is never used. I see it for half a second while I’m typing in app names to launch, but that’s it. Granted, all of the PCs I use are x86 so I can’t vouch for ARM stability, and that could well be a fustercluck of immense proportions.
I spend all day at work on a computer, then come home and study all night on a computer. I can’t afford to use things that don’t work. I felt confident enough to deploy Windows 8 exclusively to all of my desktops and mobile computers, and it hasn’t let me down once.
Take from my words what you will, but know that Windows 8 isn’t nearly as bad as a lot of tech blogs would have you believe.
Picture this, vista and win 7 is the same windows XP with just a few additions, modifications to the UI (just to hide controls that still there) and modify a little bit the kernel.. Still, tons of software and drivers are not compatible not then and not now.
What do people expect from the same people who give you windows 95, windows me, and windows vista making a OS from the ground up?
Every release of windows ships this way. Nothing to see here lol
I’m waiting for Windows number 9…
Number 9, Number 9, Number 9…
Where you turn on the computer and the monitor is all white!
Hopefully the OS will have no bugs, especially beetles.
Your enemies enemy is your friend. As awful as this sounds Apple should team up with microsoft to help develop windows mobile and get it to market as quickly as possible. This would fracture android and lock out Google. Additionally, if Apple could provide services say mapping to the device – it would lock out Google.
Sounds awful – but I believe Google posses a much greater threat to apple then microsoft…
Yeah.
And your enemy’s enemy is your friend.
I have to admit, picking the best applicant for the posted position is getting easier and easier.
MBRCFALAIT!
Why on earth doesn’t MS offer the double boot?
I’ve always kept (at least) 1 OSX version safe on a drive, when upgrading to the next. In case of ANY problem encountered with the latest version, one can simply boot on the other and go on working ahead.
The smart thing to do was to (surprise) copy Apple.
Windows 7 was set to become the next Windows XP, the Windows OS release that enterprise customers settled on for the long term. Microsoft should have released another refinement “service pack” for Windows 7, and let it continue its run as the latest version of Windows. But instead, the relatively successful run of Windows 7 has been cut short by the bloated and unready kludge called Windows 8.
Microsoft should have concurrently developed and released a separate tablet-only OS (copying Apple). Since the “metro” interface has nothing to do with “windows,” it should have gotten a new name. Actually, “Windows Phone 7” should have gotten different name, because it has nothing to do with “windows” either. Apple didn’t call iPhone “MacPhone” and iPad “MacPad” for good reason… (Microsoft is deluded in thinking that the name “Windows” is a marketing plus. 🙂 )
don’t be stupid. all OS are not perfect. even mac os x is vulnerable anyway. there is what people say about mac or OS. don’t buy very first edition or newly designed products. you will regret so deeply. wait until they will fix it. for windows 8, it will the same. once you will install it, MS will dispatch many update to fix whatever it is possible. apple does the same shit anyway.
good job! Your English is getting better!
Don’t be stupid… Mac OS X releases are refinements of previous releases. Apple has not done a release-to-release major overhaul of the Mac’s OS since the Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X transition. The “beta-quality” release for Mac OS X was the first one (“10 dot nothing”), and Apple knew it. That’s why Apple kept Mac OS 9 as the default OS (the one Macs booted into when turned on for the first time), until Mac OS X was at 10.2 (Jaguar).
Every “big cat” release of Mac OS X has been an incremental enhancement and refinement of the technology and interface. And now, with these yearly (nearly free) upgrades going forward, it will be even more enhancement and refinement, not radical overhaul (although there may be a Mac OS 9 -> X -like overhaul at some point).
On the other hand, look at what Microsoft has been doing with recent releases of Windows. They make radical changes in the technology and interface. Vista was a huge mess, and it took a whole new release (Windows 7) to fix (mostly) the technical and marketing mess it created. Now, Microsoft is doing it once again with Windows 8 (creating a new mess); they will eventually resolve the problems, but it will take “Windows 9” to fix this new mess. By then, they will have to come up with a new naming scheme (not “Windows 9”) to try to get customers to forget about Windows 8 (like with the “Vista” disaster).
So, if you think Apple’s Mac OS X releases have been anything like Windows releases, you are entertaining but clueless…
I don’t know if you have had the opportunity to upgrade your iMac to OS X Mountain Lion, but I can tell you that it’s a superb upgrade insofar as integrating cloud services is concerned.
I don’t know if it’s snappier than Lion or Snow Leopard (doesn’t feel that way) but it’s significant if you live your life on the cloud. Everything syncs much faster than before.
You are clearly not old enough to remember the Vista release, where one major MS-aligned reviewer said it should have a virus enclosed sticker on the box, it was so buggy!
Also, there are two general definitions of Troll, both of which apply to you, Edward; 1) a person who writes provocative messages in order to provoke an angry response, 2) a creature of low intelligence and poor personal hygiene that lurks under bridges seeking to attack unwary travellers; in your case lurks in your parents basement…
Inspired by Intel.
So windows 8 will be used on PC and mobile like windows phone. Yay this is great news that the windows phone be buggy 🙂
so windows phone will be buggy win win8, this is great news LOOL
I like the moniker W8. As in Weight…, or wait ….
Windows, in any flavour, is a piece of garbage. Always has been and always will be.
There’s more pressure than ever for Microsoft to get their OS out fast but releasing it to early is not the answer. People have come to expect much more from an operating system now that they are used to iOS.
Forcing people to use the metro gui is by far the smartest move Ballmer ever made.
Windows 8 operating system is being released before it’s fully ready
Delete Metro and maybe Windows 8 will be usable.
*Here Comes The Metro Back-Lash*
This is going to be fun. 😀
Yes, time to get the popcorn out, and the easy chair and enjoy the show.
REAL butter. Mmmmmmm.