“It is going to be very difficult for Microsoft to succeed with Windows 8.1, and that has little to do with whether the official build will include a Start button or boot-to-desktop option,” Mike Feibus writes for InformationWeek. “Rather, it’s because Microsoft picked a terrible time to release the upcoming follow-on to Windows 8.”
MacDailyNews Take: In Microsoft’s defense, they didn’t pick the time, they were forced to rush it out due to their pervasive incompetence.
“Windows 8.1 will not be available in the next six weeks, as it needs to be to make it into the first batch of next-generation PCs,” Feibus writes. “An October launch for Windows 8.1 means that back-to-school PCs will be saddled with a lame-duck version of Windows. (I’ve written before about how important it is for the PC OEMs to update in lockstep their entire product: hardware, OS, and aesthetics. That means we’ll see fewer PC sales than we would if PC makers were able to pair their latest hardware with the latest operating system.”
Feibus writes, “When Microsoft was forced to push out the Windows Vista launch to early 2007, for example, the final period of 2006 ended up being the PC market’s worst in the 22-quarter stretch from early 2003, when consumer notebook purchasing lifted PC shipments out of the post-Y2K slump, through the end of 2008, when the financial crash stalled sales”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Via their typical bumbling, Microsoft is only accelerating the inevitable.
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