“Windows 8’s uptake was stuck in reverse for the second straight quarter as the reputation-challenged operating system fell behind the pace set by Windows Vista six years ago, according to data released Friday,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“Web metrics firm Net Applications’ figures for July put the combined user share of Windows 8 and 8.1 at 12.5% of the world’s desktop and notebook systems, a small drop of six-hundredths of a percentage point from June,” Keizer reports. “That decline was atop a one-tenth-point fall the month before, the first time the OS had lost user share since its October 2012 debut. Windows 8 accounted for 13.6% of the personal computers running Microsoft’s Windows”
“While in June Windows 8’s user share came dangerously close to the sluggish uptake tempo of Windows Vista, in July Windows 8’s pace fell below Vista’s for the first time,” Keizer reports. “That Windows 8’s uptake performance has not matched Vista’s is important because the latter, widely panned at the time, has earned a reputation as one of Microsoft’s biggest OS failures. By association, then, Windows 8 looks to be the same.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What we said over three years ago, on June 1, 2011, right after Microsoft previewed 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… 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 “James W.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Apple’s Q314: Surging Mac defies a shrinking Windows PC market – July 24, 2014
More good news for Apple: Microsoft previews Windows 8 (with video) – June 1, 2011