Microsoft wants you to forget Windows 8
Look to Vista for how Redmond will treat Windows 8 as it moves on to the next bright, shiny OS
As talk of the next Windows begins to build and some details of what most are calling for now either Windows 9 or Threshold come into focus, it’s worthwhile to take a moment to remember Windows 8.
Because Microsoft will want everyone to forget it. And we will.
Unless the Redmond, Wash. technology company radically changes its habits, it will throw Windows 8 down a memory hole even before the successor ships. Just like it made Vista persona non grata in its official messaging in 2009, it will shove Windows 8 so far into the background that we’ll need the Hubble telescope to find it.
Not that that’s unusual. All companies fake amnesia to a stunning degree, even when what they want to forget — more importantly, what they want customers to forget — was once trumpeted with Joshua’s band. Ford tossed the Edsel into the don’t-mention file, Coca-Cola did the same with New Coke, Apple erased the Performa and Ping from its corporate memory, and IBM would be hard pressed to admit it ever knew the PCjr or OS/2.
It’s always about next year’s shiny object, not last year’s.
Vista redux
To see the future for Windows 8, look at how Microsoft treated Windows Vista — the 2007 edition that launched late and quickly garnered negative reviews that painted a reputation from which it never recovered.
In the months leading up to the launch of Windows 7, Vista’s successor — and a wildly successful one at that — Microsoft came close to banning the word “Vista” from press releases, its most official line of communications to the media, investors, partners and customers.
From January through October 2009 — the latter was Windows 7’s launch month — Microsoft mentioned “Vista” in just one press release headline or the single-line synopsis accompanying a headline. During the same stretch, Microsoft used “Windows 7” 16 times…
Source: ComputerWorld — Click here to read the rest of this article.
I had so much trouble with Windows 8.1. How can windows be so heartless to do this to me. Windows must not care what you are doing to us. I would think that you had enough of the many customers that have gone to others. It would be in good faith that you could market a computer that didn’t require a doctorate to operate. All you do now is make the average person feel stupid. You need not show how smart you are.
I, too, will be happy to forget Windows 8. I currently use Windows 7 Professional on my Microsoft driven units. When the 2020 end of support date arrives, if I’m still alive by then, I’ll convert to Linux Mint. I already have Linux Mint running on two units with great success and it does everything and more that is expected of it by me. I made my living for many years in support of Microsoft products and for that I’m grateful. However, I’m sick and tired of Microsoft making the consumer pay, and pay dearly, for their mistakes, miscalculations, and complete lack of understanding in regard to what their client base wants in an operating system. Only Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 7 have been successful and somewhat stable. The rest, well, they should have never happened. Doesn’t say too much for the Redmond giant, eh?