Windows 9 is coming

With Windows 8 sales tanking, HP’s new advertising push for Windows 7, and the end of Windows XP looming, Microsoft finds itself in a quandary. What to do with Windows 8. Easy. They’ll call it Windows 9 and put everything back the way it was in, say, Windows 7 – i.e. make it more mouse and keyboard friendly.

I’ve always wondered who, at Microsoft, came up with those garish, Crayola kindergarten tiles on the start screen. I mean a desktop or laptop is not a smartphone, right. It looked to me like Microsoft copied the design from one of the many smartphones that use the big bright tiles. But it makes more sense on a tiny screen where bigger and brighter tiles make it easier to select a function. But it makes no sense to use this same design on a desktop or laptop – since way more than 50% of laptop users uses a touchpad or mouse and keyboard, and almost all desktop users use a mouse and keyboard. What were the MS designers drinking? Or smoking?

More than poor planning, I think Microsoft suffers from Google-envy or Apple-envy  or both. And it’s too bad. I used to be a big fan of Microsoft – I always kept in mind that Microsoft is the company that brought computing to the masses – and that means you and me. Apple’s products are very over-priced. So it’s not likely that most of us would have bought our first computer if it would have cost us $3000. I paid about $700 for my first computer – and now a Windows computer as good as that one was in its day would cost about $600. Apple computers of the same power would cost between $1500 and $2000.

Why? Well Apple makes great products and offers great support, and until Steve Jobs died, they were very innovative. But you’re mostly paying dearly for the name “Apple”.  Starbucks does the same thing. Their $3.00 coffee isn’t even as good as McDonald’s $1 coffee IMHO, but McDonald’s suffers from an image issue – the purveyor of fat to the fat. While Starbucks offers calorie-laden Lattes, some of which have more calories than a large serving of Mickey D’s french fries, they get away with it because of their image as a trendy, environmentally-friendly, innovative company. McDonald’s – not so much.  Now I’ve not been to a McDonald’s in years, but I have had coffee from there, and it’s not bad – but I’m not going to get in an argument if you like Starbucks’ coffee better. I’m the kind of guy who makes a pot of coffee and the next day heats the leftover coffee in the microwave – waste not, want not.

Google-envy, Apple-envy, whatever it was the drove Microsoft to create Windows 8/8.1 has left Microsoft racing to release Windows 9 (supposedly in the spring of 2015). And before I send you off to read this article from Maximum PC magazine, keep in mind that I think once you peel away the design mistakes and garish, kindergartenish tiles, Windows 8.1 is actually a pretty good operating system; under the hood it’s Windows 7 with a few nice new features like System Refresh and System Reset.

Maybe XP was so well-loved because it was designed for consumers like you and me, from the ground up. Windows XP was not Windows 98 with a few new features and a prettier face. It was the first O/S created by Microsoft that was built from the ground up since the first Windows was released.

Vista was a disaster. Windows 7 fixed Vista. Windows 8/8.1 have been a sales disaster – so much so that the world’s 2nd-largest PC maker started a major advertising campaign last month pushing new Windows 7 computers.

Will Windows 9 fix things for Microsoft? I really hope so. I really hope they start giving their customers, both corporate and personal, the products they want instead of the products that Microsoft wants them to have.

From Maximum PC Magazine

Microsoft hopes new branding will help distance itself from Windows 8 criticisms

 

There will be an update to Windows 8.1 sometime later this year, which isn’t surprising because Microsoft never stops working on Windows. Beyond that, however, Microsoft is reportedly gearing up to announce Windows 9 during its Build 2014 developer conference in April. Should things go plan, Windows 9, or “Threshold” if you prefer to use the codename, will launch to consumers a year later.

This is according to Paul Thurrott, who says that “Windows 8 is tanking harder than Microsoft is comfortable discussing in public.” By Thurrott’s figures, Windows 8.1 is installed on less than 25 million PCs, and one thing Windows 9 desperately needs to do is find a better balance between traditional PC users and those who are adopting newer touch-friendly form factors.

“In short, it needs to be everything that Windows 8 is not,” Thurrott says.

But will it be? Well, one of the reasons Microsoft is dropping the Windows 8 brand in favor of Windows 9 is to distance itself from its current OS. A name change alone won’t get things done, and while details are light at the moment, Thurrott says the Windows team will focus on maturing and fixing the Metro design language. A windowed mode that works on the desktop could be in the cards.