Windows8

As I try to stay on top of things happening in in the software field, I decided to upgrade to windows8 when it arrived. I was interested to see what has been done with the Metro interface and the new approach of Microsoft now they have for the first time in decades serious competitors on the desktop / laptop / tablet market.

Microsoft decided to make 1 operating system for 2 completely different devices, laptop/desktop computers and tablets/smartphones. The first group needs a keyboard and mouse (at least for serious business applications) the second group need your fingers and has to be very intuitive.

I understand that they are doing this, if you are market leader you don’t want to loose your market share which already dropped unbelievable. Imagine, in 2005 around 95% of the desktop computers was running window, mainly XP and windows 7. But in 5 years the world changed a lot. Now you can see your smartphone and tablet pc as serious computers. And if you recalculate you will find that Microsoft is still dominating the desktop but is doing not much on tablets and smartphones. In fact that world is dominated by Android and Apple. If you take the overall percentage of software operating systems, you will find that Microsoft has around 23% market share (source : winbeta.org) .

So what Microsoft did was more or less logical, try to gain back the lost market share on tablets and smartphones. That is the reason why windows8 is so different than windows7 or XP. With windows8 you have to swipe your screens and you must be able to work without keyboard. But on your desktop you still need your mouse and keyboard.

Contradictions

The contradictions in these devices are in my view simply too big. Let me give one example, if you want to got the the next screen on a tablet you will swipe with your finger from right to left, to move your screen moving to the left. But on your desktop you cannot swipe you have to use your mouse, so you scroll. But you scroll from left to right to move your screen to the left. That is completely opposite of what the same operating system is doing on a tablet device.

Another contradiction is that on your tablet/smartphone one program will fill the complete screen while in windows you have a lot of screens next to each other. Windows8 tried to combine both, with the result that if i open skype (which is bought by Microsoft) it will use my complete screen. Not really what i want on my desktop but on my tablet that is ok. The windows button now is use more or less as Apple’s end button. And if  i want to open my desktop there is a widget which allows me to do so. In fact i see the ‘old’ windows7 screen there and I can run my applications, at least at my desktop. But my startbutton is gone, and it is difficult to switch between programs.

Outlook layout

And with Office 2013 windows8 is only focusing on the tablets, means that everything has to be possibly done in one screen. On a tablet this is very handy but not on my desktop. As software developer THE STANDARD layout was always the outlook layout. But outlook left that standard and created a completely new interface based to work as a saas solution.

Microsoft id and apps

A lot is personalized now, you have to log in with your Microsoft id. Everything is connected to that. And you have now a Microsoft app store as well. Where you can download your Microsoft or other Apps. I understand why, so you have your same applications also on you other devices running windows8 but personally I don’t like it and for companies it will be very hard as they will not allow people to use their personal Microsoft id. The administration of this will be a lot of work and I am curious how that is going to work out.

My 2 cents

Of course all the smart guys working at Microsoft must have thought about this as well before they started developing. But i think that windows8 is not going to be a success. By changing it so much they are opening the door for the first time to let people switch from operating system. I expect that a lot of business users will stay on windows XP/7 and then the biggest advantage of windows 8 (1 Microsoft id on all windows8 devices) will be gone. And windows8 (new layout / behavior) will not be suitable for desktop applications. If I read that Microsoft Navision is also going to follow the windows8 path, I am shocked. I cannot believe that Microsoft is going that way with their business applications as the risk is simply too big.

In my opinion they should have created a windows8 for tablets and leave the windows7 with some improvements and better exchange possibilities to their windows8 structure. The windows appstore for the desktop does not make sense for me too much. They have tied it too much too each other but I don’t know if that is a good move. I would not have been my choice.

For the first time in my life i went back to a previous version of an operating system because the new version of an operating system is was working against me instead of working for me. I love windows7.

Market share

If you take a look at the market share of windows8 you see it has of the windows versions only a market share of 2.3% in december 2012 (windows Vista still has 11%, windows7 59%). Strange is that the percentage went down from 2.5% 2 weeks earlier. Probably all desktop users downgrading. On the tablet / smartphone the percentage is still very very low. So I am not the only one with doubts.

 Future ?

I think that Microsoft will more or less split up windows8 into 2 versions if they want to get business users. Another thought of Microsoft might be that they know that users will stick with windows7/xp for a couple of years and they have that time to fix the issues which are a problem for business users.

If Microsoft really thinks that windows8 will be adopted by business users and will be an alternative for windows7 then they open the door for another kind of applications which are not bounded to an operating system. In that case I think that HTML5 and other more open source Operating systems has a chance to take this gap which Microsoft is creating.