Kind of misleading. Let us not forget that people were coming from the shitshow that was Vista (before all the service packs / hotfixes were applied) or XP if they didn't get Vista. The latter made people long overdue for an overhaul.
We're actively avoiding it because of the interface issues, but even if Microsoft restored the start button and desktop there's no business need for an upgrade.
There may be businesses that will benefit from of the new features, but we're not one of them.
A lot of businesses jumped from XP to 7. Maybe Microsoft has a chance to hold on to them if 9 isn't garbage. Scarily, I also see a possibility that business start jumping ship to Apple, Ubuntu and/or some Google ChromeOS offering on the desktop, and Active Directory, Exchange, and MSSQL servers the last remnants of Microsoft operating systems in the enterprise.
Granted, I think it's a slim chance, and I might be crazy.
Apple, yes (through BYO and the iPhone/iPad trojan horses). The rest, probably not. Any large business with an IT department worth its salt would steer well clear of "supportless" nonstandard oddities like ChromeOS.
In 2001 the PC install base was less than a 10th of what it is today. Raw sales are kind of a terrible comparison. Relevant to MS's revenue, sure, but not a good means of comparison. The better comparison would be the relative market share. I haven't seen numbers, but I would guess that XP's market share was substantially better than W8's over the same duration, even if only considering PCs operating on Windows.
I did a quick check right now and couldn't find it either (always easy to find shipment numbers, but not user base). I am pretty sure it was an IDC or Gartner chart that I saw that showed worldwide pc users per year. Let me do some checking this afternoon when I have more free time and will post a link.
I am going to have to recant I guess. Quickly looking through the IDC, Gartner, World Bank and Strategy Analytics numbers, I can't find something to cite. If you look at global device shipment numbers from 1996 - 2013 and plot shipments per year with a 5 year tailing use to estimate the user base (which seems the norm for the PC user base values) it seems like 15-20% would be closer to the average, not 10% like I stated. I doubt it's important enough to either of us to spend the time to it. ;)
* Windows XP: ~120 million (based on an IDC estimate, as Microsoft released few early sales figures for XP).
It looks to me like Windows 7 was the anomaly: a stronger PC market at the time, and 8+ years worth of computers running XP looking for an upgrade. Vista was not a realistic option mainly due to a lack of drivers at release, much higher system requirements, and absurd pricing-- up to $359 for a boxed copy. By the time Windows 7 came out, manufacturers had gotten around to creating the Vista drivers that'd also work in 7, computers that would've been sluggish in Vista could easily run 7, and the price of the OS was slashed.
Getting people and businesses to upgrade again when they just did so in the past few years is a tougher sell. The hardware available at the release of Windows 8 was pretty un-exciting too, which probably contributed to 2013's record-breaking decline in PC sales overall. Only in the past 3-4 months have the updated models from most manufacturers made it into stores -- touchscreens, new form factors and doubled battery life -- reasons for people to actually want to buy a new PC.
I'm not so sure. There are more PCs around now than there were then, and the number of computing devices has grown vastly. However they aren't windows PCs...
Windows 7 is not an anomaly, the OS sales numbers should be on an increasing trend. Windows 8 is the anomaly that is comparable to the failure of Vista. I am pretty sure that they could have achieved a sales better than Windows 7, if the product was really compelling.
Unlike in the past, the OS upgrade cycle has shortened considerably thanks to mobile devices. People don't really mind upgrading their OS even though Windows users might be more reluctant than others. But I am sure that the Windows 8 user interface changes are the real reason why most people would not even want to upgrade.
>Vista was not a realistic option mainly due to a lack of drivers at release, much higher system requirements, and absurd pricing
Also, many people avoided Vista because it was the release where Microsoft made significant improvements to their security model by showing (by default) UAC prompts every time the user installed software or did many other actions.
"...Microsoft made significant improvements to their security model by showing (by default) UAC prompts..."
I wouldn't call nag prompts that people learned to reflexively say ok to a significant increase in security. I don't know of any hard data (couldn't find any), but anecdotally, I see people just pressing "Allow" without any thought because it comes up so often.
Yes, it's similar to the unix model, but people using unix probably have a much better idea of what security means and what the risks are going in.
EDIT: I just realized that you may have said that sarcastically...
No sarcasm intended; I should have said that Microsoft made significant changes to the security model in an attempt to improve their security. I personally haven't seen any hard data to suggest how effective it was.
Windows 7 was a business-friendly OS, focused on Desktop experience, with a release cycle that aligned fairly well with the long-overdue XP sunset, and required only minor retraining of the average workforce.
Windows 8 was a consumer-oriented OS, focused on touchscreen devices, released shortly after most businesses had just moved on from XP, and would have required massive retraining of the average workforce.
In that perspective, I think 200 millions is actually a surprisingly good number.
I think 'netbook' was predominant that anomaly. It was the dawn before low-cost tablets and, to its credit, created a whole new segment in low-cost computing.
Much of those segment are now diverted into iPads and low-cost Android tablets. Too bad Intel focused on 'ultrabook' instead of improving the Atom chip as fast as they could.
I spun up a VM of Windows 7 to do some browser testing and I was like, wow this OS is amazing, in comparison to Windows 8. Windows 7 is just simple and intuitive. Windows 8 is considerably busy. It makes sense why people don't want to update.
Similar experience here. I've got Windows 8 on my main computer. When I first installed it it felt odd but I honestly thought I'd get used to it. Nope, not yet. Every time I go back and boot up my desktop (mostly only used for video games), I'm struck all over again by how much more comfortable it is.
Win 8's UI is just. . . eeech. A year later and I still catch myself repeatedly slapping the cursor against the middle of the right side of the screen wondering why the hell it won't give me the charms bar.
Your message made me realize something I should have known all along.
You wrote,
> Getting people and businesses to upgrade again when they just did so in the past few years is a tougher sell. [...]Only in the past 3-4 months have the updated models from most manufacturers made it into stores ...[which serve as] reasons for people to actually want to buy a new PC.
Microsoft needs the Win8 upgrade so they can get revenue. They also needed to get new features into peoples' hands (security, new APIs including touch, etc). But the customers aren't crying out for these features, as seen by the continued demand for XP.
Apple needed the Mavericks upgrade so they could get new features (security, new APIs including tighter integration with iOS, etc). But like Microsoft's customers, Apple's customers aren't crying out for these features either.
I don't know what Mavericks' penetration in the Apple base is but I would guess it's still under 15% if some articles from December are to be believed). Better than Windows 8, though: how big is the Windows upgrade market vs wait-for-a-new-PC market? I'd bet at this point the Windows upgrade market is close to nil.
Since Apple makes their profits from hardware and add ons (a few apps, plus the huge iTunes ecology) they can afford to do this. Microsoft cannot.
So they're the numerator, right? Then what's the denominator? It seems like that's tough to figure out. But I want to say something like, how many PCs were sold up until the release, and with what OSen?
I don't have an answer. I'm just curious because it's an interesting debate.
Well there is also no need to upgrade for a lot of people. A dual core/quad core computer with windows 7 it can run office, media, and the internet perfectly fine and pretty fast. This is what most people use computer for. So Windows 8 need not be bad for it not to be purchased it is just that it is not needed.
Windows 7 was the first compelling upgrade of Windows in over eight years, it pretty much works, and it was a necessary upgrade to properly take advantage of 64 bit computing.
Windows 8 is a customer-hostile mess that adds very little to the Windows 7 formula.
I recently bought the first Windows computer I have had in years. It came with Windows 8. What a disaster. In a few days I upgraded to Windows 8.1 which made things a bit better. You can right click on a start menu button and pretty much get a much reduced functional start menu and boot into desktop mode by default.
I'm glad Microsoft is backtracking on this. What they did was bold, but the product they forced down everyone's throat was just so terrible. Maybe it was innovative, but so much functionality and customizability was stripped. The Windows Store is a joke. I hate metro apps, I hate that Skype is a metro app, it's the only one I use and it bugs me that I can't put it on the desktop somewhere. I just want metro to go away forever.
Luckily under the hood is still that vaunted desktop Windows from old. It just needs to come back as soon as possible.
Could you explain what it is that you actually hate about Windows 8? I keep on seeing this sentiment and I just don't get it. I've been using it since it was released and it just feels like 7 with a flatter desktop and a different start menu. I get that a lot of people lost their minds when there wasn't a button that you could click to get to the start menu but since that's been added in 8.1 if you want to completely ignore the new UI you pretty much can.
Is it just the fact that things have changed that causes all the hate or is there some rational explanation that I'm completely missing? You're right the Windows Store is pretty feeble but if you hate it's easy to ignore.
What I hate is moving my mouse to the corner by accident during a DayZ fire fight and windows charms covering up my screen.
What I hate about Windows 8 is having 3 or 4 different settings panes.
What I hate about Windows 8 is having to relearn how to open up settings.
What I hate about Windows 8 is that it has two kinds of applications, from apparently two different universes and they can't interact, or if they can I can't figure it out. I just pretend one of them doesn't exist.
What I hate about Windows 8 is that I have to right click on start button.
What I hate about Windows 8 is that if I want to hit a keyboard short cut that requires the windows key and I make a mistake I'm looking at the Metro screen.
When it comes to Metro I hate everything about it, including the little tiny arrow on the bottom right that brings up a second start menu like thing. The little label-less arrows that take you to some kind of app view that's littered with every exe on the computer and scrolls horizontally. Have you seen the way the windows selection charm works? You drag your mouse into the top corner, then drag down to see all the open applications, this list also includes metro applications. The Windows 8 search thing is not even remotely as good as the old Windows 7 search in the start menu and it's only available in metro.
I can go on but I'm tired of being angry and annoyed.
> What I hate is moving my mouse to the corner by accident during a DayZ fire fight and windows charms covering up my screen.
Turn off corner navigation.
> What I hate about Windows 8 is that it has two kinds of applications, from apparently two different universes and they can't interact, or if they can I can't figure it out. I just pretend one of them doesn't exist.
Metro and desktop applications can and do happily interact, I don't understand what you mean here.
> What I hate about Windows 8 is that I have to right click on start button
Why do you have to? You get a menu if you do but you don't have to, you used to get a menu if you right clicked the start button in Windows 7
> You drag your mouse into the top corner, then drag down to see all the open applications, this list also includes metro applications.
Just use Alt-Tab it works like it always has, you don't even need to see Metro
> The Windows 8 search thing is not even remotely as good as the old Windows 7 search
Here I have to respectfully disagree, IMHO the search in 8 is way better than in 7
Without wanting to make you even more angry and annoyed every one of the other issues seems to basically boil down to things have changed a bit and I don't like change.
There are whole host of stupid defaults. It ridiculous to say "just turn them off" or adjust that setting.
Installing Linux on a laptop recently was a pain thanks to the secure boot nonsense, but I got there. Using windows while before getting it installed was terrible. There is a whole load of unintuitive stuff (closing a fullscreen app by dragging it down? That's obvious!).
It takes 3 or 4 actions to shut the computer down if I remember correctly - find the charm menu, click it, click shutdown, confirm. There are some gestures (I still don't know what) that flip between the start menu and the app you are on. So you end up clicking an app in the start menu, moving to the part of the screen you want to click, and trigger the gesture t go back to the start menu. The whole experience was awful (and I was only really using the computer for surfing the web for articles about dual booting Linux with secure boot).
One thing I am really enjoying about Linux just now, is that no matter what crap gets shoved onto the latest and greatest desktop, I can choose a different one. Xfce is currently very nice. Feels like what windows XP did.
> "Installing Linux on a laptop recently was a pain thanks to the secure boot nonsense, but I got there."
Is it easier if you just temporarily remove the HDD, boot the laptop, get thrown into the UEFI settings, remove the unwanted crypto key, then put the HDD back in again? I was thinking about doing that the last time someone asked me to install Linux on their secureboot laptop.
Much of an improvement that Windows 8 is, this doesn't surprise me - There is no -need- to upgrade to it over Windows 7.
It's not like the difference between XP and 7, where users were upgrading from an ageing buggy mess (or in the case of upgrades from vista, just a buggy mess).
I think these numbers are a testament to how good Windows 7 is. There was definitely a compelling reason to upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista, but, with Windows 7 being so good, Windows 8 is a tough sell for some consumers.
In my experience, Windows 7 has been more stable than Windows 8. For average users, there's no real reason to upgrade.
It almost sounds like Microsoft would be better off adopting the Ubuntu model - two consumer releases supported for a shorter period followed by one long term supported Pro release. The consumer release can be priced to sell the pro one can retain today's Windows 8 Pro pricing.
The consumer release can push the boundaries in terms of features and experimentation, while the pro release can pickup stabilized Pro centric features and security updates from it.
While they are at it they can also deemphasize Metro from the Pro edition, leaving it as a mostly consumer feature.
What I'd like to see in the next iteration of Windows is desktop application windows that are /scalable/, as in the "pinch to zoom" on smartphones, but mouseable.
On Windows' windows, all four corners presently control clipping. Two of those four could be devoted to scaling instead of clipping.
This is something a desktop OS could do to increase my productivity. One desktop /application/, Real VNC Viewer, does this -- and I find it very convenient.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadThere may be businesses that will benefit from of the new features, but we're not one of them.
Granted, I think it's a slim chance, and I might be crazy.
* Windows 8: 200 million
* Windows 7: 300 million
* Windows Vista: ~128 million
* Windows XP: ~120 million (based on an IDC estimate, as Microsoft released few early sales figures for XP).
It looks to me like Windows 7 was the anomaly: a stronger PC market at the time, and 8+ years worth of computers running XP looking for an upgrade. Vista was not a realistic option mainly due to a lack of drivers at release, much higher system requirements, and absurd pricing-- up to $359 for a boxed copy. By the time Windows 7 came out, manufacturers had gotten around to creating the Vista drivers that'd also work in 7, computers that would've been sluggish in Vista could easily run 7, and the price of the OS was slashed.
Getting people and businesses to upgrade again when they just did so in the past few years is a tougher sell. The hardware available at the release of Windows 8 was pretty un-exciting too, which probably contributed to 2013's record-breaking decline in PC sales overall. Only in the past 3-4 months have the updated models from most manufacturers made it into stores -- touchscreens, new form factors and doubled battery life -- reasons for people to actually want to buy a new PC.
Unlike in the past, the OS upgrade cycle has shortened considerably thanks to mobile devices. People don't really mind upgrading their OS even though Windows users might be more reluctant than others. But I am sure that the Windows 8 user interface changes are the real reason why most people would not even want to upgrade.
Also, many people avoided Vista because it was the release where Microsoft made significant improvements to their security model by showing (by default) UAC prompts every time the user installed software or did many other actions.
Yes, it's similar to the unix model, but people using unix probably have a much better idea of what security means and what the risks are going in.
EDIT: I just realized that you may have said that sarcastically...
Windows 8 was a consumer-oriented OS, focused on touchscreen devices, released shortly after most businesses had just moved on from XP, and would have required massive retraining of the average workforce.
In that perspective, I think 200 millions is actually a surprisingly good number.
Much of those segment are now diverted into iPads and low-cost Android tablets. Too bad Intel focused on 'ultrabook' instead of improving the Atom chip as fast as they could.
Win 8's UI is just. . . eeech. A year later and I still catch myself repeatedly slapping the cursor against the middle of the right side of the screen wondering why the hell it won't give me the charms bar.
You wrote, > Getting people and businesses to upgrade again when they just did so in the past few years is a tougher sell. [...]Only in the past 3-4 months have the updated models from most manufacturers made it into stores ...[which serve as] reasons for people to actually want to buy a new PC.
Microsoft needs the Win8 upgrade so they can get revenue. They also needed to get new features into peoples' hands (security, new APIs including touch, etc). But the customers aren't crying out for these features, as seen by the continued demand for XP.
Apple needed the Mavericks upgrade so they could get new features (security, new APIs including tighter integration with iOS, etc). But like Microsoft's customers, Apple's customers aren't crying out for these features either.
Which is why Apple priced it for free, and was "rewarded" by huge uptake (in their much smaller installed base: according to this they are about even with Windows 8: http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share....)
I don't know what Mavericks' penetration in the Apple base is but I would guess it's still under 15% if some articles from December are to be believed). Better than Windows 8, though: how big is the Windows upgrade market vs wait-for-a-new-PC market? I'd bet at this point the Windows upgrade market is close to nil.
Since Apple makes their profits from hardware and add ons (a few apps, plus the huge iTunes ecology) they can afford to do this. Microsoft cannot.
So they're the numerator, right? Then what's the denominator? It seems like that's tough to figure out. But I want to say something like, how many PCs were sold up until the release, and with what OSen?
I don't have an answer. I'm just curious because it's an interesting debate.
EDIT: to downvoters - I'm just assuming that Microsoft make at least tens of dollars per licence sold. Am I wrong?
Windows 8 is a customer-hostile mess that adds very little to the Windows 7 formula.
Huh? I ran Windows XP x64 Edition with no problems before Vista even arrived.
I'm glad Microsoft is backtracking on this. What they did was bold, but the product they forced down everyone's throat was just so terrible. Maybe it was innovative, but so much functionality and customizability was stripped. The Windows Store is a joke. I hate metro apps, I hate that Skype is a metro app, it's the only one I use and it bugs me that I can't put it on the desktop somewhere. I just want metro to go away forever.
Luckily under the hood is still that vaunted desktop Windows from old. It just needs to come back as soon as possible.
Is it just the fact that things have changed that causes all the hate or is there some rational explanation that I'm completely missing? You're right the Windows Store is pretty feeble but if you hate it's easy to ignore.
What I hate is moving my mouse to the corner by accident during a DayZ fire fight and windows charms covering up my screen.
What I hate about Windows 8 is having 3 or 4 different settings panes.
What I hate about Windows 8 is having to relearn how to open up settings.
What I hate about Windows 8 is that it has two kinds of applications, from apparently two different universes and they can't interact, or if they can I can't figure it out. I just pretend one of them doesn't exist.
What I hate about Windows 8 is that I have to right click on start button.
What I hate about Windows 8 is that if I want to hit a keyboard short cut that requires the windows key and I make a mistake I'm looking at the Metro screen.
When it comes to Metro I hate everything about it, including the little tiny arrow on the bottom right that brings up a second start menu like thing. The little label-less arrows that take you to some kind of app view that's littered with every exe on the computer and scrolls horizontally. Have you seen the way the windows selection charm works? You drag your mouse into the top corner, then drag down to see all the open applications, this list also includes metro applications. The Windows 8 search thing is not even remotely as good as the old Windows 7 search in the start menu and it's only available in metro.
I can go on but I'm tired of being angry and annoyed.
Turn off corner navigation.
> What I hate about Windows 8 is that it has two kinds of applications, from apparently two different universes and they can't interact, or if they can I can't figure it out. I just pretend one of them doesn't exist.
Metro and desktop applications can and do happily interact, I don't understand what you mean here.
> What I hate about Windows 8 is that I have to right click on start button
Why do you have to? You get a menu if you do but you don't have to, you used to get a menu if you right clicked the start button in Windows 7
> You drag your mouse into the top corner, then drag down to see all the open applications, this list also includes metro applications.
Just use Alt-Tab it works like it always has, you don't even need to see Metro
> The Windows 8 search thing is not even remotely as good as the old Windows 7 search
Here I have to respectfully disagree, IMHO the search in 8 is way better than in 7
Without wanting to make you even more angry and annoyed every one of the other issues seems to basically boil down to things have changed a bit and I don't like change.
Installing Linux on a laptop recently was a pain thanks to the secure boot nonsense, but I got there. Using windows while before getting it installed was terrible. There is a whole load of unintuitive stuff (closing a fullscreen app by dragging it down? That's obvious!).
It takes 3 or 4 actions to shut the computer down if I remember correctly - find the charm menu, click it, click shutdown, confirm. There are some gestures (I still don't know what) that flip between the start menu and the app you are on. So you end up clicking an app in the start menu, moving to the part of the screen you want to click, and trigger the gesture t go back to the start menu. The whole experience was awful (and I was only really using the computer for surfing the web for articles about dual booting Linux with secure boot).
One thing I am really enjoying about Linux just now, is that no matter what crap gets shoved onto the latest and greatest desktop, I can choose a different one. Xfce is currently very nice. Feels like what windows XP did.
Is it easier if you just temporarily remove the HDD, boot the laptop, get thrown into the UEFI settings, remove the unwanted crypto key, then put the HDD back in again? I was thinking about doing that the last time someone asked me to install Linux on their secureboot laptop.
In my experience, Windows 7 has been more stable than Windows 8. For average users, there's no real reason to upgrade.
The consumer release can push the boundaries in terms of features and experimentation, while the pro release can pickup stabilized Pro centric features and security updates from it.
While they are at it they can also deemphasize Metro from the Pro edition, leaving it as a mostly consumer feature.
On Windows' windows, all four corners presently control clipping. Two of those four could be devoted to scaling instead of clipping.
This is something a desktop OS could do to increase my productivity. One desktop /application/, Real VNC Viewer, does this -- and I find it very convenient.