Windows 8: Is Microsoft flailing?

In Arlo Guthrie’s famous song, Alice’s Restaurant, the defendant is prosecuted with the use of “twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back.” That’s how it felt reading Microsoft’s response to user criticisms of Windows 8. In a lengthy and unbelievably technical post, Marina Dukhon, a senior manager, valiantly defended the new Metro user interface against the withering criticism it has received for being a large step backwards in productivity for current Windows users, using a raft of statistics and formulas.

While admitting that current users might be less productive with the new interface, and using an analogy to road construction projects which take years, Dukhon has in effect told current users to “take one for the team,” arguing that eventually, once everyone converts to the new system, and all the developers rebuild their applications for it, everyone will benefit. This arrogantly assumes that everyone is in the same boat as those at Microsoft — addicted for life to Windows and willing to put up with yet more years of change and inconvenience, to get to some future nirvana.

Source

A Guy

 

[davehc]

I love the insipid picture of the Metro. Just about sums up a large number of views on it!

 

[Beta]

Why does everyone seem to be mad at Microsoft for showing how they came to the conclusion about the new UI? People wanted to know and Microsoft showed them and people fliped out. I just don't get it. They give them everything they wanted and more and because they could not find something else to be mad about they rip into Microsoft. If it was up to these bepople who are mad at Microsoft we be still on Windows 95.

 

[Colonel Travis]

Why does everyone seem to be mad at Microsoft for showing how they came to the conclusion about the new UI? People wanted to know and Microsoft showed them and people fliped out. I just don't get it. They give them everything they wanted and more and because they could not find something else to be mad about they rip into Microsoft. If it was up to these bepople who are mad at Microsoft we be still on Windows 95.

This is not why people are complaining. No one wants to be stuck using old technology. That said, the linked post isn't good criticism. What's wrong having a common OS interface for PCs and devices? Sounds smart if it can be pulled off properly - and that's the key point and that's why people are complaining.

Then there's this from the link:

But in the same post Dukhon provides the jaw-dropping advice that advanced users might need to consider third party launchers if they don’t like the Windows 8 user interface. Having developers and support professionals use a different interface than their users is a recipe for chaos in the Windows community.

Someone explain to me why this is jaw-dropping? Maybe it is, I'm not a developer or IT person. But I use a third party launcher on my Android phone and haven't read about a freakout. It's just the opposite. The principle reason I and millions of others use an Android phone over an iPhone because with an iPhone you're pretty much stuck with what they give you unless you hack into it. Does that same principle not apply to PCs any more in any new context? One of the big problems people (like me) have with 8 - as it stands now - is giving up user control. I don't want Windows to turn into Apple, which makes great stuff, but which is also totalitarian in what it offers.