About Windows 8

Recently I watched this video about Windows 8. Basically, the author claimed that this version of Windows almost killed Microsoft. I was professionally using Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 for many years and I can state that this is just somewhat a clickbait.

Yes, Microsoft made a mistake and there was too much focus on tablet mode. But it is easy to tell now when we know that tablet PC didn’t become a thing. But at that time conception of the tablet PC looked logical.

Plus idea of having the same Windows with the same UI everywhere was also quite appealing. You write your application once and you can run it on the phone, PC, and XBOX. And I’m sure that if Windows Phone became popular, this idea could work. It is so easy to criticize knowing what we know today.

Moreover, I agree that it was not perfect and clearly Windows 10 is much better. But it was way far from disaster many people claimed. The design was good. Yes, it was unusual at first sight, but now when I see Windows 7 UI it looks quite bad to me. I would say it is too busy and too much 3D that is not necessary.

I would probably be extreme but I will say that it was progressive or more precisely too progressive for many people. Too many changes for one version and it turns out most people are just too lazy to learn new stuff. And I would say that I’m right because Windows 10 has more or less the same design and just the start menu changed. And people loved it.

Also, I have a feeling that if Windows 10 were released right after Windows 7, people would hate it pretty much the same as Windows 8. I believe that most people actually didn’t like the UI and not the start menu. But by the time Windows 10 was released, users got used to it and learned to appreciate it.

Yes, I totally understand that many people built a lot of habits of how they do stuff in Windows and rightfully became upset when things they use were moved to a different place. But surely you can learn where is a new place. It is not supposed to be hard. It is like moving to a new house. You need some time to learn where stuff is.

And yes, I agree that most people ask a rightful question: but we do not gain anything by learning where our stuff is. It is still the same stuff. Well, the same with a new house. You just moved to a different place because you changed your job.

We are all intelligent human beings. Surely we can accommodate relatively small changes. They are not that hard. And I agree that I would prefer to keep them as is, but if they are changed I will not moan and complain a lot and I will adapt.

And I also agree that in some cases these changes just make things much worse without any benefit. But I did not see these bad things in the case of Windows 8. Something became worse, something became better. In general, I preferred Windows 7 but I moved my home computer to Windows 8 very quickly.

Moreover, I still sometimes connect to virtual machines that run old server versions of Windows and they have the same UI as Windows 8. And I didn’t see any problems with that interface even though I have used Windows 10 for many years on every single PC I have.

So I personally don’t understand this hatred towards Windows 8. It wasn’t an ideal operating system but it wasn’t that bad. Moreover, I’m pretty sure that if somebody ran some usability tests I would not be surprised to find out that many people were more productive on Windows 8 than on Windows 7. All they need is to learn how to use it.

In conclusion, Microsoft had quite an ambitious plan and it obviously failed. But I think in general they were moving in the right direction and if Windows Phone became a thing people would treat it quite differently. Moreover, people in general hate a change, not the change. They can tolerate minor changes but when there are a lot of good changes they will also hate them because they need to learn how new stuff works.

I have seen people who dial a phone number on a stationary phone again and again instead of using the redial function. And when I asked them why, they said it was the way they used to and they are not planning to change it and learn a new way.

This is my subjective opinion on this controversial topic.