As I suspected a long while ago after comments from very frustrated customers when on site fixing various PCs and laptops, the rumour mill is suggesting that MS are looking to ditch Win 8 and release Win 9 next year, following on the back of poor customer uptake and gross irritation amongst many of its users.
The only thing that I have that uses Windows 8 is my Nokia Lumia 720 and at first I was quite sceptical switching from Symbian on my previous Nokia N8 but adapted to it quite easily. In the phone enviroment I have found W8 works quite well.
Market share, particularly of the latest version of the OS, I think will count for more than it has done in the past. They can’t afford another XP hanger on. By taking cash out of the equation, there will be reduced barriers to upgrade, providing the system isn’t too old anyway. Even my XP era laptop with its 2 GB of ram and single core Pentium M runs Win7 ok for example, although it isn’t 64 bit capable. Not worth the update if I have to pay any more than a token sum for it, but gets interesting as the price lowers. On a similar note, I have several desktops with older Windows OSes on it I wouldn’t mind upgrading, but not even at OEM licence costs.
I certainly think Vista era hardware should be able to run Win8 no worse, and that could also apply to Win9. That way they could increase the share of Win9 more rapidly. A bigger ask perhaps, but they will need to monetise the desktop to recover what they lose on the up front licence fees. So perhaps that’ll be the start of more integration of subscription based services? Give you enough “free” stuff to get going, but charge you as you need/use more? Hmm… freemium business model anyone?
I think the bigger conflict is attempting desktop/mobile convergence. MS tried too hard to integrate them in Win8, which annoyed their tradition core desktop user. Too far, too soon, but understandable as a way to get more traction in the mobile space which they neglected for far too long. I still think touch on the desktop would be a value add feature if done right. That is, in addition to the keyboard and mouse, not instead of.
Is it me, or has MS turned into the “old” Apple? When they just to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, never mind past consistency. And not doing a great job of it.
Further thought, they could have different levels of OS as they have done already. Only the basic one need be free for the masses.
Win9 free (home edition) - lacks domain support, limited to single socket and perhaps 16GB ram.
Win9 pro (business/enthusiast/power user) - add in domain support, perhaps 2 sockets and more ram
Win9 server (erm… servers?) - unlimited hardware support
That way, home users can continue to use the OS even on older hardware and keep the active user numbers up. Businesses can still pay with an increased level of support. One thing I’ve noticed in Apple’s modern growth is that it is consumer lead, not business lead. But the rising consumer use is opening the doors for them in business use. So MS risks losing share in both areas and are at risk of doing an IBM.
If you think of MS’s history, leading with the home user is how Windows got into the business environment. Apple’s actually using MS’s old playbook. I think MS has to make some radical changes and reassessment of their OS in order to gain market share back. With the advent of mobile technology and “apps”, MS’s hold over users as the only platform to run software on was broken. They need to go back and take a hard look at the driver for previous desktop OS sales. I suspect they will find they sold Windows platforms more because there was no other choice for users rather than because they had a top offering. Win8 was a step in the direction of something new, but it was more interface and less OS change. I don’t think the Windows OS will continue to sell well unless they revamp their core design. We’ll see what they offer with Win9.
Win8 was too different for most users and I’ve had customers complaining all the time that they “can’t find things”. For us tech guys it’s not so much of an issue, but for the average Joe it is too radical. If they’d given PC and laptop users the choice of interface as part of the sysprep on initial start up, I feel a lot of people would have opted for it knowing that they could always try the alternate interface later on. Most people when they get a new machine, just want to get into it straight away and for some they couldn’t do that and became frustrated.
It’s like DIY, no-one reads the instructions until they get stuck, but for some, they couldn’t even find the instructions after they’d powered up their machine and just got confused.
Egad, I think MS started as a business lead organisation. How many home users were there in the early days of MS? Very few. Only businesses could really afford computers. Outside of niche industries, Apple was a minor player until the iPod and iTunes came along and got them really noticed by the masses. That was the birth of the modern successful Apple. While I’m sure they’re not complaining about Mac sales, they are dominated by mobile devices in consumer land, gradually eating their way into historic MS strongholds in businesses.
As a power user, MS has been heading in the wrong direction as far as I’m concerned since Windows 2000. That to me was the last “no fuss” OS they did, but on the flip side it wasn’t a novice friendly OS. XP was the start of the decline putting in barriers to doing anything useful in the name of making things easier or safer for the novice.
If I ruled MS OSes, I’d take a note from the *nix world. You can still share the underlying functions of the OS, but the UI layer can be very different. I’m talking functionality more than cosmetics, although of course the two will be linked somewhat. A power user/business version could be relatively simple, no nonsense, straight to the point. Casual home users can have a different interface, and tablets once again can have another. There can be enough commonality between them that one program runs on them all. Instead we have Windows 8 which tries to be all three at once. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Egad, I think MS started as a business lead organisation. How many home users were there in the early days of MS? Very few.
I still have in my parent’s basement a box containing a cassette tape that had the TRS-80 Editor/Assembler on it circa 1978. Back then I was interested in programming the TRS-80’s Z80 processor at the assembly language level and this was the program Radio Shack sold to do so. The manufacturer of the editor/assembler? Some unknown company called Microsoft. Two years later they made headlines when they were selected to produce the DOS for the new IBM “Personal Computer”.
I suspect they will find they sold Windows platforms more because there was no other choice for users rather than because they had a top offering.
It’s funny how quickly people forget (or weren’t around to know) how “Windows” started. Originally, it was a joint-effort between IBM and Microsoft to build a graphical user interface that could compete with Apple’s LISA-based GUI. Their joint-effort OS was named “OS/2”. After a year or so of jointly developing the OS, Microsoft and IBM had differing opinions on how OS/2 should work, so Microsoft left the OS/2 project, decided to build their own GUI-based OS and called it “Windows”. IBM continued to develop and market OS/2.
So yes, there WAS another choice for a GUI-based OS on IBM PC’s, but it was decidedly trounced by Microsoft Windows because Windows was clearly superior to OS/2. The claim that “there was no other choice for users” is false. Therefore the claim that Windows had the top offering by default is also false. Windows had the top offering because OS/2 sucked so badly.
A bigger ask perhaps, but they will need to monetise the desktop to recover what they lose on the up front licence fees.
This is something people keep forgetting about when it comes to Microsoft vs. Apple: Microsoft doesn’t build desktops. Microsoft has no ability to monetize desktops in order to recoup reduced software license fees. In recent years Microsoft has entered the smartphone and tablet markets and so could probably subsidize some of the OS costs in the pricing of those hardware purchases, but as of right now Microsoft has NEVER built a desktop nor a server computer.
Contrast this with Apple, who requires that any Apple OS MUST be installed on an Apple-built computer. To install an Apple OS on a computer not sold by Apple results in the person who did so getting sued by Apple. (See: Apple Lawsuit of Psystar) Apple can (and probably does) subsidize most of the OS development costs by including them in the cost of the hardware. That would certainly help explain why Apple products are so #^%# expensive compared to similar products running other OS’s.
[QUOTE=Fadamor;466203]It’s funny how quickly people forget (or weren’t around to know) how “Windows” started. Originally, it was a joint-effort between IBM and Microsoft to build a graphical user interface that could compete with Apple’s LISA-based GUI. Their joint-effort OS was named “OS/2”. After a year or so of jointly developing the OS, Microsoft and IBM had differing opinions on how OS/2 should work, so Microsoft left the OS/2 project, decided to build their own GUI-based OS and called it “Windows”. IBM continued to develop and market OS/2.
So yes, there WAS another choice for a GUI-based OS on IBM PC’s, but it was decidedly trounced by Microsoft Windows because Windows was clearly superior to OS/2. The claim that “there was no other choice for users” is false. Therefore the claim that Windows had the top offering by default is also false. Windows had the top offering because OS/2 sucked so badly.[/quote]
I was thinking of more recent years, starting around 2000 and on. I ran OS/2 3 and 4 at both work and home in the 90’s, and I am well aware of how it started. I loved it. Compared to MS’s offering of the day, OS/2 was leaps and bounds ahead in my opinion. However, that’s really not what we were discussing. I was making my statement that there was no other choice with more recent history in mind. How many businesses and home users can use the alternatives like Linux (pick your flavor) and Apple? Apple’s products were certainly easy to use and support daily computing life, but let’s face the fact that the sheer volume of software written for the Windows platforms has allowed it to dominate. I’m running a Windows system right now because I have to if I want to play my games, not because I have any love for Windows. I think that most people own Windows systems for the same reason, and I think MS should take that into consideration when determining what drives sales. They need to ask the question: what percentage of our sales is due to our dominance vs. the percentage due to our technology? In my opinion, understanding that key difference is extremely important for MS when they are trying to move forward in a new market they can’t seem to win over.
You’ve missed the context in my previous reply. When I was talking about monetising the desktop, I mean the Windows desktop (as part of the OS), not a desktop PC. There was speculation Windows could “go free” in a future version. If they reduce licensing costs (perhaps for “home” versions only), they may look to make it up in other ways. They’re struggling in the mobile space due to a chicken and egg situation. No users, no apps. No apps, no users. With Windows, the number of users is no problem (for now), and they need to retain or even fight back against Apple from taking a bigger share.
One possible way to resolve the app shortage, which would help leverage their mobile side, is to get more people using apps on the desktop. To do this they need people to keep up in Windows versions, at least to Win8. Making future Windows free would help in that a lot of legacy systems could be updated. They probably wont do it to anything called Win8 as it will annoy people who have already paid for it. By branding it Win9 or something else, they can say it is “new” even if it is only evolutionary.
Even if Windows as a whole is still dominant in the desktop OS market, I’m guessing Win8 is a relatively small share of that. While it may not represent the bigger ecosystem as it will have an inherent bias, the Steam Hardware Survey shows 63% of users run some flavour of Win7. Win8 has 20%. I’d argue that gamers will lean towards the leading edge of the curve, so in a bigger population the proportion of older systems would be much higher. I’m sure MS would love to see the Win8 share much higher in that.
And in other news, the updated nVidia driver for Win 8 x64 fixed the problem I had with Skyrim crashing after five minutes or so. Just ran it for five HOURS with no crashes. That’s one less complaint about Win 8.1.
Win 8 has always been promoted as a touch-enabled OS. Those without touch screens probably haven’t seen a need to move from Win 7 and that’s fine. As such, I would expect Win 8 to always be behind Win 7 as far as number of users goes. I would expect Win 9 to be designed to be the successor to Win 7 (i.e. non-touch screen computing) and Win 10 to be the successor to Win 8.
Microsoft dipped their toes into the “freemium” pool when they killed off the venerable Flight Simulator franchise and replaced it with the freemium MS Flight. MS Flight died a horrible death shortly after coming out of beta. I wonder if Microsoft would risk doing something like that to their bread and butter income generators?
I haven’t seriously played either game. There is an amateur pilot at work. He played Flight Simulator, and has all the expansion packs for it. But he doesn’t like Flight, saying it is more like a dumbed down arcade game for the masses than FS was. In that case, freemium wasn’t the problem, it was the content. That matters more regardless what you have to pay for it. As said, I haven’t played it, so don’t know if that’s accurate or not.
Back to Windows, I can’t see them having alternate versions with differing optimisations to that extent. They may pick to focus development on a particular version in a particular area, but it will still be one OS to it all. Longer term MS has opportunities to bring touch to the desktop (as in PC this time). Not instead of keyboard and mouse, but in addition. Have the best of both worlds. Arguably they’re more OS ready than Apple are, but getting players onboard with the hardware may be more challenging for them. Laptops and tablets are already there so it is not much of a stretch to imagine that. Then again, as desktops are more likely used by power users, there may be less of a need to go touch enabled, but it will still bring benefits if done well.
To me Win8 has the Vista problem. Bad press early on refuses to die out even after they make changes, so all they can do is bring out the next numeric version and everyone’s happy. Vista really wasn’t that bad. I ran it on a netbook for several years.
Back to Windows, I can’t see them having alternate versions with differing optimisations to that extent.
??? They’ve had alternate versions since Win 2000. Win 2000 was aimed solely at the business market and people were expected to use Win 98 on their home computers. When Win XP came out, you had a “Home” version and a business (“Professional”) version from the beginning. Splitting the market based on the presence or absence of touch-screen technology is no different than splitting the market for home or business.
You were describing major version numbers as being the differentiator, as opposed to different subversions of the same major version. We have the latter, but I really can’t see the former again now they merged them.
Just saw a post on Ars Technica and it reminded me of this thread.
There is mention of “Windows 8.1 with Bing”, but it sounds like speculation after that. Their thought is that it could be a low cost (even free) version of Windows 8.1.
I think there still is a gap that will be left open once XP support ends shortly. I still have several XP systems which are functional, and I’m not sure what to do with them. I’m pretty sure they’re all Win 7 capable, so it wont be a stretch for Win 8 also apart from me not wanting to pay a new licence cost to keep serviceable old systems running. If any low cost or free version of Windows isn’t too crippled, that could be ideal.