Why was Windows 8 such a horrific boondoggle when so much was riding on it's success?

[Mangetout]

OK, but as a counterexample, my mother (in her 70s) loves Windows 8. Previously, she was on XP and I had to write step by step manuals for her to check her emails, print things, etc. She actually found the Modern UI completely intuitive and friendly (and this is on a non-touch laptop).

[Voyager]

@bump

Thing is, people seem to be more resistant to change than they are stupid. Most people can handle having a Windows 7 PC, an Android phone, and a Xbox One with the charms interface, without it being a big problem for them. They do get cranky when someone moves their cheese and makes something different, without a good reason (from their perspective) for doing so. And just making the PC look like the Xbox isn’t usually a “good” reason from most people’s perspective, hence the irritation with Windows 8.

In Redmond probably everyone has Windows phones and tablets. Those people probably love a unified interface. For the rest of us, a PC interface looking like the interface to devices we don’t own does no good.
IT departments are going to do lots of testing no matter what a new OS looks like. However users can migrate from XP to Vista to Win 7 with minimal pain. Some, someone with a good intuitive feel for computers can probably migrate pretty well, but the pain of a user base who have learned the same basic interface for ages moving is going to be great. And it is all for something which has more to do with Microsoft marketing than the user experience.

[asterion]

@Mangetout

IMO, this is part of the problem - sure, Microsoft made some mistakes in the initial release of Win8, but there is also a groundswell of entirely unjustified, self-perpetuating negativity about it.

It wasn’t meant to be a shot at Win8 but at the apparent thinking at Microsoft. I’m not convinced they ever actually talk to their actual users when implementing UI changes. Killing an ancient but useful keyboard command just seems like something they’d do.

[Alessan]

I’d also like to note that Alt+Tab also still works, and is very useful for when Win8 traps you in some seemingly inescapable app.

[Mangetout]

@asterion

It wasn’t meant to be a shot at Win8 but at the apparent thinking at Microsoft. I’m not convinced they ever actually talk to their actual users when implementing UI changes. Killing an ancient but useful keyboard command just seems like something they’d do.

Except it isn’t something they actually did. And there is a lot of that general flavour of comment about.

All of the keyboard shortcuts from previous versions of Windows are supported, and work the same as they always did.

[bump]

@Voyager

In Redmond probably everyone has Windows phones and tablets. Those people probably love a unified interface. For the rest of us, a PC interface looking like the interface to devices we don’t own does no good.
IT departments are going to do lots of testing no matter what a new OS looks like. However users can migrate from XP to Vista to Win 7 with minimal pain. Some, someone with a good intuitive feel for computers can probably migrate pretty well, but the pain of a user base who have learned the same basic interface for ages moving is going to be great. And it is all for something which has more to do with Microsoft marketing than the user experience.

I agree entirely.

As to the point that you could go XP->Vista->7 without any pain, you’re absolutely right. They actually upgraded my XP machine at work to Windows 7, and it works BETTER now. I wouldn’t have believed that upgrading a machine in situ would actually work better, but it does.

[Magiver]

@DWMarch

It was necessary. Microsoft was getting requests for features that were already in the software but hidden so deep in sub-menus that a casual user would never find them. The ribbon puts it all up there for you and doesn’t actually take up much more space than the old menu bars did. As I understand Win 8 took this a step further and made the ribbons collapsible so you could push them out of the way if their existence rankled you that much.

Well here’s the rub. I understand what you said but in reality the people actually using the product spent a great deal of time relearning where stuff was. They could have added to the pull down menus that were there. I’ll admit some of the stuff is easier to get to but it didn’t seem to compensate for the inconvenience it caused.

If IT departments don’t feel like being the beta test team for MS rest assured the rest of us shmo’s don’t either. I just don’t feel like MS sought the input of long time users.

@DWMarch

In any case, Win 8 has been put out to pasture and will be remembered as Ballmer’s big failure. Balmer was also put out to pasture and Gates might be next. The Nadella era of Microsoft is already a marked improvement over the previous regime and I am pretty sure he got rid of that horrible system in which MS employees had to play a vicious, backstabby version of musical chairs to keep their jobs. If Google’s mantra was “don’t be evil” MS seems to have acquired the mantra of “stop pissing people off”. Windows 9 will be a welcome change.

If they adopt the SPPO mantra life will be good.