I have been waiting before I post anything on Windows 8, and this is because I actually wanted to give Windows 8 a chance. I tried to believe in it, I used it, and I forced myself to keep an open mind. Now the analysis is over and I have come to a conclusion. Windows 8 is a substandard operating system.
What I cannot understand is why Microsoft cannot do anything right! They take shortcuts and just do not think things through. The small, simple and logical things that they keep on missing by a mile make the difference. And it is here where Mac OS X excels.
The Metro interface; a good thought but no, no and no. What Microsoft (MS) keeps missing is that you need to balance beauty, efficiency, reliability and ease of use. And Windows 8 is full of stupid mistakes. MS decided to copy OS X. They took the good ideas and managed to turn them into junk, and I mean junk. It is almost pathetic how they cannot themselves see these things.
A few small things, which may sound silly, end up being the difference between a Rolls-Royce and a Ford. As it is with cars: you may buy the bulk assembled half plastic car from Ford, or you can invest in a vehicle in which no detail has been overlooked. The way the gears shift, the feel a button has, and even the noise the seats make when you sit in them, all contribute to the overall feeling of quality. And Apple gets this, MS doesn’t.
First of all, the metro “thingy”, when you sit there looking at the tiles and realize that you want to go either left or right on the screen, on a computer with a mouse and no touch-screen display, you cannot just click anywhere on the screen (holding down the mouse key) and simply drag the tiles left or right. Oh no, that would have been logical… Instead you need to go to the lower part of the metro screen, wait for the “drag bar” to appear, click on that thin bar and move the view to the position you want it to go to. Had it been Apple the solution would have been a click and hold anywhere on the screen and drag. Easy, simple and logical.
Second, the hot corners that MS decided to copy from OS X. Go to the top left hand side when say in the “desktop” view, and a small little square appears with a miniature picture of another active application. This is meant to be an easy way to quickly flip between active applications. However, move your mouse pointer one millimetre too far and it’s gone. Repeat the process until you manage to get it right. And I am not kidding, the mouse movement allowed from getting the “square” to appear and actually entering the application previewed is ridiculously small. Seriously MS, how hard can it be? A five year old would have thought of this.
Third, turning the damn thing off is the most hilarious thing ever. The first time I wanted to turn off the computer running Windows 8, it took me a good 2 to 3 minutes to figure out how to do it. And I am not the only one. There are tutorials on YouTube on how to do this. Just the fact that people have to make tutorials on it is stupid enough. But no worries, I’ll guide you though the process if you happen to sit in front one of these “things”.
- Move your mouse pointer to the right, drag it down on the right side of the screen.
- Now a side menu appears, in that menu select settings.
- In the settings menu click on the power button
- Select Shut Down
My fourth point; yes it is nice to quickly be able to open an application and this was the idea behind metro in Windows 8. And once again MS took something that works in OS X and turned it into a disaster. The Launch Pad in OS X is basically a part of iOS that was allowed to move in to the Mac operating system. But instead of doing it like MS decided to do, Apple didn’t want it to be an in-your-face experience. In OS X, you are free to choose if you want to use it or not. It is one button or gesture away. And guess what, in OS X, you can click on your mouse, hold the key and drag the Launch Pad view in your desired direction. Or just use a simple gesture on your track pad. Whereas in Windows 8 it is the first thing you see when it starts (after you have figured out that the first “wallpaper-like view” isn’t a desktop but a extra thing to get through before windows actually starts to run).
And the list of small, and actually in the long-term annoying things, just goes on and on and on. But not to spoil for you the joy of exploration, I will not describe any more of these.
So to the big question, why does MS keep on failing. Well, I call it the Ballmer syndrome. This man is too full of himself to understand anything when it comes to usability or what people actually want. He has laughed at Google and Apple so often that I have forgotten the number of times. And each time he ends up steering the MS ship towards following their lead and trying to copy their success. MS has stopped innovating, and is now the world’s biggest photocopier. And to such an extent that they would even make Xerox jealous! Just to name two examples of MS copy and paste mantra: Zune and Surface. Both evolved from products Mr Ballmer laughed at and said never would be successful.
The arrogance of his behaviour and the way he talks about his competition is appalling. And why he is still the CEO of the company beats me, big time. Because since Ballmer took over from Bill Gates the company has not done anything new. If we exclude the success of the Xbox, the only true growth and profits generated by this CEO has come from the fact that so many businesses and users worldwide are just stuck with Windows, or haven’t yet tried anything else. But the sales of Apple and the greater adoption of Android devices are changing this fast. And MS is shaking from the ground up.
But then again, what can we expect from a company that is run by contractors. And seriously, if you know anyone working for MS, just ask how many percentages of the employees on site are contractors. You will be shocked. And this I believe to be one of the core reasons for their failure. If your people cannot trust you to be there for them and employ them, why would they give you their knowledge? But that is not the whole reason. The other reason is that MS has lost its soul. It does not innovate anymore, it is playing catch-up. And because it is desperately trying to follow the innovators, it looses focus on the small things that matter. And it is not made easier with a CEO that is desperately trying to prove that he is a high-tech guy and not the pizza delivery guy he actually is. Ballmer is simply a man without a vision. And those who can predict what the users-of-the-future want left the building a long time ago. And getting them back is hard, actually damn near impossible.
What MS needs to do is to finally sack this guy. If not, at least buy him an island far away from Seattle, put the man there, give him a few coconuts to play with. And keep him as far away from business decisions as possible. And if they also could get Bill back from saving the world for a year or two, MS might have a chance to get back in business. If none of the above happens, I can promise that what we are seeing now is the start of the end for what we once knew as Microsoft.
// The General
And to round up this rant with a smile, I give you Microsofts own Steve Ballmer: Steve Ballmer going crazy
Recommended reading: Microsoft’s Lost Decade, Microsoft’s Odd Couple and Microsoft’s Crazy Windows 8 Bet – How you can invest smarter
Recommended to view: Ballmer Laughs at iPhone, Windows 8: The Animated Evaluation
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