What Windows 8 is all about

[andrewducker]

It took me a while to work out what Microsoft were up to with Windows 8. I think I've got there, but to work it out I had to go back to the heady days of the browser wars...

Flash back to the heady days of the late 90s, when multiple web browsers vied to dominate the web - Netscape desperate to turn the browser into the user's portal to the world, the only piece of software they really cared about, Microsoft desperate to keep people tied to Windows and happy to keep throwing money at Internet Explorer until it controlled the market and people didn't build pages "for the web" they built them to work on Internet Explorer, leaving them tied to Windows*.

Microsoft was eventually investigated for unlawfully leveraging its operating system monopoly into trying to control the browser market, and while it was distracted a new set of browsers came along - Netscape Navigator turned into Firefox, Google launched Chrome, and we're now getting to the point where many people _can_ get by with web apps for most of the things they want to do**.

Which brings us back to today, and the latest threat to Microsoft's dominance - smartphones and tablets. Microsoft have actually had tablets for ages, but they were basically laptops whose screens folded over, (a) making them large and bulky and (b) running Windows, which wasn't much fun with a stylus, let alone using your finger to jab at things. They've had phones for ages, but they've been awful for years, outclassed by Symbian phones running s60 and Blackberry devices, and then made wholly obsolete with the coming of the iPhone and Android. When they launched Windows Mobile 6.5 in 2009 I think the general reaction was a massive shrug of disbelief that Microsoft were still bothering.

Which, as mobile devices now outsell desktops/laptops leaves Microsoft with a massive threat. If people can do most of what they want through a tablet*** then why would they buy one of those boxes that gives Microsoft a cut?

Windows Phone 7 was generally well received by the press - the interface is supposed to be very nice, and they've generally had good reviews. The problem is that nobody cares, and nobody**** is buying it. Personally, I think the reason for this is simple. Buying a new phone is _scary_. Nobody wants to spend a small fortune on a phone (or tie themselves in for a two year contract) and then discover that it's rubbish. And so they copy the tastemakers. And for mobile phones there are two groups of those: The fashion people, who will tell them to buy an iPhone, or the geeks, who will tell them to buy an Android (or possibly an iPhone). If you ask either of these groups if you should buy a Microsoft product then the answer will be "Hahahahahaha. No."

This is partially because there's no unique selling point for a Windows Phone. The iPhone has that "It was made by Steve Jobs and oozes sexiness,with millions of apps" thing going for it. Android has that "You can install any piece of software you like on it, or even write your own without paying cash to anyone, with nearly as many apps" thing going for it*****. Windows Phone is largely as locked down as the iPhone, doesn't have nearly as many apps available, and (most importantly) nobody you know has one, so how would you know if it was any good?

This leaves MS in a situation where it knows that the future is mobile, it wants to be part of that, it has a good system it can sell, and it can't persuade anyone to try it. And even if it could, chances are they've already bought a bunch of apps for their existing iPhone/Android, so they don't want to switch.

Windows 8 is their solution to this problem. They've put a whole bunch of work into all of the familliar stuff - networking's had an overhaul, the process manager seems nicer, Windows Explorer is a little spiffier - by the looks of things it's nearly as much an improvement in usability over Windows 7 and Windows 7 was over Vista. But that's not the interesting bit. The interesting bit is that Windows has a whole new interface that's completely incompatible with all of your existing applications. "Metro" is clearly designed for a Tablet interface, and also looks to be the basis for Windows Phone 8. It's got lots of the stuff that's now familliar to iPhone/Android users - an app store, complete with the ability to redownload all of your applications, data synchronisation, etc. They recently showcased the ability to "reset" your OS back to the default install and then put all of the Metro apps back on top of it.

The old stuff is still all there - munged into Metro like a ballad track on an industrial album. You switch between your applications and "Desktop" is there, as if the whole of Windows 7 was just one screen amongst the many options. And weirdest of all, the Desktop will only be there on _some_ Windows tablets. There will be ones that run on a different type of low-power chip****** that don't support all of the "legacy" applications like Microsoft Word or Photoshop or World of Warcraft*******. This has baffled and angered an awful lot of Windows users, because they don't want all of "this tablet crap" on their nice Windows box. They want to hit the desktop, load their familliar applications, and get on with doing their job.

So, why is Microsoft doing this? Why anger their current power-users? Because they want to stop you being afraid of Metro. They want it to become a familliar part of your everyday computing life. They want you to buy a Metro app or three on your desktop. They want you to walk in to your phone shop, see a Windows Phone and say "I like the look of that one, it looks just like my computer at home. Will it run the apps I've already paid for there? It will! Goodness me, that's fantastic, sign me up at once!"

Yes, once again Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly on the desktop to push something at you. Once again it's a case where they're telling you that they're offering you more functionality as part of the OS, when what they're really doing is bundling something extra in with it in order to get you used to it then extend that into a different market..

Which is, of course, exactly what Apple do with the iPad ("All of my iPhone games, on a bigger screen? Yes please!") and Google do with Android ("It synchronises all of my Google calendar, Google contacts and GMail seamlessly? Yes please!"). But you should be aware that that's what it is.

*There is still have oodles of corporate software that runs on Internet Explorer. You might think IE6 is dead, but it sadly still lives on in the heart of large enterprises.
**Although, frankly, not as well as they could with a dedicated application.
***Personally, I can't, but I'm led to believe that many people can. If all you want is email/web/Facebook/Angry Birds then a tablet will do you nicely.
****Seriously - Windows Phone 7 has a marketshare of somewhere between 1% and 1.4%
*****Plus you can buy the lower end ones for £120-odd last I checked.
******ARM chips, which power most existing Android/iOS devices, are lower power and less powerful than Intel chips. This is one of the reasons why the battery on a tablet lasts for numerous hours while most laptops die in 2-3 hours.
*******This is still unconfirmed - there are differing reports about what the ARM Windows tablets will support - I suspect they're working on making it easy for people to port to ARM tablets, but it won't just be a case of moving Intel-compiled programs over.

Comments

[matgb]

Yup.

Re Winphone7 market share, do we have any stats yet on how the Lumia is doing? Given Symbian was still outselling iOS in the 3rd quarter last year IIRC, and there's beena lot of marketing muscle put into it, I suspect it'll be into the teens at least.

Oh, aside. Put my N8 into power saving mode a few weeks back, works fine as a phone but doesn't do any app stuff unless I tell it to. Charged it 10 days ago and it's still going strong on the one charge.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

"Seriously - Windows Phone 7 has a marketshare of somewhere between 1% and 1.4%"

Indeed. But it was also the top selling phone in Europe in December... I'm holding judgement on the fate of Windows Phone 7 because a) I freekin' love the Lumia 800 and b) I suspect that Nokia and Windows are turning that stuff around and c) Oh gods Android sucks, I hate it with such a passion and, finally, d) I am bored with iOS...

The challenge here is Apple need to do something interesting with the next iPhone or they're going to find out how fickle the phone market really can be.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Personally, I can't, but I'm led to believe that many people can. If all you want is email/web/Facebook/Angry Birds then a tablet will do you nicely.

Hmmm... I think more people than most analysts imagined a few years ago fall into this category. Then this area is super hard to predict. Even three years ago there were serious people saying Nokia had it tied up and others saying the "google phone" was a hopeless failure that would never sell. Last year some people were saying tablet sales had topped out already and HP's notable failure was a symptom -- recently I've been seeing "fivefold increase in tablet sales". If I was MS I would not bet the house on a tablet revolution... after all, four years ago it was a netbook revolution but now they've upped specs and price and largely reintegrated into the market as shitty quality cheap notepads.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

The reason that 3 years ago people were saying X is the lifetime of a phone hardware cycle is about 18months (regardless of what your contract says) - typically phones bite the dust in 18-30 months, depending on use.

People are also fickle... just because you had something that worked and people just have to have it 2 years ago, doesn't mean they will continue to do so.

The iPhone has had impressive staying power, but Apple need something special for the iPhone 5 or they'll continue to lose to Android.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Apple need something special for the iPhone 5 or they'll continue to lose to Android.

Hmm... maybe... I mean they're losing market share not sales. By which I mean that the number of iphone sales is still going up I think, just the android numbers are going up faster because now everyone wants a smartphone (and apple still has vastly larger margins per unit). That said, 2010 Symbian outsold iphone+android -- current success is no guarantee of future performance.

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

The iPhone has had impressive staying power, but Apple need something special for the iPhone 5 or they'll continue to lose to Android.

The Siri voice control is already a selling point, but they could go even further with customisable voices. I don't have an iPhone, but I would pay proper cash money for a phone that would talk to me in the voice of Sylvester McCoy.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

BTW - if you have found a way for Android to seamlessly sync with things, let me know :)

[andrewducker]

For me, and most people I know, we signed into the phone when we first got it, and all of our contacts, calendar and email is just there. And changing it there changes it elsewhere too. It Just Works.

I'm sure some people have problems (nwhyte had endless problems with Exchange and thousands of contacts, for instance), but most people don't seem to in my experience.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Pretty much does if "everything" is on google anyway for most users.

[makyo.livejournal.com]

and then made wholly obsolete with the coming of the iPhone and Android
I got a copy of Paul Graham's book Hackers and Painters for Christmas this year, and there's a bit in one of the essays where he remarks (the book was originally published in 2004) that if Apple can figure out a way of incorporating a phone and a GPS receiver into its shiny new iPod, then Microsoft will be in a lot of trouble. Which seems to be pretty much exactly what happened.

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Skimming this, is it me or does Metro sound just a little bit like Unity? *ducks*

[andrewducker]

Yup. Or the Android UI. Or the iPhone UI.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Which is, of course, exactly what Apple do with the iPad ("All of my iPhone games, on a bigger screen? Yes please!") and Google do with Android ("It synchronises all of my Google calendar, Google contacts and GMail seamlessly? Yes please!").

Which, of course, anticipates my point... Microsoft isn't doing anything with Metro that others haven't done before, so calling this practice out as evil while touting one of the above competitors is just tribalism.

-- Steve's been using the Metro interface on his Xbox since the beta came out last October, and finds it rather interesting... which doesn't necessarily mean he'll update to Win8 on his desktop.*

* maybe the laptop, which is a 7" tablet PC running Win7 rather well with fingers and stylus but Metro could be interesting on it and Win8's scalability might mean the update won't crush performance on its Atom CPU. The desktop's Core i7, however, needs no such assistance.

[andrewducker]

I think that leveraging an existing monopoly, which is what MS are doing, is somewhat different. It does equate to what Google are doing with G+ though - pushing people towards their new product because the existing one.

And nobody has used the word evil.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

Apple did not alter the MacOSX UI to make it look like an iPhone.

they added features so that you can choose to use it kinda like an iPhone, but you have to actively select that option every time you wish to use it. All it does it show your apps as screens full of icons until your next mouse click.

this was done quite some time after iOS proved successful.

MS is trying the exact opposite.

[I have no problem at all with MS doing this, and genuinely hope that Metro is successful]

ps. Andrew is overwhelmingly not of the pro-Apple tribe. But I'm sure you knew that.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

my @rse with Android is that I signed it up with my work account... which means I have a bit of hassle to do when I finish up there. My bad, tho'. My mail/calendar is Hotmail (don't laugh) and it works fine (now - but I think it's all pretty new that stuff)

[danmilburn.livejournal.com]

I understand what Microsoft are doing, and why they feel they have to do it, but I have a strong suspicion that Windows 8 will be a disaster.

Why? Windows 7 is good enough on the desktop, and Windows 8 isn't really trying to offer anything new there. There are of course still plenty of people who see no reason to stop using XP.

They will also struggle on tablets, for much the same reason as WP7 is struggling. Microsoft simply isn't a player, and they can't outspend their competitors like they used to.

Also, I think Metro is ugly and a massively inefficient use of limited screen space, but I understand that most of the few people who know what it is don't agree with me on that..

I'm sure Windows 9 or maybe 10 will be pretty good though, if they last that long.

(If I were running Microsoft, I would start giving away the full Visual Studio stack for free right now. It's the only way they're going to be able to compete on third party support.)

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

I physically can't use Metro, as it completely kills my eyes.

I do wish it success, though, because it's MS finally trying something different.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> "Metro" is clearly designed for a Tablet interface, and also looks to be the basis for Windows Phone 8.
> Which is, of course, exactly what Apple do with the iPad

It's a tactic even older than that. Apple added Dashboard to OS X back in the mid 2000s (for 10.4 IIRC?) and it was like the desktop accessories of System 7 but with fancy effects and in an overlay that obscured your desktop. It was shiny but a bit pointless, but as simple dashboard widgets could be done just HTML + JavaScript a lot of people wrote them.

And then the iPhone came along, and it looked suspiciously like a lot of dashboard widgets, or 'apps' lined up with their little icons in a grid. Fancy that!

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

there's no unique selling point for a Windows Phone ...(most importantly) nobody you know has one

Which is why the Nokia deal makes sense. I had a series of Nokia phones in the 1990s. They were overwhelmingly popular, and still are outside of US and Europe. In those markets, lots of people that you know have a Nokia, so why not get a shiny new smart one.

[andrewducker]

Because nobody connects Nokia and Smartphone. They connect Nokia and "That awesome phone that didn't do anything except calls and texts, but had a battery that lasted _forever_"

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

point of note:
***
my Director of Studies runs the entire year on his iPad. Easily. He finds this such a piece of piss he no longer bothers to carry a laptop, ever. That includes his lectures, handling all student business, course rep meetings, and running the entire administrative side.

and his lectures are quite excellent.

I post him useful iPad stuff all the time, which he generally finds ways to make use of.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I've learned more about recent Windows developments from reading this post than everything else in the last year combined, I think.



However, have all your footnotes at the foot of your post makes it hard to follow. :)

[andrewducker]

I wonder how I can do them better without disrupting the flow of the piece.

I need to look into whether you can do HTML hover-over things. That might work.

Glad it was informative!

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

IAWTC. Very interesting reading.