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Neowin reviews Windows 8 - Leave your pre-conceived notions at the door

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rgdot:
Has anybody tried WinMetro by IOBit, that kind of emulates Metro on XP and later?

I played around with it, it is not too bad, such as it is (not the real thing obviously)

Carol Haynes:
I havent used 8, but it seems to me there's a share of reaction against it because of the [very understandable] fear that MS might be planning to abandon the desktop.
-tomos (October 24, 2012, 03:10 PM)
--- End quote ---

That is precisely what they are doing and that is precisely their intention.

They want new users to switch the computer on and find internet, email, facebook etc. right there in front of them and never have to click on Desktop at all - hell on ARM tablets Desktop won't exist.

This is all pretty clever from MS - the next stage in the game is 'you have used Windows 8 on a PC why not make your next purchase a tablet - you don't really need all the other stuff that comes with a netbook, laptop or desktop computer ... oh and hey, we have you covered MS Now run the shop so you know everything you want is easy to get and we also make the hardware."

Microsoft's slogan by the time Windows 9 or 10 appear (depending on how much crap they take over Windows 8 ) will be "Microsoft - locked in like Apple".

Businesses will put up with crap for so long but eventually they will move - if for no other reason than MS will phase out support for Windows desktop products at some point. In the meantime they will still be coughing up corporate subscriptions for old versions of Windows and old versions of Office (so why should MS care). I wouldn't be surprised if MS at some point doesn't change the corporate licensing to force the move to the latest version of windows and office ('so we can provide the best support') - given that they unilaterally rewrite EULAs and contracts all the time.

We have to accept that MS is getting out of the operating system and office software game and moving into the consumer/service/subscription business with a manufacturing arm (pun intended).

We can all squeal and squirm as much as we like.

Personally I am quite pleased I will reach retirement age before all this comes to full fruition but I pity anyone working in the IT industry over the coming decades. The 80s saw the death of big industry in the west, I suspect the next 20 years will see the death of information technology (as a business) in the west - everything will be locked into two or three large conglomerates and most of the work will be outsourced to suicide camps in the far east.

When are western governments going to notice that the west is gradually losing all forms of income apart from loans from China ?

mahesh2k:
On locked scale and the patent fights, I think apple wins any day. I don't think microsoft will be as successful like them with appstore and stuff. It took apple 3 years to push people for dependency on ITunes store and app store. MS can't push people that quickly with Windows 8. It will take some years and some biased media news to push people to use MS app store for purchase.

Carol Haynes:
On locked scale and the patent fights, I think apple wins any day. I don't think microsoft will be as successful like them with appstore and stuff. It took apple 3 years to push people for dependency on ITunes store and app store. MS can't push people that quickly with Windows 8. It will take some years and some biased media news to push people to use MS app store for purchase.
-mahesh2k (October 25, 2012, 05:23 AM)
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Depends how quickly major developers make the move to the new interface and the AppStore. Utlimately if not-Metro works as well as some think it will on tablets there is a good chance MS could gain market share rapidly - most of the reviews see a lot of advantages of not-Metro over iOS - and for me not having to depend on iTunes is a major draw. Even Apple fans who use Windows boxes hate iTunes on Windows. I think Apple deliberately make it suck to try and move people to Apple hardware.

Daleus:
This is quite an intersting discussion.  Just this morning, I completed a survey by InfoWorld Research, focused on the consumerization of IT and yesterday I read this piece on SlashDot:

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/10/23/2038220/the-greatest-battle-of-the-personal-computing-revolution-lies-ahead?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

I tried Windows 8 when the Consumer Preview version was offered earlier this year.  It was slightly buggy and I found without a touch interface it was difficult to use.  I also understood the strategy of making some form of Windows a direct competitor to iOS. Whether or not it is a successful strategy is beyond me.

My thought is that the overwhelming popularity of iThings has got a lot of computer/IT companies in a Big Fat Stir(tm), but all I am seeing from any of them is a sheep-like determination to make a product just like an iThing.  It may have pretty colourful squares on it, but in my estimation, Win8 is essentially a wanna-be-like.

Pursuant to the SlashDot article linked above, the copy-catism seems to have taken Microsoft right down the rabbit hole into another walled garden app store.  I have never liked that idea and I look forward to the witch burnings and drownings I predict will occur when Microsoft starts taking a 30% cut (or whatever it is) of every product that goes through its own store.

Finally, and I understand *I* might get burned at the stake here myself, I am no fan of portable devices like the iThings and data capable phones. I don't believe them to be innovation, but rather a step backwards and very much playing into the hands of entities both corporate and governmental who want to double-speak me and control parts of my life they have no business concerning themselves with.  While the move to the "cloud" has certainly opened some doors to convenience, I use these services with the expectation that they will be yanked from under my feet, the moment I stop measuring up to someones expectations in some way. Consider the poor woman reported this week, who lost her library of legitimately purchased eBooks, just because Amazon is run by a bunch of pricks. With the reliance of portable devices on such cloud services and their attendant walled-garden purchase/installation setups, I'm staying way clear.  If I can't secure my purchase in my own home, on a non-connected device, I'll have no part of it.

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