Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Was Windows 8 THAT bad?”.
Windows 8 has reached end of life and, unlike what happened with Windows, 7 Microsoft has been very clear that there will be no extensions, it is going away and it is going away forever. Who cares? Am I right even at its peak? Hardly anyone used it by comparison. Even Vista was a hit, but why Microsoft’s greatest sin we almost universally agreed was throwing away the traditional desktop interface that they had spent 20 years, perfecting in favor of this touch-centric approach. That was so half-baked that even the few people who actually had touch screens at the time warned everyone. They knew to stick with windows 7., so good riddance to bad garbage, then right wrong.
Windows 8 may have been a commercial failure, but it also introduced many of the innovations that Windows 10 would ultimately get credit for and by the time it got its first and only service pack. It was not only not awful, but with some minor tweaks it was one of the fastest most stable and most usable versions of Windows. Ever I actually still use it to this day. So then, what did you miss out on, statistically speaking, probably Windows, 8 and given that I haven’t segued to it? Probably our sponsor the ridge, the ridge wallets, are high quality, minimalist wallets, designed for convenience and practicality, follow the link below and use code Linus to save 10 off your purchase and get free shipping. The new start screen really did look great and on the right device. It was actually pretty pleasing to navigate this flat.
Tile-Like style was called the Metro design language at the time, and it was meant to unify the look of everything from Windows phone to the Microsoft website to even the Xbox interface. It was probably Windows, 8’s biggest success story, and we still see its influence today, both in products from Microsoft and in products from its competitors. Along with this new design philosophy, they introduced metro style apps. Their influence also remains, but their long-term success is at best questionable. These apps were special because they ran full screen, didn’t have the traditional window, decorations, menus and title bars and were only available from the new Windows store. An interesting example of one is actually Internet Explorer Windows, 8 confusingly shipped with two versions of IE: a touch friendly Metro version for people who clicked on it by accident and a classic desktop one for quite literally everyone else.
The Metro apps at least the ones that still function today do work well with a full screen touch interface. But this parallel development of similar apps resulted in an overall experience that was clunky, was confusing and was unfortunately pervasive throughout the entire operating system. Microsoft’S, either unwillingness or inability to commit to a single interface Paradigm made Windows 8. By far the most confusing OS that I have ever interacted with and it’s a problem that continues to plague Windows to this day, as evidenced by the presence of the classic control panel, which is still there in Windows 11., I mean their intentions were good to help.
You get around the OS Windows 8 borrowed liberally from its mobile cousins, encouraging users to swipe from the edges of the screen in order to perform common tasks. Swiping on the left side reveals the charm bar, where you can search for apps share content, get to the start, screen manage devices and quickly access common system settings the the behavior of the charms change, depending on the active app replacing functionality that might otherwise be hidden Away in a menu in a traditional desktop app on that subject, Microsoft put considerable work into ensuring that your older Windows, 7 apps, would function as expected. The problem is that the way that they implemented it was Kaka. The start screen does have a button to reveal a traditional desktop, but that desktop is basically treated like any other Metro app that doesn’t sound disastrous until you think about it for three seconds, because then you’ll probably realize that that means any program that might be running Inside the desktop app cannot be navigated to like a Metro app would so you can’t just swipe from the left edge of the screen and get directly to say a word window. That’S hiding behind a file explorer window. You can only swipe to the desktop as a whole and then poke around at it from there if all this stuff could have been disabled at launch, along with the default behavior of opening the full screen Metro UI every time you so much as grazed the Windows Key, I believe users would have flocked to Windows 8, like they had to Windows 7..
It had a lot more going on under the hood than most people, give it credit for Safety and Security. For starters, both improved thanks to the introduction of BitLocker full disk encryption. Uefi boot support improved Biometrics and windows Defenders. Antivirus capabilities Windows Live Family Safety, built on the parental controls that were introduced in Vista, then confusingly reduced in Windows 7.
Only to finally make their return online services were more tightly integrated than ever, with various services from Bing to Xbox, to SkyDrive, either having dedicated new apps of their own or adding functionality to others. And there was even a new windows to go feature that let you boot a fully manageable live Windows, environment off of a USB key. It was super cool but was largely ignore it as an enterprise-only feature.
Many other existing applications were also overhauled, with new looks and new functionality, we’ll put a link in the description with a list, because there’s way too many to mention here honestly up until this point, I could understand if it doesn’t even really look that bad to you. The start button is totally gone, but we still have a taskbar to pin apps to along with all the space on the desktop. So who cares? I mean interacting with the desktop with a touch screen feels a lot like it did in Microsoft’s. Older attempted tablet interfaces, that is to say you can make it work, but okay, here’s the thing. I went out of my way to find a device for all of our b-roll so far that has a touch screen and was explicitly designed for this new interface. Let’S, instead put ourselves in the shoes of a typical Windows user back in 2012., our desktop PC is running Windows. 7..
Fine, just fine and Windows 8 has the same system requirements exactly which is great, but doesn’t have any new killer apps. So, on the one hand, we don’t have to buy a new computer, unlike that whole mess with Windows Vista a few years ago. But if we were to go ahead and upgrade, we would discover that in Microsoft’s, reimagined new world order Windows users without touch screens, which is to say nearly all of them, were suddenly second-class citizens and for what, instead of just swiping anywhere along the edge of the Screen to activate the new navigation and tools, mouse and keyboard users had to move the mouse into one of the four corners of the screen and then get this left or right click depending on what they were trying to do. This is a awful because it’s really easy to activate it by accident, say when you’re, oh, I don’t know trying to close an app and B completely different from the touch screen experience I mean why not just have Mouse users move the cursor to the right side Of the screen, click and then drag in to get the charms bar you know, so there has to be an intent to it.
Then you could just do the same thing. On the left to switch apps, I mean the idea of having a hidden menu or taskbar on the edge of the desktop. Wasn’T even a new one. You could Auto hide the taskbar way back in Windows 95.
So why not make use of that same thing here and give everyone an equal experience, making it even worse, Microsoft didn’t go out of their way to explain the new navigation scheme to the user that is outside of the initial setup. So if your favorite grandchild happened to set up your new PC or if you wandered off to make a sandwich, while the installer was doing its thing, you would have had no idea that these important features even existed with the start button ripped from the taskbar. It also wasn’t obvious how users were intended to launch desktop apps. If there wasn’t an icon on the desktop or on the taskbar, you would either have to open up the start screen by moving your cursor into the bottom left corner past, where the start menu should have been and then left click to open the start screen.
Then you’d have to right click on the start, screen, selecting all apps and then finally find and click on your app alternately. You could move the mouse to the equally unlabeled top or bottom right corner of the screen. Wait for the charms bar to appear carefully move the cursor to the search icon and then type in the name of the program, you’re hoping to run In fairness. The search at least worked unlike Windows, 11, but because the focus of the start screen is on the new metro style apps, anything involving desktop apps felt like a lot of extra work. It’S no wonder that Indie developers leapt to the rescue, producing replacement, start buttons and start menus for all those poor, frustrated users without touch screens, which might I remind you once more was functionally all of them now before you. You start to comment, you know. Obviously, Linus has forgotten about keyboard shortcuts. Of course, I know there are keyboard shortcuts, but come on.
We have all watched that relative use their computer keyboard shortcuts might as well not exist for most people, and we need to accept that and we need to build interfaces that account for it. I haven’t even gotten to the worst part, yet you couldn’t play free cell or Minesweeper without downloading them from the new Windows store with your shiny, new and mandatory Microsoft account. Sorry, I should have warned you before saying something that upsetting. If you feel the need to replace your underwear, you can check out our new designs at lttstore.com. In all seriousness, though, users, that upgraded existing systems were not happy with the interface changes, and they told their friends who told their friends who all appear to have listened because Windows 8 as it was first released, never managed to crack even 10 of the market of Windows users.
Luckily, though, Microsoft also listened, and just days before the one year anniversary of Windows 8, they released a service pack that was so roided out it necessitated a whole new version. Number Windows 8.1 arrived on the scene like Gandalf on shadowfax, bringing with it the start button and a whole host of new features and usability improvements. Microsoft clearly recognized that most of their users did not have touch screens so 8.1 made it much easier to stay on the desktop most of the time.
They even made it possible to boot directly to the desktop instead of booting to the start screen, and they acknowledged that for many users, the full full screen Metro apps were actually step backwards in terms of productivity, particularly for multitasking, and they made it possible to run At least two Metro apps side by side and up to four at once on, a higher resolution display auto hidden title Bars, were added on metro style, apps, making them easier to manage for non-touch users and the taskbar was now accessible on the start screen by moving The mouse to the bottom 8.1 also allowed more customization of the start. Screen added more built-in apps greatly expanded the settings app so that you weren’t forced to revert to using the old control panel to deal with common administrative tasks and improved the search charm by allowing it to find files and online content, rather than just programs. 8.1. Didn’T abandon the Bold vision of Windows 8, but it did temper that Vision with a healthy dose of reality. The version of Windows 8.1 that I still use regularly high back by the way, is a modified image of Windows, 8.1 embedded industry Pro that the modern cheekly calls Windows 9.. It hacks out any unnecessary Telemetry and pre-packages a variety of usability mods, resulting in an extraordinary combo of stability, responsiveness and low system requirements. Unfortunately, like the rest of Windows 8, it will no longer be getting critical security updates and it’s time for me to move on. If Windows 8 had gone on to build the same kind of user base that Windows 7 did, I could probably expect Microsoft to quietly extend the support window a little bit, but unfortunately, by the time the 8.1 update came, the damage to its reputation was already done And that would never happen.
Microsoft wasn’t offering free migration to new versions yet and Windows. 7 users just didn’t see any compelling reason to upgrade, meaning that they were essentially forced to continue supporting Windows 7. Removing the last remaining reason that one might upgrade to Windows. 8..
The obsolescence of what you’re using Windows 7 ended up being so dominant that it saw virtually no change in market share until Windows. 10 came out in 2015.. 8.1 did gain some ground in here and made it to almost 20 percent of the windows Market. But it’s clear from Windows, 7’s flat line here that that was solely from folks replacing their old xpiera machines and users, who were simply desperate to get off of Windows.
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If you guys enjoyed this video and you want to go way back in time, you can check out some of our coverage of Windows 8. From back when I still wore NCIX shirts. Oh man, yeah thanks. .