

Windows 8′s Greatest Sin - jeffreyfox
http://techpinions.com/windows-8s-greatest-sin/11907

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s_henry_paulson
Terrible article.

Interviewing companies about their plans to move to Windows 8 less than a
month after it's released?

Of course the numbers are going to be low. I would be surprised if 1/3 of the
people interviewed had ever even seen the product.

Companies are known for keeping old software as long as humanly possible, not
turning on a dime to adopt something that just hit the marketplace.

The author then follows with a bunch of conjecture focused on how individuals
make decisions, but corporations are not individuals, and don't make decisions
like "maybe I should just buy a mac" on a whim.

There are lots of things to consider like your current system architecture,
your employee's skillsets, corporate software, the cost of purchasing hundreds
or thousands of new machines, etc. etc.

So what are you trying to analyze, individual decision making or corporate
decision making? Because the two are completely different.

This article is literally the bottom of the barrel when it comes to tech news,
and I hate that I took time out of my day to read it.

~~~
captainchaos
I agree. I think the bad assumption is

"If I’m Going To Have To Buy New Computer Hardware Anyway…"

You don't. I don't think most people running Windows 8 think they need to buy
a touchscreen.

PS: People seem to disregard that 4M people upgraded to Windows 8 within a few
days of release. That's about the same number of new Macs purchased in an
entire quarter. Microsoft made the upgrade path to Windows 8 far simpler than
any prior release.

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smacktoward
Under most circumstances, I would agree with this analysis. Pushing the
customer into doing what I think it was Joel Spolsky called "the dreaded
market survey" is a terrible idea, because, as the article says, once you
disrupt their normal workflow they're as likely to go with someone else's new
alternative as with yours.

The problem with applying this line of thinking to Windows 8 is that these
days, for Windows, are not "most circumstances." Customers' routines have
_already been_ disrupted, they are _already looking at_ other peoples'
alternatives, and many are choosing them. So for Microsoft the issue isn't
whether or not to let the gravy train roll on undisturbed, it's to do
something to keep at least some of the gravy from spilling out.

The cause of this disruption is two-fold -- first, the beginnings of a massive
platform shift from PCs to mobile devices, and second, the feeling among most
Windows users ever since XP or so that the Windows they already have is "good
enough." This puts Microsoft in the awkward position of competing against both
competitors with superior offerings for those customers who want something
radically different, and themselves for those customers who are change-averse.

All of which is why, _in this particular case,_ just quietly sitting pat would
have been a bad idea. It's debatable whether Windows 8 is the product that
will square this circle -- that will make Microsoft relevant again to both
those who want massive change, and those who want none at all -- but what I
don't think is debatable is that they needed to at least _try_ to create such
a product if they wanted to defend their position in the marketplace.

(Whether that product should have been called "Windows" is another story, but
that's a subject for a separate rant.)

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corin_
Really poor article. Here's what I think is probably its lowest point:

> _"This forced Netflix’ customers to re-evaluate their subscription plans.
> And when they chose, many of them chose to cancel their subscriptions
> altogether."_

Not sure how you can attribute the cancellations to "forcing customers to re-
evaluate" and completely brush over the fact that the price went up 60%.

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jiggy2011
The article seems to suggest that businesses will re-evaluate their options
and many will choose to go from Windows to Mac.

Whilst this may happen more often that it used to, Windows still has some
important advantages.

Apple stuff is expensive, in the UK a Mac Mini will cost you at least £500
whereas a cheap dell powerful enough to run Office and other apps can be had
for less than £200.

Microsoft also has an complete eco-system with Windows Server & Exchange etc
as well as client OSs and has an army of professionals who are highly trained
in these specific tools.

One of the big reasons IT depts love Windows Server is the amount of fine-
grained control it can give over permissions on Windows clients as well as IE
etc, there is also extensive third party tooling built around this.

As far as I am aware there isn't really an out of the box solution that
provides this sort of thing in the Mac world.

There may be a lot of small businesses who can swap a Windows Server for a
bunch of Mac (or even Ubuntu) boxes and a dropbox account + web apps. On the
other hand I'm not sure Fortune 500s are exactly dying to put all of their
data at the mercy of google etc.

~~~
crag
Apple isn't even going after the "enterprise" market. The Mac works very well
in a Windows server based network, with Exchange. So in other words, it's
perfectly fine having Server 2012 (or 2008) with Exchange, SQL Server,
Sharepoint (and all the rest), with PC's and Mac as clients.

And frankly, I don't think MS is even going after the PC anymore. It already
owns it. It wants what it doesn't own: mobile. IOS and Android are kings in
mobile. MS isn't even on the field.

That's what Windows 8 is all about. It's about leveraging Windows 8 (on the
PC) into users buying Windows based phones and tablets.

And that leveraging is a big risk. and I don't know. I mean, it's clear to me
Metro is not aimed at enterprise. Time will tell if it's a good bet or not. I
hope so. Cause if not MS will become irrelevant - sort of like what CA or
Novell are right now.

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rlu
I don't really agree with this article at all. For one thing, as people have
already pointed out here, making coclusins based on companies' plans just does
not make much sense.

1\. Do people really and honestly think that companies will abandon Windows
for iPads or macs? I find that extremely unlikely for reasons that I think we
already know (iPads are not good for productivity, I doubt companies will
shell extra $$$ for Macs). Companies being wary of a brand new Windows release
is nothing new. Remember when Windows XP came out? People and companies hated
it initially. The article's comparison to Windows 7 is funny because it failed
to say how most of these companies who looked forward to upgrading were
running an OS that was 8 years old! (XP - the same one they initially claimed
they would not use)

2\. I don't buy the fact that most people think that they can get away wit
just having an iPad. Most people that I know use an iPad as a SECONDARY
device. It is more fun than a laptop for consuming content. Sure. But what if
you have to actually, you know, do some work? This is basically Windows 8 /
Surface's entire value proposition. One device to work AND play.

3\. Why is the article ignoring the fact that most people won't feel
comfortable spending ~$1,300 on an Apple computer when they could get an HP or
something for $600 or even less? Let us not forget the fact that not everyone
can shell out the money for a Mac.

My 2 (3?) cents :)

------
account_taken
MS had to do this. As many point out there already are alternatives and it's
clear mobile devices are the future. MS made the tough choice. Will it hurt
them in the near term? YUP. It's an unpopular, bold move but I think the
correct one. Kudos to Balmer for having the gonads to push the company in this
direction. We're looking at maybe 2 years before Win8 takes hold.

For what it's worth, I think Win 8 acceptance will be molasses slow. Win 8
will affect Android's share not Apple's. I have a newer ICS tablet and I still
prefer my IPad Gen 1. ICS feels slow despite having a much faster processor.

------
macspoofing
This was all inevitable. The market has changed. There wasn't much Microsoft
could do. Given a typical lifecycle of a Windows OS is about 2 years, in 2012
they had to build an operating system that was truly touch-enabled, compatible
with ARM architectures and could compete with iPads and Macs. This way they
have their bases covered until Windows 9.

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nextstep
Exactly. Most Windows users remained Windows users for so long because they
lacked a good alternative. That has only changed, and now many market segments
are no longer hostages to Microsoft's OS.

~~~
xradionut
Most people use OSes to run apps and contain data/media. The fact that most of
the applications used are on Windows is a huge reason folks haven't gone
elsewhere. This is more true in the business realm than the consumer realm
that has the major growth in alternatives.

------
macavity23
I think the key (single-sentence) paragraph is:

 _Windows 8 is designed for a touchscreen._

This seems to be the TL;DR of many reviews. If this becomes 'common wisdom',
which looks likely, then I think MS are going to lose a lot of people on the
upgrade train as this guy suggests.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Lose them to who? Is Linux or a Mac really a viable upgrade path for most
corporations? How much Windows expertise has been built up over the
years/decades? How many interoperating windows products are they already
running? Legacy software? All of these are major barriers to switching.

And this is the key to Microsoft's strategy with Windows 8. Roll out their
next generation paradigm while piggy-backing on the momentum of their current
generation software and infrastructure. If they had waited too long to
transition, it would have been a situation of "well if I have to relearn
everything anyways...". Forcing this paradigm on their desktop and server
customers _now_ was key to keeping the majority of their userbase in the
transition.

~~~
gregd
_Lose them to who?_

Themselves. On the desktop, there may not be a compelling reason to upgrade to
Windows 8...with the exception of IE10. As a former enterprise IT manager, I
would seriously consider staying with Windows 7 and switching my users
wholesale to Chrome or Firefox...despite the lack of GPO options with either
of those.

~~~
benjarrell
Chrome supports policies: <http://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy-
list-3>

~~~
gregd
Thanks for the link. I hadn't investigated for several years and it's nice to
know they've jumped on the GPO bandwagon. All the more reason to get your
enterprise off IE.

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uxwtf
Windows8 comes up with brutal UI changes, pushing current Windows users to
learn how to use it. This might scare off some current Windows users, and they
will consider buying Mac instead, but don't forget that Apple is raising its
prices, that might bring people back to Windows.

~~~
MichaelGG
So the logic here is "Wow, the new start screen is different, so I might as
well go learn a different OS, with a different set of apps, and different
hardware"?

Not to mention if the person has more than a single PC, they're now using two
totally separate systems? It also ignores the folks upgrading to Windows 8.

------
sixothree
I would be more interested in knowing how many companies plan to adopt Server
2012.

~~~
meaty
Anecdotal but we're not. We have 240 windows 2008 r2 machines and are waiting
for a good reason to upgrade.

~~~
benjarrell
For me, one reason is the new server manager, it makes it so so much easier to
manage multiple servers at once. ([http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-
cloud/windows-server/s...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-
cloud/windows-server/server-management-automation-features.aspx) click the
plus on Server Manager)

~~~
meaty
We use Powershell and WMI remote exec (which is underneath all that anyway).
All our Win admin is via console.

