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 touchscreens 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
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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 8. like I'm desperate to
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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