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What was the worst version of Windows ever?

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We've argued it was clearly Windows Me or ME, but there's another version that people love to hate.

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Windows 8 may not have been the buggest release ever,

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but it was definitely the most pointless. So let's take a stroll down memory lane back to 2012,

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when the iPhone 5 was all the rage. Call Me Maybe was the most overplayed song in history,

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and the end of the world we are embracing for didn't bother to show up.

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Windows 7 had been out for about three years,

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and people actually seemed to like it, but it was built for traditional desktops and laptops.

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Microsoft could sense that a massive shift toward mobile computing on touchscreen devices was imminent,

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and the company, understandably, didn't want to be left behind.

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So they adopted the attitude that Windows had to be on everything from desktop PCs

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all the way down to smartphones. In 2010, Microsoft released an operating system

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for phones simply called Windows Phone 7. It introduced the concept of live tiles,

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which were supposed to distinguish the OS from iOS and Android.

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Instead of boring static app icons, users would instead get large tiles

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which would show real-time information like messages, emails, or news updates.

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This design language, called Metro, was actually relatively well-received,

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with some outlets praising Microsoft for daring to go in such a different direction.

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So what does this have to do with Windows 8? Well, Windows 8 directly borrowed

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quite a few design elements from Windows Phone, possibly due to the positive feedback

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or possibly because they planned for that to happen all along, but regardless,

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Microsoft clearly thought the correct way to get Windows onto every device

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was to have it look the same on every device. But it turned out that this wasn't the solution,

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and we'll get into the exact reasons why, after we thank, computers and tablets are not phones,

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yet you'd never know that from the way Microsoft designed Windows 8.

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One of the biggest aspects of Windows that Microsoft had emphasized since Windows 95

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was multitasking. If you need to switch to another program,

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just click its button on the taskbar and you're there,

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or hit Alt-Tab if you wanna impress the hotties. This simple and long-standing design convention

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was upended by Windows 8 and its much-maligned start screen.

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Instead of the familiar start menu, you got a start screen,

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featuring a dizzying mosaic of live tiles spitting out often useless information

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and steering you toward full-screen Metro apps,

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which made multitasking a lot more confusing, as when the Metro app took over the whole screen,

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the taskbar would disappear, leaving novice users wondering what the heck was going on.

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Although you could still get back to the traditional Windows desktop pretty easily,

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Windows 8 felt confusingly like two operating systems in one,

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with a normal desktop experience and a touch-optimized experience

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stuffed into a single, bizarre package. Maddeningly, Windows 8 also lacked any option

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to restore the classic start menu, a decision that was so unpopular

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that developing third-party tools to restore it became a full-blown cottage industry.

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Windows 8 also debuted a built-in app store, which wasn't bad,

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but seeing as how many people were already used to just finding whatever program they needed

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through a quick web search, the new Windows Store raised concerns

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about Windows becoming a walled garden in which users would ultimately have less control

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over their own PCs. But this wasn't to say Windows 8 was a terrible OS.

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It was roughly as stable and polished as Windows 7,

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and some of the weird UI decisions could have been forgiven

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if Windows 8 actually improved in other ways over its predecessor for desktop users.

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There were some useful new features, such as the ribbon in File Explorer,

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a new task manager with a performance monitor, secure boot to prevent against rootkits,

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and native USB 3 and NBME support. But all of these features likely could have been part

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of a Windows 7 update, or at least didn't necessitate such a radical redesign

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of the user interface. Simply put, Windows 8 didn't give users

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enough positive changes to outweigh the negative ones,

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especially considering that the popular Windows 7 was also a minimalist, unintrusive OS

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that largely stayed out of the way, even on phones where Metro apps and live tiles

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seemed to make a little more sense. Microsoft overestimated how much utility

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the average user would get out of them. It turns out most people didn't need a bunch of live tiles

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vying for their attention every time they opened their phone. Think of how annoying regular notifications can be

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without live tiles. And there simply wasn't enough interest

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from big app developers on the platform, especially the likes of Google,

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who didn't want to help Microsoft compete with Android just by handing them a YouTube app, for example.

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So the phone version of Windows 8 didn't fare much better, and Microsoft completely pulled out

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of the phone OS market in 2017. On the desktop side, the start screen was completely axed

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in Windows 10, and live tiles disappeared by the time Windows 11 rolled around.

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Yes, they were still in Windows 10. And ironically, the Microsoft Surface lineup

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is doing just fine today without a specific tablet interface.

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But if any Microsoft developers are watching this video, please don't feel too badly.

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Windows 8 was far from the most pointless tech product

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we've ever seen. Remember Gibo?