Windows 10, Here’s what Microsoft should have done instead
a.. By David Cardinal on June 9 2015 from the
b.. Extreme Tech Staff
c.. 'Document source Link:
d..
e..
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/207780-windows-10-heres-what-microsoft-should-have-done-instead?mailing_id=1276983&mailing=ExtremeTech&mailingID=F98C71CE61AECF34AC8B64A964276FEA
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· Windows 10 is a well-meaning effort by Microsoft to mollify Windows 8
haters and coax Windows 7 loyalists to upgrade — all while stubbornly sticking
to its goal of a single OS for every possible platform. And by framing the
problem that way, Microsoft has given itself a nearly impossible task.
· To the company’s credit, each new build lurches closer to being
usable, although with new bugs every time, it is difficult to evaluate how
smooth the final release version will be. Best case: It may earn the grudging
acceptance of Windows 7 users who refuse to move to Windows 8. And part of that
acceptance will come not from sudden enthusiasm for a new way of interacting
with the desktop, but from a desire to take advantage of the clear core
benefits Windows 10 provides in performance, security, administration, and
memory usage over Windows 7 and even Windows 8.
· So why is it so hard to convince users to move to a brand-new, free,
feature-packed, more efficient OS?
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http://www.extremetech.com/computing/205320-microsoft-windows-10-will-be-the-last-version-of-windows
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· Apple does it all the time. Simply put, because Microsoft didn’t
build Windows 8 or Windows 10 for Windows users. It built them to further its
own business strategy of using the power of the once-ubiquitous Windows
platform to extend its dominance into the rapidly growing mobile space. The
result is an OS whose features are now flipping and flopping with each new
build — as Microsoft tries to fix problems of its own creation.
· Imagine how good a desktop OS Windows 10 could have been
· What if instead, after realizing what a terrible mistake Windows 8
was, Microsoft had made the truly brave decision to come clean and change its
strategy? If Windows 10 had been designed from the beginning to be the best
possible desktop OS, and the thousands of developer years spent trying to make
it everything to everyone were instead spent providing services and
applications for the mobile OS platforms people actually want? If in tandem
Microsoft was willing to let go of its sub-3% market share in mobile, it could
also have spent the cash it used to buy Nokia to build out its cross-platform
services offerings instead. We could have had a really excellent desktop OS —
worth paying for —
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http://www.extremetech.com/computing/201601-microsoft-desperately-wants-you-to-move-to-windows-10
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· and great integration with the leading mobile platforms.
· Certainly Microsoft has woken up to providing competitive versions of
its applications on Android and iOS. But imagine how much further along it
would have been if it had put real work into the effort starting years ago.
Perhaps we wouldn’t have to use third-party utilities to sync our information
between Google and Outlook, for example. Or OneNote might have supported
syncing on Android during the first several years it was available, instead of
only recently. Pick any Microsoft desktop technology you access from your iOS
or Android device and you can come up with a list of features that would make
it much more useful.
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· It’s not like there isn’t anything to fix in Windows
· Anyone who thinks Microsoft didn’t focus on desktop users as it
evolved Windows 8 and 10 because its desktop OS has “no need for improvement”
hasn’t spent enough time wrestling with the inscrutable hex error codes from
Windows Update, or debugging driver version mismatches, or finding information
they’re sure is somewhere on their disk. While Windows 10 isn’t final, judging
by the builds so far, all of those problems are still there. Even support for
high-resolution displays is still spotty. Windows 10 adds some new Zoom
options, but there is still no serious scalable-font solution that works across
the full range of possible displays.
· As a good example of how this alternate direction would have worked,
let’s look at the Control Panel. No one doubts that it is an old, crufty system
for managing a computer. A desktop-focused OS project would have overhauled it
completely while preserving its functionality. Instead, Microsoft seems
determined to replace it in bits and pieces with new “touch-friendly” settings
that aren’t much more intuitive, and that become even more frustrating when you
need to go back to the old system for pieces that are still missing. Windows 10
is supposed to address this problem, but we’re less than two months from
shipment and Settings are still far from being either intuitive or finished.
· Tablet mode and Continuum are also inventions seeking to solve a
problem Microsoft has invented for itself. For the few of us who actually own
and use a Surface Tablet mode, it’s sort of a good thing. (I love that I can
both taken written notes and run Outlook on my SP3, but with the addition of
desktop apps to Android, I’m not sure how many others will see the need to
spend that kind of money for basic productivity.) It’s good because it is
better than Windows 8, where often the touch keyboard wouldn’t pop up when
needed, and icons could be hard to finger.
· It’s still only sort of good, though, because it’s confusing and
forces the user to have one more thing to think about. Somehow iPads and
Android tablets seem to easily survive the addition of a keyboard without the
need for an entire special OS mode. Like many of the other new features in
Windows 10, it seems like a “throw it against the wall and hope it sticks”
attempt to solve a user pain point — not a from-the-ground-up technology
architected to support the broad range of devices that can now run Windows.
·
· Windows 10 internals are actually pretty impressive
· There is a lot to like about Windows 10 — in addition to having the
best kernel Windows has ever had. Edge (aka Spartan) is promising (although it
too is only a prototype version, and certainly could have been shipped
separately). Cortana might be useful, but is so limited and buggy in the
current builds that it is hard to tell. If it doesn’t get sorted out by July,
Microsoft risks taking yet another step backwards in desktop search
functionality, which would be a shame. Virtual desktops are a nice feature,
although hardly groundbreaking.
· The included apps are certainly way ahead of the ones Microsoft
shipped with Windows 8, but Microsoft has had many excellent desktop apps over
the years — including the now-dead Windows Media Center, LiveWriter, and
MovieMaker. It is the company’s own fault that it feels the need to start over
time and again. On the tablet side, if Microsoft is serious about usability, it
should be providing a better touch keyboard — one that includes swipe-through
typing, for example. I also wish the company had finally fixed Windows Update.
Mobile users won’t put up with the way it works now — they are spoiled by
seamless OTAs from Apple and even many Android vendors.
· Perhaps the ultimate warning sign about Windows 10 for me is that for
many, its positioning is summed up as being “no worse than the six-year-old
Windows 7, while adding support for tablets and phones.” That sounds pretty
silly, but maybe not far from the truth. I run a Windows 7 desktop for some of
my business-critical applications right next to a couple of Windows 8.1
machines and a couple of Windows 10 machines. I don’t really feel any less
productive when I’m on the Windows 7 machine, and I can’t imagine that I’ll
upgrade it to Windows 10 and risk something breaking.
· Tablets are certainly a different story. I’ve already put Windows 10
on almost all my Windows tablets, and suspect most of the small number of
Windows tablet users will also. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Windows tablets
are a relatively small market, and may never become mainstream.
· Laptops are the most interesting case. While each version of Windows
adds new power management features, that may not be enough to get laptop users
to upgrade. For example, Microsoft keeps changing the WiFi settings interface,
and for many of us, the new version is lame compared to the more powerful one
that preceded it. Engineering laptops still ship primarily with Windows 7, and
I don’t see anything about Windows 10 changing that. Mainstream laptops will
get dragged along onto Windows 10 because of the Microsoft marketing machine,
but I don’t know how many current laptop users will bother to take advantage of
the free upgrade. No doubt that is part of why Microsoft is inflicting its
Windows 10 adware on the already confusing Windows Update process.
· At this point the die is cast, and we’ll need to live with whatever
we get on July 29th — or stay put and hope the little Get-Windows-10 nagware
goes away.
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