Why Windows 8 will suck | Hacker News Reader

Why Windows 8 will suck

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16 pointsorclev17 comments

Windows 8 sucks for different reasons than the alternating suck release strategy. Windows 8 is primarily a tablet OS. On the desktop side, that OS UI is bolted onto the underpinnings of Windows 7. It would be as if Apple forced Mac OS users to interact with the all their Max OS apps through the iOS UI primarily.

Additionally, 'metro apps' as they are known are basically tablet apps. Windows 8 on tablets is Windows 8 in name only and this seems purposely designed to confuse people into thinking it is more functional than it actually is. No existing Windows desktop apps will work on it at all. If you buy a Windows 8 tablet, none of your Windows software will work on it. Your existing copy of Microsoft Office, Photoshop, etc, none of it will work on Windows 8 tablets.

On the desktop, using the metro interface and metro apps is incredibly clunky, because you are using things designed for touch with a keyboard and mouse. It takes longer to get at things and switching between running apps isn't anywhere nears as convenient.

In the end, Windows 8 doesn't know what the hell it is yet. Either way, it's definitely not ready for prime time.

I'm unsure if this is trolling or not or if I lost my sense of humor. Anyway, I can simply not buy that Windows 95 sucked or was a half way-house of old and new tech where Windows 98 was a major technical step forward in comparison. And of course, the author very conveniently forgot Windows 2000.

I don't think it's trolling based on the following point. As a purely intellectual exorcize, the article bases an argument on an unproven stated fact -- that version "x" of Windows sucked or didn't suck followed by a version that reversed the trend. While the merits of why an OS will or won't be "good" may seem completely subjective to me, unit sales data as a percentage of in-use computers around the world would provide a nice starting point for debate. Windows 95 (for me) was a watershed OS that has influenced how we use MS OS's _to_this_day_. I just don't have sales figures to support my claim, therefore mine is just an opinion -- like the original article.

The author also omitted certain releases (and fessed up to said omissions) to better support his claim. You can't fit the data to the hypothesis. I stopped reading. This is a novelty. Move along.

Even if Microsoft has pursued the Alternating Suckiness Strategy in the past, it's questionable that they can continue doing so.

The other operating systems, Android, iOS, Mac, Linux, are increasingly becoming viable alternatives for a great many people, simply because the OS has become increasingly irrelevant to the question of "Can I run this program/ open this file".

Microsoft cannot afford to give people another reason not to stick with their platform.

>Microsoft cannot afford to give people another reason not to stick with their platform.

Microsoft isn't going anywhere - they have the business segment locked down tight. The reasons for which are out of the scope of this discussion- but there are still companies out there writing ActiveX apps for IE6. Them upgrading to 8 is irrelevant because they're still on XP fer chrissakes.

I can see them taking the RIM tack if they continue down this road (namely making every other release distasteful for one reason or another and pissing more people off) - disregard the wants of consumers and sell a primarily business-focused product which consumers can also use, if they wish.

Windows 98 was just awful. I still remember having to re-boot that sucker 10 times a day.

Windows 98SE, however, was awesome and a VERY different beast from plain Windows 98. It was an entirely new release and it should really be on the list.

Similarly, Vista Service Packs made Vista much, much better, as did improved 3rd party drivers.

Try the turbo button

Adding Windows 2000 into his list would change the entire article.

Windows 2000 was targeted at businesses and servers. It's specifically excluded as this is talking about the consumer releases that get bundled with new computers. Likewise the NT releases and any of the server releases are also excluded.

Nearly every nerd I knew in 2000-2 had Win2k on their PC. I can recall of two holdouts specifically, and both because they perceived to have a performance advantage in some game by sticking with Win98.

I recommend not buying into this narrative. 7 really was not that much different from Vista, but people persist in this perception that Vista was an abomination whereas 7 is somehow incredible.

The truth is, Windows has a huge obligation to legacy and backward compatibility, and MS has to pay homage to that instead of breaking with the past and starting something new. That's not to say that if they did do that the results would be any good, but they can't even try at this point. They are attempting to sorta-kinda do that with the Metro experience stuff, but I think this approach is ultimately doomed. Computing is changing, rapidly, and a mish-mash of old and new probably won't work very well.

I hope I am wrong about this.

From what I've seen of Metro in videos, it feels a lot like the old DOS-based menu systems we used to run. In other words, it just looks like an application running on Real Windows, which provides a fancy UI and shopping gateway. Not unlike Media Center or, in a sense, iTunes.

Aside from tablets, I just don't foresee consumers "getting it".

I absolutely do not agree here. Fun fact, we've had a discussion of windows versions at work today and this is basically exactly what I said about good and bad windows versions (not his conclusions, though). We're a 70 people software shop with highly mixed infrastructure, and we've had much, much, much fewer problems with XP and 7 than with Vista. (Of maybe 20 people not running Linux or OS X).

Windows back-compatibility support has its limits these days. The advertised vehicle for old enterprise XP apps that you just can't upgrade is "Windows XP Mode" (duckduckgo it), which is XP itself running under Virtual PC. (Yes, "well behaved" XP apps are supposed to be able to run on Windows 7 natively, but the mere existence of this other thing is a concession that many apps of interest are not that well behaved.)

The same strategy could be used to maintain back-compatibility across much more drastic transitions, if they were of a mood to make them.

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