Let's face it, unresponsive customer support and releasing unusable garbage like Windows 8 hurts Microsoft the most.
Also, the fact that they enthusiastically helped the NSA subvert their own users scared me right off their entire ecosystem.
Also, the fact that they enthusiastically helped the NSA subvert their own users scared me right off their entire ecosystem.
That's funny. I managed to use my Windows 8 computer to not only read your comment, but respond to it. I was planning on using it to get some work done later today but I guess that's out of the question now that I know how unusable it is.
My complete computer illiterate and borderline luddite wife has no trouble using Windows 8. I wonder why you're having trouble?
People hate change. My mom is a prime example - she found Chrome to be unusable because it wasn't 100% exactly the same as IE...
However like always, users get over the change and their uproar and continue to use the product, eventually unaware that it was ever any different.
Once you show a normal Windows user where and how to get to the new start menu... they get it, and move on. The bloggers and writers for tech review sites however did not. They might have "got it" but they didn't move on, and MS had to buckle or suffer review after review that complained about the "missing" start button.
Once you get over the newness, Windows 8 is just like 7 but that doesn't make for a very exciting or controversial review.
In Windows 8, there was no button unless you scrolled the mouse to the lower-left of the screen. When you did that, a button that even was labeled "Start" showed up. When you clicked it, you were brought to what people commonly call the "metro" screen.
In Windows 8.1, there is a permanent recognizable button with the picture of a Window on it in the lower-left of the screen. When you click it, you are brought to the "metro" screen.
No functionality difference in the start button. The only people appeased are those that were looking for something to complain about.
Usability == productivity.
By contrast, Windows 8, with the big pastel tiles and simple typography is by a long way the most n00b-friendly, regular-folk-focused, detail-hiding desktop OS that Microsoft has ever done. IMHO the problem is not usability for simple tasks, it is that MS have been alienating the power-users in chasing after this mass market that seems to want simple things.
I'm not saying that the "normal people" market is stupid or unskilled - they could be lawyers or doctors. Just that they don't care about computers as much as IT professionals do, they want the computer to just work, and in a simple way while they do something that they do care about.
Maybe windows 8 is not what people want. But it certainly isn't because it's too much like telnet.