The last post was written on a BMI flight from Vienna. Now, at 10AM on the following day, I am sitting on an old, smelly BA Boeing 737 (which my uncle flies for Austrian Airlines) on route to Geneva. I am tired, grumpy and have my whiny sister sitting next to me, reading Michael McIntyre's autobiography (apparently very funny, noticed through her annoyingly loud giggles), with her elbow taking up the whole damn armrest.
Moving swiftly on, this post will be based on Windows 8, Microsoft's recently previewed operating system. Now, this is interesting, as they are attempting to merge the PC with the tablet into one system. Just take a look at this video.
See what I mean. Pointless piece of junk. So, let's break this down a bit. You have a touch screen interface, designed for mouse AND touch, which does not work, as proven by years of unsuccessful (being generous there) Windows tablet sales! There we have it, a failure even before we start ripping it apart.
Let's look at the productivity side of things. You start it up, wait 2 hours (as is customary with Windows), then presented with a login screen. You log in and you are presented with a pointless home screen. I say pointless because, when you think about it, when are you going to use it? One needs a computer for work, Internet and email mainly, and less so RSS feeds and photo viewing. If I want to work on Word, or browse the file system, I need to use the standard Windows 7 interface, and not the fancy crap on top.
It like taking a horrible cake, and dressing it up with icing: It looks appealing, but when you eat it, you throw up. Get where I am going with this? Microsoft has been using the same system for years now, with little innovation and diversity (I mean, how is 7 different from Visa?). Just putting another high power demand layer on top of the already high demand operating system will make things even worse!
So, as a message to Microsoft, I ask you to redesign the whole operating system. Get rid of the start bar, the start menu, everything that makes Windows, Windows, and build it from the ground up, with your own technologies, like the Kinect system, and what little you have learned from Windows Phone. The current system is built up from old Apple technology, so Windows is just a manifestation, just a bad one, of the original and currently outdated Apple systems.
One other thing, the simplicity of the user interface. The new OSX Lion release is cool, but a bit more complicated to use, especially to old windows users (I am not looking foreword to tomorrow, when I have to teach my dad about full screen apps!), but it's still much simpler than windows, am I right? Windows 8, as it is placing another layer over the old user interface, is much more complicated to use than Windows 7.
To round off this unusually short post, lets think about Microsoft and tablets. In the following post, about Steve Ballmer, I will go deeper into this topic, but for now, just hold this in mind: Microsoft is coming out with tablet software in LATE 2012. Consider the consequences of this, and what will happen to Microsoft as a result. All will be revealed in the next, final, exiting installment of the "Microsoft, Again" series!
P.S. My sister thought that video was a parody, and not an official video!
P.S. My sister thought that video was a parody, and not an official video!
