Windows 8 has been on the shelves for a whole six months so and here’s a shocker: it turns out that people don’t like being forced to relearn how to use their computers after using the same method for the last twenty years. Everything was fine the way that it was. You turned on your pc, clicked the Start button, hovered the mouse over programs, and clicked on whatever program you wanted to open. And it worked right? Sure, and why fix it if it’s not broken. There are a few answers to that.
The first is that the world is fast approaching an age where the pc is a thing of the past. More and more users are using devices like tablets and smart phones to do most of their computing and because of this, pc sales are down. People ask me a lot what kind of computer they should get and I always ask the same question: “What do you intend to use it for?” The answer is almost always the same. Listen to music, watch movies, and surf the internet. These are three basic needs of the average consumer and they are three things that you can do very easily and efficiently on even the cheapest of computers; however, neither a smart phone nor a tablet is going to completely replace a laptop, desktop, or at least some type of device that has a physical keyboard.
Which brings me to my second point. Users are getting more and more used to being able to touch the screen when they use their computer. Who hasn’t at one point walked into an Apple store and touched the screen on a MacBook expecting it to do something. Unfortunately, with Windows 7 touch screens wouldn’t have worked very well. So recognizing that the future of computers is in touch screens, Windows was redesigned for a better touch screen experience.
Microsoft no longer being the huge tech leader that it once was took a lot of criticism for the new design of Windows. Unfortunately for those that don’t like change, Windows 8 is here to stay. One way or the other, we are going to be brought into the new way of using computers. We are all going to learn to swipe down to close programs and swipe in from the left to switch between programs and swipe in from the right to see the “charms”. Now that we’ve talked about the past and the present, let’s look to the future.
There’s much more to the new design of Windows 8 than a better touch screen interface. With such devices such as the Kinect soon we will be able to have a huge screen hanging on the wall and a keyboard sitting in our laps and we won’t even have to touch the screen. A simple wave of the hand will tell the computer to close the app you’re in or switch between apps. Amazingly, now Windows 8 is starting to sound really cool and futuristic. While that may be how your home computer is controlled, that might not be so practical for the office. Instead, in your office you might have a desk that’s made of glass with a touch screen computer behind it. No more need for your computer to take up any physical space in your office at all with a system like that running. None of these things would have been possible with an operating system like Windows 7.
Next let’s take a minute to discuss Windows Phone 8. Just recently, it passed Blackberry in market share with 3% behind iOS and Android. 3% doesn’t sound like a lot and admittedly, it’s not. But as I said earlier, like it or not, Windows 8 is coming and we are all going to learn to use it and it will become the standard for computing. There is no turning back now for Microsoft. Microsoft is definitely getting noticed with the ads that it has been creating around its Windows products. More and more people are going into their local cell phone store to see the Windows Phone that they’ve been hearing about and they just may be more likely to choose the smart phone that works just like their computer does so that 3% number is going to rise and rapidly. Admittedly, the Windows Phone App Store doesn’t have nearly as many apps as the Apple AppStore or the Google Play Store, but it’s certainly no worse than the Android Market looked only two short years ago.
Another thing to point out is that Microsoft has 7% of the tablet market. That’s a huge increase from the 0% it was at this time last year. The Surface RT was the first Microsoft tablet to be released and it’s a fine product. Everyone seems to be criticizing a Windows device that can’t run Windows applications but no one seemed to be too upset when the iPad came out and they couldn’t run their Mac OS software. Perhaps Microsoft’s mistake in Windows RT was in calling it Windows, which created the expectation to be able to run all Windows software. No worries though, because as I stated above the main thing that the average consumer seems to want to do with a computer is listen to music, watch movies, and surf the internet and the Surface RT does all of that very well. So for a price point of $499 you get a 32 GB SSD, Microsoft Office, you can attach a keyboard to it, and there are thousands of games to choose from that sync with your Xbox Live account.
Of course if you do need to run all Windows software on a Windows tablet, there is the Surface Pro which has amazing features. With an i5 processor, it’s the first tablet that can completely take the place of your laptop or desktop. Windows 8 Pro is available on all types of devices from tablets that turn into laptops to laptops that turn into tablets. There is something on the market for every kind of user.
Microsoft’s development style has always been iterative in nature, starting with the earliest memorable versions of Windows. Windows 3.0 didn’t work very well but the 3.11 update had huge success and that’s where many of the older generation had their first experience with Windows. Windows 95 wasn’t a hit. It was the first Start menu and people were afraid of change as they are now. It also had a lot of bugs in the program and this was before automatic updates came along. Of course Windows 98 fixed all that and Microsoft had its next hit. Bring us to the last decade and the turn of the millennium when Windows 2000 was released and it was a flop. Microsoft wanted to switch us all from a DOS based system to an NT based system and the transition wasn’t so quick and painless as you’d expect. Windows XP was the answer. Windows XP was released in 2002 and there are still computers here twelve years later that still use it. The next version of Windows was the infamous Windows Vista, which is one that everyone likes to poke fun of as the worst thing ever, but as the smarter ones will tell you, “without Windows Vista, there wouldn’t have been a Windows 7”. And we all know how popular Windows 7 ended up being.
Microsoft always releases a product they take the user’s response and create the product that we will all love. So expect nothing but good things from Microsoft. Microsoft certainly seems to be the company that the future is coming from. We haven’t heard from Apple in six months, Samsung is just making products with a bunch of flashy new features, and Google seems to be the only other company that’s looking into the future. So bet on Microsoft. It’s a smart move.
Although it’s not a huge surprise to anyone, Windows 8.1 Update 1 will be available from Windows Update on April 8. There aren’t a huge amount of changes coming to Windows, but it is the biggest update to come to Windows since Windows 8.1 was released.
Windows Phone users have been waiting for the 8.1 update for some time. After all, Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone 8 came out at the same time and Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 came out a year later. While we did see some minor updates to Windows Phone over the last year and a half, Windows Phone 8.1 was the update that we were all waiting on.
For the Love of Tech 