My friend Trent posted this article on Google+.
Five Reasons Why Windows 8 Will Be DOA
So many large companies behave like Microsoft that it’s almost difficult to be disappointed by the list of things wrong with the Windows 8 OS. For example, it was the lack of evolved and well-thought-out development tools that buried the Wii – because programming for the Wii is expensive and difficult. Or… Why does the iPhone have so many more titles/apps (that’s applications for old schoolers or “programs” for the informed) than the Android market? Because, with the iPhone, you only have to program it once. If you can get it to work on THE iPhone, then there’s nothing else to account for. With the Android market, you have to worry about n different phones with n different screen sizes and so many different versions of Android still floating around out there with Bob only knows how much carrier-specific bloat-ware on those phones. Sure, you have to get it approved by the Apple people and they can yank it at their heart’s desire and it can cost you lots to get it approve, but you only have one version to write, one version to fix, one version to upgrade. This, by the way, is why Google purchased Motorola Mobility.
Windows 8 does NOTHING to address that from a developer standpoint. There will still be machines out there running Windows ME (I just threw up in my mouth a little) that have to be addressed. Or, at least the architecture they’re running on must be addressed. Then, there’s the different input devices that your app/application/program will have to account for. Will it be running on a tablet, or a pc (x86 or 64bit?) or will it be running on a phone (which phone?) Or, worse yet, will it be on any/all of these?
While the Apple model is restrictive and cumbersome, I think they may have just gotten this whole picture right – perhaps without even knowing it. They have control of the devices. They have control of the OS. They have control of the applications that get approved. They have the final say on who provides service (cell carriers) for their devices. From a provide for the lowest-common-denominator perspective, they may have hit the bull’s eye. My 14 year old daughter and my 75 year old father would be equally comfortable running any one (or all) of their devices. I don’t think I could say the same about Windows.
For power users, there’s Linux/Unix. We’ll always have command line level control of everything we do in the hard-core/power-user operating systems. Microsoft doesn’t play in that arena any more, any way. Have you tried to do anything in Windows 7 that didn’t offer/require a wizard? Even the most simple things are made wizard-enabled with Windows 7. I suspect that Windows 8 will take that one step further and require that you use a wizard to figure out which wizard you need to change that user preference which, in the end, will be a one-line change to a config file that we used to be able to edit in notepad.
I hope, in the battle between operating systems, the browser wins the day. Most things that end-users do on a computer today can be done through the browser. Even those things that require heavy back-end programming can get by with a web interface quite nicely. For everything else… command line will win the day. Get out your pocket-protectors, geeks… we will win in the end.
