Google Windows 8. Go ahead, I’ll wait. See anything remotely positive about Microsoft’s brand new OS? Of course you didn’t. That’s because Windows 8 hasn’t sold nearly as well as Microsoft had intended it to whenever they initially decided to change everything that was fundamentally Windows about Windows.
Starting from the initial outcry of, “where’s the start button?!” to further anguish over the layout of the start screen, Microsoft users world-wide have bashed this new iteration of the Windows brand for a while now, even before the operating system officially hit shelves.
Further evidence of Windows 8’s poor performance can be found if one were to search for a simple usage share of operating systems. Windows 7 holds the top spot, with 47% of all computer users running some iteration of the mega-popular OS. Then there’s Windows 8, which holds a measly 10.58% of the usage share-itself. Compare this to Windows XP, yes, Windows XP, the operating system that’s about 15 years old now and one that Microsoft plans to end support for in less than 2 months and the numbers are even more telling, with 29% of all PC owners running XP. That’s right, a 15 year old Operating System currently has 3x the user-base of Windows 8. Microsoft can spin Windows 8’s success all they want, but at the end of the day, numbers don’t lie.
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However, is Windows 8’s poor showing really its fault? Or can it be contributed to something else, something that, regardless of how amazing Windows 8 may or may not have been, would’ve still hampered any chance it had of performing at the level of Microsoft’s previous release in Windows 7? I’m here to argue why, even without the many critiques the general public and critics at-large seem to have about Windows 8, it would’ve done just as poorly as it already has.
There’s one thing no one can deny, and that is the amazing success of Windows 7. Microsoft’s answer to a poor showing by Vista, Windows 7 reaffirmed the company’s dominance over other operating systems by performing better than any prior or since. I can remember whenever it first came out, there were even local businesses dedicated to installing boot-leg copies of the OS on Vista computers for a fee below that of what the OS would have otherwise cost if one were to pay retail price. Needless to say, it’s done very well ever-since. However, if one were to look at Microsoft’s history of operating systems as a whole, a pattern begins to emerge.
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Starting with operating systems that utilized the desktop, we had Windows 95, one of the most successful operating systems of all time. Allowing people to actually use a desktop, something sorely missing in Windows 3, fans flocked to its desktopy goodness.
Following in its wake was Windows 98, which few people who ran Windows 95 seemed to care about since the two were virtually identical, causing it to perform much worse than Microsoft would have otherwise liked. Not one to worry, Microsoft decided to shake things up a bit with their next release.
Enter Windows XP, a massive success, the breakthrough OS that many people, as mentioned above still use today, 15 years later. Everything about Windows 98 that people found to be uninteresting was remedied with this new iteration of the Windows platform.
Next, unfortunately was Windows Vista, still a topic of interest among tech nerds to this day as they discuss all the various intricacies that make it so terrible. From the bloatware, to the incessant administrator requests, to the slow speeds, everything people loved about Windows XP they hated in Vista.
But all that was forgotten as soon as Microsoft released Windows 7, the most used operating system in the world and the most successful of all time, it seemed to erase any bad memory that people previously had about the evil Vista and its horrible reputation for destroying the lives of everything in its path. It seemed at this point that Microsoft’s future could only get brighter. That is, until Windows 8 hit the market.
Heralded as a fundamental shift by Microsoft, 8 was meant to be the XP of its generation, as it changed everything people knew and loved about Windows 7, while attempting to make the transition as seamless as possible with an added sleekness that was ahead of everything before it. And people hated it. They hated it so much that there are blogs dedicated to its unruly design. They hate it so much that now, over a year after its release, people are still writing articles about its failures (Hi, mom!). But before we continue to decry Windows 8 and everything it stands for, let’s take a step back and look at the pattern we have before us.
Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 – Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad. An interesting pattern to say the very least, don’t you think? One that’s consistent enough to defy coincidence, too I’d say. Could it be that Windows 8 isn’t doing poorly because of its features, but rather, because Windows 7 was so good for its time that people are hesitant to switch?
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Keep in mind, the only reason Windows 95 users switched to XP is because, by that point, Windows 95 was beyond dated. Similarly, the only reason people running XP traded in their old hardware for Windows 7 was because, some 7 or so years later, their operating system wasn’t up to speed with modern technology and the evolution of features that’d been added to new operating systems in its wake.
Which brings us to Windows 8, couldn’t it be that this new operating system is failing because Windows 7 succeeded? The same way that Windows 98 failed because 95 succeeded, and Vista failed because XP succeeded before it? After all, while there is no start button, and the metro display is different from previous iterations of past operating systems, are those really reason enough to decry everything else about the operating system that’s still, at its heart the Windows we’ve known for all these years?
I don’t think so. Also, one has to realize that if a critic’s biggest complaint about a new operating system is that it doesn’t look like an old one, then it’s not so much an attack on the new operating system as much as it is a praise of sorts for the old. Which, at its core proves the reasoning behind the pattern above, people aren’t neglecting Windows 8 because they hate it and everything it stands for. They’re neglecting it because it’s not what they love in Windows 7.
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Which means we can probably expect a new, successful release in Windows 9 in future years whenever Windows 7 users have finally realized the antiquity of the operating system they’re currently using (this article is being written on Windows 7, at the moment, don’t hate) and jump-ship to the new kid on the block. But should Microsoft be worried? Shouldn’t they be trying to find a way to rectify this gloomy pattern before another operating system (See Chrome OS) comes along and knocks it off of its pedestal in the wake of a poor-received release like Windows 98, Vista, and 8?
Because, at the end of the day, regardless as to why people are using 95 and not 98, XP and not Vista, and 7 and not 8, they’re going to blame the new OS, rather than praise the old. It’s human nature, after-all to be unwelcome to change until said-change is so overwhelmingly better than what we’re used to that we embrace it with open arms. It’s for this reason that we can expect to continue reading articles blasting Windows 8 and its metro screen. That is, of course until Windows 9 comes along.
But one thought crosses my mind as I’m writing this. Is Microsoft aware of this pattern and allowing it to persist on purpose? After all, people are buying Windows 8, just not at the rate at which they bought Windows 7. So Microsoft’s still making money on the release, as it’s just costing them the price of a blank DVD per-sale. Are they capitalizing on a poor-received operating system with the knowledge that their next release will kick up revenue an astounding amount the way Windows 95, XP, and 7 did before it? Who knows. But one thing’s for sure, Windows 8 will never be what Windows 7 was, and people shouldn’t expect it to be, so-long as they continue to base an operating system’s excellence by how closely it resembles one that already exists.
What do you think? Is Windows 8 being attacked unfairly? Let us know by commenting in the comments section below, or by starting a new discussion in our new forums! We look forward to hearing what you have to say, as like it or not, Windows is going to stick around at least for a while.
