First, any business that thinks 3rd party apps are all crap has a problem of perception that impugns their business judgment. Honestly. I rarely have had a problem even with freeware, just stick with reputable sources as Snap Files. Do they feel the same way about their smart phones? The fact is without 3rd party apps Windows would hardly be as viable as it is, and thus Windows enables them to run.
And a good business must look for innovation and improvements, and simply running a well used and very helpful and vetted program as Classic Shell certainly should be considered, esp. if they are stuck with Win. 8 - which desperately needs it.
WIndows 8 is a disaster, and its been roundly rejected/ignored by the enterprise for good reason..
Which is partly due to the Metro UI, which is why considering a simple well affirmed app as Classic Shell should be a given
But i think the other main reason is there is no need for most business to upgrade from Windows 7, even if W/10 is very good, while many even are fine with XP, except for the lack of free support.
But i do not want to be really contentious. Thank God we even have options! Imagine if only the go.made Computers and the OS!
I didn’t say all 3rd party apps are crap.
I said that if you expect businesses to have to install 3rd party apps just to make the OS usable you don’t understand business..
The fact that the OS NEEDS 3rd party apps to be usable tells you all you need to know about exactly WHY Win8 has been roundly ignored/tossed by nearly all enterprises. If you need to install something else just to make your OPERATING SYSTEM usable, you FAILED.. period.
When you screw up an applications UI you have a crappy application, when you screw up an OS’s UI/UX you make every application and every interaction with it crappy. This is exactly what Win 8 did. It is, was and ever will be known as one of the biggest disasters of a tech company going forward.
It was not coincidence that suddenly MS upped the retirement date of Vista, they did it to try to push people to Win 8, because its been rejected, not only that, but they made sure that you have to get Win 8! They only backed off and let Win 7 still come on machines after Enterprises told them Eff U we are not taking Win 8. Its not coincidence that MS is not only skipping completely using 9 in its next revision, but pushing that revision out in just under 2 years from the release date of Win 8. Believe me, MS used every weapon in its arsenal to try to force this turd on the world, and the world quite frankly said... Nope, not gonna happen.
Win 8 brought some interesting things into the core OS, but unfortunately it forced Metro/ZUNE into a place it didn’t belong, the desktop, and not only did it force it on the desktop, it did so with a horrific implementation.
Metro/Zune is fine for a touch interface, and I understand why MS wanted to try to merge it with its core OS, but it completely screwed the pooch with how it did it. Metro/Zune is fine for your phone or a tablet, its nothing spectacular, but it works.... Its got absolutely no business on the desktop/laptop world. It would be just as big a mistake if Apple decided tomorrow, we are going to replace OSX with IOS on the desktop... Its a flat out disaster, wrong, bad, etc etc etc.
I am not unsympathetic to what MS wanted to do with Win 8, they needed to unify touch and desktop in some fashion to move forward, but in typical MS style they decided they would just kludge something together fast, since they missed mobile and were so far behind, and think they could force it on the world..... Fortunately the 1990s are over, and the world is at a point now where they can and did say, nope.... Not gonna happen.
I do agree that for most people/companies windows 8 brings nothing new to justify an upgrade, but the same can be said for MOST version of windows... lets face it, Win 95 was probably the last really great upgrade to windows, where it truly was light years ahead of its predecessor. The problem is that MS made sure initially WIN 7 wasn’t even available when win 8 was released, and even now won’t let manufacturers put it on low end PC’s designed for the personal market. Sure you can get it, but you will be paying 2-3 times as much to get a PC with it on there, because MS will not let HP or Toshiba or Dell put it on a cheap system, because if they did, they would be shipping even fewer win 8 units.