Windows 8 usage can't even keep up with Vista/s poor numbers. (Data from Net Applications)
Posted on 03/05/2013 8:24:48 AM PST by ShadowAce
Windows fans will whine, but Net Applications' desktop operating systems numbers don't lie. Windows 8's pathetic user adoption numbers can't even keep up with Vista's lousy numbers.
Windows 8 usage can't even keep up with Vista/s poor numbers. (Data from Net Applications)
The numbers speak for themselves. Vista, universally acknowledged as a failure, actually had significantly better adoption numbers than Windows 8. At similar points in their roll-outs, Vista had a desktop market share of 4.52% compared to Windows 8's share of 2.67%. Underlining just how poorly Windows 8's adoption has gone, Vista didn't even have the advantage of holiday season sales to boost its numbers. Tablets--and not Surface RT tablets--were what people bought last December, not Windows 8 PCs.
Windows 8, and its relatives Windows Phone 8 and RT, make no impression at all in the smartphone and tablet markets. (Credit: Net Applications)
Windows 8's failure is actually greater than it appears. The tablet and phone markets in 2007 were next to non-existent. Now, in a market where NPD expects tablets to out sell notebooks by year's end, neither Windows 8 nor its cousins Windows RT and Windows Phone 8 even appear on NetApplication's mobile and tablet reports for February 2013. How bad is that? Android 1.6, with is tiny 0.02% of the market, does make the list.
I predicted that Windows 8 would be dead on arrival last year, but it's flopping even more than I thought it would be. So, why has Windows 8 been such a failure? Here's my list:
I said it before, I'll say it again: Metro, or whatever you want to call it, may make an OK tablet interface, but it's ugly and useless on the desktop. It requires users to forget everything they ever learned about Windows and learn an entirely new way of doing things for no real reason. To quote a popularly held opinion, Metro is "awful."
True, you can use a more traditional Windows interface, but you know what would have been a lot better? If Microsoft had just kept the Windows 7 Aero interface for the desktop version of Windows 8 and give up this idea that the Metro touch-friendly interface is for every device.
Can you tell me one new thing that Windows 8 brought to the desktop that was truly innovative? Exciting? Engaging? I can't. Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7, but that's about it -- and that dual interface mess makes it slower for practical purposes.
I said all along programmers wouldn't like throwing out their hard-won .NET, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) expertise to work natively on Windows 8. I was right. Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director of video game company Valve, said it best: "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space." He then started moving his Steam game empire to Linux.
We saw this happen before with Vista and XP. Then, as now, the new operating system -- Vista -- was not better than the old operating system -- XP -- so very few people moved to it. We're seeing it again now.
In addition, in an economy that's still not moving forward quickly, who really wants to move from tried-and-true Windows 7 to new, expensive Windows 8 PCs? As Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu observed, the $500 to $1200 price tags slapped on Windows 8 hardware makes it "uncompetitive" in a world where people want iPads and Android tablets.
If you are going to buy a new computing device in 2013, chances are it's going to be an Apple iPad, an inexpensive Android tablet, or a Chromebook. The PC desktop isn't dead, but it's not very profitable either -- and Windows 8 isn't helping PC sales.
Microsoft has to know this. If Microsoft does indeed start selling, or rather renting, Microsoft Office for iPad, you'll know they've seen the light. Microsoft's future then will not lie in operating system and application sales, but in services.
And Windows 8? Like Vista before it, Microsoft will re-release an older version of Windows, Windows 7 this time instead of XP, and start talking about wonderful Windows Blue, the next version of Windows, will be.
When any sizable portion of your user base refuses to upgrade and when they need new hardware demands the old OS you’re cooked.
No way I would upgrade and damned if I wouldn’t try like hell to get Win 7 instead of 8 if I had to get a new machine.
I looked at this thing and though “Who the hell wants a touch screen interface on a desktop?”
Seems tons of people agree with me.
It’s terrible. It came with a new notebook I got about a month ago.
It gets frequent BSOD’s while using Chrome or Firefox with just basic web page browsing. No viruses, no malware, no spyware, clean system that just doesn’t play well with basic internet surfing. More complex internet apps seem to work great though.../boggle
The Metro interface is a clunky mess at best on a notebook/desktop platform and couldn’t compete with Android on a tablet. Legacy apps that worked fine on Vista or Win7 have more problems working on 8 than old 95/98 apps had working on Vista.
I actually had to google how to do basic computer things like closing a program and properly turning off the computer. The only good thing about Metro is the search function is great...which ironically never worked properly on previous versions of windows.
Decided I had to go back to windows 7 but unfortunately since you don’t actually get install discs anymore I can’t just install a windows 7 with license I have unused on an old computer, so will probably have to go to grey market sources for the install disc and use on of my legitimate licenses.
I want to smash Windows 8 far more than I ever wanted to smash Vista, and I don’t think any amount of “service packs” are going to solve some of the problems.
At some point, if for nothing else than the PR value, Bill Gates is going to have to return.
This is highly topical for me, as I just started using a Windows 8 tablet today. I can run all my office apps and I’ve got all that one-touch connectivity.
Very nice!
I haven't seen them do that much with Windows 8, so I guess even they realize it is a turd.
I’ll be staying with Win-7 Pro 64-bit, until they carry me out in a bag, feet first. Plenty of OEM CDs, a couple of Upgrades, and Win-Xp Pro to upgrade from, if needed. Bite it, 8!
I think this is the most important one on the list. Windows 7 is a solid, fairly usable OS. Windows 8 offers no compelling reason for anyone to upgrade from Windows 7, and anyone looking to upgrade from XP or Vista has likely already gone to Windows 7.
Someone upthread mentioned Mac/OS X -- for better or worse, Apple has decided to go with smaller, more frequent, and cheaper upgrades. That means fewer bells and whistles with each new version, giving the (correct, IMO) impression of incremental upgrades rather than anything to specifically crow about. It's quite possible to skip an upgrade or two and still be using most of the latest and greatest stuff (though I do need to do the Lion -> Mointain Lion update at some point to get full benefit of Mac/iPhone synchronization).
The same crowds at the Apple store also line up to vote for Obama thus proving that Apple users are dumbasses.
I can’t imagine business users being forced to use 8. Productivity would crash in a free fall.
I’m sure as a FReeper you understand the only “FR acceptable” platform is Linux, LOL.
While I agree that it's a tad early to claim "it's failed", the article does provide this rather compelling data:
Its usage is going up, but it still lags the much-maligned Vista (a/k/a "best thing to ever happen to iMac") in adoption. That can't be a good sign.
“You think you hate it now, wait til you use it.”
Hopefully, businesses will have learned the lessons from the completely pointless "ribbon" "upgrade" for Office some years back, that completely changed the Office UI for no good reason.
And there it is. You've hit the nail on the head, Stu.
Microsoft is adopting this garbage, Agile (project management) style of development, and now they're pushing out unfinished garbage instead of polished software.
I'm actually a bit incensed by the characterization of Win7 as "legacy." Windows 7 is far and away the best operating system Microsoft's put out since Windows XP. It's stable, universally accepted, easy to configure, and it's functional. They're trying to compete with Apple in ways that Apple dominates the market while neglecting everything they've done right in the last 10 years.
Vista was an unmitigated disaster, and the fact that MS was so quick to market with Win8 after Win7 was just beginning to show strong market adoption indicates to me that they're competing with market forces in an attempt to "dominate," but the fact remains that Windows is not and never will be an accepted mobile platform, something they've been trying for years but never manage to get off the ground.
To make matters worse, Microsoft is pushing Server 2012, which provides very little in the way of upgrades to Server 2008 R2, and it comes with a touchscreen interface native, something that no server engineer, myself included, wants to deal with considering most servers are installed in racks inside of lights-out datacenters.
And finally, the coup de grace to Microsoft's stupidity is this very hard push on enterprises toward Office 365 and Azure, both cloud platform "applications as a service" that have proven to be costly to early-adopters due to outages caused by network latency and even outright downtimes.
Microsoft seems to be pushing to maintain some level of market relevance in a market that's not trying to make them irrelevant. They fit in their very neat little position as workstation (desktop & laptop) OS leader and dominant server OS across most major IT organizations. Why it is that they'd push their users (consumer and enterprise) into products that they don't want or need it beyond my understanding. Microsoft needs to innovate on existing products and provide feature enhancements such as better integration with smart devices (i.e. televisions, media centers, etc.), better gaming experience (native graphics APIs and platform enhancements), and support for the newest devices such as graphics cards, SSDs, and biometric devices.
Windows will continue to dominate the desktop market, even with the abysmal performance of Vista and Win8, but if they continue to pump out garbage from Redmond and Chennai, they're going to find more people going to OSX and Linux platforms before considering that discount laptop with Windows 8.
I am happy with Windows 8 except it has disabled all of my built in card readers on all of my computers.
I bought a Dell laptop for my wife, it came with W8, I sent it back after 3 days. After a week of looking, I found the same machine with W8 and bought it.
W8 wanted me to abandon my POP3 email I had for over 20 years, save my stuff to the “cloud”, and there was no start button.
I’ve figured out every version since W3.0, but this new thing was totally unusable for me. I have no patience for those who change things just for the sake of change.
In short, Windows 8 sucks!
> It’s a liberal cesspool of pro-death, pro-fascism,
> pro-Obama maggots that believe they own your hardware.
This is true for Microsoft, Apple AND Google.
Of the three, Google is the worst, because its Android OS is really just a phishing expedition. Don’t you know why you must have a Google account to operate your Android appliance? Virtually every keystroke you make is echoed to a Google archive. Even worse, Google freely hands over data to the communist US government.
Buy a computer that has a flavor of Linux pre-installed, or buy one without an OS and install Linux on it.
As much as is humanly possible, do NOT do business with companies that support all the things you oppose and oppose all the things you support.
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