Windows 8.1 run better than Mavericks

[Graeme43]

The fact that you had people using IE6 10 years later, but no one using Netscape Navigator 10 years later should show you that IE was pretty darn good.

I have to use IE6 and Windows XP at work drives me mad lol.. especially because I think banks shouldn't be using software with more holes than swiss cheese when it was new... never mind 10-12 years on

 

[Gav Mack]

Of course it would be better to let the user decide what to do, I wouldn't say that not doing that destroys the entire OS though.



What the market wants is not really interesting to me as most users are dumb, many users of the market make their decisions based on fancy advertisements and fanboyism. Market studies show that people have a tendency to be loyal towards brands based on no real objective information at all, they do not compare units to evaluate them on a unbiased level.

Yes, the market is what companies develop for, but it does not mean the markets interest can be used to evaluate if a product is good or bad.

I been using and evaluating everything for the past years and I evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each platform. Currently I am back to a Mac laptop with a rMBP and also back to iPhone after a year of Windows Phone (which had problems with the lack of apps), my desktop is still running Windows though and so will my next tablet.



It has to do with logical thinking that you have to actually look objectively at the product, not go "this is different, therefore bad" as many people do.

Yes I agree that forcing the same input on 2 different types of units with such different input capabilities is quite illogical, still doesn't make an entire OS bad.



Well most major operating systems are the same. Take OS X with the retina displays, you can't even choose your resolution freely without installing third party programs.

As for Modern UI it is only something that I disable on my desktop, on a tablet or such it is working nicely. Disabling modern UI makes it like Windows 7 with improvements, so how could that make it worse than Windows 7? I see Windows 8 as an improved Windows 7 with a different GUI slapped on top.

Most users aren't dumb, they have got familiar to a desktop OS which has evolved since windows 95 onwards and Microsoft decided unilaterally panicking prematurely that tablets were the future full stop and they knew better than their users, throwing them into into a tablet style OS with no reversion option, the type of OS which for a classic desktop or laptop is utterly useless for them to use productively with menus and settings options confusingly spread all over the place.

They had a chance with 8.1 to correct that mistake, didn't go anywhere near far enough, still left the menus and settings fragmented and even messed the upgrade up by having to upgrade solely through the windows store instead of a standalone service pack for non corporate users for the first time too, for cynical marketing purposes and not practicality. Like if Apple stopped combo OSX updates - crazy.

I could go on and on, but it's a waste of breath and time criticising their mistakes. I like many others will prefer to skip 8 completely and await Windows 9 RC with interest, to see if they took the fingers out of their ears and listened to their users like they did with 7 after Vista.

 

[simon48]

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree then. I am curious though, who (and why) would you consider to be the best software development house in the world?

Why not, who would you call the the best software house in the world?

That's a tough one, especially considering it's hard to determine what to consider a "software house". I'd say Apple, Google, Twitter are all up there.

Apple for being financially off the charts, having incredible margins, being an innovator and not a follower, fantastic products and building a very good retail experience. Apple is also who I would put in my number 1 spot, but huge portion of their success is due to hardware though.

Google for being a leader in search, owning YouTube, having a huge corner of the email market, and not being afraid to diversify fairly significantly (although several of them have been glorified tech demos), and building it all off of ads.

Twitter for doing something very unique, having a gigantic customer base and doing a very good job at scaling it. Twitter is positioned to be around a lot longer than Facebook that's for sure.

There's some big names in the gaming industry that might deserve to be on the list as well. I very well could've left out a few other ones too, especially if you go a bit more broad and say tech companies with a significant focus on software that opens it up a lot more (Amazon?). I honestly think you do have to open it up a bit more because Microsoft really isn't just a software company.

 

[theromz]

For power users (which I guess most people are on these forums) you get your desktop experience by installing a simple program. Sure it won't work for old people with no technology knowledge (unless they get help) but for people who know a just a bit about computers it is not a big problem. I wouldn't say Windows 8 is bad because of Modern UI simply because you are still able to use it in desktop mode.

They tried to push the touch UI too much for consumers who have no use for it and cannot understand it. It does not make it a bad OS though.

Like I said its not a bad OS and I actual like using it, get along well and just set all my defaults apps to the desktop versions and so on. But for the 99% of users who arn't "power users" on a laptop/desktop without a touchscreen the experience is not only bad, its confusing and very jarring. Too the point that my Dad paid for a windows 7 key to downgrade.

If your users are confused by your UI/UX decisions then I would say the OS is bad for them. I know a lot of my friends parents and so on that have totally lost faith in windows all together and jumped ship to Macs now.

Going forward the Windows business will slowly dye out with only really business using it, and with ever growing presents of business in the cloud and SOA it is very clear why MSFT fired Balmer and replaced him with the cloud guy at MSFT.

Windows RT is also not having the expected impact that MSFT had hoped for, and the desktop experience has been affected by it. I think they really need to separate the 2 and build more customised UI for each form factor.

 

[macproredux]

I think you have your rose colored glasses on. I have nothing to say about MS Bob, but I can certainly attest to Vista and IE6. IE6 was the best web browser in 2001. It supported things like AJAX, which Netscape Navigator didn't. The fact that you had people using IE6 10 years later, but no one using Netscape Navigator 10 years later should show you that IE was pretty darn good.

Likewise, Vista, for all of its problems, wasn't anywhere near as bad as OS X was in the same time frame. Where Vista had slow file system access and poor video driver support due to nVidia, it never had the BSOD issues like Leopard, or glaring data loss bugs like Snow Leopard did. Actually, for Vista Microsoft re-wrote the entire graphics stack without breaking compatibility.

Last but not least, Microsoft supports their older OS's, and works to make them backwards compatible*. Something that Apple doesn't care about at all with OS X.

*About 1/2 way down, search for SimCity without the space

I still use Netscape Navigator today in it's current form, Mozilla Firefox.

 

[SarcasticJoe]

I will have to point out that those figures only include RT tablets, a well known sales failure, and not tablets running full Windows 8, which has performed considerably better. The only real data you should take from that is the usage of Android and iOS and a much better figure to work with would be actual sales statistics.

It's fairly obvious that Microsoft saw Android and iOS as a threat and simply decided they were going to "bulldozer" the entire market by making Windows 8 tablet friendly and charge into the market space by offering a full computer with the same form factor and ease of use. With Windows 8 they're trying to strike Android and iOS in the one place they can, the fact that iOS and Android devices are more companion devices than standalone devices and don't fully fill the computing needs of anyone except those with really basic needs.

Unfortunately Windows 8 was too little and too late (iOS and Android had already worked out the most pressing problems with them) and the same time alienated their basic bread butter market, which also now happens to be a market in decline because of the market they let grow too big before entering.

I'd say they're also repeating this mistake by holding up releasing Office on iOS (and ignoring android) in an attempt to make Office support work as a definitive plus side for Windows 8 and RT tablets as it really was a genuine killer app. The result of this is that office suites that would have been completely laughed out had they released on Windows or OSX have actually found success and even something as basic as iWork on iOS is doing better than what it should.

As for Vista (which was mentioned multiple times earlier in this thread) it really doesn't deserve a very large part of the hate it got. Was it rushed? Yes. Did it crash a lot? Can't deny that. However did it change a lot of things that genuinely needed to be changed? Definitely and this along with developers (of both applications and drivers) not being able to keep up with this sudden change the chaos with crashes, bugs and incompatibility was generally to be expected.

 

[marivaux]

Last but not least, Microsoft supports their older OS's, and works to make them backwards compatible*. Something that Apple doesn't care about at all with OS X.

*About 1/2 way down, search for SimCity without the space

Right, but if you read the rest of the article, it goes on to talk about how Microsoft has lost the backward compatibility religion. I do agree that it has, historically been an advantage (though also a disadvantage in terms of updating the OS in efficient ways). It's definitely also annoying that Apple will leave you stranded in the name of modernizing and streamlining things (I was pretty unhappy when they got rid of Rosetta, and don't get me started on my Appletalk printer). It's definitely true that Microsoft has kept its market dominance by accommodating a lot of different needs.

On the other hand, there are advantages to ruthless modernization, and I wouldn't say that Microsoft is/has been great for computer security. Some of that is not their fault, since most malware is targeting them. On the other hand, some of it is...and I, personally, am happy to be running a computer that isn't partially controlled by Conficker or some other botnet.

 

[Freyqq]

I will have to point out that those figures only include RT tablets, a well known sales failure, and not tablets running full Windows 8, which has performed considerably better. The only real data you should take from that is the usage of Android and iOS and a much better figure to work with would be actual sales statistics.

It's fairly obvious that Microsoft saw Android and iOS as a threat and simply decided they were going to "bulldozer" the entire market by making Windows 8 tablet friendly and charge into the market space by offering a full computer with the same form factor and ease of use. With Windows 8 they're trying to strike Android and iOS in the one place they can, the fact that iOS and Android devices are more companion devices than standalone devices and don't fully fill the computing needs of anyone except those with really basic needs.

Unfortunately Windows 8 was too little and too late (iOS and Android had already worked out the most pressing problems with them) and the same time alienated their basic bread butter market, which also now happens to be a market in decline because of the market they let grow too big before entering.

I'd say they're also repeating this mistake by holding up releasing Office on iOS (and ignoring android) in an attempt to make Office support work as a definitive plus side for Windows 8 and RT tablets as it really was a genuine killer app. The result of this is that office suites that would have been completely laughed out had they released on Windows or OSX have actually found success and even something as basic as iWork on iOS is doing better than what it should.

As for Vista (which was mentioned multiple times earlier in this thread) it really doesn't deserve a very large part of the hate it got. Was it rushed? Yes. Did it crash a lot? Can't deny that. However did it change a lot of things that genuinely needed to be changed? Definitely and this along with developers (of both applications and drivers) not being able to keep up with this sudden change the chaos with crashes, bugs and incompatibility was generally to be expected.

Their choices concerning MS Office have been hilariously short-sighted. By not competing in the office space on tablets, other standards are beginning to gain traction. What was once a de facto monopoly is now only a major player.

 

[Praxis91]

On the windows side, I love W7 Ultimate x64. I bought my brother a basic laptop for college, and it came with W8. I do NOT like W8 at all even though his laptop has a touch screen. I updated it to 8.1 and it's okay, but I just don't see the point of why they deviated so much from W7.

If it ain't broke...