The End of the Windows 8 Era? Hardly (Premium)

Yes, support for Windows 8.x is ending soon. But Windows and its users are still living with the mistakes of that era. And always will be.

A lot of people have opinions about which version of Windows was the worst. Many of them are wrong.

Some will point to Windows Me, which is ridiculous given that Microsoft was already pushing forward with Windows 2000 and that it was only a limited side-show. Most also forget that Windows Me was the first public testing ground for several key technologies that went on to great success in Windows XP, including driver rollback, System Restore, and Universal Plug and Play (UPnP).

Some will naturally point to Windows Vista, the middling result of the several years that Microsoft wasted trying to bring Longhorn to market. This is a more defensible choice, since Microsoft’s inability to deliver disappointed developers right when Microsoft was also distracted, allowing competitors like Apple and Google to target and then dominate key new markets. And it would probably be the right answer if it weren’t for one other release.

Which is, of course, Windows 8, an internal coup that saw selfishness and political infighting undermine Microsoft’s greatest platform at the worst possible time. With the iPhone and iPad ushering in a new era of mobile- and multitouch-based personal computing, the leadership of the Windows team of that era, such as it was, overreacted and, sadly, overreached. The result was an embarrassment, a bareboned WinRT/Metro mobile platform that wasn’t just strapped on top of Windows like some bizarre Frankenstein’s monster, but something took over for key user experiences for all users, mobile or not. The product’s leader was fired before the product was even finished, and his key lieutenants were gone, either from the company or from that division, within a year or so.

My biggest fear with Windows 8 was that it was the death blow. I later evolved that view into “the iPhone was the asteroid that killed the Windows dinosaur,” and there’s some truth to that. But it’s important to put Microsoft’s reaction to the iPhone in perspective. While it’s unlikely that Microsoft could have done anything to blunt the success of Apple’s products and the resulting shift in the personal computing industry, it is very clear that Microsoft’s reaction---Windows 8---exacerbated the damage. Microsoft couldn’t have responded more poorly.

Tied to this, it's important to remember that Windows 8 is also why Windows Phone failed. And that’s doubly tragic because Windows Phone, while not perfect, was chock full of good, customer-friendly ideas, and it was superior to what Apple and Google were offering, not just technically, but from a user experience standpoint. Had different people been in charge of Windows 8, that team would have worked with the Windows Phone team to create a converged platform that worked across PCs, tablets, and phones as far back as 2011. And that would ...

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