Fear and Loathing and Windows 8
(Or: Why Windows 8 Scares Me -- and Should Scare You Too)
I was very excited when I saw the first demos of Windows 8. After years of settling for mediocre incremental improvements in its core products, Microsoft finally was ready to make bold changes to Windows, something I thought it had to do to stay relevant in computing. Whats more, the changes looked really nice! Once Id seen the clean, modern-looking videos of Windows 8, the old Windows looked cramped and a little embarrassing, kind of like finding a picture of the way you dressed when you were a senior in high school (link).
So when Microsoft announced that it was releasing a "consumer preview" of Windows 8, I couldnt wait to play with it. So far Ive installed Windows 8 on two computers, a middle of the road HP laptop and a mini tablet PC from Japan. Ive browsed the web and used Office and even tested our new app, Zekira, on it. My conclusion is that Windows 8 in its current form is very different; attractive in some ways, and disturbing in others. It combines an interesting new interface with baffling changes to Windows compatibility, and amateur mistakes in customer messaging. Add up all the changes, and I am very worried that Microsoft may be about to shoot itself in the foot spectacularly. Even the plain colorful graphics in Windows 8 that looked so cool when I first saw them are starting to look ominous to me, like the hotel decor in The Shining.
Why you should care. The rollout of Windows 8 has very important implications for not just Microsoft but everyone in the tech industry. In normal times, most people are unwilling to reconsider the basic decisions they have made about operating system and applications. Theyve spent a huge amount of time learning how to use the system, and the last thing they want to do is start learning all over again. Thats why the market share of a standard like Windows is so stable over time. But when a platform makes a major transition, people are forced to stop and reconsider their purchase. Theyre going to have to learn something new anyway, so for a brief moment they are open to possibly switching to something else. The more relearning people have to do, the more willing they are to switch. Rapid changes in OS and app market share usually happen during transitions like this.
Windows 8 is a revolutionary transition in Windows, easily the biggest change since the move from DOS to Windows in the early 1990s. Consider the wreckage that was created by that transition:
--Apples effort to retake the lead in personal computing was stopped dead
--The leading app companies of the time were destroyed (Lotus, WordPerfect, Ashton Tate, etc)
--IBM was eventually forced out of the PC business
--Microsoft, formerly an also-ran in apps, became the leading applications company, and a power in server software as well
Will the Windows 8 transition be as disruptive? Its impossible to say at this point. But huge changes are possible. If the transition is successful, Microsoft could emerge as a much stronger, more dynamic company, leveraging its sales leadership in PCs to get a powerful position in tablets, mobile devices, and online services. On the other hand, if Windows 8 fails, Microsoft could break the loyalty of its customer base and turn its genteel decline into a catastrophic collapse. The most likely outcome, of course, is a muddled middle. But based on what Ive seen of Windows 8 so far, I am a lot closer to the rout scenario than I expected to be.
Whatever the outcome for Microsoft, whats certain is that because so many people use Windows as the foundation of their computing, the transition to Windows 8 will produce threats and opportunities for everyone else in the tech industry. Play your cards right and your company could grow rapidly. Mess up and you could be the next Lotus. You may love Windows 8 or you may hate it, but if you work in tech youd be a fool to ignore it.
And yet, most of my friends in Silicon Valley are paying very little attention to Windows 8. Most of them havent tried it, and dont know a lot about what it does. There are a lot of Mac users in the Valley; they dont think about Windows at all. But even among the Windows users I talk to, the OS isnt a trendy topic; there is a lot more excitement about Android, Facebook, and whatever product Apple just announced.
If youre one of those Windows-fatigued people, its time to wake up. Heres a summary of my experiences with Windows 8, followed by some thoughts on what it means for the industry...
Listening to Windows 8
The most important message I want you to understand is this: Windows 8 is not Windows. Although Microsoft calls it Windows, and a lot of Windows code may still be present under the hood, Windows 8 is a completely new operating system in every way that matters to users. It looks different, it works differently, and it forces you to re-learn much of what you know today about computers. From a user perspective, Microsoft Windows is being killed this fall and replaced by an entirely new OS that has a Windows 7 emulator tacked onto it.
The main Windows 8 interface is based on Microsofts Metro design language, which was supposedly inspired in part by the directional signs used in public transportation (link). Metro emphasizes typography (big words in clean fonts) and simple monochrome images, like the signs youd see on a subway platform.
About Metro. Instead of application icons, Metro features large rectangles (or tiles) in primary colors which are clicked to launch apps, and which can also display live content (like the time or a message). The Metro look is also used in several other Microsoft products, including Windows Phone 7.
I think Metro looks incredibly nice. The graphics are clean and bold, the animations are smooth, and overall its one of the most visually literate things Ive ever seen from Microsoft. Im still kind of amazed that Metro is a Microsoft product.
The simplicity of Metro is very appealing in many ways, especially when viewed against Apples interface, which is becoming more and more encrusted with strange textures and bits of faux 3D gewgaw. TK commented on this blog a year ago that Apple is falling into skeuomorphism, a situation in which digital designs retain bits of their physical counterparts even though theyre no longer necessary (link). That theme recently cropped up in an interview with Apple designer Jonathan Ive, in which he ducked a question about Apples software look by saying hes only responsible for hardware (link).
Metro is one of the most anti-skeuomorphic interface designs Ive seen, which makes it a worthy counterpoint to Apple.
I worry about whether Metros clean look will last once third parties start adding apps to it. The first few independent Metro apps Ive seen use the tile as an advertisement rather than making it blend into the Metro look. Check out the effect:
Just a little bit of this makes Metro look like a scenic highway lined with billboards. Thats not much of a step up from todays Windows.
A Microsoft services buffet. The second striking thing about Metro in Windows 8 is that its a serving platter of Microsoft online services. Most of the tiles you see when you start Windows 8 are Microsoft services, ready to launch with a simple log-in through your Microsoft ID.
Apple has a habit of featuring its own services on its devices, and we all know how Google manipulates Android to feature its tools, but I dont think Ive ever seen a platform vendor push so many of its own services so aggressively.
More than a visual change. In addition to its signature look, Metro also dramatically changes how you use the computer. There is no menu bar in the main Metro view, and no file icons. In fact, almost all computer controls are hidden, other than the tiles for launching apps.
To control the computer you have to hover your mouse or your finger in the corner of the screen to bring up a popup set of tools. Lower left is the popup to take you back from an application to the Start screen; lower right brings up an icon bar called Charms for common functions like the control panel.
The main screen is only for launching applications. File management is now separate from app control, and its not clear to me if youre even expected to manage files in Metro. Like the iPhone and iPad, files are more or less hidden, or managed within individual applications. If you want to deal with them directly, youre apparently expected to use Windows 7 compatibility mode (see below).
Separating app and file management is an interesting move, and I kind of like it in theory. It was never completely intuitive that in the Mac/Windows desktop metaphor, some icons represented tools while other icons represented your documents. The desktop metaphor implied that you were dealing with pieces of paper that you could move around and store in various places, so why could you drag around an application the same way you could drag around a document? In terms of the metaphor, this was like storing your stapler and telephone in a file cabinet. Early versions of Mac and especially Windows created all sorts of strange workarounds to ease management of files and apps, and prevent confusion between them. Microsoft created the Start menu, Apple added the icon dock at the bottom of the screen. Both were basically kludges that papered over holes in the metaphor.
But they were kludges that weve all become accustomed to. Every Windows user is now trained that you use the Start menu to launch apps and manage the computer. There is no Start menu in Metro, so youre going to have a lot of deeply confused people fumbling around trying to find critical computer functions.
This might be easier to manage if there were a new metaphor to Metro that would make it intuitive to guess where the functions are now located. That was part of the strength of the desktop metaphor. You had files, and folders that contained files, and applications that acted on the files. Apple even called some of its early applications desk accessories. This let people guess fairly reliably at how to use the computer, and where to find the things they were looking for.
But Metro doesnt have a central metaphor. Or maybe I should say that its central metaphor is very limited. Subway signs are effective for displaying small amounts of information, but nobody uses a subway sign to carry out a task. Metro biases Windows 8 toward information consumption rather than creation, a recurring theme that Ill discuss more below. That may be great for a media tablet, but what does it do for someone who uses Windows for business productivity?
Im drawn to a quote from the Jonathan Ive profile that I referenced above. He said:
"Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, thats a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. Thats not simple."
There are times when I feel like Windows 8 is focused too much on being clutter-free, at the expense of complicating the things that most people do with PCs.
There is a second user interface in Windows 8, and it looks like traditional Windows. You get to it by clicking a Metro tile called Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer (not to be confused with Internet Explorer) takes over the screen, and makes the the PC look a lot like Windows 7, with a few minor cosmetic tweaks and a couple of very important deletions.
Its the deletions that worry me about Windows 8. The most successful OS transitions in history allowed users to keep using their old habits and applications while they gradually got used to the new stuff. For example, Windows coexisted with MS-DOS for many years before it took over the PC (as Microsoft lovingly detailed in a long post here). I can tell you from personal experience that Apple found it almost impossible to convert PC users to Mac during the Windows transition, because there was no point at which the DOS installed base felt abandoned. They could continue using the old DOS commands for as long as they wanted, until they felt ready to move to Windows.
To Microsofts credit, it is enabling old Windows applications to continue to work in Windows 8. But some other key features of Windows are being removed, forcing users to switch to the Metro equivalents now, whether they feel ready or not.
The paragraphs below describe some of my concerns about Windows 8. (If youd like to see a demo of the problems, watch the video).
The Start menu is gone. As I mentioned earlier, there is no Start menu in Metro. Thats not such a big deal -- you expect changes like that in a new interface. But the Start menu has also been removed from Windows Explorer. Its no longer present anywhere. If youre not familiar with Windows, you wont understand how central the Start menu is to a Windows user. Its the thing you generally use to turn the computer on and off, launch applications, open file folders, search, and access the control panel. Recent changes have also made it a preferred place for directly opening documents.
In Windows 8, the functions formerly done by Start have been spread across several locations, some in the Metro interface and some in Windows Explorer. So Windows users moving to Windows 8 will have to learn parts of Metro before they can get anything done. In some cases, common functions formerly available through a single click in Start have been buried several clicks deep within Metro.
If youre not a Windows user, it is hard to describe how disorienting this is. Its roughly equivalent to giving someone a car in which the steering wheel has been replaced by a joystick. Not only do you need to learn how to steer with a joystick, but all of the controls formerly attached to the steering column are now scattered in various spots on the dashboard. The wiper control is a lever above the radio, the high beam lights are a switch on the rearview mirror, the turn signal is a set of buttons under the speedometer, and the cruise control is a dial hidden inside the ashtray. Oh, and you honk the horn by bouncing up and down in your seat.
The cars designer will give you logical explanations for every change they made in the car, just as Microsoft can explain the reasons for removing Start. For a new user they may all make sense. But for an existing user, the removal of Start forces a huge amount of re-learning. An existing Windows user cant just sit down with Windows 8 and start using it. Theyll need some sort of tutorial and reference system to show them how to use it, and to answer questions when they get confused.
Microsoft has not forced discontinuities like this in past transitions. The best example is the preservation of the DOS command line interface, the equivalent of the Start menu for people who used DOS. The command line function has been available in every version of Windows to date, and in fact its still supported in Windows 8.
Control panels are missing. Many of the old control panel functions from Windows are accessible through the Settings Charm in Metro. But some of them arent. I dont know if that means Microsoft hasnt finished adding them to Metro, or if they have decided to eliminate some controls. Based on what Microsoft has said online, I think its the latter -- one recurring theme in Metro is that Microsoft is trying to hide some complexity in order to make the OS more approachable. I understand the motivation, but for an existing user this actually makes the OS more complex.
Case in point: in Metro I cant find a power management function allowing me to control when my laptop sleeps and how much power it uses when running on batteries. I looked through every tab in the Metro settings, and finally realized the function just wasnt there. After searching online, I found a way to access the old Control Panels through Windows Explorer. But its not in an intuitive place.
For a user, theres no easy way to tell if a particular control panel feature has been relocated to a new spot in Charms, eliminated, or hidden within Windows Explorer. You just have to fumble around and cuss for a while until you figure it out.
How do I turn this thing off? The concept of a power button is pretty central to any electronic device. You turn it on in order to use it, and you turn it off when youre done. Its easy to turn on a Windows 8 computer; you just press the power button on the computer. But pressing the button again does not turn off the computer. Instead, it puts the computer to sleep.
Sleep is a good thing in a computer. It lets a computer restart quickly, and keeps your apps active. But it does consume power, which is an issue for ecologically-conscious desktop users, and a primary concern for laptop users. Also, I find that its helpful to turn off Windows from time to time because the OS gradually becomes confused and slow as you launch and quit large numbers of apps. So I expect to be able to easily turn off my computer, and I think most Windows users will feel the same way.
It is absurdly difficult to turn off Windows 8. So difficult that there are entire web pages devoted to tutorials on how to do it. CNET wrote an unintentionally hilarious article detailing four different ways to turn off Windows 8, each more baroque than the last (link). Heres what CNET called the "most basic" way:
"In the Metro interface, hover your mouse over the Zoom icon that appears in the lower right corner of the screen. The Charms bar should then pop up displaying several icons. Moving your mouse up the screen will reveal the names of each icon, including Search, Share, Start, Devices, and Settings. Click the Settings icon and then the Power Icon. You should see three options: Sleep, Restart, and Shut down. Clicking Shut down will close Windows 8 and turn off your PC."
So shutdown requires five actions: a hover, a sweep, and three clicks. Plus the command is hidden in a very non-intuitive place. People used to joke that only Microsoft could think it was intuitive to have the Shut Down command hidden under the Start button. I think its sooooo much more intuitive to have it hidden under Settings.
I dont know why Microsoft chose to make it so hard to turn off Windows 8. Some of the online reviews have suggested that Microsoft believes people should only put their computers to sleep instead of turning them off. Maybe, but thats a pretty controlling assumption, especially for laptop users. Or perhaps Microsoft optimized Windows 8 only for tablets and views the entire PC thing as an afterthought.
Whatever the intent, I am concerned that its so hard to perform such a common function. But whats much more alarming is that there are several redundant, complex ways to perform that common function. When that happens, its usually a sign of confusion in the development team.
Windows 8 is not designed for PCs. I know thats a very sweeping statement, but in a couple of areas Windows 8 is clearly designed to work better for media tablets than for traditional personal computers. The first is the general architecture of the interface. Despite Microsofts protestations to the contrary, Metro is clearly optimized for use on a touchscreen device rather than a keyboard and mouse PC. You can force it to work with a mouse, but many of the things you have to do feel awkward, and are more complex than their old Windows equivalents. One good example is the finger swipe, which works very well with a touch screen but is unpleasant on a notebook computer because you cant easily click and drag on a trackpad for long distances. Parts of Windows 8 (for example, logging in to the computer) require finger swipes.
I long to see what Metro could do on a PC equipped with a gesture recognition system like Kinect. That might be a revolutionary change worth migrating to. Microsoft says that is coming, but Kinect, Metro, and Windows 8 are not yet fully integrated (link). Thats unfortunate, since developers are working on Metro apps now.
Windows 8 is also designed with tablet-like tasks in mind. Productivity and information creation tasks are compromised to make the OS more attractive for content consumption. Microsoft was very explicit about this in some of its online commentary (link):
"People, not files, are the center of activity. There has been a marked change in the kinds of activities people spend time doing on the PC. In balance to �traditional� PC activities such as writing and creating, people are increasingly reading and socializing, keeping up with people and their pictures and their thoughts, and communicating with them in short, frequent bursts. Life online is moving faster and faster, and people are progressively using their PCs to keep up with and participate in that. And much of this activity and excitement is happening inside the web browser, in experiences built using HTML and other web technologies."
Let me translate that for you: "Were optimizing Windows for using Facebook and YouTube at the expense of performing productivity tasks." Which is fine; its a design choice Microsoft is free to make. But its going to have an impact on the large base of people trying to get work done with a PC.
Incomplete support of existing hardware. In the first announcements of Windows 8, Microsoft bragged about how efficient it is. The company said explicitly that it would put less burden on hardware than Windows 7, and demonstrated Windows 8 running on old low-featured computers (link). In several places Ive seen Windows 8 described as a great way to revive an old laptop. Unfortunately, although Windows 8 may have a light hardware footprint, it has compatibility problems with some existing hardware, including some Windows 7 computers. Computers designed for Vista can have much more serious problems. This became very clear to me when I installed Windows 8 on my Vista-based mini tablet PC. Windows 8 is not compatible with the wireless network chips in my tablet PC, so it can no longer connect to the Internet.
More importantly, the touch screen isnt fully compatible with Windows 8. I cant get the system to recognize taps in the outer half-inch of the screen, meaning that I cant activate the Metro Start function or the Charms panel. Fortunately, my tablet PC has a keyboard, so I can use the trackpad to control it. But who wants a tablet PC that doesnt have a working touch interface?
The severity of this problem varies from computer to computer, but its apparently fairly common. For example, heres video of an Acer user with some of the same troubles, although not as severe as mine (he can activate the controls some of the time; link).
There is no workaround for this problem other than buying a new computer. So its promise of running well on existing hardware turned out to be an exaggeration.
Microsoft recently discussed the problem in an elaborate blog post describing touch screen compatibility under Windows 8 (link). The tests documented by Microsoft show a lot of Windows 7 devices interpreting gestures properly only 70% to 80% of the time (the ratio is even worse for some features). A success rate of 95% is required for Windows 8 certification, so a lot of Windows 7 touchscreen computers (Microsoft doesnt say how many) would fail to pass certification. The article concludes:
"The vast majority of Windows 7 touchscreens can be used with Windows 8...with a reasonable degree of success."
I applaud Microsoft for coming clean about the problem, but I hate to see them use those qualifiers in their statements. Lawyers love words like "vast majority" and "reasonable degree" because they sound good but dont quantify anything, so you cant be sued. The reality is that if you want to be sure Windows 8 will work at its best, you should buy a new computer bundled with it. This is especially true of touchscreen PCs, the devices that stand to benefit the most from Metros touch oriented features.
I dont actually have a problem with that. Providing backward compatibility is always difficult when you upgrade an OS, and considering the complexity of the Windows hardware base, it would be surprising if everything worked right. However, what I do have a problem with is that other parts of Microsoft are ignoring the subtle compatibility story and continuing to claim that all Windows 7 hardware is fully compatible.
For example, Antoine Leblond, the VP of Windows Web Services, implies that Windows 8 will run on every Windows 7 device (link):
"We�ve just passed the 500 million licenses sold mark for Windows 7, which represents half a billion PCs that could be upgraded to Windows 8 on the day it ships. That represents the single biggest platform opportunity available to developers."
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer continues to quote that half billion number in public (link).
This isnt just misleading to customers and developers, it may also hurt Microsoft by setting unrealistic expectations. If twenty percent of the Windows 7 installed base upgrades to Windows 8 in the first three months, is that a raging success or a humiliating failure? I might view it as a very promising start, but Microsofts own hype says it would be a disaster.
Failing to warn users of potential problems. Speaking of miscommunication, Microsoft didnt clearly tell users that the Windows 8 preview is a one-way installation. The word "preview" implies to many people an advanced sample that you can play with for a while and then toss aside. But unless you have the original installation disks that came with your computer, the Windows 8 preview replaces your current OS and cant be removed. Even if you do have those disks, on many PCs (including mine) the factory install disks wipe the hard drive and do a new install from scratch, deleting all your files and applications.
Microsoft did disclose this information on the Windows 8 preview site, but the disclosure was written in bureaucratic language that didnt make clear the risk, and whats worse, that text was below the "Install" button, meaning a user could easily miss it. (In the latest version of Microsofts site, the automated installer for Windows 8 has been removed [gee, I wonder why] and you can only install by burning an installation disk on a DVD. That makes it much harder for casual users to install the preview, and the warning is now above the download links.)
If you want a measure of how many people missed the warning, do a web search for "uninstall Windows 8." Be prepared to read some angry commentary.
I think the next round in this cycle of frustration is going to come early next year, when the Windows 8 preview expires and preview users are required to purchase Windows 8 to keep their computers working. The fact that theres an expiration date on the preview is something else that Microsoft didnt prominently disclose.
What it means. I could go on, but I hope you get the idea. Windows 8 is a very interesting, provocative, even courageous product. But Im not sure its going to succeed. My concerns are in two areas. The first is that Im not sure what burning problem Windows 8 solves for what group of users. If youre a productivity worker, Windows 8 does very little for you, and in fact probably makes your life harder. If youre most interested in entertainment and accessing online content, Metro is a big improvement over Windows -- but arent you likely to already have a smartphone or tablet?
My second concern is the emotional feel I get from Windows 8. I know thats a really vague comment, so let me try to tie it down a bit. I think Im a fairly sophisticated user. Ive used every version of Windows since 2.0. When I worked in the competitive team at Apple, we tested every bizarre computer operating system we could find around the world, including stuff written in Japanese with no English-language documentation. We made all of it work. But there are still some parts of Windows 8 that I havent been able to figure out, and other parts that I understand but that annoy me every time I touch them.
Because of its problems, Windows 8 isnt fun to use, at least for me. Whatever sense of joy I get from the cool new graphics is outweighed by a feeling that my productivity is being reduced. Think of the best new app or website y