Monday, June 4, 2012

Windows 8

Microsoft is rearranging deck chairs on its latest version of Windows code-named 'Titanic'. It is suffering from alternate disaster release version syndrome with Windows 8 which is already being called Windows 2, ME 2 and Vista 2.

I tried the latest Release Preview and was not impressed at all on the desktop and laptop hardware platforms. Admittedly, it might work better on a tablet or smartphone but I'm already happy to use Android on mine as are billions of Apple iPhone and iPad users with their devices. It just works well and doesn't need to be Windows. I understand that Microsoft are going to flatten the desktop user interface in the final version to be even more consistent with the new, simple Metro user interface.

Microsoft can't even get simple things right like automatically correcting when you are tying into an application or window that has lost keyboard focus or typing sentences with the caps lock inadvertently left on. In fact when I started in the IT industry over 40 years ago the primary way of inputting data was the QWERTY keyboard and still is. Nothing has changed. We still don't have natural language speech recognition or even thought input. Now that would be a huge improvement for Windows!

Come on Microsoft, wake up and smell the coffee!