Once upon a time an outfit called the Coca-Cola company came out with a new product. They called it
New Coke. The can was slightly different, the drink inside was slightly sweeter and tangier from what little I recall. Most of us who lived through it don't remember much, because New Coke lasted about as long as Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan. It was an epic marketing disaster. In one fell swoop, senior execs transformed the globe's most popular soda into an object of ridicule and the respectable company into a worldwide laughing stock. I'm not if sure they all got promotions—they certainly would have today ...
Which brings us to Microsoft and 2015. I'm talking, of course, about Windows 8. To hear Microsoft PR wax poetically, it's the best thing since keyboards were developed. On the other side of the aisle, where reality trumps corporate bullshit and ass-kissing, Windows 8 may yet go down in history as the biggest F-you to loyal customers in the modern Information Age. Its often referred to in my circle of friends as the late-term abortion of operating systems. I have some personal experience with this marvel of short-sighted corporate greed, below the fold.
It's been a while since the abomination came out and still, Windows 8 isn't just user-unfriendly, it's user-hostile. The user interface is ... unappealing—garish colors, asymmetrical squares, and polygonish tiles lumped together like a child's crayola drawing with little in the way of description even when moused over. Maybe child drawing is too kind: it's like something Andy Warhol drew up with neon-colored magic markers from beyond the grave while coming down on really bad acid.
The Squares of Confusion is where most users encounter their first round of what will be many bouts of agitation—where's the start menu or whatever passes for it (hint, there's not one)? But it's been added since, ad hoc: if you click on the bottom blue square and then right click on the lower left icon in the toolbar where the usual disco ball is supposed to be, you'll get a drop up of some of those start menu features.
How does one find documents, device manager and get devices recognized, and why does everything look so freaking different and not have some of the familiar tabs? Why is it so confoundedly un-intuitive? Up to now I had been avoiding the bother of having to find out. But then the abomination was forced on me ...
I spent all weekend putting together a new system for a customer/friend and, of course, that system only came with Windows 8. There's your first piece of evidence right there, Exhibit A. If Microsoft was confident in their design and the free market so much of Silicon Valley claims to worship, they'd let Win8 and the other Windows systems compete head to head. But Windows 7 was not an option for the new system, the work-arounds to purge Win8 and get Win7 installed anyway would have been time-consuming and almost certainly would cause confusion for my customer, who would have called me at all hours of the day and night asking for help.
So began the quest through a small portion of Win8's serial confusions and dead ends and incomprehensible features. On this new system or example, the CD drive simply refused to read, which meant I couldn't download the software on the Netgear WiFi adapter the desktop needed to connect. Until Netgear tech support (thank God for those guys) directed me to an obscure fix. Then it was off to Regedit for a little virtual brain surgery, always a fun, landmine-filled place in a new and poorly designed OS, where a brilliant friend had told me on the phone a critical file had to be overwritten. That sounds easy enough; it took hours to figure out by the process of elimination and desperation, but finally, the new system was able to see the wireless network and connect.
It promptly began the ole "Configuring Windows Do Not Turn Off Your PC." At first it showed it was 3 percent done. The 3 turned over to a 4 after about 10 minutes. After it got to about 20 percent, it stopped politely notifying me how far along it was. Four hours later it appeared to be done, but no! When I tried to get on the Internet, it went back into a similar message and sat there for another hour.
Finally I could sign on! I loaded Firefox, set up some faves, and the system suddenly locked up. I restarted using the method advised, and sure enough the SoB goes right back into "Windows is setting up features on your PC, do not turn it off." This lasted another hour. It has periodically done this several more times since, completely out of the blue—how many goddamn times does it take to configure and get it right?
I gave up and went to sleep.
The next morning I was able to sign in, plugged in the new wireless mouse. It dutifully downloaded the software for that, worked for a few minutes and the mouse locked up everything. "Windows is searching for a solution ...." Well, you know, of course, Windows found no solution. I rebooted, no luck. Took the mouse out and put it my laptop where it also locked up.
Is it possible that just letting the mouse be contaminated with the dreaded Win8 caused it to malfunction no matter where it went afterward? I went to the mouse company's website, downloaded the wireless mouse drivers or whatever they were, it worked fine on my laptop. Put it back on the Win8 desktop where it worked for about an hour before locking up again. I gave up and stuck with the old-fashioned wired mouse. Dare I put my precious gaming headphones in?
I dared! I was that stupid, and besides, I had an article to write—although I hadn't intended to sacrifice my Razor headset. But who would think Win8 could really screw that up, too? Well, the speakers in the headset worked fine, but the microphone stopped working 10 seconds into an important Skype call on the new system and it has not worked since.
Now admittedly, any of these peripheral issues could have been in the mail already and have nothing to do with Win8. But call me suspicious, call me frustrated, call me angry: Windows 8, from Hell's heart I stab at thee!
The back story is Microsoft wanted a scalable OS that could run PCs and work on tablets in Android and IOS. A noble goal indeed. The problem is those devices are quite different, radically different, and the selection of new devices is only expanding at a never-ending rate. It's hard to fathom how lumbering dinosaurs like Microsoft would ever have a chance in hell of keeping up with them.
The engineering challenge is something like building a flying car. We can build flying cars, but that analogy goes farther than first glance would suggest: the engineering demands of both vehicles combined into one means you end up with an overpriced shitty airplane and a lousy, impractical car. Perhaps one day, some innovative designer will thread that needle for a PC and tablet OS. But my friends, today is not that day and Win8 is not that product, not as it stands. In its current incarnation, it's a mediocre PC OS—and that's saying it nicely—and not particular impressive on tablets or phones from what I'm told. Around the blogosphere, reviews have not been kind.
Whatever will Microsoft do? Will they adjust, pay attention to criticism, and offer a Windows 7 option for those, like me, who are tired of doing battle with their latest orc monstrosity? Or will they doggedly stick with it, come hell or high water. So far it's been the latter ... we presume, from the company's perspective, Win8 may well be doing fantastic, it's a captive user base casting coin after coin into their endless wishing well. Better still, it continues to so puzzle users as more and more are forced to switch over, that we again presume tons of business have had to upgrade to more costly top-tier support. NASA's ill-fated Apollo 13 has nothing on Microsoft—this is an ultra successful failure.
Which brings us back to the epic failure that kicked off the ass-ripping screed: unlike New Coke, which was after all merely a soft drink, the kind of thing most people could get through their day without really having to rely on, the Windows operating system runs more than 80 percent of the PC universe.
Even so, New Coke was such a total, epic failure, that regular or Coca-Cola Classic was brought back by public outcry within just a couple of months. So quickly that some wondered if that wasn't the original idea all along. It wasn't, it was just a massive fuck-up.
We can only hope and pray something like that happens with Windows 8, that Microsoft brings back the some of the popular and familiar features of Windows 7 in future patches. But I wouldn't bet on it. Microsoft has had plenty of time by now. Odds are this abomination is with us in some way or shape or form, forever. And there's a good dollar and cents reason why every other company on Earth should be burning Bill Gates in effigy: the millions of working hours that will be irrevocably lost as business large and small are forced by time and change to switch, and then to try and cope with and train their employees on Win8. I wonder how many billions of dollars in lost time and waste and earnings it will all eventually add up to?
Note: despite several tries, I was unable to reach anyone at Microsoft for comment. We invite them to create a screen name and make use of the user diary function to make their case or beg forgiveness—DS