It’s been nearly 10 years since Windows 8 launched to the world as part of Microsoft’s big tablet push. While we’ve seen two heads of Windows since then, former Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has shared some early concept images for Windows 8 in a new video. The images show concepts for the Start menu, multiple monitor support, File Explorer, Internet Explorer, and lots more.
Windows 8 development began in the spring of 2010, and Microsoft held an all-team event for the Windows org (around 5,000 people) at the Seattle Convention Center. “This video was played as the meeting ended and the team departed the Seattle Convention Center,” explains Sinofsky. “It is a highlight or sizzle reel of the many months we spent planning the release and all of the inputs into the Windows 8 project.”
Windows 8 would’ve been a fascinating, innovative, fresh, and incredibly interesting operating system and graphical user interface if it hadn’t been Windows 8. Microsoft should’ve split Windows into something like “Windows” and “Windows Classic” over a decade ago. Let the two sides of the coin shine where they should, instead of trying to cram every single Windows interface from 3.1 onward into a single mess.
Windows is so ubiquitous, any change causes uproar. Sadly, the backlash made Microsoft temper their ambitions, which left us with a system that tried to straddle a middle ground that fulfilled neither design principle. Many on this forum lambasted Metro apps, then complain that Microsoft didn’t go full throttle.
Similar uproar happened with the ribbon in office. Yes, people complained, but Microsoft stuck with it and it’s been a massive success. I wish they had done similar with windows.
Adurbe,
Yes and I was among them.
Really? I don’t remember people complaining that microsoft didn’t change more. Beyond just the familiarity, I felt they threw away a lot of good design principals they worked hard to achieve. People felt it had a place on mobile, but not as good on the desktop.
I still dislike it TBH and a lot of users I know did too. You have to keep monopoly status in mind when calling something a massive success. Consider a cable company being a massive success by market share, that doesn’t directly equate to customer satisfaction though.
LMAO the ribbon a “success”? Can I have some of what you are smoking please? Because everyone I know who does office work still LOATHES the ribbon, they are simply stuck with it because their office runs the latest MS office and that is all you get. Luckily thanks to backwards compatibility I can still run my trusty Office 2K but every time I have to deal with modern MS Office I want to puke at what a mess the ribbon is.
And Win 8 could have been a hit if they simply made Metro optional and left it at that, because Metro was a touch UI and even in 2022 most people are not using touch enabled PCs. if they would have simply gave the users the choice? I could still see it being around as it was great for tablets, touch laptops, and HTPCs but it royally blew when it came to a desktop.
Who the hell uses a touch-enabled HTPC?!
Most HTPC controllers come with a trackpad with multi-touch which Win 8 was perfect for as its large UI made it easy to interact with.
Most? Not even close, most people use a regular remote. But, there are people who use those trackpad and/or `air mouse` remotes as well. For a home theater environment it doesn’t really make sense to have a full-blown Windows install, although people tend to stick with what they know. Then again tons of Windows users go with Linux or Android devices + Kodi.
bassbeast,
I agree with this. Give users a choice! The preview builds of windows 8 did in fact have the ability to switch back to a windows 7 desktop. However I think to understand why microsoft removed it we have to consider microsoft’s windows 8 agenda at the time. It wasn’t just about the UI, MS wanted to have control over users and apps, just like the control apple has over IOS. They realized this wouldn’t be feasible without a way of weening users off of win32s, which users still needed and expected to run. Microsoft’s solution to this was metro. All existing win32 applications would be relegated to a second class “legacy” desktop sandbox. It would look and feel out of place, but it would satisfy the backwards compatibility checkbox. First class applications would have to be built for metro and users would have to download them from microsoft’s app store. The jarring interactions between the legacy desktop and metro was not due to incompetence, but was part of a deliberate goal to isolate and eventually cut off the unrestricted legacy software in favor of first class metro applications distributed with microsoft as gatekeeper. Of course it didn’t pan out this way. There was widespread user criticism and even microsoft was still relying on legacy for it’s own software. They finally relented fixing many of window 8’s design issues and properly integrating win32s as first class citizens again. But in doing so they lost the windows app store leverage they were gunning for with windows 8 + metro.
If you commented this shortly after Windows 8 came out, there would be tons of astroturfing comments and down votes on other platforms by “online reputation management” firms. It is exactly what they were trying to do, and had at least hundreds of people working full time to lie on public forums that they liked it, it was the future, etc.
dark2,
Yeah that stuff happens. Sometimes it’s blatantly obvious like the times trump was caught on tape pretending to be a 3rd party or you can track IP addresses to a known source. But others can cover their tracks. It seems quite plausible that Job’s reality distortion field was driven by highly effective astroturfing campaigns, but when it’s well executed with plausible deniability then it becomes speculation.
The problem is that judging the authenticity of a post’s origin on the internet is fraught with error and insufficient information. Bias alone can hint at but doesn’t prove astroturfing. Real people are biased. However sometimes the messaging is so egregiously & stubbornly one sided to the point of ridiculousness that it’s hard to believe it’s not from a corporate stooge. I think this could make for a very interesting research topic!
I still maintain that Windows 8 and afterwards, was a massive fail in the conversion of your workstation into a Tablet. The entire OS, including Metro/ive Tiles, Ribbon, etc have IMO, hindered Productivity, instead of ease it. The AEro interface requires 3D Accelerated chips, just for animated cursors and icons. I believe Microsoft ripped off the wrong features of the wrong OS. They should’ve ripped off OpenWin, CDE, Fvwm, Gnome and KDE(multi workspaces), and afterwards Project Looking Glass(workspace cubes, app lableling) in their design, as those projects in itself were more Productivity focused.