Microsoft jumps straight to Windows 10, brings back the Star

[frigidmagi]

Washingtonpost

As expected, Microsoft launched a new version of Windows on Tuesday two years after the troubled release of its last operating system, Windows 8. But instead of introducing the expected name, "Windows 9," Microsoft announced it will jump to "Windows 10."

Yes, Microsoft can still count.

The reason for the bizarre jump, company executives said, is that there were just so many changes to the system. The name “represents the first step of a whole new generation of Windows,” Terry Myerson, the Microsoft executive vice president in charge of the Windows division, said in a company blog post.

The name change signals Microsoft's desire to make clean break with the poorly received Windows 8, which was launched as a completely redesigned version of the company's most important product. The effort, which was intended to bring Microsoft into the touchscreen era, fell flat, as core users balked at some of the drastic alterations, such as the decision to get rid of the long-standing Start button. Microsoft then had to roll back that and other changes in an update.

"To me, [Windows 10] signifies a new era," said Gartner analyst and research vice president Michael Silver.

With Windows 10, the Start button and the traditional start menu are back -- a move meant to appease customers who demanded the familiar navigation tool. Gone, too, is the jarring switch between apps designed for Windows 8 and legacy software from earlier systems. Now, instead of switching between the traditional Windows layout and the more app-like layout of Windows 8 applications, all Windows programs will again appear in, well, windows.

That doesn't mean that Microsoft is abandoning all the features it picked up from Windows 8, or that it's leaving the world of touchscreens to competitors such as Apple and Google. Some layout settings remain from Windows 8, such as the ability to call up settings menus by swiping in from the sides of the screen. Windows 10 will also be Microsoft's next phone operating system, completely unifying its mobile and desktop products, though there will be layout differences.

Although Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella was not on hand at the preview of the new system, his influence was evident at the San Francisco press event.

The break with the past naming scheme is also meant to indicate that this is Microsoft's last major change to Windows. Instead, the company is moving to a quicker, more incremental release cycle to better react to changes in the consumer electronics world. This sort of cycle has already been adopted by competitors such as Apple, which has been building on "OS X" with smaller updates since 2001. With Windows 10, Microsoft is seeking to minimize these releases even further, Silver said, to make Windows a constantly updating system, similar to the way mobile apps update.

Nadella has also spoken about the need to make "One Windows" across mobile and desktop platforms, to make it easy for developers and users to use as many Microsoft products as possible.

Myerson echoed those ambitions in his announcement. "Some of these devices have 4-inch screens – some have 80-inch screens – and some don’t have screens at all,” Myerson wrote in a blog post. “Some of these devices you hold in your hand, others are 10 feet away. Some of these devices you primarily use touch/pen, others mouse/keyboard, others controller/gesture – and some devices can switch between input types.”


Still, despite all the talk of innovation and a break with the past, Microsoft was mindful to appease its core business users -- who have been the most vocal opponents of the company's attempts to change Windows. Much of what the company announced Tuesday was aimed not at consumers, but at enterprises, with a strong focus on productivity and business features. Microsoft also said that it would give businesses the option to forego the constant stream of updates.

A very early version of Windows 10 designed for developers and others who want a technical preview will be available Wednesday. Microsoft said that a consumer version should make its debut in mid-2015.

So basically windows 8 was so bad it killed windows 9. Damn. Just... Wow.

[Lys]

I could paraphrase this but a copy-paste job seems easier.

First of all, it’s important to note that between Windows 3 and Windows 7, versions of Windows were designated by a name rather than a number: 95, 98, NT, Me, 2000, Vista, and so on. When Microsoft announced Windows 7, there was actually a similar amount of disbelief/pushback; after a series of named versions of Windows, it seemed odd to jump back to numbers.

There’s also the odd fact that the name of each Windows release doesn’t actually match the real version number; for example, Windows 8.1 is actually version 6.3 of Windows. Windows 10 is version 6.4. The last time the release name actually matched the version number was Windows NT 4.0, which was released back in 1996. Windows 2000, which was called NT 5.0 during development, was actually version 5.0. Windows XP was version 5.1. Windows Vista was 6.0, Windows 7 was 6.1, Windows 8 was 6.2, and Windows 8.1 is version 6.3

You know, I actually vaguely remember Windows 3.1; it was my first operating system. This was after Win 95 came out, but my household's first computer definitely ran 3.1. I'm not sure why, perhaps my mother got the computer from a relative, unlike her brother she hates to spend money on consumer electronics. I do remember me very much disliking the Win 95/98 interface when I first encountered it, as it seemed stupid to have to click on things to get the list of programs when you could just have them all neatly arranged in tabs right on the screen. Regardless, we didn't have it long, shortly after we got a Compaq Presario with Windows 98, and the older computer was passed off to my sister.

[Josh]

Oh god Windows 95 was a mess. Unstable as fuck and very jarring if you came off of working command line interface.

Microsoft basically follows the old Trek movie rule of every other version sucking. (Which isn't fair to ST III, but whatev.)

[Lys]

So what you're saying is that I lucked out that we skipped Win 95? Maybe that is why mom got a 3.1 machine, the equivalent of getting an XP one after Vista came out because Vista sucked.

[Hotfoot]

95, ME, Vista, 8. Yeah, roughly every other version. Though of those listed, in retrospect, Vista was the least bad in my opinion.

But you will never, ever see me put a beta version of Windows on my primary system. Screw that.

And yes, I will give Microsoft shit for not keeping to a normal iteration scheme, because they did it for the XBox too, and it was stupid there too.

[Lys]

Windows ME... I'm pretty sure that's what my mum's Sony Vaio ran. When she got that one I was given the Presario, making it so that everyone had their own PC instead of having a household machine. I think my sister was also given a new computer to replace ageing Compaq running 3.1 at that time too, but I couldn't tell you what system it ran, probably 98. It seems I got pretty lucky with OS here, since I went 3.1, 98, XP, and now Windows 7, successfully skipping every bad version.

[White Haven]

ME is a bit of an outlier, because it released in parallel with 2000, which was actually not shit. That was a deeply weird time in Microsoft's history.

[Lys]

It's because Windows basically had two lines of operating systems. There was the basic home consumer use ones everyone is familiar with: Windows 3.1, 95, and 98, which were 16/32 bit hybrids, then you had the NT line which was primarily intended for use as workstations and servers. Windows NT was a true 32 bit environment and was branched off Win 3.1, such that the original Windows NT was listed as version 3.1, and it progressed through the numbers until it NT 5.0, better known as Windows 2000. Meanwhile the non-NT line was progressing as Windows 95, 98, and ME, using internal version numbers 4.0, 4.1, and 4.9. What happened around the year 2000 is that it was decided to open the NT line to professional and basic office use, as Windows 2000, and keep the non-NT line going for home consumer use, as Windows ME. Between 2000 proving a success and ME being a disappointment, plus the non-NT line starting to get seriously outdated, Microsoft decided to just drop it entirely and focus on the NT architecture. Windows XP is thus Windows NT 5.1, and it was marketed for home and professional users. The 64-bit version of XP is NT 5.2, with the server variant of 5.2 being called Windows Server 2003, intended as a follow-on to the success of Windows 2000 in that capacity.

[Hotfoot]

Yes, that was another period of stupid nomenclature from Microsoft.

Look, let's be blunt, there's really no time in Microsoft's history which has not been weird, there have only really been outbreaks of sanity.

[rhoenix]

Microsoft Bob? What?

[Hotfoot]

Shut up, no one likes you.

Man, fuck Bob.

[rhoenix]

Shut up, no one likes you.

Man, fuck Bob.

Now, now. Let's not forget Clippy, or his barbiturate-laden associates.

[White Haven]

Thank you, Lys, for that lengthy dissertation on the history and specifics of something that's in no way news. I know quite well where both CAME from, but that doesn't make it any less weird that Microsoft had two different desktop operating systems side-by-side and decided to release both of them at the same time when one was objectively very, very bad compared to the other in many areas, most dramatically security-related.

[rhoenix]

Thank you, Lys, for that lengthy dissertation on the history and specifics of something that's in no way news. I know quite well where both CAME from, but that doesn't make it any less weird that Microsoft had two different desktop operating systems side-by-side and decided to release both of them at the same time when one was objectively very, very bad compared to the other in many areas, most dramatically security-related.

My interpretation is that Windows ME was the last gasp of the user-specific version, and I say good riddance.

For that reason, I was incredibly happy when Windows 2000 was released, as it was meant to fully cross the divide between the user-specific versions of Windows (95, 98, etc.) and the business-specific versions of Windows (the NT series, as Lys went into above). It also was a leap forward in how Windows networks were viewed and managed on the business side (which was the reason I got my MCSE in Windows 2k), but that's another discussion.

I think they just carried the user-specific version onward through sheer momentum, even though by the time Windows 98 was released, Windows NT 3.51 was quite capable of replacing it, should Microsoft have chosen to do so. Despite the possible accusations that they'd be copying OS/2, it could have been done then - but I think business figures at the time were interpreted to mean that there was still life to be had in the personal line of Windows, despite the massive security flaws and other issues that weren't seen in the NT line, at least, not in the same blatant forms.

Ultimately, they've merged the workstation versions of Windows together as a single product, and have basically spun off the Windows Server line for backend stuff. I think we all can at least agree that this was a good move on their part, if a little late.

[Lys]

Thank you, Lys, for that lengthy dissertation on the history and specifics of something that's in no way news. I know quite well where both CAME from, but that doesn't make it any less weird that Microsoft had two different desktop operating systems side-by-side and decided to release both of them at the same time when one was objectively very, very bad compared to the other in many areas, most dramatically security-related.

Where they came from explains why Microsoft did what it did. They already had the systems developed and an established practice of releasing them in parallel to different markets. While they had taken a steps toward a unified platform by expanding Win 2000 toward professional users they still felt that ME was more appropriate for the casual user because it was purpose designed for that market. I also doubt Microsoft was fully aware of ME's security problems. It's a mixture of institutional inertia, sunk costs fallacy, and a nice helping of incompetence. If you already knew the historical context then all this should have been self-evident, but in your case I suppose not.

[Hotfoot]

I'm hesitant about Microsoft's unending push to have all-in-one solutions to operating systems. Windows CE was a pile of crap back when, and I have reservations about tablet and phone OS being the same as the desktop OS.

We'll see, I suppose, but 8 was such a piece of shit as a result of it I'm in no hurry to check out 10.

[rhoenix]

I'm hesitant about Microsoft's unending push to have all-in-one solutions to operating systems. Windows CE was a pile of crap back when, and I have reservations about tablet and phone OS being the same as the desktop OS.

We'll see, I suppose, but 8 was such a piece of shit as a result of it I'm in no hurry to check out 10.

I agree with you there - both my machines are still on Windows 7, and I have no intention of changing that anytime soon.

[Josh]

I wouldn't be surprised if their sudden jump to universal OS was driven by all that "tablets are going to kill PCs" nonsense we were being inundated with a while back. If they bought into that view even a little, then they had to do something big to avoid being cut out of the primary OS market.

Of course here we are humming along still using PCs, which may actually someday die but not yet.

[rhoenix]

I wouldn't be surprised if their sudden jump to universal OS was driven by all that "tablets are going to kill PCs" nonsense we were being inundated with a while back. If they bought into that view even a little, then they had to do something big to avoid being cut out of the primary OS market.

That makes quite a bit of sense, given the timing.

Of course here we are humming along still using PCs, which may actually someday die but not yet.

If mobile phones grow powerful enough to, say, play Shadow of Mordor on high while outputting to an HDMI-capable monitor, that might be beginning of the death knell of the PC. Once the PC itself is small enough to easily put in your pocket, convenience will go quite a long way. PC's certainly won't die right then, but I think it will then propel a debate as to what a PC really is, and that debate should make things interesting then as well.

[White Haven]

The entire 'tablets are the future' surge was driven by fresh marketing/MBA graduates with no sense of perspective and no clue about IT. 'But tablets are selling in huuuuuge numbers!' they yelled, pointing to huge sales numbers of tablets and non-huge numbers of PC sales. And whenever people with an actual connection to the real world heard this, they replied 'Because tablets are useful for certain tasks and almost no one already has one yet.'

Tablets are a perfect, classic example of a complementary good when placed alongside conventional PCs. PCs were and are an essentially saturated market; new sales come primarily from replacements, with first-time buyers largely restricted to 'I now have a job for the first time' teens. Tablets were a brand new market, so NO SHIT they had huge sales figures for a few years. They didn't exist, then they did, and so people bought them. PC sales slumped a bit over the same interval because again, shocking no one except MBA-holders, the money to buy those freshly-existing tablets has to come from somewhere.

If this sounds bitter, it's because during that period I got so monumentally tired of people and businesses speaking and acting as if the Primacy of the Tablet were a foregone conclusion. Hell, during this period Intel made the decision to get out of the motherboard-manufacturing business altogether, because they wanted to focus on the small-form-factor and mobile markets more heavily. And now as an increasing percentage of the people who want tablets already have tablets, the market is settling down just as anyone with a functioning brain expected, and boy do I wish I had a big enough stick to back up a well-deserved 'I fucking told you so.'

[General Havoc]

I can write a novel on a computer. I cannot write a novel on a tablet. Bullshit solutions about just hooking up some kind of extraneous keyboard thing to my tablet do not interest me, as I have no intention of making my life harder because other people find it convenient to win a console war. When Tablets can do anything a PC can do with equal ease, we may speak of the death of the PC. Until then we may as well be talking about the supremacy of Laserdisks.

[Lys]

The effective problem of tablets is limited screen size and awkwardness of keyboard setups. It's difficult to engage in lengthy, involved tasks on a tablet. It is similarly difficult to play high detail oriented games, whether those details be in terms of the management complexity of a strategy game or the spacial and reflex complexity of a first person shooter. I could talk about the things they are useful for but honestly I'm not sure. I can speculate that business travellers may be able to lighten their load by taking a tablet instead of a laptop, given most of their computer use when travelling is reading and emailing, but I don't know if that matches actual usage patterns. I do own a tablet, it was a present, but I haven't found much use for it myself. Any time when my laptop proves too unwieldy is a time when I can just use my phone, and the phone is more portable. The only times when I found the tablet legitimately superior to a phone is ebook reading, so I'm thinking that what I really wanted was a kindle.

[Josh]

I have two tablets. One is a nice old Asus that was pretty hotrod when I bought it, it was originally intended as a supplement for business before I got my office. However, my office came along about six months sooner than I anticipated and as soon as I had that I put a desktop in. That tablet is now affixed to a southern-engineered armature that places it over my bed, where I stream videos and Netflix at night.

The other one was a cheapy that I purchased on the theory that I'd like a bigger screen to read ebooks on.

I used it for that for about... two weeks, and then found myself right back to my phone as my primary reader. In part due to the inconsistent nature of syncing between platforms, and in part due to the hassle of keeping yet another device charged. (Especially since the cheapy tablet charges off a jack and not a micro-usb like all civilized devices.)

Most of my tablet-related tasks go to the phone, basically.

[Lys]

I remember one of the initial reactions to the ipad was along the lines of, "Oh briliant, an iphone that can't make phone calls and doesn't fit in your pocket." I'm kind of more or less still there, the only thing that a tablet does better for me than my smartphone is something best done by a similar but distinct device optimized for the task. The one other thing the tablet could do better, web browsing, is inherently limited by the fact that my phone can get internet anywhere there is a cellular signal, whereas my tablet can't. This coupled with portability makes the phone the superior platform.

[frigidmagi]

I got a tablet as a Christmas gift for the folks. My experience with it so far? It holds many books, it also lets me play tetris and tower defense games on the bus and it's the only bloody thing in the house that can run XCom.

So you know... It's alright.