Is this a satire? I find it hard to believe that Microsoft and Windows 8 is to solely blame for any decline in PC sales. Haven't PC sales been declining for some time now? This sounds like a pretty far-fetched claim to make here. Considering here in Australia you can still buy a new PC with Windows 7 installed, I find it hard to believe that consumers are opting not to buy a computer just because of Windows 8 comes pre-installed. Remember when Windows Vista was an even bigger failure upon launch? That didn't make people stop wanting to buy a PC, how is Windows 8 any worse than when Vista first launched? It's the best version of Windows yet, the lack of start menu is a non-issue.
I'll tell you why PC sales are declining, because PC's are no longer our sole means of downloading, playing games, reading news or running apps. Mobile phones and tablets are to blame for the drop in PC sales, this isn't a bad thing and the PC isn't all of a sudden going to disappear because a PC will always serve a purpose. Sounds like a consulting firm trying to sound insightful and draw comparisons that shouldn't be drawn.
Exactly. As much as I would find it amusing to blame Microsoft, it's really just a sign of the times. It's a combination of device saturation for general consumers, and hardware stagnation for power users, so that really doesn't leave many in the market for a new pc.
Vista was nowhere near as bad as people made out, and in fact after SP1 a lot of problems were resolved. Win8 is a car crash its the bastard child of a Desktop/Tablet OS that only really works on tablets.
I actually like the look of Metro and how it works on a tablet, but Microsoft forcing desktop users down this path is not going to work.
It's perfectly reasonable. Yes, it may seem that Windows 8 isn't "that bad", but it does have a very real impact on the market. I've seen it with my own eyes. Of all of the people I know across all levels of technical sophistication very, very few of them are enthused about Windows 8 and many of them are actively turned off by it.
More so, while PC sales in general are also under assault from competing devices (like tablets and smartphones), that actually raises the importance of the desirability of the current version of Windows. It's when sales are weak and competition is strong that the effects of an undesirable OS are most pronounced.
Also, PCs certainly aren't going to "disappear" but the rate at which new PCs are purchased, especially in the near term, and the total size of the PC market is still up in the air, by a huge margin and perhaps even by an order of magnitude.
Casual PC users hate the lack of start button, but as a power-user I suits me just fine because I usually hide my task bar on the left side anyway. Having it hidden in the lower left-hand corner does not require me to make any dramatic changes. I also like the idea that the kernel has a lot of optimization making it faster on older hardware.
But as a human, what I hate legitimately and with a passion is having the "Mobile Web 3.0" paradigm being forced onto me with the Windows Market. Keeping games on a "real time" platform like Steam is one thing, but having my actual data in the cloud is not at all a comforting feeling. Not because I have anything to hide, but because I know that data is going to be mined for usage patterns and other valuable data that will ultimately be used to corral and control me. Features that cost money to support will be hidden behind deep menus and dialogs, affecting my productivity because their motivations are now skewed. Products they want to push are now right in my face and they know how much time I look at them, and by aggregate patterns, how to make it more "effective" i.e. annoying.
It's another bubble; There is a few applications that do benefit from this paradigm but unless it is managed very carefully, the temptation to extract my value for their own usage as a kind of user tax will always be there. The observer effect is not confined to quantum particles, it manifests up to observable macro phenomenon. While my incentive for taking a certain action may be fuzzy, it becomes binary when measured and leads to annoying false conclusions, a la clippy.
I don't really blame Microsoft and their solution is probably the best. I can't certainly think of anything better than hiding it on the right hand side, but it's still there, like a shadow hanging over the OS, waiting to slurp up less-wary users into its world, where I'll have to travel if I don't want to be left behind. If it is really as insidious as I imagine, they'll just die off as the machine leeches the life from them and we can all move along learning from the failed experiment. But chances are the machine will nurture its little human cells and use them to stomp out and consume anything that isn't it.
But it still sucks for Microsoft. Because those sales include the "hybrid" sales, too, so whatever this means for the "PC market", it's still very bad for the "Windows" ecosystem and Microsoft.
I'll tell you why PC sales are declining, because PC's are no longer our sole means of downloading, playing games, reading news or running apps. Mobile phones and tablets are to blame for the drop in PC sales, this isn't a bad thing and the PC isn't all of a sudden going to disappear because a PC will always serve a purpose. Sounds like a consulting firm trying to sound insightful and draw comparisons that shouldn't be drawn.