Windows arise! 4 hopes for Microsoft’s survival

Windows is dead, kaput, finito. It is pushing up daisies, it has joined the choir invisible, it has ceased to be. Like Margaret Thatcher, Jonathan Winters, and Annette Funicello, it has shuffled off its mortal coil and moved on to a better (or in Thatcher’s case, hotter) place. Windows’ death has not been exaggerated.

OK, maybe a little exaggerated. But not according to my esteemed colleague Steven J. Vaughn-Nicholls over at ZDnet, who composed Windows’ obit earlier this week. Sayeth Steven:

Most people in our recent debate over the future of Windows 8 thought that the operating system could be saved. I’m sure many people in 1491 thought that the Earth was flat, too. …

It looks like Microsoft is betting all its chips on the silly notion that Metro will be the one true interface for its entire PC and device line. There’s only one little problem with this idea. Sorry, but I have to say it again, look at the numbers: Metro-interface operating systems have already failed.

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If nothing else, it’s a brilliant way to stir the pot and drive traffic during an otherwise slow week in tech news. Kudos, SJVN. His debate partner, the effervescent Ed Bott, took the opposite view, of course. But even he found flaws in Microsoft’s abandonment of a UI that Windows users had grown accustomed to, like partners in a bad marriage who cling together despite the pain because it’s still preferable to divorce. Ed writes:

It’s tempting to compare Windows 8 to its predecessors. But I really see it as the first Windows release in a new generation. …

Windows 8 is more like a living organism, made partly from familiar bits that have evolved over the last two decades, with several new strands of DNA tossed in. It’s due to be updated for more often, and it’s part of a much larger hardware-apps-services ecosystem that is also changing quickly.

Oh my God, it’s alive! Save yourselves — run for the hills!

Usability is only skin deep

As I write this, Microsoft is readying Windows “Blue” (not to be confused with Google’s Gmail Blue), otherwise known as Windows 8.1. Rumors are flying that Microsoft might just maybe bring back that Start button, the lack of which has utterly flummoxed many longtime Windows sufferers, and allow people to boot directly into Desktop mode, bypassing the tiles-based don’t-call-it-Metro interface entirely.

So much for that experiment in modern UI design. Personally, I didn’t have a problem with Metro or whatever it’s called. It took me all of two minutes to suss out that I had to tap or click a tile to get to the Desktop. But while not-Metro might be a fine interface for a touchscreen device, it’s a stupid to way to run a desktop, as I’ve pointed out before.

Don’t know what you got till it’s gone

Still, I think Microsoft is onto something here. Tapping into Windows nostalgia could prove to be just the thing to bring the OS back from the grave and prove SJVN wrong. Here are some other items Microsoft should also bring back:

1. Clippy. Be honest — don’t you miss him? Those quizzical eyebrows, that wiry frame? And he was always so helpful.
2. Windows Genuine Advantage. Because every user should be forced to pull over to the side of their desktops and show their user license as often as Microsoft deems necessary, even when their copies are perfectly legit.
3. User Account Control. I for one love it when an operating system second-guesses my intentions — then forces me to reconfirm those — over and over and over. It just makes me feel so secure.
4. RSODs. Why stick with blue screens of death when you can choose from a rainbow of attractive colors? Yes, I know BSOD jokes have been done to death, but I for one can’t get enough of them, and they really do tweak the Microsoft fanboys.

You want to know the real reason why PC sales are plummeting and Windows 8 is an even bigger flop than Vista? It isn’t the Metro-ish interface. It isn’t the explosion of tablets and smartphones (well, not entirely). It’s primarily because PCs are much better than they used to be in virtually every way.

Storage and memory are cheap and plentiful enough so that people get more than they need when they buy a new system; they’re not forced to pinch pennies to meet Microsoft’s suggested hardware requirements, and thus they no longer feel compelled to buy a new PC every two or three years. Part of that may well be Microsoft’s doing, having learned from the Vista debacle and turned Windows 7 into an impressively stable and reliable OS.

Microsoft created its vast fortune thanks in large part to built-in obsolescence. That’s not so true any more. But I’m sure it’ll figure some way to bring that back, too.

What old Windows features do you miss? Share your Winstalgia below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

This article, “Windows arise! 4 hopes for Microsoft’s survival,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.