Death of Windows?

I have been using and developing software for Microsoft Windows for over 15 years now and have been a fan until the last couple of years. It seems Microsoft keeps making basic bad decisions in the way their software works and the latest offering is Windows 8, which is confusing and chaotic and shows they need to make some better decisions in the future to survive. Here are some reason why I think Windows is a dying operating system, after using it for a very short period.  

• It's feels like an incarnation of the previous version, with more features, but not as user friendly.
• The way you use it seems confusing with options to run in 2 different ways depending on what you are doing.
• The new design does not wow and is pretty boring, I did not like using it and it is not intuitive enough. It seems to also seems to break some UX design rules, including hidden controls, ugly icons and everything is very boxy and flat.
• Search is still slow, Microsoft really needs to sort this out, iOS is far better and easier to use.
• From using it for a short time it made me feel that I should stick to Windows 7. 
• Messages are sometimes unfriendly, condescending  and techie. 

I think it is a case that in the future Microsoft will see that Windows 8 was a bit like ME and Vista and will need to get it right with Windows 9. These are the features that I think are required in the next version of Windows.

• Improve startup and shutdown times.
• Get rid of the 2 personalities of Windows 8 and Windows 7 desktop, and make it feel like a single OS.
• Don't hide features and expect users to explore to find hidden treasures, it's not a game.
• Get the search working properly so its quick, easy and finds the results, look at how Google and Apple do it.
• Needs to be more intuitive.
• Make it more innovative and include support for future technologies like Kinect, 3D and voice recognition.

Microsoft is in a difficult position at the moment with not just Windows, but their Office suite and their new XBox looking like it might be overtaken by the PlayStation 4, which from the specs is a superior games machine. I think they will need to have a good look at themselves, their competitors and the market place and come up with some great new products to survive, and there is a good chance they will.

Is Windows 8 doomed to fail?

Recently I had a quick play with the new Microsoft Windows 8 operating system and was disappointed. The reasons why I felt disappointed are as follows:

• Without a touch screen to scroll to the left or right there is a naff scrollbar, it would have looked a lot better if they had to large buttons on each side like in Google Chrome.
• Some of the live tiles look annoying with constant movement.
• You cannot see more than 2 applications at the same time, this is clearly designed for tablets, but what about users with large monitors.
• The 2 application view does not allow a 50/50 split, there is always 1 application larger than the other.
• The old style Windows 7 option, seems to run a virtual machine, but is not as good as Windows 7 and the integration with the main operating system is clunky.  

Overall I got the impression this OS has been designed with the tablet in mind and I think if you are going to run it on a PC stick with Windows 7. The history of Microsoft OS seems to hint it is not going to be a good OS, see my list of OS and what I think of them below, hopefully Windows 9 will be the next good OS.

Windows history showing a trend.

• Windows 3.2 - Good OS
• Windows 95 - Not bad, but not great and seemed a bit buggy
• Windows 98 - Great OS and worked very well
• Windows ME - Rubbish
• Windows XP - Very Good OS
• Windows Vista - Dreadful, problems starting up and shutting down.
• Windows 7 - Good OS and runs really well 
• Windows 8 - So far, not good.