It offers fuck-all to the PC space, is the big problem.
On a tablet it probably does have a nice preview-based UI (wasn't really functional when I tried it) but there's no goddam reason that couldn't have been added to Windows 7 without the toxic autologin/app-store/hardware-DRM bullshit.
Well sure, but "minor tweaks plus shit you don't want" has been MS's MO for some time now. Win7's a glorified service pack -- so are XP and Win98, when you come down to it.
Doesn't mean we have to like it, obviously.
The thing that un-sells me about Windows 8, ultimately, is the future it proposes. Yes, Desktop mode is pretty livable, but it's also a legacy system. More and more things are going to be Metro-only.
Yep. And this isn't going to be like Vista where poor sales lead to tweaks and fixes -- it's going to be like Office 2007 where everybody's stuck with it even though nobody likes it, because this is what MS is doing now.
And with Metro, you are very limited in how many Metro apps you can have on-screen. I like to aggressively multitask, and Windows 8 seemed from my use of it to be hostile to that desire.
Which ironically is the OPPOSITE of what tiling WM's are for.
I've said before that the App Store is basically Apple seeing apt-get and deciding to release a version without its single defining feature (dependency resolution). MS seems, similarly, to have seen tiling as a good design except for all the parts where it's useful and flexible.
Has anybody talked about W8's adoption among businesses yet? Office productivity is pretty much the last area where Microsoft still has a lock, but all the differences between 7 and 8 are pretty hostile to that space (the touchscreen controls, the forced full-screen apps, the worry that Microsoft may become privy to corporate secrets). Shoehorning a tablet OS into their PC OS was pretty bad, but shoehorning their consumer OS into their business OS might be what actually sinks them. At least, if they're stupid enough to actually try to force businesses along that upgrade path.
I'm curious to see some numbers, but anecdotally, the businesses I've worked for just switched to Win7 and have no damn interest in 8 whatsoever.
I think it has a shot at making some inroads in the tablet space and mmmmmmaybe even the phone space, but Apple's got a pretty massive head start.
Still, the size of the Surface plus its (sort of) actual keyboard plus Office compatibility might be a big driver, provided MS can fix the problems with RT that review mentioned. Again anecdotally, my experience is that road warriors are damn particular about having the smallest, most lightweight computers they can (we had multiple users at my last job who had a full-sized laptop for work and home AND a second, smaller laptop for travel).
Guess we'll see. I don't see what the draw is (it's got its moments but I wouldn't pay for it) but I wasn't expecting a huge demand for the Surface, either. I've been pretty consistently wrong about what kind of gadgets consumers want since, oh, the original iPod (in fairness, who the fuck wanted the original iPod?), so I'm not exactly qualified to make forecasts.
