Topic: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?  (Read 18485 times)

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Offline Tulwar

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #20 on: April 28, 2014, 04:01:39 pm »
GIMP cannot compete with Adobe Photoshop.  While you may be able to put WINE on a Linux computer and run a pirated version of Photoshop on your Linux machine, if you're doing everything above board, you still have to buy that Windows or Apple machine and pay a butt-load to Adobe if you're going to be a serious photographer.

What has happened in the world of software is that the bigger companies with the better products have completely obliterated the competition.  Wherever you go to buy industry standard software there is monopoly publishing an excellent product at an inflated price.  MS Office gets a few more bells and whistles every year, but it's your basic word processor and spreadsheet.  The monkey-model (Home and Student) costs $150.00, while the professional version costs $300.00.  There's no reason they need to bill that much, but they can, so they do.

One thing that really struck me is that a lot of industry specific software is completely primitive.  The bread and butter software for synchronizing databases, customer accounts look like something borrowed from the 1980's, and believe me, this stuff is expensive.  Five different companies in your town have hundreds of machines using this software, and it's all trying to integrate a few dozen Windows machines with a Unix server.  It would probably be easier to have a company write the software for Linux, knowing their customers are going to pay for support, but companies cannot break out of their MS Office environments.  They still have to communicate with other companies in the MS Office format.

The power of MS is astounding, when you come to think about it.  You hear Republicans go on diatribes against governmental power, but who elected Microsoft?  We are paying these companies handsomely for residuals.  Patents are too complicated to go into, but copyright law was created before the typewriter.  Think about that for a minute.  Now think of all the trustfund babies that are living fairly luxurious lifestyles while hardly doing any meaningful work.  This is what most of your software dollars are going for.  We're paying for a new aristocracy.  Bill Gates might not be simply giving his money to his children, but the B & M Gates Foundation is doing the kind of thing the Peace Corps used to.  A small number of people are getting powerful enough to displace our government.  Add to that the power of wealth to influence elections and the people who win our elections, the government starts to become exactly the type of foreign entity the Republicans characterize it as.

At some point, the government is going to get on top of the private entities vying to control it.  The first way is that some individual or consortium are able to dominate the government so completely that they are able to impose their lackey at which point they invest that lackey with greater and greater power, until one day, their lackey is replaced with somebody they can't control.  Conservatives try to make out the Nazis as "Socialists," but that was in name only.  The Nazis bragged about not having any economic plan what so ever, and in fact, they were heavily financed by private companies like Krupps and multinationals like I.G. Farben.  The 1930's were hard times, but somebody was buying a lot of nice, new brown shirts.  Well, the companies supporting the NAZI Party didn't so much lose control as fell in line with Hitler.  The Nazis never really went to a hard core socialist war economy, like we did right from the time we declared war on Japan.  Roosevelt made sure the American People were serious about winning the war, while the German leadership was so out of it that at least one company was still making wallpaper, even as the Russians surrounded Berlin.


The other way is for the people to remember that the government is there to support their interests over the interests of a powerful few.  When my mother died, my state legislator read into the legislative record his condolences for my family.  Apparently, one of my siblings worked on his campaign.  When my sister gave me the parchment that state documents are printed on, I thought about it for a long time.  On one level, it looks like a politician paying back his cronies by producing some honorarium at state expense, but it goes a whole lot deeper.  The basic unit of politics isn't the individual, but family  Families provide the money and warm bodies to get politicians elected, which imposes the responsibility on the politician to act as a friend of the family.  This means that our government is not composed of "them" but of "us."  While there are those that make politics seem petty and ugly to keep people from putting their money behind politicians or going to the polls, there can be nothing more honorable in a republic than to stand behind your choice of representation.  Otherwise, your representative will necessarily represent somebody else.  If I may quote Lincoln, "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Just how the government will reign in companies like MS, I do not know.  Market forces work in favor of the monopoly, so there has to be some outside actor.  The government is the only thing I can think of, but then, the US is not the only country in the world that has a government.  While we may delude ourselves that our irreverent society will keep coming up innovating the new things that will keep us on top, that's really wishful thinking.  The Chinese can throw people at just about any problem.  If the Chinese government wants to have Photoshop capabilities on the state Linux computers, they can put together the coders and develop the capability, and they can shrug off any patent suite that Adobe may present, just like the developers of television did the man who invented FM radio.  China is moving slowly, but effectively to dominate the world.  They are not as rash and violent as we are, but they are determined.  Perhaps with their population, that dominance is inevitable.  The thing is, that in competition with the Chinese people, I would like to think the US government promotes my interests.  It doesn't.  For the most part it seems that it supports the interests of the monopolists, who's short term interests lie with China.  Of course, China will turn of them the moment their interests run contrary, but that is not today.
Cannon (can' nun) n.  An istrument used to rectify national boundries.  Ambrois Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #21 on: April 28, 2014, 08:48:17 pm »
There is a lot to reply to but first this makes no sense.

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While you may be able to put WINE on a Linux computer and run a pirated version of Photoshop on your Linux machine, if you're doing everything above board, you still have to buy that Windows or Apple machine and pay a butt-load to Adobe if you're going to be a serious photographer.

What would stop you from using a legally bought version?  No different from my running various legitimately bought games which though made for Window ran under Wine.  Crossover Office was created specifically to allow running MS Office on Linux - legally. 
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Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #22 on: April 28, 2014, 09:05:09 pm »
Back during the US DOJ vs Microsoft antitrust trial a friend of mine asked what *I* would like to see done about Microsoft.  My desire then and now was for governments to adopt (and if need be create) public standards and insist on using them.  Any software not capable of using them with full compliance (including being capable of defaulting to the standard format) would be frozen out of government use.  This would balance the playing field in many ways as anyone could write compliant software and it wouldn't matter when submitting (or receiving) data to the government if you used the same software they used.  So long as the standard is "How Microsoft does it" people are stuck using the same software as the government does.

I've been very gratified to see others come to the same conclusion resulting in ODF being standardized and some limited adoption by governments around the world but not enough. 

Patents need a few features restored.

1/ Specificity.  Don't just say what say HOW.  Then someone designs a new way to do the same thing isn't blocked (like it used to be)

2/ Working model (no more teleportation using the conical psychic eye, whatever that is unless you can demonstrate it)

3/ Restore requirements of originality.  None of this "Do that old thing but ON THE INTERNET" nonsense. 

4/ Don't write them in legalize.  Write them so that people "skilled in the field" can read them and KNOW what is meant.  Right now they try to be as vague as possible so they don't inform competitors of how they do things and so they can claim damages regardless of whether they even thought of the competitors way of doing things.

5/ Some type of punishment for violating the above especially when doing so in a flood. 

6/ No more patenting things that you discover rather than invent.  Natural genes in their original plant/animal should not be patentable.  Algorithms should not be patentable.
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Seti Team    Free Software
I believe truth and principle do matter. If you have to sacrifice them to get the results you want, then the results aren't worth it.
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Offline Tulwar

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #23 on: April 29, 2014, 03:23:53 pm »
I'm no expert in how things should be done.  I agree 100% that genetically modified life forms should not be patented.

When it comes to computer operating systems, this is world standard.  Imposing standard is just about the most ancient function of government.  The inch derives from the length of King James' fingertip.  Just as every merchant needs to have a common sense of the volume of one gallon, every software coder has to know the standards for writing machine code.  As it is, small software companies complain MS won't the standards for writing code, and why does MS have to bill individuals $150 to build their own Windows machine?  That's just gouging.  These are the abuses of a natural monopoly.  There was a time that our government created systems to regulate monopolies.

Water, Electricity, Natural Gas, and Telephone lines are all controlled by local commissions, empowered by government to oversee that customers receive adequate service at reasonable prices.  Somehow, cable has been free of this regime.  It is a natural monopoly, but there are some legal fictions that create the illusion of competition.  The indisputable fact is that once somebody has strung cable lines throughout a community, nobody else is going to the expense of stringing up another set of lines to compete with an established service provider.

That is the same for OS's.  Even though the original MS DOS machines were pieces of crap compared to Apple or Commodore, the bore the IBM logo.  Even though this was a product inferior to everything that was on the market at the time, everybody knew that this was going to be the standard for business simply because of the name "IBM."  The executives at IBM should have been shot for stupidity for letting their name be used to establish somebody else's empire.

The fact is that MS has become so successful that everybody is dependent on the standard they create.  Yes, even the hermit that living in a national park, in a part so remote that the rangers don't even know he exists, will eventually go to a hospital where he will have a file generated on a computer using a MS OS.  Everybody meas everybody.  The Constitution of the United States charges the Congress with the responsibility to write laws that "promote the general welfare."  Monopolies allow a rarefied few to abuse the many.  MS is a monopoly, but the vocal anarchists in our society have made our government too pansy-butt to do what is required.  In business and banking, we're pretty much limited to "the Law of the Jungle."

We live in a world of monopolies.  The most powerful monopolies are entrusted to the government.  Courts and armies cannot be entrusted to individuals, so we created governments to handle these monopolies.  Anarchists make something of this to make government power appear very scary, and go on to make out that the government can't do anything right.  They go on to make out the government as being something foreign.  The more centralized the government, the more foreign it is, and what makes the government most foreign is when your people are not part of it.  A government that sides with a monopoly is much more likely to use it's scary powers on individuals and be exactly what anarchists characterize it as.

I still find the cable monopoly scarier than the OS monopoly.  Cable controls the public's access to information.  We've been told over and over again that the press is "liberal."  90% of all political commentary carried be the "liberal media" is conservative.  The conservatives running NBC saw that no one was catching the potential revenue from putting ads in front of liberals, so they launched a few liberal commentary shows on MSNBC.  That is not a news network by any stretch of the imagination.  The fact is that the "liberal press" died in the 1970's, and we are fed this continuous about the nature of the lies we are being fed.

The thing is, that people eventually vote their own interests.  As more and more people make too little money for the government to bother taxing them, they will be less and less inclined to worry about their tax situation.  Cable companies (should I just say "Time/Warner") are already hated for abusing their monopolies and will increase their control over individuals' access to the internet.  Any fool can see the inherent conflict between a TV/ISP and Netflix.  The cable industry has vowed WWIII should the government try to regulate the industry.  Every other physical infrastructure monopoly is regulated as a monopoly, so what makes cable different?  My local Natural Gas distributer is regulated, even though I can buy an electric heating system.  What makes cable different?  Internet access is a luxury.  Oh, yeah?  Try applying for a job without it!

Everybody knows that a government can tolerate no rival.  The cable industry has complete control of the most powerful privately controlled propaganda apparatus the world has ever seen.  This means that Time/Warner, through the networks and programming it allow has the power to allow in people's homes, can control the political conversation, and thus control the government.  Through CNN, cable took control of American politics, and Fox turned the conversation even more to the right.  Either, the leadership of the cable industry will dominate the government or the government will dominate the cable industry.  I would rather see WWIII than surrender the Republic.
Cannon (can' nun) n.  An istrument used to rectify national boundries.  Ambrois Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #24 on: April 29, 2014, 06:59:39 pm »
When IBM created the PC they were in a bit of a hurry as it appeared they were going to be broken up.  The PC was created to give one of the parts that otherwise wouldn't have a computer type one.  They were trying to draw "Cut here" lines for the government so as little damage as possible would be done.  Outsourcing the OS both was quicker and sent the right message to the government/judges.  The anti trust case was dropped (President Carter I think) leaving IBM with the PC which they really were not sure what to do with. 
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Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #25 on: January 22, 2015, 06:42:18 pm »
The final judge on Win8 being a flop is whether it is dominant version of Windows when its successor comes out or not.  So about a year from now Win8 can receive its final judgment.


Less than a year till Windows 10 is released and how is 8 dong?

Link to full artcle

Quote
Today Windows 7 runs on 55 per cent of the World’s PCs. Number two is Windows XP, released in 2001 and now so old it’s dangerous to run – as Microsoft now no longer makes security fixes for new hacks or threats.


Already MS is trying to buy makert share for 10..

Link to full artcle

Quote
We won't claim the credit for Microsoft’s decision to give its next version of Windows as a free upgrade for 12 months to those on Windows 7 and 8.x.

Yet we did say this week that Microsoft couldn’t risk re-imposing charges on Windows 8.1 that it had started giving away for free – on small-screen tablets.

Also on Wednesday, Microsoft’s vice president of operating systems Terry Myerson said once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, Microsoft will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device “at no cost”.


Win 8 still flopping.  Less market share stll than XP.
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Seti Team    Free Software
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Offline Brush Wolf

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #26 on: January 22, 2015, 07:03:17 pm »
I think much of the slow upgrade rate is Win 8, or even 7 don't have anything that makes them must haves.  Win 8 really isn't  a bad OS but the Metro UI which you can bypass for 99.9% of you use is a big put off.
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Offline Tulwar

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #27 on: January 22, 2015, 08:34:18 pm »
You can't really judge the OS itself when the interface is too difficult to use.  Even the way Win 7 cascades multible windows of a program can be difficult compared to XP.  I'm sure if I had a Win 7 machine, I would eventually learn how to juggle a week's worth of spreadsheets.  As for the Metro interface on Win 8, I don't even see how to open more than 4 windows.

My Win 8 machine bit the dust.  Since it had a crumby little processor, I didn't see any reason to spend money fixing it.  I'm waiting on my W-2's so I can blow my return on something useful.  I don't miss the PoS one bit.
Cannon (can' nun) n.  An istrument used to rectify national boundries.  Ambrois Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #28 on: May 02, 2015, 02:44:52 am »
Looks like Win 8.x is still less popular than XP making it the 3rd most popular Windows in current use.  Its a flop just months before the "Wave release" of Win 10.0.  Sorry guys but it IS a flop. 
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Offline Tulwar

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #29 on: May 02, 2015, 03:06:18 am »
Looks like Win 8.x is still less popular than XP making it the 3rd most popular Windows in current use.  Its a flop just months before the "Wave release" of Win 10.0.  Sorry guys but it IS a flop.

But...  But....  But, if you live in a community of hackers that are up on everything MS does, and they tell you the little secrets you need to know, and you're really good at figuring them out yourself, and you really don't mind relearning your job....
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Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #30 on: May 02, 2015, 03:11:18 am »
But...  But....  But, if you live in a community of hackers that are up on everything MS does, and they tell you the little secrets you need to know, and you're really good at figuring them out yourself, and you really don't mind relearning your job....

You forgot spending fortunes replacing production lines the new OS is not compatible with but the old one runs.  Yep that is what they would need to do where I work replace ALL the production lines to "upgrade" to the more recent Windows. 
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Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #31 on: July 03, 2016, 05:15:14 pm »
Quote
op 10 Platforms
1    Windows 7    23.72%
2    iOS 9    14.16%
3    Android 4    12.16%
4    Windows 10    12.16%
5    Android 5    10.59%
6    Windows 8.1    5.10%
7    Android 6    4.41%
8    Mac OS X    3.82
9    Windows XP    2.83%
10    Linux    2.48%

From  Don't forget Android is built on Linux.  Win 8?  Still a flop.  Win 10?  Flopping too.
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Seti Team    Free Software
I believe truth and principle do matter. If you have to sacrifice them to get the results you want, then the results aren't worth it.
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Offline Javora

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #32 on: July 03, 2016, 08:11:49 pm »
Because more people are using their cell phones to get on the Internet.  Not so much that Windows flopped as that times have changed.  Windows mobile has flopped however, Microsoft needs to cut its losses on that front.

Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #33 on: July 03, 2016, 09:37:57 pm »
Windows 7 is number one.  10 is 4.  8 is 6.  With all the pressure and shenanigans by Microsoft 7 shouldn't still be dominant if the users were not solidly resisting it.  8.x is a flop and always was, it never passed 7 in popularity. 
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Offline Javora

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #34 on: July 04, 2016, 01:01:58 am »
If you add the Android versions and iOS together, it equals over half the market share.  Most people upgrade their phones about every two years which is why the list shows so many of the Android versions.  To see a real apples to apples OS PC comparison, all of the phone OS's need to be stripped out.

Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #35 on: July 04, 2016, 11:01:32 am »
Windows 8 flopped.  Not Windows.
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Offline Nemesis

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #36 on: July 04, 2016, 11:14:55 am »
Prediction.  Due to the relatively slow upgrade to Win 10 Microsoft will extend the free upgrade past July 29th 2016.
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Seti Team    Free Software
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 FoaS_XC : "Take great pains to distinguish a criticism vs. an attack. A person reading a post should never be able to confuse the two."

Offline Brush Wolf

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #37 on: July 04, 2016, 12:30:03 pm »
Windows 8 flopped.  Not Windows.

This, W8 was actually a good OS but the tablet centric Metro interface that they tried to force on people turned them off. W8.1 partially got rid of it and W10 only has a vestige of it within the start menu but you never have to deal with it.

Prediction.  Due to the relatively slow upgrade to Win 10 Microsoft will extend the free upgrade past July 29th 2016.

It wouldn't surprise me if the do but it also wouldn't surprise me if they didn't and basically told the procrastinators tough, break out the wallet.
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Offline EschelonOfJudgemnt

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #38 on: July 04, 2016, 01:21:08 pm »
One of the first things I did when I bought my 8.1 Convertable was to install a mod that restored the desktop and start menu (not Start8, although that's a good one - I found a free widget to do it).  It does a pretty good job of replicating the desktop, so it doesn't feel much different at all than the Vista install I'm typing on now, although it has some newer stuff that is, to be frank, quite nice.  Win 8.1 manages my wi fi connections and my 4g modem connection much better, and I don't need to start up my 4g software in order to make a connection in 8.1, I just click on the networking icon in the start tray, turn on wifi or the other thing that turns on my modem, pick my network and connect. 

My 8.1 system tends to find my 4G modem much faster when I plug it in to the USB port, and finds the 4G network MUCH faster than the software on my Vista machine, usually within 15 seconds, as opposed to several minutes on my Vista machine.

Everything else that I've installed so far works pretty well now on my 8.1 machine, but as it only has a 13" screen, I tend to use my Vista computer (17" screen) for more serious stuff, like photo editing and playing SFC.  I haven't tried installing SFC on my 8.1 machine though, mainly because that machine didn't come with a CD drive.  I have an external BluRay/DVD/CD drive now, and maybe someday I'll install SFC on the smaller machine so that I can use the HDMI port to play on my TV...

So I'd say that the 'bones' of 8.1 are actually pretty good, as long as you install a widget to make it more user friendly (i.e. restore the desktop environmnet).

The only reason I haven't upgraded my 8.1 machine to 10 is because of the size of the download.  If Microsoft offered a 'send CD/flash drive in mail' option that was free, I might consider it, but my 4G connection costs $10/gig, and I tend to hit/exceed my 5gb/mo allotment already.  Since 8.1 is working fine for me, and since I am perfectly happy with things the way they are (new fangled is overrated), well there ya go...

My other (3rd) laptop is XP, but I hardly use it anymore as it is pretty dated/significantly slower hardware wise/only 15".  My Vista machine is also slower than my 8.1 machine, but fast enough that I can use it well enough.  I'll get a 17" replacement eventually, and I'm sure it'll probably have 10 on it. 

I will miss having a 'hardwired/physical' networking switch on my replacement DTR (Desktop Replacement) laptop when I finally upgrade.  My Vista machine has a slider switch for my wifi next to my headphone ports, and it's a quick and easy way to shut off wifi (it's off most of the time, I only use the WiFi card when I'm traveling/visiting other people that have wifi).  On this machine, if I simply unplug the 4G modem from the USB slot and shut off the wifi card using the switch, i KNOW that this laptop is isolated from the internet.  I don't fully trust software switches, as there is always the opportunity of them being hacked/activating in the background to 'phone home to Microsoft,etc.'  Sometimes the old ways are best when you want to isolate your computer from any outside networks - too many home users IMHO leave their computers on networks 24/7, which increases the chances of hackers finding their way into said systems, and putting them to use.

Anyways, regarding to that list above.  Go diehard XP users!

Offline Brush Wolf

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Re: How badly has Windows 8 flopped?
« Reply #39 on: July 05, 2016, 01:36:46 pm »
Even if you didn't install a desktop widget for W8 you only had to deal with the Metro Interface on logging in and after that you spent 99% of your time on the desktop. The Metro Interface was really only bad because of being tablet centric and if it had been properly adjusted for the PC environment I don't think there would have been as much push back.
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