Windows 8 is a disaster

No mincing of words here. [Link]

God knows, Microsoft tries. It's a wonderful observer and follower. After watching Windows Vista get mismanaged and then slapped around by Apple, it tapped Steven Sinofsky to reimagine Windows. It's fair to say that this man shares many of the same character traits—and flaws—that defined Steve Jobs. He was belligerent and one-sided, didn't work well with others, had no qualms about tossing out features and technologies that didn't originate with his group, and had absolutely zero respect for customer feedback. Here, finally, was a guy who could push through a Steve Jobs-style, singular product vision.

And he did. Sadly, the result was Windows 8.

The reason this happened is that while Sinofsky had the maniacal power and force of will of a Steve Jobs, he lacked Jobs' best gift: An innate understanding of good design. Windows 8 is not well-designed. It's a mess. But Windows 8 is a bigger problem than that. Windows 8 is a disaster in every sense of the word.

This is not open to debate, is not part of some cute imaginary world where everyone's opinion is equally valid or whatever. Windows 8 is a disaster. Period.

While some Windows backers took a wait-and-see approach and openly criticized me for being honest about this, I had found out from internal sources immediately that the product was doomed from the get-go, feared and ignored by customers, partners and other groups in Microsoft alike. Windows 8 was such a disaster that Steven Sinofsky was ejected from the company and his team of lieutenants was removed from Windows in a cyclone of change that triggered a reorganization of the entire company. Even Sinofsky's benefactor, Microsoft's then-CEO Steve Ballmer, was removed from office. Why did all this happen? Because together, these people set the company and Windows back by years and have perhaps destroyed what was once the most successful software franchise of all time.

The specifics of what's wrong in Windows 8 don't really matter, and of course we've discussed this issue many times. Certainly, some of it isn't even Microsoft's fault: The personal computing market is moving on. But at a high level, the Sinofsky era was of course a reaction to what came before. Likewise, what's happening post-Sinofsky is another reaction, this time to what happened during his tenure. And while Windows 8.1 could be seen as an overdue nod to responding to customer feedback again, what's happened since then, and can be seen more clearly in Windows 8.1 Update 1, is ... troubling.

To be clear, Windows 8.1 Update 1 is not exactly an earth-shattering update, and while it brings many small changes to Windows, it likewise doesn't add any major new features. Windows 7 and 8 represented what the Windows team could deliver in three years, and Windows 8.1 is what they can do in a year. Update 1? That's about three months' worth of work, tops.

The problem with Update 1 isn't in any single small functional addition. It's in the strategic direction that this update implies. You may recall that I previously described Windows 8.1 as an apology, a way to fix Windows as much as possible in one year, and make the Metro environment more hospitable to tablet users (fewer trips to the desktop and Control Panel) and make the desktop more hospitable to traditional PC users (fewer reasons to visit the Metro side of the fence). In that sense, Windows 8.1 is "successful," but only within the confines of the madness of its predecessor. It doesn't do a thing to address the fact that Windows isn't a single OS. It's two of them, mobile and desktop, fused together unnaturally like a Frankenstein's monster.

Windows 8's big problem is that is tried to combine the desktop and the tablet and not the phone and the tablet like iOS does.