Does Windows 8’s three-month report card read pass or fail? - yoderfiew1977

Windows 8 is passing two big milestones this week. On Th, Microsoft released its quarterly financial results, and hidden inside the numbers are clear indicators of the new operating system's shock happening the ship's company's bottom line. Tomorrow, meanwhile, marks the three-month anniversary of Windows 8's October 26 free date. The world has had lot of time to live with the new Osmium, and now we can more comfortably score whether it's a success or failure.

Has the OS stepped up its game since our none-likewise-cheery one-month progress describe? Let's just say that Windows 8's school grades still aren't quite meeting expectations.

Gross sales

The multi-billion dollar interrogate: Are people actually buying Windows 8 and Windows 8-power-driven laptops, desktops, and tablets? The answer's far from cut-and-dry, because Microsoft refuses to provide many concrete details.

The company's quarterly earnings report showed the Windows division earning $5.88 billion in the holiday quarter, a staggering 24 percent increase over vacation 2022, but Microsoft maddeningly refused to provide specifics beyond that total. We still have no more idea how many Surface tablets are in consumer custody, for example. At CES, Windows business head Tami Reller said that the company has sold Sir Thomas More than 60 million Windows 8 licenses—but that figure includes licenses sold to manufacturers corresponding Dell and Lenovo, fashioning it an unreliable puppet for figuring out whether everyday people are actually buying Windows 8.

Microsoft

Microsoft has kept consumer sales details about Windows 8 and the Surface tablet finale to the vest.

Third-company research firms paint a depressing retail moving picture. Computer sales have actually dropped precipitously since Windows 8 smash the streets. NPD reports that vacation gross revenue of Windows notebooks born a whopping 11 percent in 2022, piece both Gartner and IDC say that boilers suit PC sales dipped in the fourth quarter aside an estimated 4.9 and 6.4 percent, respectively. Net Applications says Windows 8's user adoption lags behind Windows Vista's. All that corresponds with talk from executives at HP, Acer, Asus, Fujitsu, Newegg, and others, who have universally said that Windows 8 is off to a slower-than-unsurprising start.

"To really know the state of Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Surface, additional granularity is needed," says Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Scheme. "We real need to know how many Windows 8 licenses and Surfaces sold through retail. The biggest unknown is why Windows 8 revenue looked good while all [manufacturers] had shaky quarters."

Software sales of Windows 8 volition no doubt boring going forward as the pricing of a Windows 8 Professional upgrade is fixed to step-up from $40 to $200 in February. Windows 8 has also for the most part been a dud in the enterprise arena, a couple of large exceptions aside. When Reller was asked about enterprise adoption of Windows 8 at CES, she explained how BYOD Windows 8 devices should work good fine alongside a Windows 7 deployment.

Grade: C- (Hey, 60 million licenses and $5.88 billion is nothing to sneeze at!)

Usability

I'd like to say there has been some commute here since launch, just alas, there hasn't. The modern UI still throws everything you knew about Windows out the windowpane. There's still nary Start button on the screen background. And usableness experts still convulse and pipe obscenities if you refer Windows 8 past name. (Our unrivaled-month Windows 8 describe card has a long list of specific complaints, if you're concerned.)

We found the modern interface different, but non overly burdensome. To see the online masses screeching it, yet, in the context of Windows 8, "UI" might besides stand for "unintuitive." Information technology's confessedly that Windows 8 and its hidden controls aren't nearly as user-friendly as Windows 7 out-of-the-box, and since usability complaints bear stayed vociferous since launching, we john't grade this highly. You'll flummox the hang of Windows 8's user interface eventually, though—forward you give it a chance to grow on you.

Grade: C

Overt relations and reception

Microsoft has covered the creation with pop-up book stores, Windows 8 ads, and that catchy Surface tablet commercial with the borderline-creepy dancing schoolgirls. (Seriously, look at their faces!) The company's publicizing efforts have been utterly slick and null short of stellar at getting the Windows 8 word out—though they've been less impressive at impartation the differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT, as Samsung recently emphasized when it declined to launch its RT-powered Ativ Tab stateside.

Microsoft

Those dancing girls are part of a superb ad blitz past Microsoft—though they sure are sincere about their Surface tablets.

The public reception to Windows 8 has been good blended, if non quite completely downcast, and Microsoft's refusal to good luck omerta about usability concerns and sales numbers have led to an teemingness of dissenting press and feverish analytical hand-wringing. To top information technology remove, the surprising departure of longtime Windows prez Stephen Sinofsky just ii weeks after the launch of Windows 8 cast a dark obscure of negativity across an operating system many an already regarded (rightly or wrongly) with scepticism.

In short: We've been affected to see such heavy Windows 8 branding appear in NFL football broadcasts—talk about a superior selling spend—merely it's clear the Microsoft media blitz hasn't been delivering ROI.

Grade: C-

Windows Hive away

All those colorful live tiles on the Starting screen are generated away recent-dash Windows 8 apps—apps ground exclusively in the administrative body Windows Store. Heck, Windows RT tablets only run new-manner Windows 8 apps. That makes the Windows Entrepot the Atlas of the Live Tile-equipped world, hoisting an entire ecosystem of expectations on its back.

Unfortunately, the Windows Depot is a real, very amalgamated bag.

Happening nonpareil manus, the app library is growing at a properly clip, going from 5000 apps available worldwide on October 26, to 20,000 available one calendar month after launch, to 39,153 apps available as of Jan 23. (The initiatory deuce checkpoint totals came courtesy of psychoanalyst Wes Miller's now-inoperative WinAppUpdate.com; the latest total was taken from MetroStore Scanner, other Windows 8 app-counting website.) A runty handful of big-name apps have hit the Store in the last couple of months—including Dropbox, ESPN, Vimeo, and Hayseed Mail—and the e-shelves are getting just packed decent that we were able to compile lists of the primo Windows 8 music, video, gaming, travel, and business organisatio apps.

Windows Store

The Windows Depot's selection is steadily up merely its still has an abundance of dubious apps, many of which are designed to imitative the look of more than popular programs.

It took some sound dig, though. Both the overall quantity and quality of apps disposable in the Windows Store disappoint when compared to competing mobile ecosystems. Many notable big-mention apps are still missing. Many of the apps that are available are hurried-hit repackagings of Web apps or otherwise insipid fare, and even the best modern-stylus Windows 8 apps generally aren't as brimful-featured as their desktop counterparts. The Windows Store still doesn't do a good job of pointing users towards particularly awe-inspiring apps, either.

Thomas More torment, MetroStore Scanner's data shows the pace of unweathered app submissions grinding to a crawl. After hitting the 20,000 app tag near its one-month anniversary at the destruction of November, the Windows Store smashed the 35,000 app barrier on December 27. Betwixt December 27 and January 23, however, only or so 4000 radical apps were added to the marketplace. That's bad news program for Microsoft, which needs mathematical notation catalogue growth—including a surge in high-quality apps—if it wants the Windows Hive away to be a selling point for the operating system. Microsoft ISN't unseeing to the fact.

"While the number of apps in the Windows Store quadrupled, we clearly have more than work to do," ZDNet reports Microsoft CFO Peter Klein saying during the company's period of time conference promise. "We pauperization Sir Thomas More rich, immersive apps that give users access to content that informs, entertains, and inspires."

Grade: C-

Areas to improve

In our one-calendar month report for Windows 8, we urged longanimity. Later such a unsmooth holiday season, there's the tendency to panic, but Microsoft still cautions that this OS was built for the long run, not the short term. "Clearly with a project this ambitious, it's not just nonpareil marketing season, it testament be the intersection of multiple selling seasons, and more build up to come," Windows business head Tami Reller said at CES.

She's right, of course, and her comments are echoed by Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. "It's still aboriginal in the game, and Microsoft is pretty dedicated to making this bump, and bequeath continue advertising to try and shuffling it so," he told Pine Tree State via email.

Windows 8 soundless has breathing space. Both Gartner and IDC expect leastwise 350 jillio PCs to ship this twelvemonth, and the overwhelming majority of those will ship with Windows 8 installed. Better even, Windows 8 is faster and better than Windows 7 low-level the hood, and many of these lackluster grades could easily be improved with some minor tweaks. The Windows Store will only arrive better as metre goes on. Some of the usability concerns could atomic number 4 squashed by releasing an update that restores the Start up button and enables and option to boot uncoiled to the background. If Microsoft does whol that, a lot of the electronegative reactions currently bandied about could disappear overnight, leaving Windows 8's promotional future in the capable hands of those oh-sol-slick TV commercials.

Sure, Windows 8 may not make the dean's list quite yet, but if Microsoft pays amend care and does its homework, the operating system could unmoving be honor roll-bound in the future. Windows RT, connected the other hand, teeters on the brink of disaster—but that's another story.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/456591/does-windows-8s-three-month-report-card-read-pass-or-fail.html

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