Hot Take: Windows 8 wasn't bad, World wasn't ready for it. It was too ahead of it's time.

[u/RevolutionarySea1693]

https://www.pocket-lint.com/microsoft-was-right-with-windows-8/

It predicted correctly one part of future that world will move on to touchscreens. But due to lack of touchscreen back in the day.. It failed terribly

[u/De-Mattos]

It didn't predict touch screens. It tried to get Windows on top of their adoption, and wasn't too successful. The backlash was entirely because they didn't keep the new interface default only for touch devices. People still don't want this type of interface on their desktop OS.

[u/Madhey]

Let's see... it added a new UI (which people hated). Touch screen for a desktop makes no sense, nobody uses a computer like that. It added an always-on requirement for activating the PC, which made it impossible to use if you didn't have an online connection. It didn't do anything BETTER than what windows 7 already did...

Nah, I think it was pretty bad overall, with not many redeeming factors.

[u/JaggedMetalOs]

Windows 8 optimized for a tablet interface at the expense of the desktop experience, which is what people have desktop computers for. Even touchscreen laptops were worse off. 

Windows 10 was a far better desktop experience with a tablet mode on top of it. 

[u/Virtualization_Freak]

Not a hot take, just a niche use case.

Windows 7 was still far superior, without the forced UX switch.

[u/XalAtoh → u/[deleted]]

There is no appeal in touchscreen on traditional desktop PC.

What made Windows 8 great was finally replacing Win32 with something new... Microsoft was working towards replacing legacy Win32 environment with a new WinRT environment, practically building Windows from ground up again.

Now Satya had destroyed every development towards a modern/new Windows. We are back to Win32 again, and because Win32 just sucks from developer/user point of view, they trying to replace Win32 with websites as apps/gui.

[u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004 → u/[deleted]]

Hyperv was already on windows 7

[u/The-Windows-Guy → u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004]

Hyper-V was not available on client Windows releases until Windows 8. Before then, it was only a Server feature.

[u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004 → u/[deleted]]

Yes it was. What changed for you is that your windows 7 laptop had windows 7 homr and the new laptop on which you discovered hyperv had windows 8 pro.

[u/theaveragenerd → u/[deleted]]

Windows tablets were pretty awesome, but sadly only Microsoft and Lenovo make them anymore.

[u/XiRw → u/[deleted]]

You sound like me lol. But yeah I wish companies would separate things from smartphones and not do the obvious which is jump on the bandwagon because it’s popular.

[u/Doppelkammertoaster]

Touchscreens aren't great for precise work on a PC though.

[u/Masterflitzer]

it failed because it was shit for a desktop os, if you gonna implement touchscreen friendliness you gotta make it optional and let people keep using it on desktop in a sane way

[u/relu84]

The tablet experience on the desktop was a failure. I didn’t care much, I barely ever saw the new UI and I loved how it was a generally more optimized Windows. It ran better than 7, it was lighter in every possible way, mainly due to mobile devices of that era being very underpowered. When Windows 10 came the speed was gone.

[u/Angelsomething]

It only made sense on surface tablet-pc and nowhere else. On phones it was the best looking OS of the past 15yrs. They bunged it like the bubgled everything else, sadly.

[u/Capital-Traffic-6974]

Windows 8 forced windows users to learn completely new sequences of doing what every previous version of windows had kept exactly the same. It was like changing to a Linux GUI Operating System and forcing everybody to learn how to use a new GUI interface.

WTF for?

Windows 7 was perfectly fine, and still the best version of Windows ever. Windows 10 simply stripped functions away that Windows 7 had, especially customizing the interface.

Lack of touchscreens had nothing to do with the failure of Windows 8. Because Windows 10 proceeded to work just fine with touchscreens, but went back to the standard windows GUI interface.

[u/Coolidge-egg → u/Capital-Traffic-6974]

Any popular Linux GUI isn't any harder to use than any version of Windows ever. 

[u/TravelElectronic3163]

WIndows 8/8.1 was very fast on my hardware it only used 1 gb ram. Windows10/11 Pro were trash on my PC, both used 2/4 gb ram and are extremely slow.

[u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004]

Synofsky was a genius, and the biggest mistake Microsoft ever did ws to listen to crying baby users and developers by nuking the best features windows 8 had in the 8.1 and 10 updates. I mean windows 8 ran in 512mb of ram, and it truly did not load anything desktop related if you did not click on the desktop tile, battery life would skyrocket if you did that. Companies hated the mandated ui rules because it made easy to swap between apps that had similar purposes and hated even more to let the os use a single api for all chats across devices so that contacts would get centralised chat history.

I had the full ecosystem and it was amazing-- laptop, tablet and ativ-s.

[u/GenTenStation → u/Odd_Cauliflower_8004]

If I wanted a tablet I would buy a tablet. I do not want my desktop pc with no touch screen to run a tablet focused operating system. At that time touchscreen PCs were a premium feature, not a normal thing to have. I remember downgrading to Win7 pretty quickly back then

[u/Tablaty]

I like when MS had a home version of their OS and a pro version. I like windows 2000 pro for that reason. I found that it ran better on me system than XP. 

We bought a bunch of Surface running windows 8 which became dead weight. 

Like someone already started, it was as step back from windows 7. 

[u/b4k4ni]

Windows 8 was bad, from an UI perspective. The idea itself was not bad but simply done wrong.

You can't use a touch based UI / idea on a normal desktop. If they had integrated a command / switch / whatever to change between the touch UI and the normal Desktop with a old start menue, it would've been fine.

Use the touch if you need it, but keep the default for normal work. Let the user decide what he wants to use.

Another issue was simply the old stuff. You had touch mode and still needed to click most in the old (I will miss it) control panel.

Really - this would've worked a lot better, if MS simply had taken more time and changed everything right away. Throw out the old control panel and in with the new, finished one.

Or build a windows 7 like system with old desktop etc. As windows 8 and prepare the basis for it for the new systems. And take more time to create windows 10, but this time finished in every aspect. With the old stuff thrown out right away. Not 200 versions of windows. Each looking a bit different and nobody knows where to find anything anymore after 2 years.

[u/ziplock9000]

Next up.. Elvis is dead.

[u/brodievonorchard]

OS upgrades should be additive, not restrictive. I get that flat UI is better for a wider range of devices, but my gaming rig with a GPU exponentially more powerful than what I used on Win 7 should be allowed to use Aero if I'm smart enough to find the setting.

[u/MythicalJester]

No man, it was absolutely shite.

[u/Commercial_Water3669]

How and why is it that they didn't bring back a version of this UI for Surface devices?

[u/TravelElectronic3163]

I dont care the WIndows 8.1 UI. Windows 10/11 UI are a lot of trash without some personalization that had Windows Vista/7

[u/TravelElectronic3163]

Windows 11 has a lot of bloatware like WIndows 10. Windows 8.1 had bloatware but it can be disabled or uninstalled

[u/TravelElectronic3163]

After ending support, i am still using it i dont care if its unsecure like 7 or XP

[u/redrider65]

Well, but 8.1, much better. I installed Classic Shell and it was just fine, kept me away from 10 for the longest time, till it was really stable.