The question has surfaced again and again: What is wrong with Window 8?

The question has surfaced again and again: What is wrong with Window 8?

for me it's not so much what is wrong with win 8 (complete lack of visual cues, inconsistency, etc) as what is wrong with the big picture.

for apple it's a no-brainer. their market penetration on desktop is minimal. they 'own' the tablet market for now. Even if Android devices are now going to invade the tablet market as they have with the smartphone market it doesn't mean a slowdown for apple. the market expands so quickly apple can still grow. if they can make macbooks and imacs a natural choice for ipad owners needing a desktop ot laptop computer that would mean a lot to them. so it will make sense to make macos more ios-like.

what i don't get is microsofts logic here. they have no market penetration whatsoever on tablet or phone. they 'own' the desktop. Why risk the desktop market in a first attempt to get into tablets? "the ui formerly known as metro" can get good for tablets once they fix the usability issues. expect win 9 to be much, much better. but i cannot see how win 8 can become good for a desktop. it's just all wrong. they are forcing this unfinished tablet-centered and very inflexible ui on desktop users who had enough trouble with the upgrade from 98 to xp. and they are surprised they didn't sell a lot of win 8 pc's for xmas?

why not go the more 'natural' route? Live with fragmentation for at least the first release, with the new ui only on tablet and phone releases. fix the problems. experiment with how it would be received on desktop (release it as a free extension for the desktop OS).

imho gnome did a few mistakes with gnome 3 and the way it was released. but gnome-shell is doing it right where win 8 is doing it wrong. by offering a set of visual cues, basic behaviour and workflow that is consistent, but with a completely minimal desktop that can then be expanded into what you need on a desktop or a tablet.