Why People Hated Windows 8

Thank you World of Warships for sponsoring this video.
During registration use the code FIRE to get for free:
-200 Doubloons
-1M Credits
-Tier 5 - USS Texas
-20x Restless Fire Camouflage
-7 Days Premium Account
The promo code is only for new players during the registration.

With its release in 2012, Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 8, ended up becoming one of the most hated and controversial products that they had ever made, but why?

It wasn’t just a matter of some public opinion; the failure of Windows 8 was actually much worse than it looked. Strictly talking numbers, Windows 8 actually did worse than Windows Vista, despite even having the advantage of being released during the holiday season.
Now with several more versions of windows succeeding it, it’s almost as if Windows 8 has become one of those products that Microsoft just doesn’t want you to remember. I mean, its support was cut very short compared to other Windows versions. Windows 8 never happened. But now that this once ambitiously marketed OS has since been kept in the past, it is much easier to look back and see where things went wrong, and doing that involves answering this question: Was Windows 8 really that bad, or was it just another victim of its time? Were these radical changes to the Windows experience justified in any way?

What’s particularly interesting about the story behind Windows 8’s failure is that it oddly reflects the factors which killed Windows Vista. These include the big design changes that Microsoft implemented, the popularity of Windows 7, objectives being focused on the wrong industries and demographics, forced implementation of apps, and lastly, simply the long-term damage of the bad press.

Giving Windows a “new look” was clearly not the right call. It’s easy to say that Microsoft totally screwed up because they just had no idea what they were doing, but an opinion like fails to take into account the technology of the time. In 2012, the direction that computers were going into was uncertain. The future wasn’t bleak. Computers were only going to become more popular and more powerful, but no one was quite sure what they were going to be like. The tablet industry was just starting to grow. Tablets had been around for a while, but with the iPad’s release just two years prior in 2010, it had undergone a complete transformation. All tablets were going to be just like the iPad from then on, and it was now a continuously and rapidly growing market. There was even speculation that tablets would make the computer as we knew it obsolete. The tablet would become the new PC, and everyone was now in on it…except Microsoft. They did have the advantage in the traditional keyboard-and-mouse PC market, but that was about it. With this new growing industry, they were falling a bit behind, and it was time to change that. It seemed that the only way to do that would be to make their most popular product more inclusive to these other platforms. Compromises had to be made. It was time to change Windows into a tablet-friendly OS, even if it’s at the expense of their already iconic setup, and that’s what they did with Windows 8. It wasn’t just the next update for your computer. It was something that would also be bundled with Windows Phone and the brand-new Surface RT, essentially to show off the new Windows’s versatility.

But as you would have probably guessed, touchscreen and non-touchscreen-based computers are very different. If you’re going to appeal to tablets, things have to be bigger and less cluttered. This led to one of the most controversial and hated decisions that Microsoft made to Windows 8: removing the Start Menu. People anticipating a more updated version of Windows wanted something that was more or less, a better version of Windows 7. Instead, they got something so foreign, it was like learning a new language. It was unfamiliar, confusing, and its setup was counterintuitive. Multitasking was now very difficult, something that Windows had been praised for mastering almost 20 years prior. There were third party workarounds for this, programs you could download such as Classic Shell for example that would solve this problem, but that was just extra work, and a lot of everyday people were not aware of these alternatives. People didn’t like Windows 8 because it was confusing, and it didn’t need to be.

Google +: just kidding.

Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod

A special thanks to these patrons:
- Swingadee
- Winolotonolo
- Tommy Sharp
- Sl0rg
- Nathan Inkenbrandt

ENJOY THE PROGRAM.

[nationsquid]

Thank you World of Warships for sponsoring this video.
During registration use the code FIRE to get for free:
-200 Doubloons
-1M Credits
-Tier 5 - USS Texas
-20x Restless Fire Camouflage
-7 Days Premium Account
The promo code is only for new players during the registration.

[friendofp.]

Windows 8's backlash could've been avoided by having a checkbox at the start of installation/setup if you were operating on a PC or tablet, with PCs defaulting to the standard desktop and start menu. Problem instantly solved.

[Sgtmajormiyamoto]

The headphone jack is one of the most missed features on flagship cell phones. It needs to be brought back, not accepted as being gone forever.

[kjorndog]

I was in middle school when Windows 8 rolled out and our school had a program where we were each provided a laptop (rare back then) and did almost all of our work on them. I remember just the constant frustration from both students and teachers because basically nobody knew how to use a computer anymore. A few months later they had everyone leave their laptop at school over the weekend and we came back on Monday with Windows 7 installed.

[JoeCensored]

The worst part was they used the same touch friendly environment for the server version of Windows for no sensible reason. Using charms and crap over vnc or remote desktop, as you usually do for servers, was basically IT hell.

[charlessnyder]

The removal of the headphone jack was definitely the wrong move and is still missed today. I don't think people have seen the light, more that they've just accepted that they're not getting it back.

[Nindota]

Apple's removal of the headphone jack pisses me off to this day, as I will always prefer to use a wired connection with headphones

[dogsinatrenchcoat]

I was in my first year of uni when windows 8 hit morale like a freight train. After the forced auto update I walked into the cafeteria and multiple people were having emotional breakdowns. I wasn't the only one who had a shit ton of files erased. It was...awful. It wasn't just people who didn't save their work and lost it to the forced shut down.

[sanchezking]

Metro/Modern UI wasnt even the worst thing about Win8. The worst thing was that Microsoft was seriously planning to use that UI style for Windows Server.

[DiamondCalibre]

I still care about removing the headphone jack... I just prefer wired connections over bluetooth, and the ability to charge your phone in the car and be connected to an aux cord is one of those things you don't consider until you need it and can't use it.

[Haar_Dragon]

"Windows 8 was trying to move people over to an environment they just didn't want." And this would define Microsoft's MO for the following ten years: forcing things on users and taking things out of their control.

[guesswho]

the headphone jack and floppy drives are two completely different things.
one was a slow storage device in a time where faster storage was more easily accessible.
the other is a way of connecting an audio deivce to another device without needing set up bluetooth any time you want to use it one device, then another and back or worrying about your audio device running out of battery, or it yelling at you for its last hour of battery life that it has "low battery" usually cutting off all audio and at max volume regardless of what volume you have it set to.

[thebasketballhistorian]

*This argument has been beaten to death but...*

Apple removed the headphone jack to promote AirPods _not_ because of aging tech. It's no coincidence that all the other phone manufacturers that remove their headphone jacks also had their own brand of wireless earbuds to promote.

In 2023 (a year after this video was made), headphones that use the 3.5 mm jack are still being sold everywhere and new non-flagship phones as well as all laptops still include the jack.

[jacke_RS]

The real reason windows versions tend to alternate from good to bad to good again is cause one version tries to fix what isn’t broken and then the next fixes what was broken

[bolladragon]

What always bums me out with Win8 is that it was SO GOOD on smart phones for the vast majority of things casual users do, but the failure of that UI translating to desktops and Android and iOS both working on large and small screens killed Windows phone despite just how much dev support it got from the start.

[ugosmith]

I still refuse to buy any phone without a headphone jack

[seragx]

You forgot to mention that all the new apps didn't initially had a close button, and there was no Taskbar! it worked like a smartphone where you had to go to the start menu to use another app, except that even in smartphones in that time the navigation bar was always visible 😂

[justingolden]

A LOT of people still care about the headphone jack, nearly everyone I talk to. They just can't do anything about it. We had ONE port used for audio and headphones across all devices (ok 2.5 and 3.5mm and some use usb) and everyone got headphones they love for that one port, they can use on any phone, any laptop, tablet, desktop, console, any device at all. And apple cut it to save manufacturing, improve waterproofing and force wireless on people

[orb]

Tiles were annoying, and it made the Windows symbol itself ugly, so I'll never forgive it. My dad installed it when I wasn't there, and I suffered through it until 8.1 made it a bit more manageable.

[Micha-Hil]

short answer: the windows menu
long answer: the windows menu with examples