Was Windows 8 THAT bad?

Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 8 and nobody cares. Probably because no one used it, amirite? Was there anything worth remembering in this wildly unpopular version of Windows?

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FOLLOW US
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MUSIC CREDIT
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Intro: Laszlo - Supernova

Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High

CHAPTERS
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0:00 Intro
1:32 The NEW Start Screen & Metro Apps
3:14 Gesture Navigation
3:45 Mistakes were Made
4:45 The Good
6:15 what is what like IRL
9:45 the worst part...
10:25 8.1 saves the day
11:50 What I use
14:10 Outro

[epicyoda.]

Windows 8 was ahead and behind its time simultaneously

[i-hate-handle-names]

Windows 8 was the point that microsoft decided to start blatantly dictating to users how they will use windows instead of just having windows to facilitate the user's needs.

[rynoman]

The typing sound on the stock keyboard with the windows phones was the most pleasing sound I’ve ever heard. I’ll never forget typing on those phones. Probably the last time I actually had sounds enabled on my cell phone. 😂

[joshuan.]

I love listening to Linus talk about past Windows. I vaguely remember listening to my older brother telling me how bad it was and that there was no point upgrading the family computer from Windows 7.

[chubbyemu]

not sure if they did this intentionally, but this video is published almost to the exact 10 year anniversary of when the first Surface Pro was released. 09 Feb 2013. I woke up early that morning to get the Surface Pro at the Microsoft Store popup on Michigan Ave in Chicago, which was delayed a bit against the Surface RT, which came out a few months earlier. It had Windows RT, the Metro only version. I have a failed unboxing video of the Surface Pro with a "Year of the Snake" keyboard cover that will never see the light of day. That keyboard was unusable. To think, I could have been a tech YouTuber during Linus' NCIX days... 🤨

[Fobia]

I was actually working at Best Buy as the newly minted Microsoft Associate, got full advanced training on Win 8 and all. It was... Rough. Even proponents of 8 had these same criticisms. When we were doing pre-orders for new devices, I had a woman come in to buy our absolute cheapest desktop to give to her 6 year old nephew. The idea was that his little mind would learn it quickly and she'd have her own little tutor. Absolutely genius.

[eliezeidan]

The first time I used windows 8 in 2023 I had to search how to shut it down💀

[TenWolf-wbpc]

My issue with windows 8 was that you HAD to restart in 15 minutes for updates. Your options were "restart now or in 15 minutes".

I was in college at the time and a lot of tests were done online, and there were people who lost time on their tests because of this. One failed because he couldn't get back in after the restart.

I can understand their goral, but at the same time, make it a setting you can turn off, and have it off by default.

[Azeria]

Windows 8 ended up being a lot like Vista, underneath it had a lot of good power and features, but most people only got to use them with 7 and 10.

[matttypes]

I used to work at Office Depot and per their contract I was forced to promote and educate customers on windows 8. I didn’t meet a single customer that liked it especially because of the missing start button.

[Mythikal]

The one panel I ever used on Windows 8 was the desktop panel. It's honestly funny how arbitrary that whole UI became

[bumblingbubble]

I used 8.1 on my Thinkpad from '20-'22 because I wanted to give it a try out of curiosity. It definitely wasn't as awful as I remembered it was at launch and I would've continued using it had they not killed it off. But now, having moved to a debloated version of Windows 10, I don't remember the upsides of running it vs running Win10.

[arachnenet]

I had forgotten about all the weird stuff Win8 did because the first thing I did when I got it was installing Classic Shell. What a wild time this was!

[waynej]

I know of a number of corporate IT administrators who felt that the Win8 UI was a step too far for their corporate environment, and had zero interest in installing third party apps to make the experience more familiar for their users. So their decision was to stick with Win7 as long as they could, and hope that MS came to their senses!

[karenwang]

I used to run windows 8.1 on my surface pro 2 back when I was in college, it was honestly a very pleasant experience. I eventually was forced to upgrade to windows 10 because of a bug in windows update that caused the tablet to have 100% CPU usage until it ran out of power. I'll be sad to see it go.

[martaintitan]

I upgraded from windows xp directly to windows 8 and the only challenge I faced was absent start button. Once it grew over me, I loved windows 8/8.1. To this date I miss it, it's UI had some positive vibes going. I never used windows 7 on my pc.

[metaleggman]

With the update to 8.1, Windows 8 did eventually get pretty useable. I remember Luke saying that a long ways back on the WAN Show. Still a misstep, especially in terms of backwards compatibility, but most all complaints were fixed in 10, and as you said, a lot of cool features were added. I feel like the only reason Vista had so much adoption was because gamers wanted the best of the best, and DX10 (I believe) was Vista exclusive, and I believe Halo 2 and Gears of War were Vista only as well. It was also flashy, pretty, and had a truly functional x64 version (XP x64, I love ya, I enjoyed ya, but man were you a pain).

[snazzy]

Metro desktop was amazing on early Surface devices and actually pulled me away from Mac as my primary machine for about 6 months. No Windows version had done that before or since.

[UltraViolet]

I used Windows 8 exclusively in 2013, my last year of high school. It was installed on our student laptops, and most students hated it and reverted back to Windows 7. Except I thought it was pretty cool and kept it the whole year, even though i didnt have a touchscreen laptop. I loved rearranging the tiles on the homescreen and made everything i needed (my class notes, etc) super accessible. When i got a Nokia Lumia phone with the same design in 2014, i customised it to look like a tumblr blog with photo tiles everywhere. Good memories :) but definitely get the frustration.

[lukey]

this is how i feel about each newer macos version; it’s trying to merge ios and macos but since macs aren’t touch screens, the new settings, control bar, etc, are SO bad and take 2-3x more steps than they used to