It was the year 2012. Windows 7 was going strong after the trainwreck that was
Windows Vista, and for the most part, people actually liked Windows 7 a lot. And that was good for Microsoft. The only bad part about it, however, was that it needed to come up with a successor. And that successor needed to not just equal Windows 7 but outshine it.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, every time it released a good operating system, it would seem to be followed by a disastrous release. Each success seemed fated to be paired with a growing pains version of Windows. After Windows 98,
Windows ME was released. After Windows XP, Windows Vista was released. And sadly, Windows 8, as the successor to Windows 7, was destined for this same exact fate.
For a change, though, it wasn’t because of fatal technical issues. Rather, this time, it was primarily related to some changes that didn’t really sit well with Windows users. Microsoft was
convinced that the future was all about touch screens. Tablets, hybrid laptops, you name it, in the model of computing it was working off of in that fateful release cycle, we’d all be jamming our fingers against our screens.
To be fair to Microsoft, though, tablets aren’t a market segment that disappeared. They’re still alive and well. Unfortunately for the company, though, in its bid to make Windows friendlier to touchscreen devices, it lost focus on the needs of its core demographic: regular PC users. For millions of people sitting in offices and at home trying to use their regular old computers in a regular old way, Windows 8 was an unbearable departure from the familiar.
Windows 8 infamously got rid of the classic Start Menu in favor of a full-screen, widget-filled experience, which was a good fit for a touch-screen device, but not so much for a PC where you had a keyboard, a mouse, and, likely, years of expectations for how you would use that keyboard and mouse to interact with Windows.
Its whole UX, which Microsoft called “Metro,” was fundamentally built around touchscreen devices, from the settings menu to the apps you could install from the Microsoft Store. Yes, it had an app store with apps you could download, like a smartphone, which in modern Windows is pretty much the only significant holdover from the mess of Windows 8.
It did have a “desktop mode,” which gave you a regular desktop experience with all the standard programs you’re used to, but all in all, Windows 8 felt a bit awkward to use. It didn’t have a start button on the taskbar, and pressing the Windows key on your keyboard would just bring up the new, touch-first experience. No matter how hard you tried to avoid the new experience, somehow, you couldn’t avoid stepping upon it.
The dual interface mess, in addition to the “main” UI not winning over users’ hearts, made Windows 8 a memorable release but for all the wrong reasons.
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