Windows 8: Microsoft's Seppuku

The Microsoft's empire peaked a couple of years ago, but last week it has started collapsing. Windows 8 together with the Windows RT and the glorified Surface tablets are the evidence. It is unbelievable, but the bundle is a complete self-ingited disaster.

For consumers the reason to stay with Windows has been the backwards compatibility. Which has just been broken now. Windows 8 is no longer compatible with the previous versions of Windows. Whoever is presented with the Windows 8 start screen is immediately lost and confused. No desktop. Just tiles. And when they find the "desktop" tile, they get the desktop without the Start button. Try it for yourself and experience the feeling. For many Windows users it is now easier to move to MacOS or ChromeOS than to move to the Windows 8. Or even better to stay with Windows 7. Which is the reason consumers will reject the 8.

Windows RT goes even further in breaking the backwards compatibility. Nothing works there. Literally. The old applications do not run. The new ones do not exist and will not be created (more on this later). Even the Media Player is not present on the RT (can you believe that?)!!! Office? Yes, but who uses Office these days? Yes OK the corporations where people still email Word / Excel attachments to each other. Dinosaurs who have never tried Google Apps / Docs.

Today Web is The Platform. We don't need no desktop operating system anymore. The world of legacy, rich / local client / framework - dependent applications has ended. No application developer is interested in restricting the target market to a niche operating system like Windows, especially the Windows 8. When you are about to invest millions in developing a new app, you want to be compatible with all computers on the planet. The last thing you would want was to lock yourself to a single platform with shrinking reach. HTML5 browser is the only choice, the only common denominator. And when your app is based on HTML5, you do not need any Windows. Any RT. Any Microsoft. Which is the reason developers will reject the 8.

With the rejection of Windows by both consumers and developers so obvious, I just cannot imagine Microsoft is so blind they are betting against the facts. But they have been living without a grand vision for many years now. It is Ballmer's and Sinofsky's world down there in Redmond. The world full of .doc and .xls and .ppt email attachments. A box they live in, a box without windows (pun intended!), not being able to think outside.

Steven Sinofsky is the second biggest disaster for Microsoft (after Ballmer). He is a perfect executor. Perfect program manager. Just lacking the vision. He has been responsible for the Office suite for many years. And he led Office to nowhere. Office has just grown old and fat, but the Office today is the same Office we had back in 1995. Files being emailed across organizations. Files with the old school "Do you want to save the changes? Yes / No / Cancel" philosophy. What the *** does save mean? Who in their right mind put this man in charge of the entire OS strategy? He is living in his past, concentrated on the rear-view mirror, not seeing the cloud / browser-based / platform-independent future in front. And the result we have today.

The Microsoft Surface tablets are nice. Some even say they are the best pieces of hardware created recently. I honestly doubt that, in light of the just announced Nexus 10 with 4x the screen resolution and AMOLED instead of LCD. A few months ago I named multiple user accounts the single reason I would choose the Surface for. In the meantime Google has delivered multiple user accounts in the Android 4.2 on the Nexus 10. But even if the Surface is good, what an irony it is that Microsoft has made such a good hardware with such a nonsense software. What are people going to run on the Surface? Office? Excuse me, and what else? Who will be writing new applications for the Surface when all developers have already gone the iOS or Android or HTML5 way?

Windows is the dead end. With version 8 Microsoft has committed a seppuku. They need a new Messiah to resurrect them. Ballmer just won't do it. Back in July 2010 he acknowledged in a presentation to analysts, Apple’s success with the iPad. “We are coming,” Ballmer said literally. “We come with thundering cannons. The operating system is Windows.”. The canons have just fired. The problem is they aimed at a wrong target. Too obsessed with Apple, Microsoft has been missing the big picture, which is, the Cloud. Unfortunately under Ballmer's regime, the entire staff prefers to be politically correct. Nobody dares to express their own feelings and ideas. I doubt there are no great visionaries, able to see beyond the horizon. But it looks like the corporate slavery makes them clap hands and not to challenge the big boss.