... somehow I don't think so... (time will tell...)
Using a something like a Twitter client as an example is
possibly the most ridiculous case I've ever seen or heard of. Lemme think about this.... a client for
something that is almost as ubiquitous as the web itself gets what they are
daring to call "a lot" of downloads.
Back in reality land, there are over 100 million twitter users, close to
a billion Windows users. Even if only a
tenth of a percent of those users are trialling Win8, then the Win8 user base
should be also over 100 million of them. In the unlikely reduction case of only
having a 1% overlap of those groups (which is very unlikely as early
adopter/tester types tend to want to talk about it), that would make for at
least 1 million Twitter clients for Win8 being "necessary" to fill
the market. So, um, the sales only
managed about 100,000, or a tenth of that potential market....
Now on one hand, that says that this is a "killer
app" that has been the stuff of legend for decades, and forms a good
business case. However, a healthy dose
of a reality check has proven time and again that the "killer app" is
so rare that even the most rabid VC won’t pony-up cash unless they are looking
for a tax write-off !
Microsoft *should* know that for a healthy OS, you need
good, usable and *needed* applications.
After all, that is one of the key points that has kept Linux (as a viable desktop) at bay for
over a decade. So what they are *REALLY*
saying is that they recognise that nothing in the Windows application market
currently will look any good or work properly with their shiny new OS and now
(finally) they are in damage control trying to get some apps ready for the
release. After all, who will buy a
Win8-entombed desktop if nothing works right on it ?
Just when the stupidity of this seemed to have peaked,
today's newsfeed contained another gem.
This time a "UI evangelist" touting the new
interface as being a good thing and (in essence) saying that developers are the
problem.
Now this guy is not your average marketing idiot, he does
recognise a pigs ear when he sees one, so he made a comment that will
undoubtedly come back to haunt Microsloth in the months ahead;
"Business apps, he said may not work in this
context, with more familiar icon-driven UI elements still available for apps
that just won't fit into TIFKAM's design paradigm."
Right, so the real bread-n-butter of the desktop PC
market is likely to find the Metro/Win8 interface unworkable. Let's say that word again,
"unworkable".
Don't get me wrong, I'd *like* to see a UI that works as
seamlessly as the SciFi style interfaces (think Star Trek or Babylon 5). I'd *like* to have a programming language
that apparently doesn't need a keyboard AT ALL (thinks of Scottie's classic
comment when presented with a mouse, "how quiaint"). I'd *like* AI that doesn't turn into SkyNet and
try and eliminate the invasive parasite that has infected the planet.... but
seriously, a paradigm change does not take place over night and you can NOT
just take your near-monopoly position and FORCE everyone to adopt it "just
because they have no choice".
Ignoring the socio-political rants that could stem from that line of
thought, Microsoft has already been slapped down by a totally retarded attempt
to FORCE users to do something, it was called "Vista", and business
users skipped "that upgrade" en-masse.
Contrary to some of the gaming press, I'm not so sure that Win8 is so dire in that sub-segment of the desktop market. The bulk of gamers may be perverse genetic freak variations of "Power Users", but ultimately, they tend mostly to use one HUGE full screen single interface, so this may be almost unnoticed by a lot of them unless they tend towards "windowed mode" (and we won't talk about why they feel the need for that configuration will we...).
