Windows 8 -- Microsoft goes astray

I have always felt that Microsoft did not perform well after leaving office at Bill Gates. Ballmer is far worse than gates in terms of personality charm and leader level. The only advantage is that he is extremely energetic ......

I think Microsoft, as the boss in the desktop operating system field, is the most difficult thing to worry about: Too few achievements in the mobile and tablet markets. In fact, Microsoft once took the lead in these fields. Of course, iOS and Android were not popular at that time.

In fact, Microsoft was involved in the mobile field much earlier than Apple and Google. At that time, Microsoft developed a Windows CE-based Pocket PC. Its design purpose was: run a Windows-like operating system (at least on the Interface) on a hand-held device with extremely limited hardware resources ). That's exactly what Microsoft did later. the Start Menu, taskbar, control panel, and close button ...... It looks like windows and saves power! This system once occupied the high-end market of smartphones for several years (at that time, the low-end market was mainly the Symbian System of Nokia). For developers, it's really good to use interfaces similar to Windows APIs to develop embedded operating system programs ......

Of course, this is all about iOS and Android. Microsoft's successor products in Pocket PC and the drawbacks of Windows Mobile gradually lose the market, I have mentioned this before. Here is a summary:

1. Too much pursuit of the same interface as the desktop windows, while ignoring the completely different hardware and usage, resulting in poor operation experience, surpassing the subsequent iOS and Android.
2. Over-developed OEM customization results in serious operating system discretization and severe hardware and software compatibility problems.
3. the development interface is messy (compared with windows on the desktop), and the documentation is very lacking.
4. Early giving up, resulting in loss of confidence in vendors, developers and users. As a successor, Windows Phone 7 adopts a completely incompatible approach, which further strikes existing supporters.

There may be others, but there are four main points: user experience, compatibility, development experience and market strategy.

Compared with Microsoft, Apple obviously thinks carefully. Later on, the iPhone apparently did not pursue a similar interface as MACOs. It completely developed a brand new interface based on the hardware usage of the device, users can easily click the icon on the interface to use a variety of applications. Using fingers instead of the pen tip is obviously a better experience. The iPhone uses a closed hardware environment, it minimizes system discretization and highly unified development interfaces, making development easier. More importantly, it provides appstore for developers to make profits conveniently, it's really amazing for developers! Its subsequent iPhone 3G, 3gs, 4, and the latest 4S have maintained a good forward compatibility. From these aspects, Apple * wins * Microsoft! The only unhappy person may be the mobile phone manufacturers ......

Apple's success turned Microsoft's eye on the market. Of course, Google also turned Microsoft's eye on the market. However, due to the relationship between the company's characteristics, Microsoft is more inclined to adopt the Apple model, ballmer also bluntly said on many occasions that Apple is their opponent, rather than Google. Even more, during the meeting, he saw employees using the iPhone, and he broke down, I don't think he's totally joking. So in the next Windows phone7, we saw a strong "apple flavor": Unified hardware requirements, framed interfaces and operating modes, and of course "stores ".

To be honest, WP7 is no better than wm6 for people who pay attention to practicality than "playing with machines". On the contrary, the high power consumption brought by WP7 makes me very uncomfortable and want to customize ringtones, I want to use my mobile phone as a USB flash drive, which is also very difficult. I will review the fatigue of the active tile operation interface after a while, I think the graphic interface of iOS and Android is better.

As a software developer, I always think that managed code cannot run native code. Therefore, Android and WP7 are slower than iOS in the same hardware, wm6 can be better, but Microsoft directly discards it, and can use local code to develop applications. It is also an open-source meego, which should be a favorite of our technical staff, it's just that Nokia gave up on it. People who used meego complained about too few applications at most. Nokia should not give up on it. It's very smooth to use and saves power.

In terms of balance between technology and market strategies, Apple has always been doing well and externally. Others think this is a creative company, and, it also constantly provides great returns to its investors.

Microsoft, eager to catch up with Apple, tries to use Windows 8 to unify the world and make desktop and mobile devices use the same operating system. This looks beautiful and is actually not feasible. In fact, Microsoft should not be the one with the most unified operating system, but apple, because its hardware control is far better than Microsoft, so far there is no indication that Apple will do so, IOS and MACOs are always two operating systems developed separately. I think Apple must have learned that desktop computers and mobile devices are significantly different. They have different hardware, functions, usage habits, and even different users.

I always hold on to the following point of view: most of the tasks that can generate benefits are completed on desktop computers (laptops are also desktop computers ), the main features of mobile devices (mainly mobile phones and tablets) are still consumption and entertainment (some entertainment still cannot run well on mobile devices ).

The desktop provides a hard keyboard and a mouse, which is still the most effective input device for the computer so far. As I am writing this article, I am using a standard 103 keyboard, I select, copy, and paste text with the mouse, which is much more difficult if I use a touch screen. The desktop also provides a large display that can display a lot of content at the same time, this is especially useful when editing office documents and writing code, but it is difficult for mobile devices to do so. If a screen is too large for mobile devices, in this case, the direct negative impact is that carrying becomes more difficult. In addition, the touch screen experience with too many operations is not good, and it is not as good as the mouse. As for what input methods such as body feeling, I can only say that playing games is acceptable, it is far from enough to do things. The same is true for speech recognition, which is currently in the field of consumption. It is useless for practical work that requires efficiency and accuracy.
 
I do not deny entertainment and consumption here. I also fully understand that mobile phones are not just a communication tool for many people. I just want to clarify that desktop systems and mobile systems are really different. In other words, I don't need a tablet or a smartphone, but I must have to use a desktop computer to work. With its own market share, Microsoft believes that what windows can do is its own world, but now it seems that its strategy is indeed very problematic, the barrier of the operating system does not seem so indestructible now.

Maybe you want to ask me, "do you mean Windows 8 has no prospects ?" Of course not. I don't want to say more about the strength of Microsoft. Sony, once the boss of the home game machine field, was squeezed out half of the country by its powerful offensive, not to mention the fact that it was the boss's desktop OS field. Microsoft's push system will naturally continue to be used. That's for sure, but if Microsoft is so willing to do it, rather than starting from the user's point of view, it will gradually go downhill ......