@abarker said:
Sure it is. Based on actual market penetration, they should have already declared EOL on Vista. Why continue to devote any resources to a 3 version old product (since M$ considers 8 and 8.1 seperate) which is used by 3-4% of the market, when you provide no support for a product that has about 5 times the market share?
Personally I applaud Microsoft to sticking to their support timelines. They have pre-set minimum standards of how long they will support a product after its successor product ships. They are just following their previously announced timelines for Vista, and the same timelines for Windows 7. The timers are started based on when the next version is fully released.
@abarker said:
@RaceProUK said:No matter what you may think of 8 (and to be fair it's only the Metro side that annoys people; the desktop part is basically 7 with less shiny window frames),
And no start menu; and you have to have shortcuts on the desktop, or some third-party menu app, or just browse through your file system to get to your desktop apps; and then you have things like an IE app (started from metro) and an IE application (started from desktop) which behave differently even on a desktop (because who needs consistent application behavior?); and ...
Ok, if you are going to bash on a product, at least have your facts straight. Maybe you do and are just not being clear about it. In any case, lets make sure we bash Windows 8 and 8.1 for what they are, not what people say they are.
First off, the Start Screen does basically everything the Start Menu did, but takes up more room. Hit the start button / windows key and start typing and you get a filtered list off all of your applications just like in Windows 7, but with better results and including more settings items as well. You can add desktop items to the start screen just as easily as you can to the desktop or pin to your task bar. I cannot see any reason that you have to have shortcuts on the desktop except for personal preference.
True, there are two sides to the GUI -- the desktop and the Modern/Metro interface, but they play ok side-by-side, and even better in 8.1. The transition and blending between the modes needs work still, but it is not horrendous... I just want to have my full-screen modern app on one screen with my desktop on another without it switching so bad. It almost works on 8.0 right.
@abarker said:
@RaceProUK said:No matter what you may think of 8, MS have to support it, at least until 9 is released.
I won't argue that. They do need to support 8 until they have a replacement. However, they shouldn't be putting the winner (7) out to pasture until they know they have another successful Windows version out there.
Right... they should never have moved Windows 98 into extended support just because people were not buying XP... and they definately should not have done the same to XP because people were buying 7.
On that note, notice the pattern. Between 98 and XP there was ME. Between XP and 7 there was Vista. Between 7 and 8.1 there was 8, and yes, they treat 8 and 8.1 as seperate OSs for support, maitenence timelines, etc. And, while Windows 8 and Windows 7 are about flat right now in their ussage, Windows 8.1 usage is increasing.
@abarker said:
@RaceProUK said:The IE issue is fundamentally different; MS should never have tied the browser to the OS so tightly in the first place. If they kept it decoupled, then it'd have its own support schedule.
However, because they did tie it so tightly to the OS, it is a valid point. Not being able to upgrade IE on Win 7 is going to make things very difficult for web developers in the coming years. The fact that XP can't go beyond IE8 is already a pretty big PITA,and I be that there will be a similar Win 7/IE11 issue in the coming years.
IE is interesting, and it has been less and less coupled with the OS. It is possible they will update IE for Windows 7 beyond IE 11. We will have to wait and see.
What I am most interested in is to see if they backport some of the OS stripping/cleaning they did with the Win8 Kernel used on Xbox One. From what I understand, they found things tied together that should never have been tied together and broke a lot of code to fix it... but the result is that they can clean it up better. If that gets folded into the main OS, it could mean a whole lot faster, secure, and maintainable OS going forward.