[anon(7929613)]

Everybody is loving Windows 10. I too like it a lot. But friends, do you think that Windows 10 owes to Windows 8.0 and Windows phone 8.0 for it's existence? It's true that many people disliked the tiled interface of Windows 8 and 8.1. But may be that is what led us to this point. What do you think? Finally we have an OS that can support any device. May be there is deeper meaning in all this.

[xandros9]

I figured something needed to rip the metaphorical Band-Aid off.

[Steve Adams]

Of course it does. Microsoft knew it was getting massive amounts of flack for 8. I for one loved windows 8 and was an early adopter. Now windows 10 is a huge step forward in operating systems for computers/tablets/phones. I am just waiting for the 10 mobile os to be released officially before I switch my 1020s and get my new 950s.

But yes, 10 owes itself to 8.

[Bagzton]

Of course it does. Microsoft knew it was getting massive amounts of flack for 8. . . . Now windows 10 is a huge step forward in operating systems for computers/tablets/phones. . . .

But yes, 10 owes itself to 8.

Yes I too believe Windows 10 owes itself to 8

[a5cent]

Every version of Windows owes to what came before it.

Windows Vista got a ton of flak, but W7 was adored, despite the later being little more than a recolored Windows Vista with drivers that actually worked (3rd party hardware developers had enough time to get their drivers working correctly by then).

The unification efforts that are now completed with W10 started life way back in Windows Vista too.

The .NET runtime and the C# programming language, which are used to make universal apps, started life on XP.

There are thousands of examples like this...

[Steve Adams]

Exactly. 7 was just vista with a couple of additions. Everyone balked at vista, I found it worked great. Again I was an early adapter and it was fine.

[Spectrum90]

No. WP7, WP8 and Windows 8 were low quality products that shouldn't have existed. That series of bad decisions made Microsoft irrelevant in the consumer market.

[elindalyne]

Exactly. 7 was just vista with a couple of additions. Everyone balked at vista, I found it worked great. Again I was an early adapter and it was fine.

Eh... That's not really the case. Under the covers there were a lot of things Vista did wrong such as overaggressive caching, degraded performance of CPU intensive tasks, and file transfers in general. The fact of the matter was you needed a better PC than was readily available at the time to be able to run Vista decently.

With 7 they disabled/removed/tweaked a lot of the processes causing the crippling performance degradation and also had the bonus of decent PC hardware becoming more available. 7 could run on low end (the general populous) machines. Vista could not.

Don't get me wrong, Vista started a lot of necessary major rewrites of the system architecture, but it was really a long way off from being good.

[tangledW]

If Windows 8 hasn't had such a bad reception, Windows 10 would be known as Windows 8.5 (or something to the like). Universal apps and one OS has been the plan for sometime now.

[a5cent]

Eh... That's not really the case. Under the covers there were a lot of things Vista did wrong such as overaggressive caching, degraded performance of CPU intensive tasks, and file transfers in general. The fact of the matter was you needed a better PC than was readily available at the time to be able to run Vista decently.

I think you're exaggerating a bit here. I had a PC that was a few years old at the time. Not low end, but certainly nothing special either. I installed Vista within a month of release and had no performance issues whatsoever. More importantly, people with low end or very old hardware typically didn't upgrade OSes, at least not back then. 99% of folks got their OS upgrade when they purchased a new computer.

However, there was a problem of MS certifying NEW devices as being "Vista Ready" that simply didn't deserve the moniker. These were typically bottom of the barrel devices who's only sales pitch was "I'm cheap", and were barely feasible for running XP. So while MS admittedly screwed up on that front, I don't think it's correct to say that capable enough hardware wasn't readily available. Even older devices did quite well performance wise if you added 2GB of RAM.

Also, if you didn't like the "overaggressive caching" (assuming you're thinking of stuff like SuperFetch which lives on to this day), you could just deactivate it. If that was a big deal in some circles it shouldn't have been.

In addition to the dishonest "Vista Ready" marketing, the two biggest issues that gave Vista a bad rep were Windows UAP, and drivers that simply were anything but ready. At least in my neck of the woods, the later was by far the biggest contributor to Vista's perceived issues.

[anon(7929613)]

Every version of Windows owes to what came before it

But don't you think that Microsoft took a huge chance by integrating the smartphone aspects of OS into Win 8.0, which was a full fledged PC OS? I think that such transitions have only happened twice in the history of Microsoft - One in 1995, when they transformed their entire OS around internet and second in 2013 when they transformed their entire OS around smartphones. What do you think?

[elindalyne]

Back when Vista was in it's "prime" I was working for a small business that dealt with a lot of low knowledge clients. They'd purchase a laptop and we'd install our software. Things like file transfers via the UI took 3-4 times longer than they had with XP. Same thing when compared with 7. Heck just doing an install would take on average of an hour to 3 hours longer on Vista than XP or 7.

Superfetch still exists yes, but hardware can actually support it now. Back then it couldn't

[excalibur1814]

No. I'm thinking that Windows 10 was always the plan, since Windows 95, with everything between them just being a great big test. /s

[a5cent]

But don't you think that Microsoft took a huge chance by integrating the smartphone aspects of OS into Win 8.0, which was a full fledged PC OS? I think that such transitions have only happened twice in the history of Microsoft - One in 1995, when they transformed their entire OS around internet and second in 2013 when they transformed their entire OS around smartphones. What do you think?

I think we have very different ideas of what makes an OS. You seem to take a very UI centric approach to judging an OS, which admittedly is the most visible part of an OS, and certainly influences how one works with it, but at least from a technical perspective and in terms of how one OS builds on its predecessors, it's a small piece of the pie, to the extent that the UI is almost insignificant.

The UWP is a million times bigger issue than a desktop OS being extended with touch input capabilities and adopting live tiles.

I also think the changes made in Windows 95 are laughably small compared to the big jumps made during Vista and W10.

[anon(7929613)]

You seem to take a very UI centric approach to judging an OS.

Actually I am not judging the OS at all - technical or otherwise. I am trying to analyse the change of VISION of Microsoft, which was necessary to survive in a mobile first environment and that makes Windows 8.0 important.

[a5cent]

Actually I am not judging the OS at all - technical or otherwise. I am trying to analyse the change of VISION of Microsoft, which was necessary to survive in a mobile first environment and that makes Windows 8.0 important.

If this is not a W10(M) thread but a MS strategy thread, then that makes things a lot more abstract.

For example, I see no internet based vision behind W95. The fact that it included support for internet technologies and telecommunications hardware out of the box were, basically, just features that were right for its time, and which every OS did. That was an OS' job after all.

Actually leveraging those internet technologies so as to provide compelling OS level services (an app store, hosted storage, etc), and tying it all together in a coherent way (something that deserves to be called a vision), is a far more recent affair.

In terms of how people interact with their devices, I'd say W10 significantly backtracks on the ideas W8 followed. At least in that department, I don't think W8 was necessary to arrive at W10.

On the other hand, the vision driving MS' unification efforts hasn't changed in ten years.

[anon(7929613)]

I see no internet based vision behind W95.

In the book - "The Road Ahead", written by none other than Bill Gates, he himself explains how he surprised the whole computing world by restructuring his entire business around internet in 1995 and then goes on to say that drastic steps like these are necessary to survive in the ever changing world..............................By the way, I got your point and I have a different opinion and it's alright. We are entitled to have our own opinions. That's why I posed this question. To get a feel of what other people think. So thanks for you insight.

[a5cent]

^ Yes, but tell me how that manifested itself in W95 or even XP? It didn't, or at least not in ways users could directly perceive. As is often the case, its biggest impact may have been realized in the form of things users didn't perceive. While important, those aren't things we usually call a compelling vision. They are just technical necessities.


At some point security became a huge issue, and that certainly had a huge impact within MS, but little to no impact on anything most users could directly perceive either.

That seems very different to the recent restructuring MS went through, in order to align the company with the UWP vision. That seems far more tangible, and at least has the potential to lead to perceivable benefits.