Windows 9 and Microsoft's tormented road to convergence

There are less than 10 days left for the official presentation of Threshold, also known as Windows 9, about which we have heard a lot based on rumors and leaks but almost nothing on official statements from Microsoft.

These leaks have revealed to us, among other things, that the next major release of Windows will mean a return to the desktop for Windows users PCs without touch functions. We've also heard about the addition of features to Windows Phone, such as a notification center, and versions of Cortana and Storage Sense.

With all this information on the table, now is a good time to an overview of the expected changes for Windows 9, and trying to figure out where they are taking us and how they fit into the Mobile first, Cloud first strategy of the new Microsoft. But for that, we must first make a brief account of how we got from Windows 7 to the current complicated situation of Windows 8.

Windows 8, the new Windows Vista

Let's not kid ourselves, outside of the geek or early-adopter world, very few PC users like Windows 8. Proof of this is that its adoption rate is being even worse than that of the battered Windows Vista With this I do not mean that it is a bad operating system (in my opinion Windows Vista was not either), it certainly has many innovations and useful features for those who know how to take advantage of it , but there is something in it that causes discomfort and displeasure in our mothers and grandmothers.

In fact, it can be argued that the situation of Windows 8 is even worse than Vista When this operating system was released there By 2007, most of the complaints had to do with performance (high system requirements) and stability, problems that Microsoft later fixed with updates and service packs that made Vista a pretty solid operating system. Many users foresaw this and therefore adopted Windows Vista despite problems at the outset.

Anyway, at that time Microsoft had it relatively easy: users and companies just wanted a more stable operating system that ran faster , and to run the applications they used every day. The direction in which to move was clear and indisputable, and Windows 7 was the embodiment of those advances.

With Windows 8 the picture is much more complex. Users who refuse to adopt this OS complain about the very essence of what Microsoft proposes with it They complain about the Modern UI, the charms, and full screen applications. Obviously it is possible to address these claims, but doing so runs the risk of blowing up the vision of a convergent Windows in which so much progress has been made, the vision of “a single operating system to rule them all” (phones, tablets and PCs).

With Windows Vista users complained against performance and stability bugs. With Windows 8 they claim against the very essence of the operating system

The truth is that in the face of this dilemma Microsoft has already taken a path. They are going to listen to the people eliminating Metro as a work environment on computers with mouse and keyboard This decision has not been without criticism either, since many enthusiasts of the The company dislikes that it is "compromising on fundamentals" by not insisting on replacing the outdated desktop with the Modern UI, and being guided by users who do not value the future: the Metro interface.

Personally I think it is not so. In my opinion, Microsoft is simply trying to fix a serious user experience mistake it made with Windows 8. And they don't have a choice, because they know that if they don't they solve it, the rejection of the users will generate a new untenable situation of stagnation in old versions.

No, Microsoft, the desktop is not an application

The fundamental mistake Microsoft made in Windows 8 is making the desktop behave like any other application We entered it through a tile from the Start screen, we'd swipe down to close it, and the app switcher treated it as a single item, no matter how many programs we were running inside of it. In other words, the desktop ceased to be the work environment for PC users, to become a kind of application where we ran other applications , something like using a virtualized Windows 7 within a tablet operating system.

This mistake was not made just because, but in a zeal for convergence between tablets, PCs, and phones. As has already been said, Microsoft wanted all its environments to be one, to create an interface that would adapt well to any type of device, whether it had a 5-inch or 30-inch screen, whether it was touchscreen or not.

The experience that Windows 8 offers to PC users is similar to that of virtualizing Windows 7 within a tablet operating system.

Once there, anyone familiar with Modern UI on the PC would immediately be attracted to using Windows on other devices, such as tablets (Windows RT) or phones (Windows Phone), achieving a kind of “network effect” in which the popularity of Windows on the desktop would spread to other markets where Microsoft is in a less advantageous position.

"

The price of achieving this was relegating the desktop to the background, making it the app-launcher I mentioned earlier, which we users would have to make do with while the Windows Store grew and we could do everything with just modern apps. Bad idea. Despite Microsoft&39;s intentions, Modern UI proved not to be an environment suitable for mouse and keyboard productivity Jospeh Malachani illustrates this very well in his brilliant article Fixing Windows 8:"

Moral: Applications run by desktop PC users should “live” on the desktop and always be managed from it.

In all the successive updates of Windows 8 that have arrived, an attempt is made to correct this, Update 1 being the most explicit in this: now we control all applications from the taskbar, including Modern UI ( which can now be minimized); closing a Modern UI app brings us back to the desktop, not the home screen; and the taskbar is displayed even when we are in the modern environment.But still missing…

The new convergence of Windows 9: different environments for the same ecosystem

If the Modern UI environment works so poorly next to the desktop, what they should do now with Windows 9 is remove it completely for mouse and keyboard users right? Not so fast.

Short of having a single interface or environment for all devices, Microsoft can still achieve nearly as valuable convergence: having a single application ecosystem . And that's what they're aiming for in Windows 9, apparently.

While Modern UI hasn't quite caught up as an environment for handling non-touch computers, modern apps still have a say on the Windows 9 desktopIf we pay attention, almost all the changes at the UI level aim to give more prominence to the apps from the Windows Store, but now within the desktop environment.

Pinning live-tiles to the Start menu, implementing Cortana and notification center, integrating charms into a more mouse-friendly menu, etc. These are all changes that aim to make it easier to use Windows Store apps for mouse-keyboard users, and to make these apps offer just as rich functionality both on tablets and on the desktop, without requiring much adaptation effort from developers.

This way there will be greater incentives to create more and better Windows Store applications, since the market of users who actually use these apps would grow. Remember that today Windows Store is 50% smaller than Windows Phone, and its users have made 92% fewer downloads than smartphone users . In other words, Metro applications are used very little, precisely because of the difficulty of working with them when we use the mouse and keyboard.Integrating such applications into the desktop environment should solve this problem.

Almost all of the changes in Windows 9 aim to give more prominence to modern applications, but now within the desktop environment.

And as if that were not enough, tablet users will also benefit from this move, since they will be able to completely do without a desktop that is unnecessary and annoying for them.

In short, Microsoft's new goal with Windows 9 would be to create a common application ecosystem, attractive to users and developers, adding value to its products and that generates synergies between tablets, PCs and telephones. If they succeed, they will have advanced more than any of their competitors in terms of convergence of devices, also gaining a key factor in regaining market share among users. Can they do it? We don't know, but at least it seems like a more realistic and practical goal than forcing everyone to use the same operating system interface.

In Genbeta | Three ideas about the future of the desktop that Microsoft will bring with Windows 9