I wandered over to the Microsoft site today to check out a sneak peak of Windows 8 and I wasn’t quite sure what to think. It’s not that I’m a fan of one company over another (though I am writing this on a Mac) but the Windows 8 tiles interface looks a little confusing. Cool, but confusing. I guess I’m just accustom to what we commonly know as the desktop space—a sort of mirrors real life interface that lets me keep track of my data’s location more intuitively. Windows 8 seemed to be anything but that.
I know that Apple, building on the success of it’s iOS (the name of the operating system on your Iphone and Ipad) formats, has tried to incorporate several iOS features into Lion. However, they didn’t do any drastic overhauls to the foundation of the user experience, opting instead to port elements that would translate well from the iOS to Mac OSX. Though I’m still not sold on Apple’s Launch Pad replacement of Expose, Apple’s ports do make sense to me because they’re something I’ve worked with before within Mac OSX, they now just have an iOS sheen. In this sense, Apple has done a good job of taking it’s products and merging the two experiences into something new, yet intrinsically understandable. Microsoft, and I’m not bashing them (the most expensive computer in my house is a PC) seems to be taking their mobile OS and painting it right over top of what most users would understand as Windows today, thus creating a new, possibly alienating experience.
This isn’t to say what Microsoft is up to doesn’t look interesting. In fact, it looks very posh, and fun, and touch friendly in a way that even Apple doesn’t seem to pull off. It also looks extensively informative; something you can find information in at record speed without navigating to multiple webpages or through a flood of applications. However, vast differences mean major upheaval to the user’s workflow, and if any company has learned how angry vast changes can make a customer, it’s Microsoft. I scratch my head as to why they would do this again, if, this is indeed what they are doing?
This may also account for why Microsoft opted to turn off the “leave a comment” option at the bottom of their YouTube page. That, or they’re scared of all the angry comments they’re going to get.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I[/youtube]