Will Windows 8 Tablets Make IT Pros Hate Microsoft?

Mike Halsey MVP
Jan 8, 2012
Updated • Jun 25, 2018
Microsoft, Windows 8
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11

As we approach the beta of Windows 8 I've been thinking more about Windows tablets, and on our sister site Windows8News I've today written an article about the pros and cons of Windows on ARM.

One of these issues will be how successful the platform is overall.  In a large part this will rest on the success of the new Windows app store and Metro apps for PCs and tablets.  Microsoft got off to a good start last September at their BUILD conference in getting software developers excited about Metro, but it's all been very quiet since and there's been no word on how many developers are actively developing, or even thinking of developing, new metro apps.

When Windows 8 launches the app store will likely be fairly barren, and it will take many months, if not years for Windows to catch up with the number of apps available in the iPad and Android markets.  This ultimately can hurt sales of the platform as people might choose an Android or Apple device over Windows because there's more they can do with it, they'll probably not even be able to run their existing desktop software on it so what will be the point in getting one?

The remaining 90% is largely constituted of IT Pros and businesses, many of whom are already taking a dim view of Microsoft's new direction for Windows or who are, at the very least, concerned about what it means for them.  If the new Windows 8 tablets don't take off and sell in huge volumes it will essentially be seen as one huge slap in the face for the IT Pro community who will have had their precious desktop working environment decimated in the name of a product gamble.

The failure of Windows tablets to sell could see these IT Pros turning on Microsoft in huge numbers and perhaps even looking for an alternative (I've even considered a dual-booting iMac as my next PC for the first time ever!)  This means that Microsoft simply cannot afford to get Windows tablets wrong.  As the whole structure of Windows is being re-engineered around them, no matter how friendly they might say Metro will be on desktops and laptops, it is too big a gamble to get it wrong.

The result of a failure to sell tablets now, and crucially to convince hardware makers that it's actually Windows tablets they should be making and not Android ones, could be the cause of the single-biggest backlash in Microsoft's company history.  IT Pros and business users have got to be kept sweet and happy, above all else.  The main reason for this of course if the huge software eco-system that Microsoft have built around Windows, which include two products that help keep the company going; Windows Server and Office.  As we head inexorably into the cloud the need for individual companies to maintain their own servers will diminish, Microsoft's own Office 365 is making sure of that but at least this means they get some of the cash back.  If people rebel against Windows that eco-system will be under threat like never before and Microsoft could find its market shares diminishing rapidly.

Of course this is all speculation, perhaps even slight scaremongering.  It is ultimately entirely possible however as IT Pros and businesses are not known as forgiving souls.

Summary
Will Windows 8 Tablets Make IT Pros Hate Microsoft?
Article Name
Will Windows 8 Tablets Make IT Pros Hate Microsoft?
Description
Mike Halsey wonders whether IT professionals and developers will hate the new Microsoft operating system Windows 8 because of its focus on tablets and touch.
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Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Some Dude said on March 19, 2023 at 11:42 am
    Reply

    Are these articles AI generated?

    Now the duplicates are more obvious.

    1. boris said on March 19, 2023 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.

  2. Paul(us) said on March 20, 2023 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
    1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
    2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro

    Why oh why?

    1. Clairvaux said on September 6, 2023 at 11:30 am
      Reply

      Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?

  3. John G. said on August 18, 2023 at 4:36 pm
    Reply

    Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.

    Special event by they is a special crap for us.

  4. yanta said on August 18, 2023 at 11:59 pm
    Reply

    If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
    Better brands at better prices elsewhere.

  5. John G. said on August 20, 2023 at 4:22 am
    Reply

    All new articles have zero count comments. :S

  6. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 7:48 am
    Reply

    WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
    It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage

    I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one

  7. St Albans Digital Printing Inc said on September 5, 2023 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.

  8. Anonymous said on September 5, 2023 at 12:47 pm
    Reply

    What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?

    1. GG said on September 6, 2023 at 8:24 am
      Reply

      Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.

      I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.

      And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?

      Nope, just charge the customer twice.

      Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.

  9. d3x said on September 5, 2023 at 7:33 pm
    Reply

    When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?

  10. Scroogled said on September 5, 2023 at 10:47 pm
    Reply

    Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.

  11. ard said on September 7, 2023 at 4:59 pm
    Reply

    For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
    quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
    unquote

    so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.

  12. Andy Prough said on September 7, 2023 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    >”Now You: what is your theory?”

    That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.

    Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.

  13. TelV said on September 8, 2023 at 12:04 pm
    Reply

    Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.

  14. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:23 pm
    Reply

    The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.

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