Windows 8 is ten years old, and it was far superior to what most people remember
Do you remember Windows 8? It turns out that it has been 10 years, but if you look at it in 2022, it still looks so modern that you could be forgiven for thinking it was a more recent release. But not many people used it, and almost all of its features have been taken out of Windows.
That's unfortunate
As a result, I haven't been interested in tablets in a long time because nothing has been as enjoyable to use as Windows 8. Sure, I'd had iPads and such, but a Windows tablet was unique in that it could function as my laptop when necessary. Naturally, Microsoft annihilated it.
Windows 8 mirrored the design of Windows Phone 7 and 8, and I believe it was perhaps too ahead of its time. Windows 8 was, at least in part, a radical departure from Windows 7. The old Start menu has been replaced by this beautiful full-screen experience with touch-friendly tiles, some of which show useful information like the weather or news headlines.
Like widgets, but not as bad because they had a cohesive UI that actually worked rather than looking like a jumble of random items. It would still look fresh and modern if it was released today.
However, the start screen was only a portion of it. The Metro UI was carried over into the app design. The UI was big and bold, and unlike traditional apps, it scrolled side to side rather than up and down. Aside from being intriguing and unusual, it was also a very intuitive experience. Swiping across instead of up and down felt much more natural to me, especially on a tablet. After all, don't we read from left to right? (I appreciate not everyone reads left to right).
Windows 8 apps stood out among Android, iOS, macOS, and even traditional Win32 apps. Nothing else appeared to be a Windows 8 app. It had its own distinct vision of what a touch interface should be, and it was freaking incredible. It made using a tablet like the Surface Pro 3 a real pleasure. The touch targets were always large, and there was never too much information on the screen at once. It's fantastic.
As a result, it naturally ended up in the trash. Congratulations, Microsoft
Windows 8 tablets are abysmal. now
Windows 8 was not widely adopted. I've always chalked it up to fear of change, and when it comes to Windows, this was probably the biggest change since Windows 95. Whereas macOS has always been considered the sexy, cool kid alternative, Windows has always been used by billions of people on billions of machines.
And those people are resistant to change. They wanted Windows 7. In many corporate (and governmental) cases, they use Windows XP. What exactly is this revolutionary full-screen start experience full of colorful blocks? Remove this from our company's ThinkPads. Gamers, too, were uninterested. It was only necessary to look at Steam's hardware surveys to see how many far too many people remained loyal to Windows 7.
I'm being facetious, but there's some truth to it. Change is frightening, and in the corporate world, it can completely disrupt important tasks. The problem was that Windows 8 still had a desktop mode. But, for the time being, it was hidden behind this new Start screen. Of course, the Start Menu returned, but Microsoft could have mitigated some of the criticism by offering a professional edition without the Start Screen. After all, if you lived on the desktop back then, you probably weren't installing many Microsoft Store apps.
For me, the issue isn't that people didn't like it. Many people clearly didn't like Windows Phone (and they were all wrong), but having a choice makes everything better. My problem is that, since Windows 8, Microsoft-powered tablets have become, well, awful. It's just plain bad.
Even if it wasn't very good, Windows 10 attempted to include a tablet mode. The Start Screen was fine, but Windows 10 was not nearly as touch-friendly as Windows 8, so the entire experience fell apart. And Windows 11 didn't do anything to improve matters.
As a result, tablets such as the Surface Go 3 and the recently announced Surface Pro 9 are now running a desktop operating system that isn't remotely optimized for touch. Consider how bad the iPad would be if it simply ran plain macOS without any effort. Microsoft had its own iPad moment and killed it cold instead of improving it and coming up with a solution that suited everyone.
I'm stuck with an iPad that I don't care about. I have a Surface Go 2, but I don't use it as a tablet. Because that's what it is, I use it as a small laptop. Even if Android apps came to the desktop, that wouldn't make it a must-have tablet.
I, like almost everyone else, own an iPad these days. Why? Because I enjoy using a tablet for certain purposes (including entertaining children), and it's the only one worth purchasing because Apple appears to care about it. But it's really like a washing machine or a microwave. I use it, but I'm not crazy about it.
What I liked best was Windows 8 on tablets, that futuristic OS released ten years ago that may have been a victim of being too far ahead of its time. I wish it was still around. Instead, it joined the ranks of other great Microsoft products such as the Microsoft Band, Mixer, and Windows Phone in the graveyard. That's a little depressing.
