Microsoft Windows, which has more than a billion users around the world, is getting a radical makeover, a rare move for a product with such vast reach, Nick Wingfield reports in The New York Times. The new design is likely to cause some head-scratching for those who buy the latest machines when Windows 8 goes on sale this Friday.
Many of the familiar signposts from PCs of yore are gone in Windows 8, like the Start button for getting to programs and the drop-down menus that list their functions.
To Microsoft and early fans of Windows 8, the software is a fresh, bold reinvention of the operating system for an era of touch-screen devices like the iPad, which are reshaping computing. Microsoft needs the software to succeed so it can restore some of its fading relevance after years of watching the likes of Apple and Google outflank it in the mobile market.
To its detractors, though, Windows 8 is a renovation gone wrong, one that will needlessly force people t o relearn how to use a device every bit as common as a microwave oven.
“I don't think any user was asking for that,†said John Ludwig, a former Microsoft executive who worked on Windows and is now a venture capitalist in the Seattle area. “They just want the current user interface, but better.â€
Little about the new Windows will look familiar to those who have used older versions. The Start screen, a kind of main menu, is dominated by a colorful grid of rectangles and squares that users can tap with a finger or click with a mouse to start applications. Many of these so-called live tiles constantly flicker with new information piped in from the Internet, like news headlines and Facebook photos. What is harder to find are many of the conventions that have been a part of PCs since most people began using them, like the strip of icons at the bottom of the screen for jumping between applications.
The Times asked five people to come in and try Windows 8 fo r the first time. Watch the video to see what they thought.
