Rotating Knives

Or rather, the death of icons altogether….sort of.   Windows releases are curious things and are true physical manifestations of the saying “you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”  In fact, when it comes to Windows releases, good luck pleasing most of the people!  I was at Microsoft during the release of Vista and my job put me right in front of customers who offered a maddening set of complaints, the two most prominent being:

• “Hardly anything has changed.  What’s the big deal?”
• “It’s too different!  I will have to train employees on how to use it!”

With Windows 8, my guess is that Microsoft has made a deliberate choice to go for a big change in the hope that they will be able to improve users’ experience with the OS while making the “one OS to rule them all” on different form factors (It looks a LOT like the new OS for Windows mobile phones and upcoming tablet devices).  The problem may be that it’s TOO different.  It marks the first OS I have seen come out of Redmond that fundamentally changes the way users access information and launch applications.  You have to hand it to Microsoft.  When you have the dominant consumer and business operating system in the world, making big changes to it is gutsy. 

The first thing you notice in the preview video is the death of icons in favor of the “tiles” first introduced in Windows Mobile 7 (you can supposedly get back to icons by turning on “classic” mode, something I believe many people will do, at least initially). Tiles are larger and display pertinent information that may obviate the need to open the application at all.  The tile for a weather app will show basic information about today’s meteorological outlook so users only need open the app if they want to see more information, such as the 5 day forecast.  It’s a neat idea for mobile phones where users want information while they’re doing something else, like walking down the sidewalk or conversing with friends.  In these scenarios, give me the information quickly so I can get back to what I was doing.  But when I’m in front of my PC and focused on using it (like I am right now) I’m concerned that these information-laden tiles will overload me with more information than I need or want.  The icon is, and has always been, a good way to organize applications on a focused-use system, which is what a desktop PC is.  I have many applications on my PC, I rarely use more than 4 at a time and I’m constantly closing apps I am done with and opening new ones that I need.  The only information I need is “Here’s the app you need.  Double-click me to start it.”  That’s what icons do and have done admirably for decades now.  I believe the reason some people are reacting negatively to the Windows 8 video is that the additional information on its tiles creates “noise” that distracts people from finding the app they want and starting it up.  Quick and useful information available at a glance while walking up 6th Avenue can become the unwanted flood of information I have to wade through when I’m at my desk doing my job. 

Windows presents Microsoft with an interesting “Innovator’s Dilemma”.  Innovate too little, and no one has a reason to upgrade.  Innovate too much (i.e.: make things too different) and no one will want to upgrade.  Only time and use will tell with Windows 8.