LogicalApex, on 28 November 2012 - 16:03, said:
There seems to be a deep polarization among us technical users about Windows 8. The only thing we can almost all agree on is that Windows 8 wasn't made for the enterprise and simply won't work there (for the majority). The general consensus among us has been that Microsoft will correct this with Windows 9 and this would have fallen in line with businesses typical upgrade cycle (they adopted XP, skipped Vista, adopted 7, and are expected to skip 8 to adopt 9). The email I got from the WSJ this morning eludes that MS may have killed Windows 9 for the enterprise before it even ships.
Microsoft seems to be in a very dangerous position here. They are running the risk of putting all of their eggs into the consumer basket and they really don't have any experience depending on them as their primary customer.
I'm going to pick and choose what to respond too, it's a lazy Sunday. I don't agree Windows 8 isn't for the enterprise. It has some great Enterprise features and performs beautifully in a VDI environment (which is the way to go these days to quickly deploy/redeploy desktops if you can afford the infrastructure). I think the Modern UI was shoehorned into the enterprise because Microsoft needs it in the consumer space and could really care less about how the enterprise feels about it. They have total market dominance and know the enterprise will just have to deal with it. There will be more than enough in the industry who see the higher maintenance as job security, lol.
I actually think MS is OK in the enterprise. I think they may be consigning themselves to the recycle bin of history due to their consumer failures. I personally don't believe as many people are using Windows 8 as MS would have us believe because of all the problems. There should be an uproar.
I have a Windows 8 Desktop, Lumia 920, and Surface RT. And they cannot sync together easily. Surface can't sync with Desktop at all. It can sync with phone but the phone app does nothing more than drag and drop. No playlists, no media conversion. The Lumia, to sync music and playlists you have to jump through hoops with multiple apps or revers to Windows Media Player classic which works better than any combination of Xbox Music, Windows Phone App, Xbox Video, and legacy Zune client on Windows 8. Unfortunately it's not present.
Just syncing Xbox Music playlists doesn't work as it won't find the local files if it's not where the playlist originating. The matching/streaming service is a joke. Yet today my Lumia 920 started streaming some songs I didn't have on my phone from the cloud, yet if I sync a playlist and manually copy the files over (since Music app or Windows Phone app won't sync music and playlists to Windows Phone 8 or Surface RT) it won't find the songs.
No way anyone who has used iTunes/iPhone/iPad on Windows or Mac is using Windows 8 and a Windows Phone or Zune and a Windows Phone 7 without screaming WTH!!!! So I don't believe that many people are using it. Can you imagine if the latest release of iTunes couldn't sync music and playlists or movies to the iPhone or iPad? It's ludicrous (as Mike Tyson would say).
Because of this, the Surface Tablet WILL be a monumental consumer fail. And when it does, now justify the problems and regressive usability in many areas, Windows users were asked to bear for the Modern UI which was made for tablets and phones primarily, and shoehorned onto the desktop?
We'll see how things are after Christmas. The first time a Surface consumer can't get their music and playlists onto their Surface or Windows Phone with their new Windows 8 PC, we'll see how successful Microsoft has been. Just the fact that a company of Microsoft's stature could release this mess, I'm thinking they will fail in the consumer space. They clearly don't have a good brain trust running things.
In fact I would actually like to see the team responsible for the Windows 8 Music and Video apps along with the Xbox Cloud Music Service for Windows. I just want to see them. I have a feeling they will look, out of touch. Take that however you like. These products feel like Microsoft was short on staff so they took expendable people from the SQL group, Server Group, Dynamics\CRM Group, and Office Group, put them together in a room, and said meet the Windows 8 Core apps group. If that is indeed what happened, they've actually done a helluva job.
Edit: And one more thing, the time it takes to create 3 20 song music playlists in Media Player Classic, searching your library and adding each song to a playlists is 100x longer using Windows 8 Search and the Xbox Music App. But don't try it, even when you create them the #$%@# won't sync and work right on your Windows 8 tablet or phone.
Edited by MorganX, 03 December 2012 - 00:44.