My point is not “change for change’s sake” but rather that the tools/OS we are using are not performing their function. Like you conclude, when that happens, we adopt a tool that does.

“Nothing endures but change”
- Heraclitus, 470 B.C.

Just as we are getting eBooks and eBook readers crammed down our gullets, coincidentally, by eBook publishers and eBook reader manufacturers, so too are we getting a radical new computer interface thrown at us with Windows 8.

The author mentions,”…the traditional Windows interface where each running application is visually separated with windows that can be dragged on top of each other, hidden, and closed; but most of the time the new Windows looks, and functions, very much like a well-designed webpage.”

Guess what? Some of us require that very traditional interface to get our daily chores done. We don’t require “a well-designed webpage” or a multi-colored Scrabble board. I have heard of no companies standing in line to embrace the new release of Windows, but I have heard of many who have rejected implementing it before its release. The university for which I work will not be implementing it. Our question is: Can Microsoft ever backtrack to a useable interface for use in the workplace or will it meet its demise by chasing an Apple down the proverbial rabbit hole?

What Microsoft has done and the author, apparently, embraced, is to take the traditional spoon, fork and knife and tried to meld them into a brave new single tool with which to eat our digital supper. To that I say, “Care to use my napkin?” To mix my metaphors, one size does not always fit all.

The user is the master over the operating system for the user is the one doing the work and the OS is nothing but one of the tools used to accomplish that work. Please don’t tell me that it’s the operating system that lords over the user or that Microsoft (or Apple) or the author knows what is best for me to do my work. You’re starting to sound too much like the United Nations when you do that. If a tool I’ve used in the past no longer performs its function well, I will simply change to a tool that does.

jk

I like that Windows is different than tablets. Star trek shows don’t use mouses, but then again games are replaced by those holo-decks (however that’s spelled).

However, on Microsoft’s side, they definitely need to keep the pace and try new things or some very eager competitors, such as Google, will gladly develop a new OS to render there’s a thing of the past… though sadly, that thought doesn’t make me one bit sad or scared.