Windows 10
It's probably a safe bet to say that the first year of Windows 8 didn't go as Microsoft had hoped or planned. So what went wrong? It wasn't just one mistake. Instead, a series of strategic missteps and bad bets got Microsoft's flashy new OS off to a very rocky start.
Windows 8 is a perfectly good name, especially coming on the heels of the incredibly successful Windows 7.
But two other crucial branding moves that Microsoft made have come back to haunt them.
The first was the last-minute decision to abandon Metro as the name for the new-look Windows 8 design language. After spending years building mindshare and equity in that brand, Microsoft threw the Metro name under an onrushing subway car, replacing it with … nothing. So now when we want to talk about the differences between apps written for Windows 8 and those written for the Windows desktop, we have to either play word games or just pretend that it’s still called Metro.
And in fact everyone except Microsoft is doing exactly that.
And then there’s the WinRT versus Windows RT debacle. One is a set of APIs, the other is a product name. But they sound so much alike that even the head of Microsoft’s Windows division confused the two at the Windows 8.1 launch event.
Oh well, at least Windows 8.1 wasn’t saddled with some horrible moniker like “Windows 8 2013 Feature Pack Release 2.”
Caption by: Ed Bott
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