Windows 8 is dead, long live Windows 8.1

The news this week is that Microsoft will revert to classic view in its next update of Windows 8. It may even…wait for it…bring back the Start button.

Well thank the Lord is all I can say.

I don’t use Windows much anymore myself but I have to help out a few people now and then with theirs and I confess to being completely lost with the new Windows 8 interface – I can’t find anything I need in it and neither can anybody else it seems.

The FT is reporting this reversal as…

“one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.”

…and I can’t help but agree.

I’m not sure how it happened, obviously Microsoft needed a new UI that would work with today’s smartphones and pads, but for a full sized PC we need something different – something that work with a mouse not your fingers.

Microsoft will have undertaken many, many usability testing sessions before launching Windows 8, so I can only assume that they ignored the results.

The boss doesn’t always know best.