Brace Yourselves

Sean Gallagher tells geeks to brace for Windows 8:

My wife was home sick today with bronchitis, and wanted to get some work done. But her laptop wasn’t working (my daughter had mislaid the powerbrick), so she turned to me for tech support. I gave her a notebook I had loaded with the Windows 8 RTM and Office 2013 Home preview. I showed her a few basic things, and then went back to work.

That’s right–I gave my sick wife a brand new operating system and an updated Office suite to use with 5 minutes of training. I’m surprised she didn’t call a divorce lawyer.

Oh boy. Get ready for some fun.

Even with Apple’s transition from OS 9 to OS X over 10 years ago, they changed a lot of elements in the operating system, but at the end of the day, they kept all existing UI metaphors: folders, files, desktop, trash can.

With Windows 8, everything is going out the window (no pun intended). Unless, of course, you revert to ‘classic’ mode, where you’re still shit out of luck if you’re looking for the START menu.

As a geek, I’m looking forward trying out Windows 8, but for all the non-geeks out there? It’s not going to be fun.

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