You'd be hard put to find a technical school company that had a busier year than Microsoft. Besides unveiling new versions of Windows, Windows Phone, and Office, the Redmond giant instituted a sweeping visual overhaul ligature together the entire software product batting order. Microsoft also revitalized its cloud scheme (hello, SkyDrive!) and even launched Surface RT, a new take along the tablet category that steals a page from Malus pumila's we-buns-make-better-hardware-than-any-of-our-OEM-partners-can playbook.
Regardless of whether Microsoft remains the most dominant computer software company in the questionable post-PC era, 2012 will be remembered as the year when Microsoft took its biggest gambles to challenge Apple and Google on mobility. Here's a consider the company's biggest hits and misses for 2012.
WIN: The Windows desktop is better than ever
The biggest news all but Windows 8 may be the system's new touchscreen interface, but the traditional desktop in Windows 8 sawing machine some big improvements, too. New desktop upgrades include a revamped file transcript dialog, better printer uncovering, improved multiple-monitor brook, pooled store via the new Store Spaces feature, a New chkdsk, and landscaped version story. Basic speed and execution have improved besides on the desktop side of Windows 8, and that's a benefit that any loyal PC exploiter can appreciate.
Go bad: The new Start Screen antagonizes PC users
User interface experts—and consuming popular opinion—give birth judged the touch-centric Windows 8 Start Blind to represent a provocative and even antagonistic user interface for PC users working with keyboards and mice. The so-called modern UI is fun and engaging on touchscreen devices, simply information technology requires too much cursor hovering, straight-clicking, and all-more or less "did I do that right?" guessing for people working on time-honoured PCs.
The modern UI is also poorly integrated with the screen background side of the Windows, and living with the OS day in and day out means struggling with file cabinet associations and system settings that are split between the system's cardinal disparate halves. The nail in the coffin? You can't boot directly into the Windows 8 desktop. Omitting that option might have been Microsoft's biggest public relations failure of the twelvemonth.
Break dow: Buh-bye, Mr. Sinofsky
Reports and commentaries following the departure (dismission? compact execution?) of Steven Sinofsky, propose that the late president of Microsoft's Windows Division was shown the doorway because he was a stubborn political actor who didn't play nicely with others. The rough navigation preceding to the leadership shake-up surely didn't construct Microsoft's greater goal of revamping its product lines into a individualist, poised, borgy formulation of Windowsness any easier to achieve. Still, the timing of Sinofsky's croak was horrible for Microsoft. Windows 8 and Surface RT had just launched to middling reviews when—bam!—out went their main architect. Jettisoning Sinofsky may glucinium a win for Microsoft in the long, but its short-term impact was entirely negative for a hebdomad's worth of news cycles.
Microsoft had a floundering webmail table service in Hotmail, only everything changed when the company reimagined Hotmail atomic number 3 Outlook.com. Beyond adopting a UI that's consistent with the rest of Microsoft's "neo" style, Outlook.com introduced a contacts port that mimics the People app on Windows 8. What's more, the ALIR right jury in Outlook.com toilet switch between an instant messaging port and an area displaying Facebook and Twitter status updates. Outlook.com too provides fast switching betwixt other Microsoft online services, such as SkyDrive and Windows Live Calendar. Outlook.com will have got a tough time battling Gmail, but IT has all the features IT needs to set so.
FAIL: Expectation for Mechanical man v.1 is the same old same old
Microsoft gets a thumbs-up for improving email by making so many positive changes in Outlook.com, but Prospect for Android gets a big thumbs-kill. Indeed, the Outlook for Android app is little more than the old Hotmail Mechanical man app with different colours and a new name. You North Korean won't find Microsoft's new modern design language in Outlook for Humanoid, every bit you leave in SkyDrive for Android, and the superannuated menu tabs at the top off of the app have to go.
WIN: Windows Phone 8 makes a fine Atomic number 76 even better
Circumstantial information suggests that the Windows Telephone program has experienced an uptick in substance abuser adoption over the past 2 months, which has to be a relief for Microsoft. Despite a good first effort, Windows Phone 7 ne'er took off, and the future remains uncertain for Windows Phone 8. Nonetheless, Microsoft has put its best foot forward with Windows Earphone 8, which offers a entertaining, eminently functional OS blind drunk with cool new features, including a customizable lock screen; collective-in mobile versions of Office apps; always-on Skype integration; circular-knit file syncing across the whole Windows ecosystem; and Kids Niche, a boast that cordons off a child-safe area on some parent's phone.
Conk out: No Windows Phone 7.8 for you!
Many Nokia 900 users were infuriated to memorize that their new, put forward-of-the-graphics Windows Phone 7 devices would be rendered obsolete to a lesser degree a year after the operating system's found. Microsoft reliable to make amends for the fact that WP7 owners couldn't climb their devices to Windows Phone 8 by promising an interface overhaul known as Windows Phone 7.8. The inexperienced upgrade would at least make Windows Phone 7 handsets look as though they had the new OS. But afterward saying that WP7.8 would arrive in the fall, Microsoft in November pushed the cosmetic update back to 2022, disappointing their unhappy WP7 customers over again.
WIN: Surface RT shows that Microsoft can build compelling changeable ironware
Microsoft's first stab at scheming, engineering, and manufacturing its possess mechanized cogwheel May be off to a slow start, but the Skin-deep RT is a fine piece of high-end ironware. The pad of paper offers a compelling alternative in a market that is submissive aside Apple's iPads and dirty by a cattle call of "ME too" Humanoid devices. The Surface's heavy-duty design is upside-notch, and its integrated kickstand and Type Cover accessory turn a evenhandedly long-standing tablet design into a practical PC workstation. The pad's video display give notice't touch the new iPad for seeable splendor, and its OS is full of fail (see next slide). However, the Surface RT's build quality and overall differentness speak volumes about Microsoft's strengths American Samoa a fledgling tablet manufacturing business.
FAIL: Windows RT just doesn't deliver
When Microsoft announced in 2011 that IT would create a version of Windows for devices running ARM processors, it seemed corresponding a good idea. But Windows RT has clad to personify a pestiferous mess. Windows RT's most egregious sin is that it includes a semblance of the longstanding desktop Osmium, but you can buoy't install any background applications on that. As a result, the desktop portion of Winnings RT just sits there—a barren tundra along which a some dejected Office apps and built-in arrangement functions set about their business in quiet faecal matter similar unsocial musk oxen.
The epic break dow of Windows RT overshadows a subordinate miscarry: Microsoft ne'er in good order explained the differences between Windows RT and Windows 8 to the world at prodigious. This is not how you set in motion a successful tablet OS in the age of turn-key, easy-enough-for-Grandfather iPads and Kindles.
WIN: SkyDrive continues to impress
Before Dropbox, Box, Amazon storage, or Google Drive, on that point was Microsoft'sSkyDrive. But favourable SkyDrive's launching in 2007, Microsoft promptly ignored it, offering little integration of IT with other company services. But that metamorphic in 2012, when Microsoft trilled impossible Dropbox-style background integration for Mack and Windows PCs; mobile apps for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone; a new app for Xbox 360; and even a Web-based, inaccessible-accession feature for Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7, and Windows 8 PCs. In short order, SkyDrive has suit directly integrated with the entire Microsoft product line, most obviously with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. IT's a winning cloud resource, and its rapid get up shows that Microsoft can do many things right.
In May, Microsoft came upfield with a way to integrate social networking with Bing through the Bing social sidebar. The new feature lets you see which of your friends are informed topics that you're running searches happening, and it also surfaces in high spirits-profile experts' tweets that ostensibly relate to your personal search queries. Just dissimilar Google's Search Summation Your World (too introduced in 2012), Bing doesn't try to merge your life with search thusly very much like it tries to insert search into your life. The result is a sidebar that looks nice only has controlled utility.
WIN: Microsoft Office boldly steps forward
Microsoft took a big step forth with its prevue edition of the upcoming Office 2022. The new productivity suite leave, first, allow home users to sign in to Role for $100 per year via Authority 365. Buying a subscription entitles you to download the software along up to five PCs at once, and even to download temporary versions for nonpareil-time use on public PCs. Office besides offers SkyDrive online repositing integration, so you can access your documents from anywhere. You can still buy boxed versions of Office 2022, but Microsoft hopes that most people will swop to an Function 365 subscription as an alternative.
On elevation of all that, the revamped interface is cleaner, more sober, and often easier to use.
FAIL: Subway—never speak its name again
At one time upon a time, Microsoft had a list for its new design language, the pleasing fundament for its pan-ware UI: Metro. Microsoft was so proud the constitute that the company glorified it on campus fence in posters (the shot at left came from the Twitter feed of Microsoft expert Paul Thurrott). But in early August, the company did an volte-face. The name Tube was peremptorily dropped, and Microsoft embarked on a tortuous travel to rechristen the new UI. The first advisory: Call IT "Fresh User Interface." Catchy! Since then, Microsoft has floated "Windows 8 Style UI," "New Windows UI," and "Modern UI Style" atomic number 3 acceptable synonyms for the look-and-feel formerly known atomic number 3 Subway system.
Merely the public doesn't need a fancy name for the new Microsoft aesthetic. We just need a uniform term that everyone agrees to use and that has some staying office!
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Ian is an independent author based in Israel who has never met a tech subject he didn't like. He primarily covers Windows, PC and gaming computer hardware, video and euphony moving services, social networks, and browsers. When he's not covering the news atomic number 2's working on how-to tips for PC users, or tuning his eGPU setup.
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