There were three primary differences between Windows 8 and Windows 7. The first was the replacement of BIOS with UEFI. The second was the attempt to migrate from a keyboard/mouse input system, to a voice and touch screen input system. The third was a fundamental shift from an operating system sales model, to a big data collection and advertisement delivery monetization model.
At this point some of you may feel your eyes crossing and the room getting hazy, while you are experiencing random hallucinations involving barbecues and beach activities. So I'll try to make what I just said a bit easier to understand.
Every piece of hardware in your computer, or your smartphone, or your tablet, has a piece of software on it that provides an interface between it and the outside world. That software is called it's firmware. Think of it as the brain of the animal. The operating system for your computer is like your country's economy and government. It keeps all the people in line and, hopefully, contributing in a meaningful way.
Now up until recently the BIOS acted as an interface between the firmware and the operating system. Think of it as the common language and the common currency that we all use that allows us to interact with everyone else in our country, and hopefully allows our government to keep everything running smoothly. Well that is in the process of being replaced by UEFI. I won't go into details, but UEFI is intended to be more powerful, more flexible, and able to take advantage of all the capabilities of newer hardware.
Now Apple was really the first to fundamentally change the way we interact with our computing devices, whether they are PC's, phones, or tablets, by introducing the touch screen. Apple may not have been the inventor of the touch screen, or even the first to use it in a product, but it was the first company to offer products that brought the touch screen to a wide audience.
"Monetization" is a popular buzzword in business circles. It basically refers to the means by which you make money off a product. Up until Windows 8, Microsoft made money by selling Windows to it's customers. You payed some ridiculous sum, and you got some version of Windows. End of story. Google has changed all that.
When Google released the Android operating system for phones and tablets, it changed the way companies made money off of software. You could still buy software, but Google doesn't make much money selling the Android operating system directly. It makes it's money by using the Android operating system to collect "Big Data" on it's customers, and then using that "Big Data" to sell advertising that specifically targets the customer, based on the customer's interests and activities.
With Windows 8/8.1 and now Windows 10, Microsoft has been playing catch up with Apple and Google, and attempting to join the touch screen and computer advertising revolutions.
After the introduction of Windows 8 the migration from a keyboard/mouse input system to a touch screen system was flatly rejected by Microsoft's PC clients, in part because it was ahead of it's time - for PC's. Large touch screens can be awkward to work with and large touch screen monitor's tend to be prohibitively expensive. Windows 10 is an attempt to mollify Microsoft's customers after the Windows 8 debacle and gain acceptance for the new monetization model by merging voice and touch screen input with mouse and keyboard input.
The only thing new beyond that that Windows 10 has to offer, is it's integration into the X-Box "ecosystem". Yes, you can now buy and play X-Box games on your Windows 10 PC. I've read various pundits proclaiming that Windows 10 may be, "the best Windows ever". That may or may not be true. I would however say that it represents Microsoft's attempts to catch up with the recent revolutions in computing, revolutions started by Apple and Google, in a way that hopefully includes the huge portion of Microsoft's client base that is still using Windows 7, or even Windows XP.
I fundamentally dislike, and distrust the big data collection and advertising platform monetization model. I could get into a long essay about that, but I will spare you. Suffice to say that I am upgrading to Windows 10 because I am a gamer, and Windows is still the only gaming platform that supports the games I want to play, while still offering a complete general computing experience, in terms of support for conventional computing activities such as word processing, and I like the integration of Windows 10 into the X-Box ecosystem.
And if you already have purchased Windows 7 or 8/8.1, then the upgrade to Windows 10 is free, again, taking a page from Apple's and Google's playbooks. That might not be particularly revolutionary, but it is revolutionary for Microsoft. And at that price, I've already bought into it...
At this point some of you may feel your eyes crossing and the room getting hazy, while you are experiencing random hallucinations involving barbecues and beach activities. So I'll try to make what I just said a bit easier to understand.
Every piece of hardware in your computer, or your smartphone, or your tablet, has a piece of software on it that provides an interface between it and the outside world. That software is called it's firmware. Think of it as the brain of the animal. The operating system for your computer is like your country's economy and government. It keeps all the people in line and, hopefully, contributing in a meaningful way.
Now up until recently the BIOS acted as an interface between the firmware and the operating system. Think of it as the common language and the common currency that we all use that allows us to interact with everyone else in our country, and hopefully allows our government to keep everything running smoothly. Well that is in the process of being replaced by UEFI. I won't go into details, but UEFI is intended to be more powerful, more flexible, and able to take advantage of all the capabilities of newer hardware.
Now Apple was really the first to fundamentally change the way we interact with our computing devices, whether they are PC's, phones, or tablets, by introducing the touch screen. Apple may not have been the inventor of the touch screen, or even the first to use it in a product, but it was the first company to offer products that brought the touch screen to a wide audience.
"Monetization" is a popular buzzword in business circles. It basically refers to the means by which you make money off a product. Up until Windows 8, Microsoft made money by selling Windows to it's customers. You payed some ridiculous sum, and you got some version of Windows. End of story. Google has changed all that.
When Google released the Android operating system for phones and tablets, it changed the way companies made money off of software. You could still buy software, but Google doesn't make much money selling the Android operating system directly. It makes it's money by using the Android operating system to collect "Big Data" on it's customers, and then using that "Big Data" to sell advertising that specifically targets the customer, based on the customer's interests and activities.
With Windows 8/8.1 and now Windows 10, Microsoft has been playing catch up with Apple and Google, and attempting to join the touch screen and computer advertising revolutions.
After the introduction of Windows 8 the migration from a keyboard/mouse input system to a touch screen system was flatly rejected by Microsoft's PC clients, in part because it was ahead of it's time - for PC's. Large touch screens can be awkward to work with and large touch screen monitor's tend to be prohibitively expensive. Windows 10 is an attempt to mollify Microsoft's customers after the Windows 8 debacle and gain acceptance for the new monetization model by merging voice and touch screen input with mouse and keyboard input.
The only thing new beyond that that Windows 10 has to offer, is it's integration into the X-Box "ecosystem". Yes, you can now buy and play X-Box games on your Windows 10 PC. I've read various pundits proclaiming that Windows 10 may be, "the best Windows ever". That may or may not be true. I would however say that it represents Microsoft's attempts to catch up with the recent revolutions in computing, revolutions started by Apple and Google, in a way that hopefully includes the huge portion of Microsoft's client base that is still using Windows 7, or even Windows XP.
I fundamentally dislike, and distrust the big data collection and advertising platform monetization model. I could get into a long essay about that, but I will spare you. Suffice to say that I am upgrading to Windows 10 because I am a gamer, and Windows is still the only gaming platform that supports the games I want to play, while still offering a complete general computing experience, in terms of support for conventional computing activities such as word processing, and I like the integration of Windows 10 into the X-Box ecosystem.
And if you already have purchased Windows 7 or 8/8.1, then the upgrade to Windows 10 is free, again, taking a page from Apple's and Google's playbooks. That might not be particularly revolutionary, but it is revolutionary for Microsoft. And at that price, I've already bought into it...
