Windows 8

Windows 8 was the successor operating system to mh:goodsoftware:Windows 7 released in October 26, 2012 and discontinued in January 12, 2016, only 3 years after its launch. It's part of the Windows NT family of operating systems.

''' NOTE: This article will only focus on the original Windows 8 which was was poorly received by its userbase, and not 8.1. 8.1 is much better, and even better with Update 1 than the previous version as it fixed many of the biggest issues Windows 8 had. '''

What It Did
The user interface received massive changes from the previous Windows versions: Most notably, the Start menu uses a GUI called Metro (now Microsoft Design Language) which was used first on Windows Phone 7 released in 2010. The interface consists of basic geometric shapes that can be clicked on to access a certain media or application. As the UI of Windows 8 is a mix of a computer and tablet, while it introduced the Metro GUI on a computer, it was still designed to be able to run applications designed to a separate interface, the Desktop, already present in the many of the previous versions of Windows. Users could use an application store called Microsoft Store to download applications from here, but it's still possible to get the others from other websites using browsers.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The biggest problem this version had was the removal of the start button: instead, to go on the Start menu without just pressing the 'Windows' button, by default you have to slide the cursor on the bottom-left corner of the screen then click.
 * 2) Poor mix of a tablet and computer operating system, and it unsurprisingly failed to make hybrid PCs popular. The most notable issue about the mix is that most of the applications were full-screen only, with no option to make them windowed whatsoever. Most users decided to ditch almost almost of the built-in applications from Microsoft (most notably the Microsoft Store) to use third-party software like Gmail or Firefox.
 * 3) It was unnecessarily very complicated, even for Windows veterans. Most notably, by default the Start menu shows up when you boot up the computer, and so you had to find the 'Desktop' button on it, which is hard to find since it's pretty small for a button to access the desktop.
 * 4) The Start menu you can see after the setup was poorly arranged, as most of the buttons were just large buttons (rectangle-shaped), and even by spamming that amount of large buttons will do a "waste of place" to pin applications on it.
 * 5) Half of the settings can be changed on the Control Panel, but the other half is on a separate Settings application: it made many people confused of where to find some settings. And since there is already a separate Settings application whose design is more modern than the Control Panel, it made the latter completely pointless to keep in this OS.
 * 6) While it still has better performance than Windows Vista and ME (it wasn't very slow), it still was notoriously unreliable on which applications it could run: Many high-end games couldn't run on it.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The mix between a computer operating system and a tablet was well written on paper, although poorly executed.
 * 2) Fortunately with Classic Shell, you can actually get the start button back on Windows 8 (which is already present on Windows 8.1).
 * 3) Windows 8 finally ditched the integration of mh:rottenwebsites:Internet Explorer, making it possible to uninstall. Finally, the browser wasn't included in Windows 8's major successor, Windows 10, and has been replaced with Microsoft Edge which is more reliable and secured than IE.
 * 4) The default sound scheme is absolutely beautiful, and has a futuristic feel.

Reception
The majority of reviews of various Windows 8 versions were ranged from mixed to negative by critics and consumers. The interface of Windows 8 has been the subject of negative reaction.

Gabe Newell, co-founder of mh:crappygames:Valve and Rob Pardo from mh:crappygames:Activision voiced concern about the closed nature of the Windows Store (it means that it puts heavy quality control on apps, as a result many of them are not present here).

Aftermath
Microsoft would learn from their mistakes with Windows 8 with heavy criticism and just in less than a year after their launch of Windows 8, they have replaced it with Windows 8.1. This successor has been critically acclaimed at launch, though it still wasn't as successful as Windows 7 (Only 4.6% of traditional Windows computers in the world are currently running 8.1).

Link

 * Windows 8 on Wikipedia

Video

 * Why was Windows 8 a Failure? on YouTube