Sinofsky’s Windows gambit deliberately imposed lots of short-term pain on users, as they were thrust into an unfamiliar touchscreen interface, whether they wanted one or not, or had a touchscreen or not.
And most didn’t. This translated into a considerable and unnecessary expense for enterprises. Almost two years ago, enterprises were telling Microsoft they would skip this particular crank of the Windows release cycle. Many assumed Microsoft was bluffing, and would pull back from imposing such a major, er, „disruption“ upon users. Microsoft responded that it was deadly serious – and went ahead anyway.
Sinofsky’s logic was that this would brute-force an app ecosystem into existence, and so keep the PC viable as a consumer choice in a world where tablets and connected TVs and games consoles could do lots of nice and useful things. The problem was the execution: the three versions of Metro (or „Modern“) apps for Windows 8 desktop, RT and Windows Phone may have looked similar, but they had three different APIs.
Sinowsky alleinverantwortlich für das Windows-Desaster zu machen, halte ich für unfair. Derjenige der es mindesten genauso verbockt hat, sucht gerade seinen eigenen Nachfolger.