Re: History repeating
Actually YOU don't get it.
Oh good! I like a joke!
The only reason why people were content with XP was simply inertia brought on by the totally once-in-a-lifetime gestation period of Vista (through the period when it was Longhorn and after that was scrapped).
That's part of the reason, not the whole shebang. Consider the required for more memory, more disc space, more everything to get Vista to work, various incompatibilities, that rather annoying "Vista Ready" scandal, and you are getting a little closer to the mark.
Even so, Vista was necessary in order to move people onto new designs and features that Microsoft intended. Having Vista effectively "skipped" by releasing the next version of Windows after XP around the time of Windows 7 instead of when Vista shipped wouldn't have changed the supposed backlash.
Windows 7 has certainly become a success but it has its problems, just as Vista had. That's part of the reason why XP lasted so long after Microsoft realised that Vista wasn't going to work. Of course you will always get the situation that people will not move from an existing OS if the computer it is running on is too recent and Windows 7 also benefitted from that. Actually it has Vista to thank for that much!
Of course Windows "9" will be more readily accepted, they would have one OS' worth of experience with the new technologies introduced with Windows 8, in the same way Windows 7 was more accepted compared to Vista.
Then you know more than anybody else as we have yet to see the final product and have no idea if users will find a necessity to move. If anything, the "technologies" introduced in Windows 8 may drive users away so don't be to surprised if Microsoft hide all that under another layer.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
