XP in the age of 8?

Next year Microsoft will be releasing Windows 8, which despite the name isn't the 8th release of Windows. Windows 8 is a great leap forward and the first true remigration of Windows since Windows NT3.1, the first release of Windows NT. Windows NT3.1 was the first release of Windows to run on Alpha and MIPS as well as x86. But one thing could still hold back Microsoft's ambitions and that's Windows XP.

Four years after Vista, two years after Windows 7 and still, Windows XP the 10 year-old Windows is used by the majority (~40%) of Windows users, more than any other OS version. This was never the case before, when XP was released a very few were using Windows 3.x or older. In the 90s Microsoft was pushing a new release every 2 years or so, and this way they got people to update often, similar to what Apple does with Mac OS X today. A rapid release cycle where running a 5 year-old release means you are 2 releases behind.

So the domination of XP is Microsoft's fault. Microsoft's inability to get the next release of Windows on time in 2004, pushing it back by 3 years to 2007, resulted not only in a huge install base of XP that can be expensive to upgrade, but also in the lack of willingness to upgrade. Microsoft also botched the launch of Vista with a confusing upgrade policy. Whether Vista was good or not isn't the point, what matters here is Microsoft failed to migrate users to the new OS and Windows 7 while better received still is at about 30% usage share.

For how much longer will we be stuck by an OS designed in the late 90s? How much innovation was wasted because a lot feel they need to tend for the about 40% who still use outdated technology? Windows XP is the Internet Explorer 6 of OSes.