It’s time to have a very candid discussion about the future of Windows customization.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been focusing on other parts of the company. Users on WinCustomize.com and related sites have no doubt noticed that my activity has dropped a great deal for awhile.
Focusing on Stardock’s games unit and the Impulse unit required a lot of the time I used to devote to the desktop enhancements group. Starting Monday, I’m back – somewhat anyway.
And today I spent time looking over the state of desktop enhancements and in particular Stardock’s desktop enhancements and I don’t like what I see.
First, third-party customization seems totally dead. For all the grief we used to receive about how “open source” and “freeware” would rule the world (how those uxtheme patches working out these days?) it’s pretty clear that that development crowd has moved on to other things.
Let’s face it, Windows Vista and Windows 7 in particular look awesome. Microsoft has done a great job improving the experience for Windows users. Why on earth should people pay money for programs that often make Windows look worse? Or make things behave flakey?
Does this mean that customization is dying? No. It means that desktop enhancements have to adapt to the OS people actually use. We’re a long ways from the days of Windows 2000 or Windows XP now.
Sure, lots of people still use Windows XP. But it’s a dying market. It came out 8 years ago. It’s time to move on. You can’t focus making software for legacy operating systems if your overall audience are cutting edge power users. I know that might upset some people but it’s true.
In two weeks, Windows 7 comes out. I’m running it right now. It’s awesome. And if desktop customization is going to move forward, it needs to start looking at customizing the things that today’s users want to customize even if that means starting from scratch.
Keep an eye on Object Desktop starting today and going forward. You’re going to see some pretty rapid changes coming.