14 DAY TRIAL // Steven Sinofsky, the former Windows boss who decided to leave Microsoft just after the Windows 8 launch, has talked in an interview about the new operating system and the company’s Surface tablet.
Sinofsky joined a Q&A session at Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference, explaining that it’s hard not to be excited about the 100 million licenses sold since the launch of the operating system.
“One of the things we tried really hard to do during the development process was be extremely open and transparent about the rationale. Those decisions we made as a team,” he said.
“As for sales, it’s hard for me to look at selling 100 million of something and not be happy.”
And still, how come that Windows 8 isn’t actually managing to lend a hand to the ever-declining PC industry? Sinofsky claims that it’s all because of the tremendous change the industry is going through right now.
“The industry is undergoing a tremendous amount of change. I think that is exciting and it means a lot of opportunity. It will take a long time for things to play out. It’s exciting but it means while it is going on you have to resist the urge to pick winners and losers. Things are just very different,” he continued.
“The nature of the computer is undergoing a transformation. Form factors of PC is one effect of that but more is going on under the hood.”
Sinofsky, who’s still an avid Microsoft Surface user, has decided to leave Microsoft in November 2012 due to what seemed to be a growing tension between him and Ballmer.
At that time, sources familiar with the matter suggested that Sinofsky hoped to become the next Microsoft CEO and take over the role from Steve Ballmer. It turned out that Ballmer wasn’t actually pleased with Sinofsky’s plan, so the Windows boss was fired just after the new operating system hit the shelves.