In the middle of the 1980s, Coca-Cola, the world’s largest soft drink company, made a decision that would forever tarnish its brand. It scrapped its old flavor – the original Coke recipe – in favor of something different. The so-called “New Coke” recipe was designed to improve upon the classic recipe, but it didn’t quite do that.
Instead, people hated New Coke and demanded the old recipe back. Coca-Cola finally responded to the criticism and brought back the original recipe in the form of Coca-Cola Classic. It wasn’t quite ready to give up on the new recipe, however, and continued to hang onto it as “Coke II.”
Ultimately, New Coke was deemed a failure. Coca-Cola lost sight of what made its brand so special. And many are starting to agree that the Start Button is Microsoft’s “New Coke” moment.

Why Microsoft may be making a huge mistake

We’ll give credit to the origination of this idea to Tony Bradley of PCWorld.com. But it’s something that has been lingering in the minds of PC users for quite some time now. After scrapping the Start Button in Windows 8, early adopters of that system have agreed that they feel lost in the new OS.
How do I access the control panel? How do I uninstall a program? Where can I see the list of all the programs on my PC?
Sure, there are mods that bring the Start Button back to Windows 8. But it may be too late for Microsoft. And with rumors about Windows 8.1 and Windows 9 arguing that there won’t be a desktop mode at all, Microsoft might not recover itself in time – just like Coca-Cola was able to do.
What do you think? Is this a turning point in Microsoft’s company history? Will they bring back the Start Button and the classic interface? With Windows 8 sales slumping, it seems like Microsoft is going to need to bat its next OS out of the park if it wants to hold onto its title of world’s most popular operating system.