6 ms·

Thrashing would be my guess. Somewhere along the line the product vision was lost; the people who had it moved on to other companies. Windows 7 had some flaws

Thrashing would be my guess. Somewhere along the line the product vision was lost; the people who had it moved on to other companies. Windows 7 had some flaws, but it was at least trustworthy. Things like forced updates and having to turn off other annoying features makes me doubt the OS as a whole. Microsoft doesn't know how to fix it, so they are doing anything they can. These are their throes.

Silhouette 10y ago
It was pretty obvious this was the intended direction as soon as Nadella was appointed, and given he's still there, the board presumably still believe in his vision. The numbers don't seem to be so positive so far, though, and the effects of reputational damage particularly among techies and other influencers could take years to fully manifest.
- scholia 10y ago
  The share price has doubled, Office 365 is a success, and more than 400 million people are on Windows 10. Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. Under the previous system, you'd have been using worse code for 3-5 years, then been faced with an expensive and possibly traumatic "big bang" upgrade.
  - Silhouette 10y ago
    The share price has doubled, Office 365 is a success, and more than 400 million people are on Windows 10. Yes, but the balance of where the money is coming from seems to have been shifting, at least going by the public briefings. As I read them, it's not that Windows 10 has been successful: only 400 million people is quite a poor performance given everything 10 should have had going for it, and market share seems to have flattened dramatically since the end of the giveaway period. It's just that other parts of Microsoft are currently doing well enough to make up for it. Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. When you start with as many problems as Windows 10 had, it would be hard not to! Still, I'm not convinced the things that originally put off the people who haven't upgraded already have really changed much at all. Potential deal-breakers like forced updates/reboots, privacy/telemetry concerns, driver/hardware problems, and ads all still seem to be there. Edge and Cortana are still mostly gimmicks. It still doesn't have as much support for playing media as previous versions.
    - scholia 10y ago
      Sorry, don't want to get into a big argument about what are basically your own opinions. > It still doesn't have as much support for playing media as previous versions. Download a media player that plays DVDs. It's not hard.
      - Silhouette 10y ago
        Sorry, don't want to get into a big argument about what are basically your own opinions. Fair enough, the opinion that 400 million is not particularly impressive under the circumstances is subjective. However, the relative flattening of Windows 10 market share and the shift in the distribution of where Microsoft is making its money seem to be widely corroborated including by Microsoft's own public statements. Download a media player that plays DVDs. It's not hard. I think you may have picked up on the tiniest possible detail to dispute there, while missing the multiple elephants in the room that I had mentioned just before...
        scholia 10y ago
        > I think you may have picked up on the tiniest possible detail to dispute there, while missing the multiple elephants in the room that I had mentioned just before... That was the only simple way to be helpful, if you actually needed it. The rest is just your opinion.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. Really? There's been some nice tweaks and a minority of us can now use WSL, but it's essentially no different than it was 18 months ago.

Silhouette 10y ago

It was pretty obvious this was the intended direction as soon as Nadella was appointed, and given he's still there, the board presumably still believe in his vision. The numbers don't seem to be so positive so far, though, and the effects of reputational damage particularly among techies and other influencers could take years to fully manifest.

scholia 10y ago
The share price has doubled, Office 365 is a success, and more than 400 million people are on Windows 10. Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. Under the previous system, you'd have been using worse code for 3-5 years, then been faced with an expensive and possibly traumatic "big bang" upgrade.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  The share price has doubled, Office 365 is a success, and more than 400 million people are on Windows 10. Yes, but the balance of where the money is coming from seems to have been shifting, at least going by the public briefings. As I read them, it's not that Windows 10 has been successful: only 400 million people is quite a poor performance given everything 10 should have had going for it, and market share seems to have flattened dramatically since the end of the giveaway period. It's just that other parts of Microsoft are currently doing well enough to make up for it. Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. When you start with as many problems as Windows 10 had, it would be hard not to! Still, I'm not convinced the things that originally put off the people who haven't upgraded already have really changed much at all. Potential deal-breakers like forced updates/reboots, privacy/telemetry concerns, driver/hardware problems, and ads all still seem to be there. Edge and Cortana are still mostly gimmicks. It still doesn't have as much support for playing media as previous versions.
  - scholia 10y ago
    Sorry, don't want to get into a big argument about what are basically your own opinions. > It still doesn't have as much support for playing media as previous versions. Download a media player that plays DVDs. It's not hard.
    - Silhouette 10y ago
      Sorry, don't want to get into a big argument about what are basically your own opinions. Fair enough, the opinion that 400 million is not particularly impressive under the circumstances is subjective. However, the relative flattening of Windows 10 market share and the shift in the distribution of where Microsoft is making its money seem to be widely corroborated including by Microsoft's own public statements. Download a media player that plays DVDs. It's not hard. I think you may have picked up on the tiniest possible detail to dispute there, while missing the multiple elephants in the room that I had mentioned just before...
      - scholia 10y ago
        > I think you may have picked up on the tiniest possible detail to dispute there, while missing the multiple elephants in the room that I had mentioned just before... That was the only simple way to be helpful, if you actually needed it. The rest is just your opinion.
- flukus 10y ago
  > Windows 10 has also improved dramatically over the past 18 months. Really? There's been some nice tweaks and a minority of us can now use WSL, but it's essentially no different than it was 18 months ago.