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Microsoft confuses me. They’ve been building up all this goodwill with frankly outstanding software and services. Then… they go and ruin it all with windows. Wh

Microsoft confuses me. They’ve been building up all this goodwill with frankly outstanding software and services. Then… they go and ruin it all with windows. What the heck is going on over there? Whoever leads that division probably needs to be replaced. I’ve heard installing windows with language set to English Europe or world makes the experience a lot better. Is that true?

teddyh 3y ago
> Microsoft confuses me. They’ve been building up all this goodwill with frankly outstanding software and services. Then… they go and ruin it all with windows. It’s not confusing at all; Microsoft builds up reputation in order to have some reputation to get away with doing the crappy things they really want to do. EEE.
pxc 3y ago
The answer is not complicated, and it has two parts: 1. Microsoft isn't a person and doesn't have values. 2. Businesses behave their worst when they are dominant players in a space, and their best when they are weak or marginal in a space. Microsoft has been responding to their relative weakness when it comes to certain kinds of developer tooling with relatively user-friendly 'open core' freeware. They have nothing forcing them to 'play nice' when it comes to their desktop operating system. So they won't! And they haven't, for a very long time. Windows has a host of other defects (stability, UI inconsistency, etc.), but aside from those its enshittification (infestation with adware, push towards online accounts via dark patterns, continual piling on of more telemetry, etc.) has been going on longer than the 'new Microsoft'. It's not a turning away from some newer, nicer Microsoft in any way— it's been continuous and simultaneous with that new Microsoft the whole time.
coffeeling 3y ago
Different divisions make money differently. Office and OneDrive people get money from providing things worth paying for, Edge and Bing teams from advertising.

teddyh 3y ago

> Microsoft confuses me. They’ve been building up all this goodwill with frankly outstanding software and services. Then… they go and ruin it all with windows. It’s not confusing at all; Microsoft builds up reputation in order to have some reputation to get away with doing the crappy things they really want to do. EEE.

pxc 3y ago

The answer is not complicated, and it has two parts: 1. Microsoft isn't a person and doesn't have values. 2. Businesses behave their worst when they are dominant players in a space, and their best when they are weak or marginal in a space. Microsoft has been responding to their relative weakness when it comes to certain kinds of developer tooling with relatively user-friendly 'open core' freeware. They have nothing forcing them to 'play nice' when it comes to their desktop operating system. So they won't! And they haven't, for a very long time. Windows has a host of other defects (stability, UI inconsistency, etc.), but aside from those its enshittification (infestation with adware, push towards online accounts via dark patterns, continual piling on of more telemetry, etc.) has been going on longer than the 'new Microsoft'. It's not a turning away from some newer, nicer Microsoft in any way— it's been continuous and simultaneous with that new Microsoft the whole time.

coffeeling 3y ago

Different divisions make money differently. Office and OneDrive people get money from providing things worth paying for, Edge and Bing teams from advertising.