5 ms·

Microsoft stores were abysmal. They felt like Best Buy without the convenience somehow. I went in to try the (then new) Surface Studio (the drafting table like

by dagmx 1y ago

Microsoft stores were abysmal. They felt like Best Buy without the convenience somehow. I went in to try the (then new) Surface Studio (the drafting table like AIO) and they couldn’t find the peripheral knob. But it kept triggering, but it turned out employees would mess around with customers by spinning it while they used it. Of course that’s just one store, but I walked by several and they all just looked depressing inside. Layouts felt about as poorly planned as a Best Buy or staples display, and even things as simple as lighting was harsher. It’s just not as simple as making a store. The store has to provide the right vibe, and Microsoft don’t understand vibe.

leakycap 1y ago
I expected they'd do better at the products with their own name on them, but I the MS Store near me didn't stock even most standard Surface devices Plus, IIRC their return policy on what they had in stock was worse than other PC retailers
- sheiyei 1y ago
  You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck. This has been a constant for decades at this point. Please give me contradicting examples, if they exist.
  - leakycap 1y ago
    My second job was somehow a cool job for a remote Microsoft office. The people I worked with REALLY tried and cared to deliver what the bigger MS office asked for, but the distributed nature of the organization combined with a lack of unifying vision made delivering something great almost impossible. Even with dedication, the result would be half-baked Wizards and ASP "solutions" that met the punch list requirements
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck. That's not entirely true. Microsoft is not just the Office and Windows 11 monolith of trash, but is made o dozens or even hundreds of small teams and silos, some making cool shit even though not all of them survived their niches or kept their quality. >Please give me contradicting examples, if they exist. Encarta, Visual Studio, the OG Xbox and 360, windows Phone 10, Zune, Surface Studio, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, AutoRoute, IntelliMice, trackballs and ergonomic keyboards, Kinect camera systems, Spot Watches, Hololens.
    - fortran77 1y ago
      A lot of Office is very good. Nothing beats Excel.
      - IIsi50MHz 1y ago
        Excel is _very_ powerful, …and very buggy and inconsistent, in my experience. Refreshing a QueryTable object or ListObject that has the filldown option enabled to automatically copy formatting and formulæ to all cells in the same column of the object can cause all or part of the object's header row to be copied into the body of the object. There are workarounds of varying ease and varying reliability. There's still no visible indication whether an edit box that accepts cell references or formulæ is currently in the mode where using the arrow keys inserts cell references and has no undo stack, or is in the mode where it acts like a normal textbox. The security model still allows a user to specify that sorting and autofiltering a locked worksheet is allowed, but does not actually implement it. Trying to use those features on a locked sheet fails with a permissions error. Similarly, if a formula returns an array, you cannot use Autofilter or right-click->Sort. Even if the array is 1-dimensional (and thus, your action applies to the entire array), Excel complains that you cannot modify part of an array. There's a workaround, that amounts to re-implementing both Autofilter and Sort using lambda(), let(), and parameter cells. Excel doesn't like to switch reliably between sheets that aren't at the same zoom level, sometimes drawing one of them at the previous's sheet's zoom…but using blurry upscaling. Or sometimes just stops drawing part a sheet or parts of the UI, requiring Excel to be relaunched. The web version is really a completely new spreadsheet …with unfortunately the same name as the desktop application. They have different bugs, and different features. They have too many kinds of add-ins, each with a different management interface, and too many scripting languages. Actually, the mere number of them wouldn't be a problem…if they all worked both in desktop and on the web. As is, there's no way to script the two Excels that guarantees function in both the online and offline applications. Some of types of add-in or scripting actions can be implemented with lambda(). …Euh…I could go on for far-far too long. (^_^);
  - fortran77 1y ago
    > You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck. Their stock doesn't stuck. Latest figures show MSFT has a $3.69 Trillion market cap, while apple is sitting at $3.00 Trillion. You're living in a bubble where you think "nobody uses Microsoft."
    - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
      Uses =/= being good. Arguably especially for Microsoft, they're the anti-thesis of each other. Gamers use Windows because (until recently, and even still only in specific contexts) you need Windows to game properly. Thankfully between things like the Proton framework and broader support for Mac and Linux gaming, that's starting to change. People in business and government use Windows because Apple has never prioritized the Enterprise environment in MacOS, and it shows. And to be honest thank fuck, otherwise MacOS might be as bad as Windows is now. A whole lot of regular people use Windows at home, because it's just the default and you can get PC's for dirt cheap (pre-tariffs anyway) that come preinstalled with it. However that market is eroding as people go full time on smartphones for general computing and computers become less relevant overall. I'm not saying Windows is going away, the inertia is incredible there and I suspect they'll continue trotting along, being mediocre and pissing off everyone continuously because that's really what they've always done. But let us not pretend financial success in the market is in any way an indicator of a good product. Like evolution, markets do not select for "the best" they select for "the okayest" and Windows is very much the okayest OS.
    - bboygravity 1y ago
      Everybody uses Microsoft, because they have to. Not because they love it or even like it. That's the root cause of why the stores failed. Think about it: how many people openly say that they love to use Apple products vs people who openly say they love Microsoft products? I have never ever heard anybody say/write about a great Microsoft product. I write all of this as someone who uses Windows, Teams and other Microsoft crap every day all day.
      - dan-robertson 1y ago
        Excel is one example of a product that is well liked and considered extremely valuable by some people. Azure (if that’s still the name for their aws competitor) is also reasonably well liked from what I can tell. Certainly it seemed they were beating gcp by having a product people liked more.
  - octopoc 1y ago
    C# is an absolutely fantastic programming language. It runs pretty much everywhere, is garbage collected but has a lot of low level primitives for performance optimization when necessary, the people building the language are making excellent calls when adding new features.
    - mystified5016 1y ago
      WinForms, WPF, UWP. They abandoned forms and WPF, and UWP is getting much the same treatment. Also there was the whole framework/standard/core fiasco
NetOpWibby 1y ago
About a year after the Apple Store opened on Boylston Street in Boston, a Microsoft Store popped up across the street in the Prudential Center. I only ever went in to get a replacement for my Microsoft Arc Mouse that I used with my MacBook (LOL). It was a funny store because the employees felt like it was their moral duty to be the antithesis to Apple...which didn't make sense because the Apple Store had bigger crowds than they did, and that's even after Microsoft added an Xbox play area. Anyhoo, they shuttered pretty quickly (Apple Store is still there, of course).
jimmydddd 1y ago
A friend worked at a window blinds company that decided to open up their own stores. They previously had display areas a Home Depot stores. They hired a women who had successfully rolled out stores for a fashion company, and was interesting to see all that goes into it. Deciding on potential locations, leasing the spaces, doing interior layouts, paint colors, lighting, displays. It's a skill set that you wouldn't normally think about.
vineyardmike 1y ago
> But it kept triggering, but it turned out employees would mess around with customers by spinning it while they used it. Oh man, that would have really set me off. What's the point of customer demos if the employees are going to ruin them? I, uniquely it seems, had a great experience with a Microsoft store. And it almost made me buy a surface studio, but a decade later, I've admittedly only ever upgraded my MacBooks... When I first went to the new Microsoft store near by university, I really wanted to try the Studios (I was an art minor; it seemed amazing to draw on). I ended up sitting there in the mall drawing on it for a few hours while my friends shopped. I apparently attracted a crowd, and the local employees called corporate to tell them. They asked for my number and I ended up getting a call from a Microsoft marketing employee asking to talk to me because they wanted to turn this "spontaneous mall moment" into a TV ad. I don't think an ad ever aired though.

by dagmx 1y ago

leakycap 1y ago

I expected they'd do better at the products with their own name on them, but I the MS Store near me didn't stock even most standard Surface devices Plus, IIRC their return policy on what they had in stock was worse than other PC retailers

sheiyei 1y ago
You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck. This has been a constant for decades at this point. Please give me contradicting examples, if they exist.
- leakycap 1y ago
  My second job was somehow a cool job for a remote Microsoft office. The people I worked with REALLY tried and cared to deliver what the bigger MS office asked for, but the distributed nature of the organization combined with a lack of unifying vision made delivering something great almost impossible. Even with dedication, the result would be half-baked Wizards and ASP "solutions" that met the punch list requirements
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck. That's not entirely true. Microsoft is not just the Office and Windows 11 monolith of trash, but is made o dozens or even hundreds of small teams and silos, some making cool shit even though not all of them survived their niches or kept their quality. >Please give me contradicting examples, if they exist. Encarta, Visual Studio, the OG Xbox and 360, windows Phone 10, Zune, Surface Studio, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, AutoRoute, IntelliMice, trackballs and ergonomic keyboards, Kinect camera systems, Spot Watches, Hololens.
  - fortran77 1y ago
    A lot of Office is very good. Nothing beats Excel.
    - IIsi50MHz 1y ago
      Excel is _very_ powerful, …and very buggy and inconsistent, in my experience. Refreshing a QueryTable object or ListObject that has the filldown option enabled to automatically copy formatting and formulæ to all cells in the same column of the object can cause all or part of the object's header row to be copied into the body of the object. There are workarounds of varying ease and varying reliability. There's still no visible indication whether an edit box that accepts cell references or formulæ is currently in the mode where using the arrow keys inserts cell references and has no undo stack, or is in the mode where it acts like a normal textbox. The security model still allows a user to specify that sorting and autofiltering a locked worksheet is allowed, but does not actually implement it. Trying to use those features on a locked sheet fails with a permissions error. Similarly, if a formula returns an array, you cannot use Autofilter or right-click->Sort. Even if the array is 1-dimensional (and thus, your action applies to the entire array), Excel complains that you cannot modify part of an array. There's a workaround, that amounts to re-implementing both Autofilter and Sort using lambda(), let(), and parameter cells. Excel doesn't like to switch reliably between sheets that aren't at the same zoom level, sometimes drawing one of them at the previous's sheet's zoom…but using blurry upscaling. Or sometimes just stops drawing part a sheet or parts of the UI, requiring Excel to be relaunched. The web version is really a completely new spreadsheet …with unfortunately the same name as the desktop application. They have different bugs, and different features. They have too many kinds of add-ins, each with a different management interface, and too many scripting languages. Actually, the mere number of them wouldn't be a problem…if they all worked both in desktop and on the web. As is, there's no way to script the two Excels that guarantees function in both the online and offline applications. Some of types of add-in or scripting actions can be implemented with lambda(). …Euh…I could go on for far-far too long. (^_^);
- fortran77 1y ago
  > You can trust Microsoft to make anything they touch suck. Their stock doesn't stuck. Latest figures show MSFT has a $3.69 Trillion market cap, while apple is sitting at $3.00 Trillion. You're living in a bubble where you think "nobody uses Microsoft."
  - ToucanLoucan 1y ago
    Uses =/= being good. Arguably especially for Microsoft, they're the anti-thesis of each other. Gamers use Windows because (until recently, and even still only in specific contexts) you need Windows to game properly. Thankfully between things like the Proton framework and broader support for Mac and Linux gaming, that's starting to change. People in business and government use Windows because Apple has never prioritized the Enterprise environment in MacOS, and it shows. And to be honest thank fuck, otherwise MacOS might be as bad as Windows is now. A whole lot of regular people use Windows at home, because it's just the default and you can get PC's for dirt cheap (pre-tariffs anyway) that come preinstalled with it. However that market is eroding as people go full time on smartphones for general computing and computers become less relevant overall. I'm not saying Windows is going away, the inertia is incredible there and I suspect they'll continue trotting along, being mediocre and pissing off everyone continuously because that's really what they've always done. But let us not pretend financial success in the market is in any way an indicator of a good product. Like evolution, markets do not select for "the best" they select for "the okayest" and Windows is very much the okayest OS.
  - bboygravity 1y ago
    Everybody uses Microsoft, because they have to. Not because they love it or even like it. That's the root cause of why the stores failed. Think about it: how many people openly say that they love to use Apple products vs people who openly say they love Microsoft products? I have never ever heard anybody say/write about a great Microsoft product. I write all of this as someone who uses Windows, Teams and other Microsoft crap every day all day.
    - dan-robertson 1y ago
      Excel is one example of a product that is well liked and considered extremely valuable by some people. Azure (if that’s still the name for their aws competitor) is also reasonably well liked from what I can tell. Certainly it seemed they were beating gcp by having a product people liked more.
- octopoc 1y ago
  C# is an absolutely fantastic programming language. It runs pretty much everywhere, is garbage collected but has a lot of low level primitives for performance optimization when necessary, the people building the language are making excellent calls when adding new features.
  - mystified5016 1y ago
    WinForms, WPF, UWP. They abandoned forms and WPF, and UWP is getting much the same treatment. Also there was the whole framework/standard/core fiasco

NetOpWibby 1y ago

About a year after the Apple Store opened on Boylston Street in Boston, a Microsoft Store popped up across the street in the Prudential Center. I only ever went in to get a replacement for my Microsoft Arc Mouse that I used with my MacBook (LOL). It was a funny store because the employees felt like it was their moral duty to be the antithesis to Apple...which didn't make sense because the Apple Store had bigger crowds than they did, and that's even after Microsoft added an Xbox play area. Anyhoo, they shuttered pretty quickly (Apple Store is still there, of course).

jimmydddd 1y ago

A friend worked at a window blinds company that decided to open up their own stores. They previously had display areas a Home Depot stores. They hired a women who had successfully rolled out stores for a fashion company, and was interesting to see all that goes into it. Deciding on potential locations, leasing the spaces, doing interior layouts, paint colors, lighting, displays. It's a skill set that you wouldn't normally think about.

vineyardmike 1y ago

> But it kept triggering, but it turned out employees would mess around with customers by spinning it while they used it. Oh man, that would have really set me off. What's the point of customer demos if the employees are going to ruin them? I, uniquely it seems, had a great experience with a Microsoft store. And it almost made me buy a surface studio, but a decade later, I've admittedly only ever upgraded my MacBooks... When I first went to the new Microsoft store near by university, I really wanted to try the Studios (I was an art minor; it seemed amazing to draw on). I ended up sitting there in the mall drawing on it for a few hours while my friends shopped. I apparently attracted a crowd, and the local employees called corporate to tell them. They asked for my number and I ended up getting a call from a Microsoft marketing employee asking to talk to me because they wanted to turn this "spontaneous mall moment" into a TV ad. I don't think an ad ever aired though.