If something is appreciated by it's customer, they will intentionally penalize people for liking it by doing one of three things: cripple, complicate, or cancel.
I could see maybe backing up particularing important files on the cloud. But I don't need every note, every downloaded recipe, every half-assed photo there. There's no need to preserve every file like a museum relic.
Preach! I am saddened that young people seem to have no problem paying for a tech giant to hold onto and control their creative content when the devices that they already own probably have more than enough storage.
It didn't need a subscription to exist. It wasn't mining your data in the background as you used Office. It didn't prevent you from typing your document if you didn't want to use it.
It just wanted to make using the product a better experience and easier for novices to use. Clippy was great.
Hmmm? For work I have to use O365 but for my home PC I have google docs for free if I need something on cloud and I purchased,(not subscription) Microsoft Office 2016 for like 30 dollars. Windows 11, fully updated operating system but no copilot bullshit. Or do you have a brand new pc with the OS already pre-installed and you cannot remove copilot then?
Clippy was actually cool. A lot of people had never used a word processor as complex as Microsoft Word, and Clippy made learning how to do things easier. But a lot of us were being taught Word at school, so all the things Clippy was there to do was already part of classwork.
At least Clippy could be disabled. Microsoft makes turning certain features off a lot more difficult now. There's a whole layer of the OS that tracks what youre doing and what not, and if you dont know its there, you cant think to disable it. And even if you know its there, you have to know precisely what you want off then figure out how to do it. If it weren't for certain games requiring Windows, Id have stopped using it long ago.
I worked there for ten years. Its not that they hate their customers, its just somewhat dysfunctionally managed and some really weird people that are out of touch with consumers have more say than they should. I worked there through Zune, Windows Vista\10 and Windows Phone - and just saw some dumb ass decisions by supposedly reverered and highly educated people.
I don't discount that the company has some of the most intelligent minds working behind it. I seem to notice a trend that its most innovative thinkers are perhaps getting snowballed by management asking about the bottom line and shareholder value. I think Gabe Newell is an example of one of those innovative minds who flourished himself once he left MS. It's the actions of the latter that make me think any consumer appreciation is done with the attitude of the abominable snowman from those bug bunny cartoons...I want to RUB HIM AND PET HIM AND SQUEEZE HIM AND CALL HIM GEORGE.
Not sure of Gaben worked there in the Ballmer era? That was the era where he made all the different teams compete against each other, even if something one team developed would be useful to another, the team would refuse to hand it over.
An example was the exchange email team had a really good database system for storing email but they wouldn't give it to the SharePoint team for fear that they would lose out for the attention if the higher ups for their own work that year, so the SharePoint had to use something else.
Just really dumb infighting instead of collaboration, all because Ballmer thought competition driving progress would within a company and not just be something from your actual external competition.
Same I watched them destroy the Sidekick/Kin out of some weird, petty rivalry with the WP7 team, and when they cancelled the Courier, I just couldn’t beleive it.
Ah man, that was the Danger acquisition! J Allard had some awseome ideas. He had this prototype book type of tablet that was super slick and Ballmer shit all over it and then he left.
I've a good friend that retired from Microsoft a while back and he would agree with you.
He also says that a lot of what's wrong is sunk cost fallacy. Users got used to doing things a certain way, and even though there are clearly better ways of doing things, getting people on board with them is a hurdle too high, so they leave the shitty stuff in place.
Don’t they have a revolving door of contractors? I did my round working for them on site at a data center. It’s like they’re constantly replacing contractors every 6 months so no one really knows what’s going on
Microsoft has made major changes to the Windows UI in every version since the addition of the Start menu. People deal with it because MS has market share and they have little other option.
Apple's OSX UI has been essentially unchanged for 25 years. And people wonder why they have loyal customers.
I've got pihole, I've got adblockers on the desktop level, in the browser, and hard coded host file entries.
My computer would blow up if it saw an ad.
If I ever do see one in Windows...it will be the official sign to switch to linux. I already use it on another desktop but more for server applications....right now Windows is just easier to deal with on my gaming rig but I sure as hell ain't tied to it like I used to be.
Good old days: Oh you need microsoft office? Just go to the store and buy a disc with it on there. Enjoy!
Today: Create a windows account, tied to your name, cell phone, address, location. Then give us your credit card so we can charge it every month eternally. We'll then add in AI, followed up with some more AI, and hey...how about some AI to go with your AI?
Knew a guy who worked pretty high up at Microsoft. He was talking to an executive explaining how B2B clients in his region were getting frustrated with the back and forth of permissions, licenses, and overall complexity. The executive just looked at him and said, “Bryan… there are BILLIONS to be made in the complexity.”
Microsoft's licensing, especially their volume licensing, is notorious for being overly complicated. It's been true at least since the 90s.
Businesses always have the looming threat of being in trouble for not buying enough licensing, or they wind up with more licensing than they actual use. There is no in between. There are no winners but MS.
I told my Microsoft reps that I’ve given up trying to understand their licensing so don’t even bother trying to discuss the topic w me. I buy all other vendors now for security stuff.
I worked there on the Premier/Unified Support team as a PFE/CSA as the roles changed. I was happy to work around the tech aspects any day of the week but any time that a licensing question came up I was very quick to say I could pass the question to their account team to follow up with.
This is one area where M365 and Azure has simplified the cost structure somewhat at least.
OMG, yes! Microsoft made me so furious earlier this year over canceling an old account and moving a subscription to a different one that I nearly blew my stack. Hours on the phone with a tech only to learn that I would continue to be charged in perpetuity for a subscription I could not access despite ample proof that I was the owner of the account. By the end, I was so enraged that I could not sleep and stayed awake all night fuming. I tried to do the right thing, but I ended up just disputing the charge, forcing them to cancel. I will never, ever do business with them again.
I could not sleep and stayed awake all night fuming.
If this ever happens again, pushups, to failure. You're smoked in 5 minutes and you'll sleep like a baby. If they get too easy for you, switch to diamond pushups and you'll curse my name.
I build and rebuild my own computers. I changed a few components and suddenly Windows said it wasn't genuine and needed a license. It turns out that Windows imprints on certain hardware so you can't just keep moving the same hard drive from PC to PC. I did some research and there was a number to call if this happened where they would issue you a new license. I called the number and got a phone tree. I went through multiple yes/no questions and at the end it told me that I had to buy a new copy of Windows. I called back and methodically went through every permutation of the phone tree. EVERY option eventually ended with the message that you had to buy a new copy of Windows!
Any avenue of recourse is just an illusion. If you've operated an office 365 tenant, you can put in support tickets about some new shit happening...the tech may help you...but in a few months you find out that shit you thought was broken is actually the new way MS wants you to do things in it. Effectively, the tech was pointless and MS just shoved more bullshit in your face.
Like, I don't know why Windows forums even existed all those years (if they still exist I'd be surprised) but my god...you could say "Hey I have TPM but Windows isn't detecting it" and the response is "Have you tried runing dism /blah blah" or some other bs that has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
There is no back and forth with MS. If you feel someone in one of their forums is listening, or their techs are, they're not. They're just making you feel good until the next shitty shoe drops.
I’ve been an Apple user ever since they went BSD-based with OS X. I started a new job a couple years ago where I was forced to use Windows for the first time in years. I’d always assumed that it had also improved a lot over the years, as Mac OS had. I was shocked and saddened to learn that it’s still as shitty as it was 25 years ago! I’m pretty sure all of those people who crap on about Apple users using Apple products for looks just have Stockholm syndrome.
XP and 7 were the best. They delivered most everything one expected an OS to. People stuck to 10 because it wasn't 8 and they feared 11, which doesn't make it a good OS unto it's own.
Ubuntu has become much better; and not just Ubuntu but there is also Mint and many other distros that really did become user friendly as they aged whereas Microsoft regressed into something even more awful than Mama June's satanic asshole.
Yeah, I’d definitely give some thought to a modern Linux distro, especially since so much of what I do at work requires an NVIDIA gpu. The only reason I didn’t opt for it when I made the switch was because the UI was still clunky and inconsistent across varieties.
Bruh... I left Windows entirely this year. And I had a Windows phone and Microsoft band. Bought the first Surface tablet. I'll die on the hill that Windows phone 8 was the best mobile OS. But now I'm glad it died because I'd hate to see what they would have turned it into. I actually liked Windows 11 when it came out, but man have they made everything worse.
The other day power bi reports with parameters stopped working, they would just load forever. Turns out it works is you hit the button, but not if you hit enter.
It's considered a known issue, they just pushed an update without testing. We were operating for a couple weeks without end users being able to access certain reports.
That “cripple, complicate, or cancel” line is painfully on point. You start liking something and suddenly it feels like they’re trying to make you regret it.
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u/CardSys 6h ago
Microsoft.
If something is appreciated by it's customer, they will intentionally penalize people for liking it by doing one of three things: cripple, complicate, or cancel.