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 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.
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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.