Microsoft, scrapping things and starting over... and failure...

[boovish]

You forgot to mention the Kin ;-)

Microsoft Kin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oh, I loved my KIN, my friend thought that it was a makeup compact at first. I would love to see something like feeds in WP, or maybe the dot

 

[Loco5150]

I didnt read the whole topic, but if this has been pointed out Im sorry.

I dont get MS for going back and forth all the time. Its bad for everyone and very confusing for the average customer. Of course its great if they see that something didnt work and they change it, but seriously how lost can you be? I mean when you have a big company with huge resources, you should be able to have a clear vision about things when you do something.

Great example is the mess, no sorry a HUGE MESS they created with Facebook in Windows Phone. The idea of the integrated part was great, but it was missing a huge number of features and couldnt be updated fast enough. Anything changed at Facebook's backend and Windows Phone was SOT. Who in their right mind thought the integrated part is good enough Facebook experience for an average user should be fired, immediately. You dont know how many friends of mine that switched from iOS to WP complained about the issues and missing features. When they realized they need the app too, they comlained how laggy the app was. Yes, they are all back at iOS now.

Now MS is fixing things and making the app better, its becoming decent and the integrated part is gone, as it has become redundand. What do we have now? People complaining that they miss the integrated part, of course. Im sure it was enough for a small group of users and great for them.

There are other similar examples with MS as was pointed out in the first posts of this topic. IMO all of this is a clear sign of poor management / lagging vision by the top people in charge of the design.

Actually now that I think of this, if I would be in the company, I would have expected Ballmer's resignation just based on al lof these back and forth WP/Xbox Music/W8 and how many other examples like this there would be.

 

[Siah1214]

They were not going to hold up the release of 8.1 Developers Preview till Xbox Music was totally finished.
Xbox Music updates fixes the problems MS knows about and incorporates user input in their updates, what I would expect.
8.1 is about a preview for developers, not a polished OS for general release.

Well hell I didn't realize the Lumia 630 was released with a fully functional polished music app. I wish they'd update my phone to whatever music app that is so I can stop dealing with black screens, lag, and general garbage that my music app puts me through every day.

Think before you post.

 

[Vitor Salvatore Pierce]

Well hell I didn't realize the Lumia 630 was released with a fully functional polished music app. I wish they'd update my phone to whatever music app that is so I can stop dealing with black screens, lag, and general garbage that my music app puts me through every day.



Think before you post.

And Xbox Music is available since December from 2013 for WP8

 

[neo158]

And Xbox Music is available since December from 2013 for WP8

So, the Music+Videos Hub was used on WP8, so Microsoft really had no motivation to update Xbox Music just for those who had an XB Music Pass. WP8.1 changes that by making XB Music the primary app for Music, this means that they have to update it regularly now to add missing features and fix bugs.

 

[Vitor Salvatore Pierce]

So, the Music+Videos Hub was used on WP8, so Microsoft really had no motivation to update Xbox Music just for those who had an XB Music Pass. WP8.1 changes that by making XB Music the primary app for Music, this means that they have to update it regularly now to add missing features and fix bugs.

Yeah. I agree. But since December that he was slow, buggy.
MS made since from the start it this way, bad.

 

[Bobvfr]

i give this topic 10/10 Microsoft needs to stop playing around with their 'touch windows' and get back to old day with Windows 9. Keep moving with WP until it matures to become the OS for Tablets. Kill Windows RT BTW.

Do you honestly think the world is going back to non touch screens?

I don't know what is in Windows 9 but it sure as hell isn't going to be a remake of XP.

Bob

 

[tgp]

Do you honestly think the world is going back to non touch screens?

I don't see the PC world going all touch screen anytime soon. I work at a desk. I'm certainly not going to have my arm outstretched using my touchscreen all day. There will continue to be more and more touchscreens, but in the current paradigm of how we use computers I'm quite confident it won't go all touchscreen

 

[spaulagain]

I work at a desk. I'm certainly not going to have my arm outstretched using my touchscreen all day.

I'm sick and tired of hearing this claim. It's honestly one of the most ill conceived notion that having or using a touch screen means your arm is outstretched all day.

If you have a touch screen, it doesn't mean you have to hold your arms up to the screen the whole fvcking time. It just means that when appropriate, you can interact with the computer in a very direct way. Simply touch it.

I have a touch screen laptop and I use touch as my point of interaction probably 40-50% of the time. Why? Because it's easy and the most direct way to press a button. Do my arms get tired? No, because I don't sit there with my arm extended the whole time. Reaching to touch the screen is almost exactly the same as moving the mouse. It's a larger degree of movement, but its also more direct and intuitive.

Touch screens will dominate most peoples interaction with computers within the next 10 years. Eventually, only professionals like architects, engineers, designers, and developers will use the more targeted, controlled mouse.

 

[tgp]

I'm sick and tired of hearing this claim. It's honestly one of the most ill conceived notion that having or using a touch screen means your arm is outstretched all day.

If you have a touch screen, it doesn't mean you have to hold your arms up to the screen the whole fvcking time. It just means that when appropriate, you can interact with the computer in a very direct way. Simply touch it.

I have a touch screen laptop and I use touch as my point of interaction probably 40-50% of the time. Why? Because it's easy and the most direct way to press a button. Do my arms get tired? No, because I don't sit there with my arm extended the whole time. Reaching to touch the screen is almost exactly the same as moving the mouse. It's a larger degree of movement, but its also more direct and intuitive.

Touch screens will dominate most peoples interaction with computers within the next 10 years. Eventually, only professionals like architects, engineers, designers, and developers will use the more targeted, controlled mouse.

I didn't expect you'd agree. :winktongue:

I know that just because you have a touchscreen doesn't mean that you have to use it. The problem is that we need a UI that seamlessly delivers an optimized experience with both touchscreen with mouse & keyboard. So far we have been left with compromises on both sides.

 

[mpt15]

I agree with spaulagain. I use the touch screen while working because it comes more naturally compared to using the mouse sometimes. Some examples I can give are increasing and decreasing the zoom on a document, webpage; scrolling a page; changing screen brightness and volume. When I'm typing a document im just using the keyboard. I've found that the touch screen actually helps me. It isn't inconvenient at all, and no, my arms don't hurt.

My mom, who has only used touch screen phones, and didn't once think there can be a touch screen computer, started touching the screen of our non touch laptop. She didn't know that there were touch screen computers. It just seemed like a natural way to interact with a computer. That's the way we interact with information now.

 

[Vitor Salvatore Pierce]

My PC isn't touch, but I love Windows 8.1.
So much better the new start menu then the old one!

 

[spaulagain]

My PC isn't touch, but I love Windows 8.1.
So much better the new start menu then the old one!
View attachment 69832

Agreed, I'm completely befuddled by how attached people are to the old Start Menu. I've always thought it was one of the worst parts of Windows. Such a convoluted menu system of endless cascading folders.

 

[Laura Knotek]

Agreed, I'm completely befuddled by how attached people are to the old Start Menu. I've always thought it was one of the worst parts of Windows. Such a convoluted menu system of endless cascading folders.

I rarely used the start menu in Windows 7. I had everything I used frequently pinned to the taskbar.

 

[spaulagain]

I rarely used the start menu in Windows 7. I had everything I used frequently pinned to the taskbar.

Same here, pinned all my apps to the task. And the search on the old Start Menu was horrible, W8 is so much better in regards of search.

 

[fatclue_98]

Agreed, I'm completely befuddled by how attached people are to the old Start Menu. I've always thought it was one of the worst parts of Windows. Such a convoluted menu system of endless cascading folders.

You just dropped the hammer on every numb-nut who complained about Windows Mobile and its endless parade of submenus. The same people who now wax poetically about live tiles on their phones and at the same time bemoan the loss of the start menu on their desktops. Thank you! I'll let you catch the grief for a while now.


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[fatclue_98]

I rarely used the start menu in Windows 7. I had everything I used frequently pinned to the taskbar.

A trick I learned from OS X.


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[Laura Knotek]

A trick I learned from OS X.


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I've never used OS X, but I like a clean looking desktop. My taskbar auto hides. I have nothing on my desktop, not even the recycle bin.

 

[Vitor Salvatore Pierce]

I rarely used the start menu in Windows 7. I had everything I used frequently pinned to the taskbar.

Yeah. Is like the people have 100000 apps!
I open Opera (IE isn't good on Scroll and Chrome... well, is Chrome), open Spotify, and some apps of Adobe Suite, Visual Studio, Vuze. Just that.
It's not like I open multiple programs every minute. 'Cause the old start have just this utility. Now the new start, I can see my notifications and can see everything that is important, and pin apps that I use most.
How can the new star menu be more bad than the old one?

 

[rodan01]

At the end of the 90s Microsoft panicked with the rise of the web. The idea at that time was that the web was going to eat everything (chromebooks?), and Microsoft didn't even have a browser.

So, the took they best guys and formed an elite team to save Windows from a major threat. This team was so successful that not only destroyed Netscape reaching over 98% of browser market share, they also developed the tech for the modern web, that Google used to build Gmail many years later.

I think this outstanding victory produced overconfidence in MS. They decided to stop the development of IE, so the dropped web as an application platform and concentrated all their resources in this ambitious Longhorn project that not only aimed to introduce a lot of new features into the OS, they wanted to build a new superior Web based on Windows and .Net.

While Microsoft dedicated all their resources to their pharaonic endeavors, Netscape became the open source Mozilla, Google developed their services, Apple developed OS X and their consumer oriented devices, the development of iOS and Android started in 2003- 2004.



If Longhorn would have succeeded Microsoft would dominate completely the tech world. But it failed not only because of the complexity of the code, their competitors modified the landscape through innovation, now Microsoft is a follower.



Edit: I or tapatalk only posted a half.