The rise, fall, and rise (again) of Microsoft's killer People feature Microsoft has removed the much-anticipated "People Experience" from current beta builds of Windows 10, and will release it later this year instead of this spring. News of the postponement accompanied the latest bleeding edge code drop, build 15014, which appeared yesterday. Released into the "Fast Ring" of the Windows Insider …
That is a fair point, but unfortunately Windows now seems to be aimed at those who are more used to a tablet or phone UI and who's main use for a computer of any sort is for "Social Media".
For most, Win10 seems to be little more than an extension of their phone. Perhaps Microsoft have come to the conclusion that for business use, people are more and more switching to linux and everyone else just wants to use their pc as an extension of Facebook so are heading that way.
>That is a fair point, but unfortunately Windows now seems to be aimed at those who are more used to a tablet or phone UI and who's main use for a computer of any sort is for "Social Media".
In many disciplines, from engineering to admin there is a need for collaboration with others, by phone, email, shared storage, text, document control, whatever. It isn't just 'Social Media' as you put it. Really, there are a great many jobs cannot be done by just one person. Even jobs that are largely done solo require an initial brief and meeting with a client, regular updates, submission of the work, billing and perhaps some after sales communication.
>What does that have to do with a UI that looks like it was designed for 12year olds to make it easier for them to chat with their BFFs?
Collating communications by contact as opposed to application. If you look at my post, you'll see that whilst I acknowledged that some people work alone, I also observed that some many people's job involve a lot of communicating with other people. It really isn't hard to see that in some circumstances a chronological list of past messages - regardless of whether they done by phone, email, text or document update - would be useful.
The OP, on the other hand, said that because it didn't suit that way he worked then the feature should be removed - he expressed his problem as being the with the concept itself, not the appearance of the implementation.
Hope that's clearer for you, AC.
@Dave 126 - The problem with many contact management apps and applications is they do not really address the work flow through an organization and its various groups. What might work well with the sales team might be a total disaster for the project management team or the programming team. This is because or the very different work flows within each group and the nature of the work each group does. In my group we never talk to an outside customer and irregularly talk to our internal customers.
>If there's one thing I'm not interested while on the computer, it's talking to other people. Keep this crap out of the OS and keep it in Skype or whatever so that it will turn off when I tell it to
Many people do have a workflow that involves communicating with others (especially those people who use Windows and Office etc), from the brief through to final invoice, so having information and documents summoned by a contact is not an unreasonable idea. If your way of working is more solitary, that's fine - but I believe the article addressed why such integration won't work as a standalone application.
>keep it in Skype or whatever
Bundled version of Skype is well borked in Windows 10, many it find it never connects even on home networks - you have to resort to the web client or install the old version. It's such a common fault with clients (easily 1 in 5) we no longer use it other than at their suggestion. 18 months ago it was defacto and used in 80/90% of (online) meetings.
"Keep this crap out of the OS and keep it in Skype or whatever so that it will turn off when I tell it to. </rant>"
Hear hear! Send me a message on IRC* if you want to communicate.
Text keeps communication (relatively) succinct and to the point, unlike voice, where once someone starts talking, they forget how to stop!
* Yes, I'm that guy.
Sounds to me like you don't really understand what the feature is/was all about. With one basic OS on both your phone and computer, along with an aggregation of contact information from every social source you may have friends in....it was all there and pretty damn slick. I'll welcome it back when/if it gets reintroduced.
it was (and still is) an excellent feature on the phone, but i can see how it would work well on a PC too - for example, use it to collate all the contact from a colleague across email, IM, skype etc...
Also, as this will also roll out to phones as well, lets hope it makes it back there too...
At work, I am interested in conversations on a subject. Never conversations with a specific individual.
I'll have many conversations on the same subject with several different people. Often groups, not always the same groups.
I'll also talk to the same person about several different subjects.
Over in Sales they are usually more interested in people than subjects, however they also talk to hundreds of people - that is not going to fit in the taskbar!
I had call to switch on my old Nokia Lumia 920 the other day to possibly give my mother as a spare phone. That WinPho User Interface was/is bloody brilliant. I was in seconds able to resize the icons from my old multitude to 3 large buttons of the few things she would use.
The phone was too heavy though.
I've an iPhone now, the UI sucks although the compatibility and app range is excellent. The opposite of WinPho.
"exactly most people's experience with moving to Windows 10 from, well, almost anything really."
Thank you. It boggles my tiny mind when the "cool kids" rant about how the brand and tech leader sucks so much, yet that's what they have in their pocket. Strange times. Everyone copies the IOS UI because it leads the pack. Show me one UI that eclipses it in any way? There aren't any because I've already seen them all. That was a rhetorical question, you see.
"This thing sucks!" *buys 100 of them* -- idiots
True, I strongly disloke the iOS interfaces. It makes for a good poster but a poor UX - and it gets worse as the screen size increases.
Android is much better, but it's still got some annoying things. My main one is that it's too easy to rearrange things on the Home screen - I really would like a lock-items function.
The other Android annoyance being that carriers can change it. That is one thing Apple got right.
Excellent bit 'o snark..
" So it pulled the People feature into a standalone app, and invited services to write to a new API. Nobody did, and so the People app became a neglected shadow of its former self.
Without really trying to, Microsoft had just snuffed out Windows Phone's "killer feature". But last October, Microsoft announced that platform-level contact integration would return to Windows via a "universal contacts database". There would be a new API and Microsoft invited developers including social media services to write to it."
Developers who take advantage of the People API in Windows 10 get the opportunity of a huge promotional boost, as Microsoft will promote People-compatible Store apps in the contact cards themselves.
Which is only a benefit to developers who haven't got a huge customer base to begin with. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, et al. won't care about this "promotional boost" because they don't need it. In fact, So why should they invest in using People API?
And without the big guys on board, people won't find People useful enough to use it.
It's the same issue that killed People last time, and Microsoft doesn't appear to have solved it.
That feature was removed from Windows Phone due to Facebook and others I believe being not happy with it. It was brilliant, because at the author pointed out, I could go to a contact and see all of their social updates, and respond to them right from that place. At the time, I almost NEVER used the actual Facebook/Twitter app. See the problem with this? If I don't use the App, I don't see any of the ads or sponsored content. FB does not make money. So this had to go. :(
"At the time, I almost NEVER used the actual Facebook/Twitter app. See the problem with this? If I don't use the App, I don't see any of the ads or sponsored content. FB does not make money. So this had to go. :("
Ads? What are those? Does FB actually have ads on the web interface - how quaint! I Never see them of course, why take the risk.
Frankly, I don't really want one. Ok for a store where I could go myself to look for something I need - but if I start to see ads continuously while I'm trying to perform a task I become really irritated...
And it really reminds me Idiocracy when the guy looks at a TV (while sitting on a WC IIRC), and the TV is full of ads around what he's watching.
Thank you, MS, for quickly leading us there. Hope someone will deliver a "StoreBlock" application.
Well said!
This is precisely the wrong way to go with this type of interactivity. I can't imagine how irritated (or irradiated) I would be if my contact app started suggesting things to me, like; what my contact's favorite apps are, or where they are, or anything other than the basic info and maybe the last email/chat/text. Maybe a post from a service of import, but never their high scores or other non-essential stuff. I get that marketing creeps like to force-feed the unwashed masses. What good does this do? None. It must be useful, and relevant, and almost like it were not there until I need it. How hard is that?
I too love my Winphone. And am not in any rush to switch. More to the point, there isn't anything to switch to.
iOS. Far more expensive than it's worth.
Android??? Why no commentard howling about the way Google examines and stores every last byte of data they can even sniff?
That being said, long since ceased being a Microsoft fan;
"What then followed is a classic and all-too-familiar Redmond tale."
Microsoft's uncanny ability to work out what the users most value and then replace it with something they'll hate.
The range of comments on here highlight an issue in the audience. When The Register started, you could expect that the audience could all write a program or complex script and had technical knowledge. Now people who work *with* computers like Project Managers and Service Desk types have become involved.
Attitudes to the products being discussed are going to be different because the worlds they are existing in are different
And that's not going to cause problems in the hands of a skiddie or other malicious person[1] eh? I'm sure that nothing could go wrong with it.
Especially nothing like writing and uploading a store app that has a trojan/worm built in (after all, Windows has so many ways to be exploited) and then embedding that in a fake contact card for someone popular..
[1] Corporations are people too! Or at least they are in backward plutocracies or corpocracies..
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