Reply to post: Re: Supply and demand

Microsoft: Profit DECIMATED because you people aren't buying PCs

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Supply and demand

The main problem they face is that windows 7 was 'good enough'.

Actually - they reached that stage already with Windows XP, but if they hadn't made that very clear themselves with the crud called Windows Vista, the upgrade fairy would have just kept on giving.

The only adaptation they needed was to make it actually secure (it still isn't without a lot of work, and it isn't intrinsically but only because they built a shell around the wreckage), and to make it suitable for newer devices.

What they should have NEVER done was change the UI without a fallback option - Apple was clever in that it offered the option on OSX, but as it didn't take off it was not developed further, so clients made the decision for them. Ditto for MS Office. OK, scaling it up for idiots who run whole companies from Excel (which renders decisions pretty much unauditable, which is probably the real reason), but the ribbon idea serious screwed over the interface. I used to use Visio before MS touched it and it was fast, elegant software where you could get things done, and ditto for MS Word. I used both recently, and gave up after 15 minutes - it's why I switched to LibreOffice and Omnigraffle on OSX instead. I didn't *want* to exit the MS club because change is a risk, but we ran an eval for 2 months and the remaining question was no longer /if/ we should do it, but why we didn't try before.

I have no idea what inspired MS management to go stupid, but, frankly, they got away with it because corporate idiots of the same type that always want the latest Apple gear decided that they should have the latest new version. These decisions were inertia based, not based on benefits because such a decision was always taken before the product had even been tested (I go back to the Vista example). All MS had to do was promise more productivity for the spreadsheet to pass approval, and upgrades galore were bought, compromising the next generation of IT users.

That is also why MS is hell bent on ramming everyone into a subscription model: the days of selling updates are gone, and they know it. Just check how many Windows XP machines are still live.

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