Re: Fans are your best customers...
"Fans are your best customers...
... they are truly uncritical. They swallow whatever you push down their throats. When you have mostly crappy products, it's important to cultivate a fan base."
And that's the point of the Insider program, isn't it? They've already purged the forum of dissenting voices, so it's already an echo chamber of "fans." Whatever Microsoft does, they're a fan; they can find a way to justify anything MS does to maintain their self-delusion regarding Microsoft's greatness. That, of course, was no accident-- it was the point of the whole thing.
By cultivating this garden of slobbering sycophants while pretending that it's a representation of the Windows using public, MS gets a shield against any criticism that may come their way. Every time people begin to complain about the latest abuse from MS, all MS has to do is claim that they've gotten positive feedback on the changes from their insiders, so it looks like you complainers are just haters or fans of some other OS trying to tear down Windows... a vocal minority that can and should be ignored. Any of you Windows users out there who were thinking of complaining: You would not want to be on the side of haters, do you? If you don't like where Windows is going, you must be wrong; after all, the Insiders like it, and they're just like you, but smarter.
The Windows Insider program wasn't meant to make sure Windows is developed according to the needs of its users. In a spectacular bit of irony, it's meant to shield Microsoft from the pressure to develop Windows according to the needs of the users, while maintaining the illusion that they're doing just that.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
