DRosencraft :
It's easy to criticize the decision here, but they can't survive by just catering to the power/hardcore users.
That's a strawman argument.
And by that I mean that it's not a false argument, but it's also not relevant to the discussion: yes, they can't survive by just catering to the power user, but what they did is just cater to the casual user, and, apparently, they can't survive by just catering to the casual user either.
So you might as well be arguing that they can't survive by catering to the casual user exclusively.
Se the problem with strawman arguments?
DRosencraft :
They NEED to entice casual users, which are a growing portion of the computing community, as many of the complainers here have repeatedly noted. They could have stuck with a strategy to keep with heavy users, turning off casual users, but in a few years they'd be in real financial trouble. In less than five years everyone would start bashing them for not having the foresight to see that trend and act on it.
That's all well and good, predictions and seeing the future and all that (you only know how you do it), but the truth of the matter is Microsoft is, in one way or another, undoing what Windows 8 did, and in many very real ways, Microsoft is worse off after Windows 8 than they were before. You might argue they'd be even worse had they released an OS in the same vein as Windows 7, but that's speculative, and I'd disagree. And I disagree (and am totally fine with you having a different opinion) because I've heard many (too many) different people complain about Windows 8.
As a web designer, I know exactly what I'm talking about. I make my money bending to the will of the costumer, and handling the pressure that brings in terms of the consistency of my work, and, above all, the quality of my work. It's my job to not only build the website my costumer wants, but also to make sure it's not a bad website. The costumer is not the designer, and such is the case with Microsoft's costumers: they don't know what's best for them. But at the end of the day, I won't make a quarter of what I make if I stick to my guns and refuse to create websites that my clients aren't receptive to. They may work better for them, they may be better and more effective, cheaper even, but if I can't recognize what my client wants, my websites may not even be built.
And that's the same thing with Microsoft. Microsoft failed to recognize what the majority of their potential costumer base wants. They thought that a combination of brute force, massive amounts of wasted money in product placement, and catering to the casual crowd would bring them profit: it didn't and it doesn't.
childofthekorn :
DRosencraft :
It's easy to criticize the decision here, but they can't survive by just catering to the power/hardcore users. They NEED to entice casual users, which are a growing portion of the computing community, as many of the complainers here have repeatedly noted. They could have stuck with a strategy to keep with heavy users, turning off casual users, but in a few years they'd be in real financial trouble. In less than five years everyone would start bashing them for not having the foresight to see that trend and act on it.
I understand that. Sinofsky wanted to make 1 os to bring to several different platforms. Unfortunately this resulted in the desktop having the same UI as tablets, phones, laptops and any assorted devices i left out. I find that unfortunate seeing at how much development power microsoft has and that they couldn't differentiate between devices in time.
On one hand, we have 3rd party applets that allow us to turn windows 8 desktop into something more like windows 7. Why couldn't/can't microsoft do that now? Why haven't they done this in the year(s) that its been released? I'm waiting to see what comes out with 8.2/8.3 which apparently is supposed to be big step for Win8. Otherwise, if history keeps repeating itself, Windows 9 will blow it all out of the water.
Oh please! Microsoft has been at it since right after Windows 7 was released. They're going for the "walled garden" effect that Apple has, which is probably the most moronic business decision I've seen a big company make in the last few years. It's just as retarded as McDonalds suddenly turn all their restaurants into coffe shops, because Starbucks is doing so well.
It is retarded. Windows Phone store is a perfect example of how retarded it is: there are few applications because Microsoft is too restrictive. I remember this because, very early on (when the store's terms of usage were first released), Mozilla came out and said they won't be releasing a Firefox version for Windows Phone, because Microsoft's policies were compatible with their open-source license. It's also the reason there is no Firefox (or many other browsers, for that matter) for iOS.
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