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Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft
CWmike writes with this excerpt from Computerworld: "Steven Sinofsky, the executive in charge of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and the driving force behind the new OS, is leaving the company effective immediately, Microsoft announced late Monday. Sinofsky was also the public face for Windows 8 and its new Metro interface, posting constant updates in a Windows 8 blog that charted its development. His last post, fittingly, was entitled 'Updating Windows 8 for General Availability.' The OS was officially launched at the end of last month. According to the All Things D blog, there was growing tension between Sinofsky and other members of the Microsoft executive team, who didn't see him as enough of a team player. But Microsoft's official position is that the decision was a mutual one. Sinofsky had only good things to say about his former employer." Also at SlashCloud.
Ship.
chair hit you on the way out! Seriously, DUCK!
that the new interface in Windows 8 bombed at the box office....
the beginning of the end, indeed.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
... hired by Apple and Google, to completely destroy Windows 8 and any chance of entering the mobile market.
Or - at least that's a hilariously plausible conspiracy theory. I'm going to pretend to believe it.
I'd hope this was a personality or really an interpersonal thing and not a strategy choice. If Microsoft starts going squishy on Windows 8 i.e. Metro they will blow a crucial part of their strategy. I don't see how they pick a different OS strategy at this point than ubiquitous computing. Releasing another new paradigm in 2014-5 will be a complete yawn.
The 2012Q4 x86 midlevel hardware has been really exciting stuff, innovative. As the hardware manufacturers start one another's ideas 2013Q1 laptops and even desktops are going to feel a 6 years ahead of 2012Q1. That's an impressive accomplishment and I'd hope that Microsoft doesn't walk it back because other divisions are getting cold feet.
If he hasn't got any bad things to say about Microsoft, why is this news?
Because Microsoft executives had bad things to say about his latest product engineering effort?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Wait, now the person responsible for the ribbon is calling the shots behind Windows?
Slashdot is a schadenfreude-driven site. We're gonna get our Two Minutes of Hate against Redmond Goldstein one way or another.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
...how once people get described as "a potential successor to Steve Ballmer" they mysteriously disappear...
If Apple fires key people, it's the management reshuffle. If the same happens at MS, it's rats leaving the sinking ship.
What's so difficult to understand?
Scott Forstall denied that he and Steven Sinofsky are forming a secret club with the aim of ".. getting back at all those people who just don't know any better and need to told how things should be done...".
It's rumored that the first meeting will be held in a tree-house in the back yard of Scott's mothers' house, and that "no girls or software company executives will be allowed", and pizza and soft drinks may be delivered.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Posting anonymously because... well...
Anyway, the guy had a Jobs complex. That sort of attitude may have worked in a "one trick" company like Apple (not trying to start a flame war on that, but Apple has a VERY stovepiped set of products as compared to Microsoft). All it did was piss people off in the other business groups at Microsoft, though.
Like many of the oustings at Microsoft over the last 4-5 years, this is a good one, and a positive sign for the company.
And lest there be any confusion on it -- at Microsoft, once you're Partner level, decisions to leave are always "mutual".
As an MS SQL developer, I thought I'd already seen the height of IDE inanity, but with Win8 they managed to make it ever worse, requiring even more clicks to perform even the most basic tasks, and frustrate users who simply want to 'get back' to where they started. It's good they fired the guy, Win8 may be different than Win7 (which does not totally suck, but it's still heavily MS'd), but I don't see it as an improvement, or an innovation, just... different. They way I see it, MS will continue down this point-click-click-click-click paradigm, forever making things more difficult and frustrating to do. They should be trying to SIMPLIFY their interface and experience, not 'Techify' it with junk that only makes the user work harder to do the same work. It's a wonder they don't get that.
wow, i was skeptical at first when i saw people claim posters like you were paid M$ shills but now I believe it!
How much Slashdot have you read? There are plenty of people here that think both Apple and M.S. are full of shit.
Apple is busy making their entire line a walled garden and M.S. is flaying around dodging chairs with no direction.
Good post I agree. Though I think for business the XP -> Windows 7 migration continues for several more years. I see Windows 8 as mainly a transitional OS for developers for new Metro style software and hardware manufacturers to give them something to target.
I really hope you're trolling...
Windows 8 is going to be a buggy flop because MS OS's alternate between buggy innovative flops and boring stable usable systems. The upgrade path is clearly Win3.1 - > Win98/NT -> XP -> Win7 -> Win9 (which will be released in about a year in two versions: one for tablets with the Interface Formerly Known As Metro, one for desktop/laptop with the standard Windows interface)
This is known...
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
win8 _is_ mid project. it's at the phase where he'd have to start answering why things were done as they were.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Very true. I'm planning on keeping a row of machines, whether virtual or physical, with XP, 7 and 8 running.
I know a lot of industries and scattered companies who have zero intention of upgrading. Their software works on XP, and they've bought both, so why upgrade at all? I'm hard-pressed to tell them they should fix what ain't broke.
It leads to a question of ownership: when we bought Windows, did we buy it "as is" without upgrades? Or buy into a stream of upgrades, possibly for a limited time? Or was it really a subscription for a number of years? If it isn't, maybe it is wholly legitimate for people to expect that Microsoft keep patching it for as long as people use it, which could be to 2042 and beyond.
With OpenGL gaining popularity windows is becoming more and more irrelevant, and I guess that's a good thing.
A few hours ago I downloaded Haiku-OS to give it a spin.
Windows 8 is a very disciplined direction. Doesn't mean: a good direction, but a unified GUI and an answer to ARM-based tablets was the strategy. Good? The market will decide.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
apple is making more money than any corporation in the world and growing revenues and profits
MS has flat growth, losses in some quarters/years, and sinking market share in their core products
3. They've gotten over the moron factor. Apple used to be able to claim its GUI was so simple a child could use it, in contrast to Windows which was "complicated" and Linux which was "hard." Windows 8 is braindead simple as a GUI and has let wizards take over many of the less intuitive tasks of computer maintenance.
It's hard for me to compete with a corporate PR department, but here I go...
Windows 8 is braindead simple? How? It's exactly the same as Windows 7, except they added a whole new interface in addition to the old one. In other words, it is nearly twice as complicated! Worse, the two environments are nearly blind to the other. "Metro" apps don't show up on the taskbar and desktop apps don't show up on the (hidden) Metro taskbar replacement. Magic things happen when you move your mouse to certain corners, and some items don't come up unless you know the secret gesture. It is an unholy mess. You want to talk "computer maintenance"? There are now two places to find all of the various settings. How that got through your meetings, I'll never know. So now tablet users sometimes have to use the finger-unfriendly desktop interface to set up certain things (and to do file management), while desktop users have to go into the Metro interface for certain settings.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
During Windows Vista and previous development, private beta testers (not internal to MS) were given a constant stream of new builds to test. Microsoft was very responsive and bugs were generally fixed very quickly. I know this will surprise people, but at least for me, Vista was quite bug-free at launch because all the ones I found during the beta were fixed.
Sinofsky took over for Windows 7, and the change in testing procedure was jarring. We got a total of two builds over the entire program -- Beta 1 and RC. The effects of this were that many bug reports weren't reproducible on their much newer internal builds, so the bugs either didn't get fixed or testers were wasting effort. When the RC was released, Microsoft actually deleted many old bug reports and told everyone not to submit anything that didn't result in a BSOD or failed install, which let a lot of glaring cosmetic bugs get through. I can only imagine this was so they could reduce their official bug counts at launch.
The botched Windows 7 testing lead to the weirdest thing I could imagine -- in the middle of the program, there was basically a revolt among the testers. So much so that some took to labeling themselves "proud" testers in their signatures to separate them from the frustrated majority.
For Windows 8 -- we all pretty much knew it was going to happen -- there was no external testing at all. I guess after Vista's performance issues and the poor handling of 7, it was pretty easy for them to decide testers weren't helping them.
Sorry to disagree on all counts.
1. The biggest problem with Windows was not that it did not unify desktop and mobile. This wasn't the biggest problem with any OS. It's a solution begging for a problem.
2. Users don't give two hoots about under the hood fixes. Loads of unwashed masses still using Windows XP will testify to that.
3. Spend a little time with Windows 8. I have a degree in Computer Programming and W8 is far from simple. W8 tablets are not winning rave reviews for simplicity, they are being well liked for power. Who needs multiple windows docked alongside on a tablet? Not grandpa.
4. Whatever the pricing model, there is going to be loads of crapware on cheap PC's
5. Security was better starting in W7. App store is a limitation on users and will be ignored by them.
Sinofsky had only good things to say about his former employer
When I was laid off years ago, in order to get my severance package, I had to sign an agreement to *not* say bad things about the company in the press. I imagine this guy had $Millions on the line if he does say anything disparaging. Hell, if the MS lawyers are any good, they made sure that any companies that he forms within N years have to use MS products exclusively. (or at least for the public facing computers)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
That could be true. Then again, the difference between updates and upgrades can be squirrely. All Windows systems could be viewed as updates to the original NT 3.5, and priced correspondingly. This gives us several models:
1. As is.
2. Update path (maybe $35 an update, roughly equivalent to current prices)
3. Upgrade path.
4. Subscription.
Can't tell which would be sensible. A subscription would have to be $20/year for XP, which I think I ran for ten years after buying for something like $200 (memory is hazy here).
It's more likely that they scrap the whole desktop with 9.
You missed the "effective immediately" part.
No transaction period for such important role basically mean "thrown out of a window". No pun intended.
Thank you? Uh...
But then some other guy writes:
So, shills are trolls now, or trolls are shills?
I have to disagree here. While I'm not a big fan of mobile computing, it is massively important. Most people who do not need a command line are using mobile computing.
("Using" is a relative term. They are using it for Facebook, shopping, Googling, etc. I doubt they're using it in the sense of running MATLAB or Visual Studio on it.)
Apple is currently in a bind because it has two OSes to support: iOS and OS X. Whether or not the desktop PC is dead (I don't believe that hogwash), the desktop PC is being somewhat displaced by tablets and phones and other mobile computing devices.
The ability for a company to develop one app for both will be a large boon, as will the ability for people to move their software between mobile and stationary computing.
I like to think of him as the Pai Mei of the Microsoft world.
Paul Allen spotted it in 1980:
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Windows 8 is a very disciplined direction. Doesn't mean: a good direction, but a unified GUI and an answer to ARM-based tablets was the strategy. Good? The market will decide.
Unified GUI?
Ahahhahahaahhahahahaahhaaahahaha!
Oh wait ... Unified GUI? ... AAAAhahahahahahahahahahah!
Man, fire up start screen, start typing 'print'. Nothing found. Go to desktop, go to control panel, in the search box type 'print'. Oh wow, it found printers and devices. Half of things on W8 are found in one place, half in another. Does that sounds unified? The amount of annoying crap in W8 is astounding. Open Office on W8 RT, and try to save a file. Good luck if you got fat fingers, UI elements are from desktop. Oops? Oh and don't even get me started on Windows Server 2012 UI.
W8 is a Frankenstein OS, it is as far from Unified GUI as you can get.
Disclosure: I use Windows Server 2012 as my desktop.
I wonder if this means that some others who left in the recent past, like J Allard or Ray Ozzie will be coming back. The rumors were that Sinofsky vigorously opposed their plans, and they left after Balmer decided to back Sinofsky's way rather than them.
My reps are contacting me and telling me CALs are going up a minimum of 50%. I know how this revolution is being fields, by shaking down enterprise customers.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Also, their answer to ARM-based tablets is a dead end. Which is the market deciding.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Well said sir! I agree it is a mess. From that cartoon / toy "metro" start to the insane insistence that apps be full screen (metro apps) on my 27" monitor - it is nothing but fail. Most users can't even figure out how to turn the thing off because they stuck the shutdown under "settings" | "power" where you would expect to find (but won't find) power settings like when to sleep / hibernate, etc. I've used it on my main machine all through the beta and RC and even the RTM version to try to be "fair" to it and give it a chance, but damn - it sucks.
Except those MacBooks which are gaining more and more market share..
--
microsoft is mad and fires guy who was in charge of it. Seems plausible.
I noticed the tag "Microsoft" on this article still uses the old logo with the italic font and the damaged "o".
Anyone got an idea how to update that to something like this:
http://i.s-microsoft.com/global/ImageStore/PublishingImages/logos/hp/logo-lg-1x.png
Man, fire up start screen, start typing 'print'. Nothing found.
On my system when I type 'print' I get 2 Apps 17 Settings and 508 Files.
Take a look at the x86 hardware in the mid range that's come out. No. It is not known. Microsoft cannot allow the GDI style interface which is non scalable to hold them back anymore. I agree that Win 9 will be much more stable and consistent, Win 8 is clearly a transitional OS. But they aren't going back to Win32 desktops anymore than XP was a return to DOS, or Win98 a return to .pif files and non overlapping GUI elements.
I went from 3.11 -> 95 -> Me -> XP -> Vista -> Ubuntu -> Mint
In companies size of microsoft, there's always a replacement for your role ready and set. It's the smaller companies that can't afford this model that need "transition" period. There is also a possibility that we weren't informed about the transition period and it was pending for a while.
So while he may have been "thrown out of the window", it's by no means a guaranteed thing.
Man, fire up start screen, start typing 'print'. Nothing found.
I tried this. There are 0 results under Apps and 17 under Settings. The items found under settings are all the ones you would expect: Share printers, Add printer, Devices, etc...
Seems to me you've run into a PEBKAC error.
Or maybe they're the rats on the "burning platform" described by another former Microsoft executive (http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/10/23/1658222/can-nokia-save-itself):
"When ex-Microsoft executive Stephen Elop took the reins of Nokia back in 2011, he memorably compared the Finnish phone-maker to a burning old platform in the North Sea. 'I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform,' he wrote in a widely circulated memo. 'And, we have more than one explosion -- we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fueling a blazing fire around us.'"
While true... that's Apple going from 4.8% of all the world's PCs to 5.2% in one year. And that's numerically -- Apple's pretty much killing off their high end and courting the folks who roll in on iOS's coattails. MacOS is only 15% of Apple's revenue, and falling... it can't remain that important to them and simultaneously take more resources than iOS. Something's got to give.
-Dave Haynie
Windows 8 is a very disciplined direction. Doesn't mean: a good direction, but a unified GUI and an answer to ARM-based tablets was the strategy. Good? The market will decide.
I've used Windows 8 at home for a bit. It's OK, but I mostly spend my time from the desktop half, not the "Modern UI" half.
The Windows 8 UI is integrated in about the same way somebody that welds can technically fuse two items together. The results aren't always good. There's a lot of flipping back and forth and frustration since the Metro apps are confined to only seeing their approved directories.
IMO, Apple leads by a notch in terms of shitfulness.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Go to desktop, go to control panel, in the search box type 'print'.
What is this 'print' you speak of?
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
I don't know of any troll-like or shill-like behavior of mine that I could point to.
What did you have in mind?
This.
Is exactly wrong.
A single UI that is write once and run anywhere is not a success by default. The same way a programming language that is write once and run anywhere is not a success by default (sorry Java). What is missing is the app must run well.
If the OS is confusing or difficult to navigate, it is not by any means a success.
IMHO, tablets and smartphones provide a significantly different interaction when compared to desktops/laptops. As such, they should have a significantly different UI.
And how the heck is Microsoft "the last one to enter the station hall" in respect to unifying UI's between devices. Apple doesn't have a unified OS between iOS and Mac devices. Google tries to maintain similar OS's on it's branded devices, but third-parties still sell new Android devices ranging from version 2.3 to 4.2.
...while desktop users have to go into the Metro interface and gesture wildly for certain settings.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
It's Uncle Fester who needs to go. Now!
I accidentally opened a metro app and had to google how to close it. There is no excuse for that. But other than that I've been fine with just ignoring the metro part and treating it like a win 7 machine.
If he hasn't got any bad things to say about Microsoft, why is this news?
If you ever exepect to land another job which does not involve flipping burgers you never say anything bad about your previous employer regardless of what you think or feel.
Me, too. Metro still sneaks up on me from time to time. Like, the built-in PDF app. One day I'll install Adobe or something, but currently it still tricks me.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
http://image.bayimg.com/8e72f6d5ae4e44b4f2caab39e4e8d16bfff92b65.jpg
Everything is completely under control.
The last annual statements available doesn't even put them in the top 100 global companies by revenue. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2011/full_list/index.html and here are the global 500 by profits http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2011/performers/companies/profits/
I do believe, however, that Apple is by far the biggest company by hype.
As we go into the big-money season when the dollars are harvested, they've left all their partners without compelling products for their customers to put under their tree. Again.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
[I have no clue how the previous post came out as AC - nothing of my making]
He now is resorting to assassinations of all underlings. He has gone completely nuts and I for one am cheering. I am waiting for the interstellar patent troll death match between Microsoft and Apple. With any luck both companies will be destroyed.
I can tell you APK that since i have so many units coming through the shop i have tried Win 8 on just about every variant of desktop and laptop, the verdict? there is only ONE place where the touch centric UI actually works as well as the Win 7 UI, and that is on a 12 inch netbook. On a screen that small the decidedly low res textures of the apps looks fine, since its only a bobcat APU the fact that Win 8 is single program centric doesn't matter, and the hack that is "Hybrid boot" actually shaves a couple of seconds off boot time, but frankly its "Everything on the GPU!" design kills what little performance gains you see over Win 7 by keeping the GPU constantly blasting.
Now that Sinofsky has fallen on the sword trying to save his boss that leaves only one person for the board to blame and that is Ballmer. When you add up the fact that he blew TWO BILLION DOLLARS on win 8 advertising and gained ONLY 4 million is sales, that adds up to $500 for every $40 sale which is ironically the same results they got on WinPhone 7, and the fact that Acer and the rest of the OEMs have announced they are "delaying" (read canceling) the WinRT tablets, which was the whole damned reason MSFT pushed a touch centric UI abortion onto Win 8 in the first place?
Well its not hard to see the writing on the wall, i predict after a disastrous Xmas the OEMs will demand to get Win 7 licenses and Ballmer will be gone in less than 3, i also predict now that old Snickerdouche is gone they'll bring in the business team guys (which if the scuttlebutt is true its the same team that gave us the excellent win 7) and Ballmer will be relegated to the sidelines until he decides to "retire". as a final insult he will trot out lies about what a "hit" Win 8 was (just like how he counted WinXP "downgrades" as Vista sales) along with what a "success" his mobile plans were, and then MSFT will either bring up someone in house, most likely from the profitable business or server divisions, or possibly bring back Ozzie or Allchin to right the ship.
Oh and one final thing about what you call the "Win9X UI" which I've always called WIMP which i'm sure you know what it stands for, the simple fact is despite what the apologists say the WIMP metaphor is NOT OLD, it has simply had 30 years to be refined into the perfect design for a keyboard and mouse which guess what? that is over 97 fricking percent of Windows sales! Its not that "people hate change" which is another excuse that apologists use, its more like replacing a steering wheel with a pair of Caterpillar sticks and saying "Its new! You are a Luddite if you don't embrace the new hotness!" while ignoring that having caterpillar controls in a car IS A STUPID IDEA and is in every single way WORSE than what we had before!
In the end it simply shows old Snickerdouche and his boss Ballmer simply didn't understand or didn't give a fuck about what worked and sadly show no fucking clue about the most basics of UI design! To me you can provide no more perfect example of why Win 8 was a POS than the way metro does the left and right swipe. Now why is that bad, tablets do that right? Well how do you hold a tablet, like a book right? And what do you do with a book, turn the pages correct? Well since NOBODY holds their monitors in their laps, even on laptops this makes no fucking sense! The CORRECT way to design this would have been to have VERTICAL and not horizontal scrolling, as this is how one scrolls pages on a PC and thus would feel natural and smooth. just try doing the left and right swipe on a non touch laptop with a trackpad and feel how damned unnatural and annoying it is!
And I agree there were several good features in Win 8, though sadly there is just as many things designed to fragment the userbase (IE, DirectX exclusives for example) but its like someone giving you a sandwich that is 90% shit and 10% delicious ham...would you eat it? of course not, its covered in shit! And that in a nutshell is Win 8, its a few bits of delicious ham smothered in thick piles of feces.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You won't see much good of it until you get the tablet or the phone.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
A tablet and a desktop are two entirely different beasts. Does it really take a genius to figure out that nobody wants a desktop that only shows one application at a time, forces users to hold their arms up for extended periods of time, and perpetually has finger prints all over the screen? It’s a good thing Microsoft didn’t decide to make vacuum cleaners to compete with Dyson. Otherwise the Windows 8 desktops might not have keyboards but instead just one switch that when flipped on causes it to hum and vibrate.
The reason why print resulted in nothing found is purely user error on your part.
You do not understand how the search function works... if you did, you would understand that of course it finds no apps named "print" but it finds print in settings.
Your problem is your own fault for not realizing that the search catagorizes your results, by apps, files, settings and more.
He just wants to hate because thats what ignorance wants to do.
... and yet I would rather own a windows 8 pc than a mac.
If you didnt know know how to close the metro apps, you probably dont know a lot of the new navigation workflow. I suspect you take some time to learn it. Its actually very good and fluid. There are some hiccups but I find most people just dont know how to use windows 8.
Did I advocate Windows 8 in my post? I'm just expressing an opinion that I think the company will benefit by trying to continue its work on a hybrid mobile and desktop operating system. That doesn't mean Microsoft's survival is a goal.
I have Windows 8 because I need to know how to use it for my job, and because there are a handful of games I possess that run poorly or not at all under Wine. But my other disks boot Debian unstable and Fedora, and the partition I'm running from right now has Ubuntu 12.04. I'm hoping Android morphs into a hybrid mobile and desktop operating system and becomes the dominant personal computing OS of the future.
Microsoft fans keep saying that with WinRT you will get two things in one – a tablet and a laptop. Many even add “a professional laptop”. In their minds the only thing that differentiates a tablet from a professional laptop is a keyboard. This statement sounds pretty stupid. Nowadays professionals more and more tend to use a high-end laptop, most often a MacBook Pro, as both a desktop and a laptop. In my company, for example, this became a standard configuration. All new employees get a MacBook Pro, a large display, and a wireless keyboard and mouse. The display and keyboard always stay on their desks and they have the freedom to take the laptop wherever they like and do their work in any place. Thanks to the power of MacBook Pro they are able to run multiple OSs in VMs and have an environment that satisfies all their professional needs. So how a WinRT tablet with 2Gb of RAM and 32 Gb of storage is going to replace a professional laptop? Maybe it will some day in the far future but presently it’s a bad combination.
Hell put ME in charge of the damned company, i'll right it in 3 or all they'll pay is my room and board, I'd right that ship so damned fast they'd be asking if I was the new Steve Jobs.
And yes BEFORE in the early alpha builds (if you look around the net you can grab a copy to try it yourself) there was a simple .reg entry that allowed you to switch between metro and a bog standard Windows desktop, not the crippled "desktop mode" horseshit, but an actual honest to god Win 7 desktop minus the Aero gloss, and old Snickerdouche found out the .reg file was quickly being passed around so not only did he kill the reg entry, he even gutted the original desktop code so the ONLY thing you could get was that crippled half ass "desktop mode!
But most people don't know there IS a way to get an actual usable desktop in Win 8, in fact in Jan when I pick up my copy so I can learn how to deal with the Win 8 fuckups its the FIRST damned thing i'm gonna do to it! It costs $30 but its the best damned 430 you ever spent, its called AstonShell and it will give you the "look and feel" of damned near ANY WIMP UI that has ever been made, from Win9X-Win 7 on the MSFT side, hell even KDE or gnome or OSX if that melts your butter. They have a 30 day free trial so you can download the trial version of Win 8 and slap it on to see for yourself, but its a HELL of a lot nicer than that damned "LOL I Iz A Cellphone LOL" UI that is win 8.
In the end you're right though, you can't stick a damned marketing drone at the head of an engineering company, it just doesn't work. As I said with the bulldozer sticks what works great on one device does not automatically mean it'll work great on another completely unrelated device, and that is Win 8 in a nutshell, bolting a Caterpillar stick onto a car and calling you a Luddite when you point out it wasn't as good as what you had. I'm all for updating the WIMP UI but to make it better, not gut it. More visual feedback to the user for example, maybe even design keyboards with an actual knob like on digital audio workstations so the user could have actual tactical feedback when performing actions.
Finally office shows the same damned arrogance Snickerdouche showed during his reign, let the USER choose which is best! While I personally don't mind the ribbon (because i just killed the damned thing and made my own customization to the minibar to have what I use most in the same spot for muscle memory) I can see that with users that have never used office the ribbon is a lot more hand holding.,....that's nice for the NEW users, but what about those that have spent fricking decades giving their money to MSFT and have the muscle memory down cold? In the height of arrogance they fucked them over to give new users a simpler UI. If they would have simply allowed a simple switch, even buried in the options, that could be controlled by GPO so that old hats could have the classic UI while the newbies got the ribbon not a single thing would have been said.
But in the end that is why Ballmer has to go, its arrogance. To use a /. car analogy he sees Ferrari keeps selling so he slaps a ripoff of the Ferrari front end to a Ford along with a $100k price tag and is amazed, amazed i tell you, that nobody wants his $100k Ford. Apple is a completely different market, with users that wouldn't take MSFT anything on a bet, so by forcing Windows to be an ersatz iOS all he is doing is keeping his customers from buying his product while the Apple customers laugh at them as they buy their iPad. But instead of paying attention and listening to his customers he fragments the fuck out of his userbase for no damned good reason, IE, DX, burns customers with dumb moves like killing Windows messenger for Skype (You watch, numbers of users switching to yahoo or Google is gonna jump when that dumbshit happens) and is shocked that the stock tanks.
hell even their mobile division is savable, they have one of the most powerf
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Didn't the same thing happen after Vista shipped?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad