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Microsoft's "New Coke" Moment?
theodp writes "Remember New Coke? Twenty-eight years ago, Coca-Cola replaced the secret formula of its flagship brand, only to announce the return of the "classic" formula just 79 days later. Had it launched in 2013, Coke's Jay Moye suspects a social media backlash would have prompted it to reverse itself even sooner. In a timely follow-up, ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols points out that Microsoft is facing its own New Coke moment with Windows 8. 'Does Ballmer have the guts to admit he made a mistake and give users what they clearly want?' Vaughan-Nichols asks. 'While it's too late for Windows 8, Blue might give us back our Start button and an Aero-like interface. We don't know.'"
Seems like Microsoft already had their 'New Coke' moment with Vista.
Two failures in three OS launches is going to be a lot more difficult for the shareholders to get over.
Remember Microsoft Bob?
Apparently, neither did anyone at Microsoft.
Rarely ever will a CEO admit a mistake. It's the user's fault for not loving it.
Bob
Me
Vista
Clippy
Zune
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Windows 8 doesn't suck because of the lack of a start button.
It doesn't suck because of a lack of an Aero like interface
The Metro interface doesn't suck
Windows 8 sucks because it flips between the classic and the metro interface seemingly at random. Yes, we computer folks know that it depends on whether the program has been written as a metro program or a classic one, but from the start screen there is no way to tell what interface you'll end up in when you click on a program. And I'm pretty sure that consistency is one of the central tenets of good UI design.
I switched to OSX about a year ago, and while it has its shiny moments, it also has lots of blunders and I wouldn't really say that it's a better desktop than Windows 7. Besides, calling "standard desktop OS" something that has ~10% market share is ... funny.
The problem with the "LOW MARKET SHARE!!1!!" comments is that you're talking about a company having a 10% of a market worth billions of dollars. I will take 10% of a billion dollars any day of the week.
Apple *is* getting converts in key sectors and if Microsoft continues to blunder and do whatever the fuck they want they will get more. Microsoft won't go anywhere - there are too many Microsoft zombies in upper management - but to roll out the "low market share" argument is absurd here when Apple has more cash on hand than the federal government.
Depends on what the companies who pay a lot of money for licensing are saying. MS dont give a real shit about the consumer but the Enterprise - who by far are the ones MS depends on - are saying no, they dont want W8 or Metro.
Ya think MS are going to stand there and stick to their guns when Enterprise says fuck it and refuses to upgrade?
Apple *is* getting converts in key sectors
No its not...and it won't Apple will never be a serious contender for the Desktop, it simply costs too much. Sales dropped 22% last quarter...and shrunk a more manageable 2% this, but any pretence of world domination, or mass exodus to Apple simply aren't happening.
The reality is Apple could buy Dell (about 22 times), or they could License their OS, but if anything they have got used to relying on Microsoft being so awful..they get to roll around on wads of cash...and even though the salesman is dead, Cooky seems indent on second guessing what a dead man will do.
I love the idea of Apple going for Microsofts throat, but they Love the incredibly profitable Duopoly. It looks like companies are putting bets on Android...and Linux is sneaking market share.
OS X may be "much better than both Windows and Linux desktops" but it will never be the "standard desktop OS". Apple's business model presents itself as the premium option, not the standard one, and Apple would just as soon see OS X die in favor of iOS.
A desktop line consisting of gimmicky miniature, an all-in-one, and and overpriced, functionally obsolete deskside doesn't make for standard even if it makes for the standard for you.
No, New Coke and then the switch to "Classic Coke" concealded the real changes from using sugar to using corn syrup as a sweetener. Classic Coke was *not* identical to the old Coke formula, it was considerably cheaper to make because of that switch to corn syrup.
We might see something similar with the taskbar, where they re-organize the taskbar in Microsoft's classic non-backwards-compatible ways but conceal them behind the restoration of any taskbar whatsoever.
it's not the metro ui they want. it's the software marketplace that they want. that's the whole business case for windows8 from microsofts view. they had to create a new ui so they could force developers to submit to paying a real ms tax of thirty percent.. well, they didn't have to do that but the backlash is less.
just imagine the execs eyeing getting thirty percent from every CS installation. thirty percent from every autocad installation.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
There were a lot of things wrong with Vista. Drivers were just one problem. Most OS releases from MS have some work; that's why anyone with sense waits for SP1. Vista was different in that it was bungled more than usual. Vista had a very noisy UAC that was muzzled later in patches. Also Vista was released for machines that barely ran it. Hence the Vista capable/ready fiasco.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well, Zune didn't have an "Zune Classic" to fall back on. A product failure isn't really what we're talking about. And I'm not sure if Bob was ever a serious contender to their flagship model. It was just something you were supposed to install on top of Windows, and it was never included with Windows. Windows ME didn't try to change anything about windows at all. It's pretty much exactly the same as Windows 98, except it crashed a whole lot more. I'm really not completely sure if that's more to do with Windows Me, or the combination of bad drivers and cheap low quality RAM which was popular at the time. Vista again seems to have been a driver problem, combined with underspecced computers trying to run an operating system they didn't have the power to run. I had a Vista laptop which had decent drivers and saw no problems with Vista on that specific machine. Windows 8 is a whole different story. They could very easily rectify the problem by just going back to the old interface. There's rumour they will in the next version.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I hope not. I hope they stick to their guns. Look, I am not the biggest MS fan, but Windows 8 is probably the most innovative and certainly the boldest thing MS has done in years. Maybe, ever.
the start button is an afterthought, it was something to get rid of how we used Windows 3.11 (which was permanantly opened folders). It was neat, it worked, but that is the past. The part people don't seem to grasp is that window with all those boxy icons IS the start menu. it is just visulazed now.
they will cave, because that is what MS does, but they shouldn't. Windows 8 is fantatic, and MS should grab their users and drag them out of 1995.
Have you tried using w8/2012 over a low bandwidth link? The suckiness is terrible to behold. Visual prettiness may belong on a tablet where big icons are needed to accommodate big fat sausage fingers, but how useful is a touch screen going to be on a server where you need to create a new account or something useful?
The way I get around w8/2012 is much like w7 - hit the windows key and start typing what I want. w8 is _so_ much slower to give me the answer so i'm less productive.
I switched to OSX about a year ago, and while it has its shiny moments, it also has lots of blunders and I wouldn't really say that it's a better desktop than Windows 7. Besides, calling "standard desktop OS" something that has ~10% market share is ... funny.
I don't think he meant it like that, i.e. in terms of market share. You are too stuck in the MS fanboy idea of Windows, Excel, Word etc. and their market share making them 'Industry Standards'. He probably meant more like that OS X is becoming more of a benchmark/reference point to measure your own Desktop OSes usability against than Windows is, i.e. that people are more likely to steal ideas from OS X than Windows 8. Of course you may disagree on whether OS X is the best UI ever made. Having used both I'd say it's better than Windows if only because OS X has a lower UI friction factor, although Windows 7 made major strides in that department so it's less of a factor than it was in the time of XP and Vista. I don't think anybody will be using Windows 8 as a usability reference UI any time soon. If OS X was discontinued tomorrow my next choice would probably be Gnome 3, bugs and all rather than either Windows 7 or 8.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Yep, nothing says "innovation" like confusing the hell out of your users and removing the ability to have multiple programs on screen at once.
Because nobody who uses Windows multitasks, right?
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Spoken like a true american that has never tried a non-hfcs beverage outside of their border...
Apple has more cash on hand than the federal government.
That is a fairly low bar, I have more cash on hand than the federal government as I don't run a deficit.
Time to offend someone
Aw hell, you didn't even include the REALLY costly fuckups, like 1.-Pushing out the X360 with a 2 billion dollar hardware flaw, 2.-Killing playsforsure (that was not only gaining against iTunes but had created a whole new media rental model that would have given them a better foothold in the living room) for the DOA Zune market, 3.-8 billion for Skype, 4.-6 billion for that ad company they had to write down, 4.- I can't remember how much Ballmer pissed away buying the Kin and Sidekick but they weren't cheap...is there any more I'm missing?
What SJVN is missing is the big picture which is thus...the SECOND that it was reported that Apple was the largest company the ballmernator totally flipped his shit and since then has been in total panic mode. What you see happening with MSFT is NOT a company trying to innovate, because if that were the case they would LISTEN to all the feedback they are getting and use that info to make their products better,what we are seeing instead is "ZOMFG teh press says teh phone and tablet is teh hotness and we ain't got no hotness! Quick, no matter what it costs get us teh hotness!" while ignoring the facts which are that MSFT has NEVER been the cool and trendy company and its X86 software that has given them a monopoly and its the reason people buy Windows NOT because they feel fuzzy about the WinFlag or give a rat's ass about the "Microsoft ecosystem" that Win 8 tries so pathetically to shove onto users.
I think the next release will be the turning point, I really do, either they listen to their customers or everyone is gonna start looking at exit strategies. I honestly never thought I'd see the day but look at the evidence, you got the OEMs on the phone with Google and putting out Chromebooks. This is a bad indicator for MSFT right here as you haven't been able to get non Windows X86 from the mainstream OEMs since OS/2 was canceled because to do so was the kiss of death. Then you have Valve, which has doubled their profits 7 years in a row and the biggest gaming service by far not only publicly saying Win 8 is shit but actually releasing a client for Linux, Finally you got no less than chipzilla itself talking about its $200 ANDROID laptops. Intel and MSFT was bestest of friends, remember? when even Intel doesn't have their backs you know MSFT is in deep shit.
So Ballmer better be ready and willing to suck it up and listen to the customers because i don't think they can survive two bombs in a row, i really don't. After all the OEMs have to have an OS that will move hardware and Win 8 is a giant DO NOT WANT when it comes to consumers. i mean for fucks sake they spent more than 2 BILLION on ads for Win 8 and got less than 4 million sales, and that was with them practically giving it away at a lousy $40! It should be obvious to everyone that his idea of turning Windows into a premium brand has failed, the Ultrabooks didn't sell for squat and the touchscreen laptops sold even less, so this is it, sink or swim time.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Every single level? That's a bit over the top. I hit Windows-D to see the standard desktop and suddenly things are more familiar. When I want to launch something that I don't have a link for already on the traditional desktop, I hit windows and start to type the name of the program. It quickly finds it, I hit Enter and it launches. Maybe I'm more keyboard-centric than the average user, but I've found Win8 to be non-issue. If users are simply shown how to get away from the metro interface, it's really not so different.
The problem is the trend of being cool because you can complain has left . Can't find the start button? Yes it's damn annoying I agree, but New Coke sucked all around. Windows 8 isn't all about a single button. A keyboard you aren't used to will ruin your life much more miserably, but do you call Dell and tell them the computer should go in the garbage? It's time people got used to this mess. Yes as a hardcore 24 hours a day user it is definitely a mess and why we can't get to the shutdown or log off screen with a click is frustrating. You are not going to sell businesses on this model the way it is right now. But it is not going to make anyone go out and change their life. Let the insane and moaners do whatever makes them feel better. I will donate a leper to your cause.
You don't seem to get it. Microsoft is a business that is attempting to sell a rather expensive (~$100 and up) product to consumers. If you want to sell your product, you have to listen to what your customers want. You can't just brush off their complaints by saying that they will eventually get used to it. Well, you can, but you'll lose a ton of business that way, and shareholders will start to get unhappy.
It may be an exaggeration to say that "the customer is always right" – sometimes individual customers really are unreasonable – but if thousands of customers are telling you the same thing, then you should damn well listen.
Also, they seem to have the "good 10%". The part of the computer market that actually doesn't mind spending a little extra money to get a well built product. They are making lots of money in profits. They have ignored the $300 laptop market for a reason. There is very little profit to be made in that sector. Their cheapest laptop is around $1000 for the Mac Book Air. Saying that 10% market share is doing badly while still making tons of profits is just stupid.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
They are also alienating their core high margin markets eg Music and Media have been worried for a long time now that Apple will throw them under the bus in the pursuit of the lower margin consumer market.
Still doesn't make OS X the standard. And Microsoft is in the enterprise not because of "Windows Zombies" but because they offer the enterprise tools. OS X server is a joke, especially since the further dumbing down in 10.8.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to shut down my computer in Window 8. Windows 7, you press the windows button and there's a shut down option.
This industry can turn on you in an instant (Well a decade-long instant, you really have to not be paying attention.) Look at Sun, no one ever thought anything would take them down. A decade before Sun went under, I attended a Linux con in Denver and had some SGI rep try to convince me that his company was crapping daisies and unicorns. I asked him point blank why I should buy a storage solution from him when I knew for a fact that IBM would be here two decades from now. He then tried to blow some marking smoke up my ass, but their company sank shortly thereafter. I started seeing the same writing on the wall for Sun later on, and they were gone a couple years later. I really feel like these guys believed their marketing and thought nothing could take them down. Well these days Microsoft's competitors are VERY quick on their feet and can take over emerging markets before Microsoft's lumbering behemoth even realizes there's something to take over. So they're coming in against already-established and VERY popular players. So unless Microsoft loses the complacency and learns how to compete in this new era, the gutted remains of their company will join Sun and all the others in the "Also-Ran" bin of history. This is not an anti-Microsoft rant. This is a warning.
My guess is the future will be pretty robust competition between an Android-based Google OS and OSX. Though I'm still not sure about Apple without Steve Jobs' vision to keep them rolling. Plus, once they exhaust the world's supply of brushed aluminum, things will get difficult for them, too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. I'm head IT manager so let's use my company as an example. I checked when our bosses wanted to get a mac for media editing (which is comical by itself). It works with exactly zero of our software suites. ZERO. No CRM, no office, no database apps, nothing. In fact, Firefox and Safari don't work with our ASP software either. Macs are toys for clueless rich people and have no place whatsoever in a professional environment. Forget compatibility, just go with cost. It's an idiotic choice.
Dude, you need to calm down. Every single one of your complaints is about cross platform issues If you designed your infrastructure with only Windows in mind and didn't factor in portability needs you have only yourself to blame. You might as well be complaining that pickup trucks are crappy pieces of equipment because they have zero parts commonality with your companies bulldozers.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Apple has more cash on hand than the federal government.
That is a fairly low bar, I have more cash on hand than the federal government as I don't run a deficit.
No... In reality you don't have more cash than the government, because you are the government. People forget that anything that is done by the government is done in their names, whether they like it or not. So that deficit... yeah, it's your deficit too... Maybe if more people understood this we would have better government.
They didn't own them, but they sure as hell talked to them before Vista was released. If the drivers weren't ready, the OS shouldn't be considered ready either.
is it Ubunutu's/Red Hat's/Gentoo's/Debian's/etc... fault that nVidia's/AMD's/Creative's/etc... drivers are garbage on Linux?
If they have the market power & control over vendors like Microsoft did, then yes.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
If you want to sell your product, you have to listen to what your customers want. You can't just brush off their complaints by saying that they will eventually get used to it.
Of course you can, particularly if you're right. Most people are naturally resistant to change, even if in the long run it is change for the better. Experienced business management teams know this, as surely as politicians do. They still promote ideas that their research tells them are better than what was there before or necessary to cope with where the world is heading, and they accept that in the short term they will take flak for it, and they hope to survive market forces/elections for long enough that their newer idea starts to pay off.
Obviously there is a risk involved in that strategy if you're not in a secure position to start with. That's why these big tech companies love their war chests. And obviously sometimes people do push things that aren't really better at all. They made the wrong call, and in the long run the hostility is still there and their strategy doesn't pay off.
But I think the important question here isn't whether Microsoft should be listening to their customers more, it's whether they're right about the change. The immediate, knee-jerk feedback from customers may or may not be a reliable indicator of that.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. -- Henry Ford
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Oh there was more wrong with Vista than just UAC and a few flaky drivers and SP1 didn't fix jack shit on that OS, in fact IME it caused at least 1 problem for every 2 that it fixed. And I wasn't running a machine that should have ANY trouble with it, while it wasn't the cutting edge a 3.6GHz P4 with HT, 3GB of RAM and a 7600GS was a pretty nice system in 07 and Vista still ran like shit.
That is why I'm quick to call bullshit on those that try to claim that Win 7 is just Vista SE, if you had actually ran Vista you would know that is NOT the case. I ran Vista and even after the SPs they just couldn't fix the issues with that OS, the "senior moments" where the UI would just hang up for a second or two, the way it would just "forget" about network shares and refuse to see them until a restart, its lousy file transfers, its just a bad OS no matter how you slice it. Contrast this with Win 7 which was the first OS from MSFT since Win2K where I could say without hesitation "This upgrade is worth it, no hesitation or reservation", those two OSes are like night and day and trying to say win 7 is Vista SE is like saying XP is WinME SE since they both have desktops.
But Win 8 is a puzzler, how they could go from such a solid release with Win 7 to such a clusterfuck is beyond me. You'd think that the point of having public alpha and beta builds would be to get feedback and fix the problems but not on Ballmer's watch, MSFT didn't have a single positive metric, not one, the beta testers hated it, the tech reviewers hated it, and these aren't haters, we're talking about guys like Bott and Thurott that can usually be counted on for a good review so when even the "go to" guys hate it? You'd think that would have sent up a red flag.
If Ballmer doesn't pull his head out of his ass (or the board fire his sweaty behind) and actually listen to their customers? Well i have a feeling that the EOL of Win 7 in 2020 will only be a footnote, a "Hey, remember when we used Windows?" story that nobody but a few legacy customers gives a crap about.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I spent plenty of years in corporate IT, sorry. Interoperability was always a big thing - even bigger now with smart phones and tablets and all kinds of other ways to get at apps and data.
You remind me of a guy at a local company I used to do work with here. He ran the company on an AS/400 and couldn't understand why people weren't happy getting their reports as TIFFs. I was able to get his data out of the AS/400 and into an actual database that folks could connect to using odbc from their desktops, allowing them to not only run the same reports themselves but also pull the data into Excel and manipulate it further.
It doesn't take infinite money - hell, the server I set up to run it was pulled from the trash bin (literally) and reconfigured with FreeBSD in about an hour. It went down one time in 3 years when someone tripped over the power cord in the server room.
I know how to run IT, and I also know how to explain patiently to "upper management" why it might make sense to spend an extra $10 now for longer term benefits. These are skills you should learn.
Do you have ESP?
So what you're saying is that it's Apple's fault your company sucks?
Anyway, don't think you're safe just because your IT department uses Windows. You'll run into trouble when someone in the executive suites wants to do business on his iPhone or iPad. "Our system doesn't support it" is generally not an acceptable answer in these cases. Maybe you should start looking for a job with an organization that doesn't have its head firmly lodged up its ass?
That's a punishment?
You setup a server in such a way that someone could trip over the power cord, and we're supposed to take your IT background serious? Really? For your sake, I hope there is much more to the story, because that's some seriously bad stuff.
I did the software setup as an outside consultant. Someone else placed the server in its room. I would have never done that.
And, if you think that's bad - I had another client one time that had their Sun e450 plugged in to the same power strip as their laptop. They nearly lost their web site when they accidentally pulled the plug on the 450 instead of the laptop one Friday evening. Oh, and no backups.
I do what I can...
Do you have ESP?