Microsoft's Asimov System To Monitor Users' Machines In Real Time

SmartAboutThings writes Microsoft will monitor users in the new Windows 9 Operating System in order to determine how the new OS is used, thus decide what tweaks and changes are need to be made. During Windows 8 testing, Microsoft said that they had data showing Start Menu usage had dropped, but it seems that the tools they were using at the time weren't as evolved as the new 'Asimov' monitor. The new system is codenamed 'Asimov' and will provide a near real-time view of what is happening on users' machines. Rest assured, the data is going to be obscured and aggregated, but intelligible enough to allow Microsoft to get detailed insights into user interactions with the OS. Mary Jo Foley says that the system was originally built by the Xbox Team and now is being used by the Windows team. Users who will download the technical preview of Windows 9, which is said to get unveiled today, will become 'power users' who will utilize the platform in unique scenarios. This will help Microsoft identify any odd bugs ahead of the final release.

Comments

Start menu usage dropped in lieu of what?

[mwvdlee]

Prior to Windows 8, what exactly where people using to start applications if they were not using the start menu?
Or did they just notice the start menu was being used less often because people were keeping applications open?

Re:Start menu usage dropped in lieu of what?

[UnknownSoldier]

> how 90% of the Windows desktop real estate could be put to better use.

That's easy ...

1. Stop having a window title bar take the FULL width. The window title bar should be a slidable tab as in BeOS.

2. The window border should be (user customizable) allowed to be ZERO pixels like it was in Windows XP. The window border in Windows 8 are FAT and UGLY. I used to use a 1 pixel border on WinXP -- it was fantastic.

3. The window border should let the user decide if they auto-hide or not. Most of the time you don't resize a window -- why does the window border clutter up the screen?

4. The 'X' close button, should be on the OTHER side away from the '_' Minimize button, and the '[]' Maximize button.

5. There should be an option to have a global menu bar instead of EACH app wasting yet another row for its menu bar.

6. Allow the UI scaling to go BELOW 100%. Who was the idiot that decided the UI text scaling choices should only be 100%, 125%, and 150% ??

Microsoft doesn't understand the first thing about UI design: Signal-to-Noise.

Disclaimer: I am an OpenGL + UI + graphics expert. I am biased.

Re:Start menu usage dropped in lieu of what?

[Altrag]

I'm guessing they noticed the start menu usage drop right after they made pinning to the task bar easy enough -- that covers probably 80-90% usage for most people if they pin the right programs.

What's amazing is that they thought the start menu lost its worth just because it lost much of its usage.

The win8 start page ended up being more of a glorified taskbar than a glorified start menu, both due to the unintuitive search interface (no indication that you should just start typing -- and the actual search icon is a different search of course) and the flattened folder structure (ie: if a program installs 14 icons into MyCompany\MyProgram under the old start menu, it now is 14 icons pasted directly onto your start page in amongst the icons from every other program you've installed.)

Navigating the win7 Start menu was relatively easy and intuitive. Navigating the win8 start page is pretty much the opposite of that. Its only really "easy" if the only things you ever use are the preinstalled software/icons/links (since its also reasonably unintuitive how to organize the start page. Not that the old start menu was much better for that but the existence of the folder structure tended to keep it from getting so cluttered that you absolutely needed to organize it given that it wasn't something you had to search through too often usually.)

Basically, it sounds mostly like they looked at the raw numbers and made a decision without bothering to check the cause of the usage drop (and more importantly, whether the remaining use cases were still relevant.) You would think the countless amount of bitching from the first day of the announcement forward (and who knows how much internal bitching by their own staff who would almost certainly have been subjected to it first) would have tipped them off but I guess not. Oh well, at least they seem to have learned their lesson for the moment.

Re:Which users?

[drinkypoo]

Having followed your posts on Slashdot now for years,

Thank you! I appreciate all of my followers.

you never needed an excuse to bash Microsoft so why use one now?

I don't need an excuse when I have a reason.

rather telling.

[nimbius]

Even after axing 4000 employees and preeching a new leaf culture, Microsoft is still so divorced from its customer base that it requires an intrusive surveillance program to figure out how to deliver a functional product.

Here are some hints for free: listen to your customers and stop treating them like unwashed hobos. shutter your dismal app store, stop making the OS contingent upon capacitive touch screen, release one, one version of the OS instead of a whole shit sandwich of different versions the average user cares nothing about. bring back the start button. Quit trying to make me use your internet browser, its a wretched piece of garbage. Stop with the search engine, its alexa rank is ten fold lower than yahoo and its results are worse than awful.

Asmiov = Halo?

[Jason Levine]

From the article:

I’ve heard Microsoft built a new real-time telemetry system codenamed “Asimov” (yes, another Halo-influenced codename) that lets the OS team see in near real-time what’s happening on users’ machines.

(Emphasis mine.)

Maybe I'm just out of it since I've never played Halo, but how is "Asmiov" a "Halo-influenced codename"? Doesn't this reference Isaac Asimov, the extremely prolific writer and one of the major pillars of classic science fiction? I'm assuming that something within Halo is named Asimov, after Isaac. Do we credit references to the latest to use the reference instead of the original source?

Data != knowledge

[pla]

During Windows 8 testing, Microsoft said that they had data showing Start Menu usage had dropped, but it seems that the tools they were using at the time weren't as evolved as the new 'Asimov' monitor.

No, Microsoft, wrong conclusion. See, your data told you the $deity's own truth, that start menu usage has dropped. Most people pretty much use desktop shortcuts 90% of the time, so your stupid fisher-price jolly candylike tiles may look like crap but don't seriously impact that specific usage pattern. More accurate data collection won't change that.

What your data didn't tell you? That remaining 10% of the time doesn't just mean people "forgot" they had a shortcut and decided to use the start menu for the fun of it. Using the start menu drastically beats having to hunt down actual executables somewhere on the HDD, particularly for administrative-type tasks that might go six folders deep into the Windows directory, and have insanely long command-line arguments as a bonus (ie, a lot of the control panel apps).

Data doesn't equal knowledge. The stats can tell you "how often", but not "why".

Re:Which users?

[s.petry]

One of many reasons I am currently developing internal proxy services is due to Windows 8 constantly phoning home, trying to download games and themes, etc.. We can only block the 3rd party requests, so nothing past Windows 7 will be in a PCI cage any time soon. Further, we have postponed any further 'upgrades'/orders which contain Windows 8 until we can determine how much impact the proxy will have. The proxy surely won't fix issues like this proposal since it will talk to "microsoft.com", so I see many others having to adopt the same plan of action you stated.

Nadella seems like a hype-driven choice for CEO

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

They appointed Cloud Guy to run the show, at a time when Cloud was a buzzword. No big surprise there from a trendy board/investor point of view, but to anyone with technical chops that move went against basically every major strength Microsoft had left and played straight to their weaknesses.

Based on historical trends, I suspect MS get 2-3 disasters with Nadella at the top before he gets forced out. The difference this time is that now Microsoft itself can probably only survive 2-3 more disasters on the Vista/Win8 scale before it ceases to be a major player in the industry at all.

The worrying thing is that there is no clear successor, with neither Linux nor OS X having the application base to be comprehensive competitors to desktop Windows yet, while the average web app is still a child's toy in comparison to serious software (and often a child's toy with serious security and privacy concerns). It is possible that the 2010s will be remembered as the decade when progress in software development reversed and the industry became dominated by cheap, "good enough" software that left professional/power users out in the cold, though I have some hope that OS X and the relatively polished, diverse and sometimes disruptive applications running on it will take over before all is lost.

Re:The THREE shells:

[weszz]

it's so classified that you can't even use the number for it.

Had something similar trying to get support for why a government website wouldn't work for a user. We were supposed to trust a cert issued by a CA we couldn't reach to verify, and the person that called me back (because you can't call them) let me hear about it since i put the ip address of the server I was looking for assistance with in the request. It has no name, but that is apparently a security breach and had to be reported. How else are you gonna know what I am trying to get to?