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Microsoft Has Received 1 Million Pieces of Feedback For Windows 10
jones_supa writes Microsoft's Windows Insider lead, Gabe Aul, has announced that the company has received one million pieces of feedback through the Windows 10 Technical Preview Feedback app. The app opens right from the Start Menu and it has been critical to the operating system's development allowing testers to send details to Microsoft about what they think of Windows, problems they have been facing, and if there are any improvements they would like to see. The app has been part of both desktop and phone flavors of the OS. Microsoft seems to have made a real effort lately to listen to consumer feedback and has been opening up avenues to discuss new features for some time. Have you sent feedback through the app?
I think it was more of a PR stunt for Microsoft to be able to say "there are enough people interested in Windows 10 to contribute 1 million pieces of feedback" and "we're listening to you, the computer-using community" than it is about responding properly to any particular piece of feedback.
I have to give both Microsoft and Slashdot credit. At least they do listen somewhat to users who voice concerns about their products. It's still not as good as Windows 7, but at least Microsoft is getting rid of some of the worst parts of Windows 8 in Windows 10. And Slashdot did the right thing by getting rid of its shitty beta site after so many users pointed out just how shitty it was.
But Mozilla? Do they listen? Nope! Firefox keeps getting worse and worse with each release. The ruined UI stays ruined, and stuff like Electrolysis and asm.js are just half-assed clones of stuff that Chrome has had from the beginning, or has a much better approach for. Then Mozilla pisses around with something as fucking awful as Firefox OS.
And then there's GNOME. Do they listen? Nope! GNOME 3 was by far the worst open source screwup we've ever seen. It's still total shit, years later. If you don't believe me, go look at recent versions of gedit. Yeah, that's how badly they fucked up what was once a usable text editor.
Finally we have Debian. Do they listen? Nope! Debian's quality has taken a nosedive since they started pushing systemd. What was once the most robust and stable Linux distro, even when it came to its testing and unstable versions, is now one of the most unstable and fragile Linux distros.
Microsoft and Slashdot have done the right thing by at least addressing some of the many issues raised by users. But these other projects, like Firefox, GNOME and Debian, need to start doing that instead of just treating their users like dirt.
Here's some feedback: can we please go back to referring to programs as programs?
It's because they put the feedback app in the start menu and with the start menu finally back in Win 10 users actually knew how to find it to launch :)
posting AC because... well, obvious reasons.
In the later stages of internal previews of Windows 8, they asked us employees to give feedback on various iterations of the Metro UX. We'd dogfood the latest, click thru, give feedback, and in several instances, the running totals were displayed. I wish I'd taken more screenshots, because the consistent feedback internally was about 80% disapprove/unhappy with the tiled Metro UI + compenentry on the desktop or laptop. (Much more positive on the phone, tho.) Seriously, with a 20% positive feedback rate, we were told, "customers love this" and "you're the only people who feel negatively about this" and they rammed the crap UI through into production. The rest is history.
What makes anyone think they'll actually listen to feedback this time? This time with a sheltered brogrammer for a CEO, even less tolerance for dissent, and a massive brain drain prompted by layoffs, it just doesn't seem like "better" is probable at all.
What I find interesting is that Microsoft's server version of the OS is pretty damn good. With the server, MS knows exactly who their target market is and develops tools that are amazingly good (Visual Studio is much the same). In that OS, the Modern UI elements they blend in with the tools (like Server Monitor or Resource Monitor) actually make sense and give the admin of the machine an good overview of the health of the machine. I don't see their crazy attempts to blend in touchscreen elements with traditional programs to try and force UI paradigms. Furthermore, you can even decide to install the "core" version of the same said OS. That version has no GUI. It's command line only. Granted it's Powershell, but if you've drank the MS kool-aid and learned PS, it's not a terrible way to admin a machine.
In the consumer market, they really don't know for what platform they should develop the OS for. In the past, they have blindly laid down the UI paradigm of Touchscreens and forgot that Windows machines are also used for content creation, not just consumption. In the process, pissing of the majority of their consumer base that don't use touchscreens. It wouldn't be perceived so damn bad if MS made a decent tablet without it costing $2k and without the multiple hardware iterations to get there. I remember watching the reveal of the Surface and thought if they actually come through on hardware, they could actually have something useful that professionals would seek out. But no, they screwed that up too.
I think it's business as normal in MS and this press release is there only to feed the news cycle and for blogs to get all a twitter about. Internally, MS will manage to screw it up yet again by not regarding any of the feedback as worthy to alter their internal course of action.