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Microsoft To Stop Offering Support For Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Old Surface Devices in Forums (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft has announced that starting next month it will no longer be participating in the technical support forums for Windows 7, 8.1, 8.1 RT and numerous other products. On the software front, the company says that it will also no longer provide support for Microsoft Security Essentials, Internet Explorer 10, Office 2010 and 2013 as of July. It is not just software that is affected. Microsoft is also stopping support for Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Surface RT, Surface 2, Microsoft Band and Zune. Some forums will be locked, preventing users from helping each other as well.
I'm one of those people with Surface 2 RT. To be honest, the support has been a lot better than I've seen with any Android device I've ever owned. 4.5 years after I bought it, and I'm still getting my regular monthly software patches. Microsoft may have made some mistakes with the Windows RT line (mostly only allowing signed code), but support is one of the areas where they were strong, even long after the platform was declared dead.
I still use my Surface 2 to this day, and find it hard to justify getting something new, because it still works quite well as a tablet/media consumption device, which was my primary purpose for it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
There are so many misfeatures in the Win 8.1 and Win 10 user interface, I wish I could read transcripts of the highly paid experts at MS who discuss them (or don't..). It seems beyond imaginable that actual UI experts or human factors experts actually have a say, or get more than a token comment in over marketing and strategy people who want to push a long-term strategy.
Right now my favorite is the burying/obfuscation of the "old" control panels for the Win 10 settings screens. You used to be able to get to them by right-clicking the start menu, but now you have to search for them. Some Win10 settings actually pop up old control panel interfaces.
I don't doubt MS has some kind of user testing data to validate their decisions, but I can't help but wonder how much selection bias is built into their decisions -- cherrypicking testers who think think will validate their decisions vs. actual random samplings of existing users.
I think MS might actually just be gambling hard on some futurism, assuming they have existing users so locked in it doesn't matter what changes they make, and focusing all their UI changes on people 16-22 because they represent the future.