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Microsoft's Plan To Try To Win Back Consumers With 'Modern Life Services' (zdnet.com)
It's not a secret that Microsoft hasn't been winning the hearts and minds of consumers lately. Killing off products like the Groove Music service, Microsoft Band fitness tracker, and Windows Phone have left many questioning whether Microsoft's grand plan is to simply focus on business users and leave consumers to its competitors. But at the company's Inspire partner show this week, Microsoft execs told partners that Redmond isn't giving up on consumers. From a report: Yusuf Mehdi -- whose new title as of June 2018 became corporate vice president of Modern Life and Devices -- led a session at the partner show in Las Vegas, Nev., where he outlined the company's vision for what officials plan to christen "Modern Life Services." Microsoft's core value proposition is productivity, he said. Microsoft is targeting so-called "professional consumers" with these services, Mehdi said. Microsoft officials believe because the company already "owns the work calendar with Outlook," that it has a foothold in working to blur the line between consumer and commercial activities. What, exactly, will qualify as a Modern Life Service? Mostly they will be apps, services, and features that Microsoft already makes available or soon will in Windows, Outlook, and PowerPoint, but which officials will attempt to position as well suited to the needs of professional consumers on Windows PCs, iPhones and Android phones.
Nobody ever wants outlook, they're just stuck with it. Most people aren't going to want their personal emails and appointments in that clusterfuckl. Nobody loves your products, Microsoft. We're just fucking held hostage by them. Try not to confuse the two.
We come bearing APPS!
Microsoft Execs have no clue what modern day life outside of business is other than a possible revenue stream that they haven't tapped yet. If they really want to win hearts and minds then they could just easily give users back control of their hardware, but we all know that will never happen.
Crazy, I know.
Adding "Modern Life Services" to the list of buzzwords that mean nothing.
go back to your roots:
to an operating system that stayed the fuck out of the way, didn't peddle "apps" or subscriptions, and let you go about your own business..
to applications that ran on your own computer and let you focus on your job or task.. without constant nagging about online 'features'..
the constant push online... constant interruptions for ads (excuse me, i mean "notifications").. and continuing to harvest user data without limits, no bounds, without transparency.. will all just fuel your demise. you're fading because you're doing all of this now.. if you do it even more, you aren't going to 'win us back', you're going to push us further away... right into the waiting arms of a competitor.
Went Linux in 1998 and never going back. Been a sysadmin since and Windows and Microsoft are pillars of intransigence. Licensing is hideous, is difficult to keep up with in the enterprise, and this is on purpose. I've helped organisations move completely to open source and never look back. Ernie Ball did this as a corporation and also never looked back. Plenty of corps use Red Hat and LibreOffice exclusively and do just fine. Microsoft doesn't care about interoperability or the customer in the long run. They care about revenue. The fact they bought GitHub is unnerving, as they control the very repository of millions of projects and billions of lines of code. I'd not be surprised if in the near future, people bail and go back to SourceForge or something else new that springs up to fill the void.
Welcome to Microsoft how may we monitize and screw up your whole life for profit today?
How about porting Media Center in a way that allows protected content to Windows 10 and improving it by letting Xbox-One work as a viewer like the 360 can?
Why?
Because, that's about the ONLY reason I keep running windows at home because it's the only way I can record and view protected content with my cable card tuner.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Exactly. An OS that gets out of the way, isn't loaded with crapware, let's you customize how you want it, and doesn't report home on your activities.
Wait are we talking about Linux, or Windows.
why bother when they'll abandon the device in less than a year?
{Wake me up when Microsoft does something interesting and useful.};
For a minute I got excited when I saw the name Mehdi. I thought good old Mehdi Ali returned to work some of his magic at microsoft. One can old dream...
Microsoft (and everyone else) should remember this when they think about making moves likely to piss a lot of customers off. What can they do to win me back as a customer? Great question... Well, do they by any chance have a time-machine, and the ability to go backwards in time and prevent the company from acting like a bunch of goddamned fucking dickheads? No? Well, then nothing. There is literally nothing Microsoft can do that will induce me willingly to give them another goddamned fucking penny for anything under any circumstance whatsoever.
The way I see it, holding this line (and if everyone else would be so kind as to do the same) could help dissuade other companies from engaging in the kind of fucked-up jackassery Microsoft has indulged in in the past. They need to understand that actions have consequences, that they can be far-ranging, and that if we just forgive Microsoft and start buying their miserable shit again, it will only encourage OTHER corporations, whom, as you'll recall, we have almost no power over since they've bought almost every one of our corrupt, useless, spineless, gutless, heartless, dickless, brainless, feckless, worthless, puppet politicians, the only way we can check corporations and the way they treat us, is to hold the line, and deny them our money (to the extent we can, obviously when they go around us and bribe our public oaf-ficials and get government contracts, that's our money they're stealing and there's nothing we can do about that... but besides that,) especially if and when alternatives exist, and the more we do that, the more alternatives there can be, (and hence, there will be,) and the better the quality and more reasonable the price we will be able to get them for.
Try not to forget there was a time when Microsoft, using illegal and unfair anti-competitive business practices, virtually destroyed all their competition, NOT because their products were better, (they were demonstrably inferior in most respects,) but because their greed was rewarded in a new business/financial/economic sector that due to its nascence, no one knew exactly how it worked or how to regulate it properly for the longest time, before the law caught up with them, and others could adapt to the damage they were doing. The result was the so-called Microsoft Tax, where you ended up paying Microsoft whether you wanted to or not, (hence the term, "tax") whenever you bought a new computer because the company you bought it from (with few exceptions) would have an involuntary arrangement with Microsoft in which Microsoft was paid a licensing fee for their wretched malware by the computer manufacturers when you bought one of their machines, whether you wanted a copy of that pile of fetid, steaming dogshit they called "Windows" or not. (The alternative to a company installing Windows with every system they sold was not being allowed by Microsoft (under the terms) to install Windows on ANY machines they sold, which was an effective death sentence for the company, unless of course their customers weren't drooling submorons who didn't want to use a pile of shit like Windows, which simply wasn't the case with most of the home PC market, or unless the company made its own OS to compete with it... like... Sun Microsystems, for example.
(Hahah, you thought I was going to say, "Apple," didn't you? Yeah, I actually meant Apple. There wasn't a whole lot of space for competing operating systems; the only way for a new one to really get its foot in the door was for it to be offered for FREE, (i.e., GNU/Linux) and even THAT has trouble with adoption, despite it CONTINUING to be free, over a quarter century later...)
Even if you didn't use Windows, such as if the first thing you did with a new computer is slap a new hard drive in it, and install GNU/Linux or one of the variety of flavors of BSD... for quite a while,... you still paid for Microsoft's shitty excuse for an operating system which could be just as well described as a malware delivery platf
You sure think about Trump a lot. Do you want to have sex with him?
Wait, you mean actually fixing the horrific dark patterned UI disaster of a data mining hacky cloud based microsoft thin client called windows 10?
Are you serious man? Fixing their flagship OS that comes with preinstalled games, has a broken user interface, has 5 different right click context themes, and error messages of "something happened?"
Actually implement QA again and fix the long standing horrific user interface bugs?
Get a grip.
I found out today what Trump and Putin were talking about during their private meeting.
They talked about golf and grandchildren!!
(Just like Bill and Loretta on that plane.)
Microsoft if you can make windows 2000 work with all the new hardware and security, then perhaps we can talk about buying something from you. Microsoft would never do this because the best system i ever had was Windows 2000 running opensource software for my needs.
Microsoft could try coming up with some original ideas that people might find useful.
Microsoft is the new IBM, only old has-been corps, and idiots run their shitty software.
That would be a damn fine first step.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Quit fucking rebooting my fucking laptop without fucking asking me, fuckhats!
my company, admittedly tiny, uses google email, no outlook
Microsoft: "feed my AI so I can sell ________ to you, because I want to know you want it before you do."
You've got to be kidding me. They consider their core competency, their "value proposition", as productivity?
Their buggy software has kept declining and declining and declining in quality ever after Windows XP and Office 2003, to the point that work using it has become increasingly unproductive. Say whatever else about that software as you will (and there's plenty to complain about). But at least it worked back then.
Nowadays, it's crash after bug after bug.
It's a very simple equation, Microsoft. You want to bring consumers back? Then fix your software so it works, the way it used to.
I wouldn't use Microsoft software at home if you gave me a million dollars to do so. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. For people trying to get work done, to be productive, it's that bad.
Microsoft went out of their way to fuck over customers. Remember if you buy a computer with Windows, you can get a your money back if you remove Windows!
"do they by any chance have a time-machine": Why yes, they do. Although if you thought your CPU was drawing a lot of power; the Microsoft time machine draws 1.21 gigawatts. But wait until you see the chassis!
Shrivel up and die already. That's about the only way you could "win my heart and mind".
Thats exactly what we want congratulations. Have a look at Battlefront 2 or something ....
Honestly what I read is "We don't give a fuck if you like us or not, since you are stuck with our products we gonna charge you a lot more often while putting less work into the product"
Just spent a day to fix broken internet on a windows 10 machine after a botched MS update. Since internet was gone they couldn't rollout another patch to fix it. Apparently the update broke the windows DHCP client. Had to set a fixed IP. Two weeks before an update broke audio on the other PC at home. Since Windows 10 installs its own drivers for everything, a simple install of the device driver from the manufacturer had no effect. Great work!
Maybe it's a good idea to fix this first to stop customers from fleeing?! WTF?
But I still don't trust them. Too many inferior products. Too much money grabbing. Why would a sane person opt for a company like that.
Having said that, as far as tech companies go, none of which a very trust worthy these days, I think they a really improving in rank.
I'm pretty ready to completely ditch Google for their arrogance and completely dishonesty . Facebook are the biggest cunt on the face of the planet. Etc. Etc.
At least with Microsoft I'd know what I'm getting into bed with.
Thank goodness for Linux I guess. Doesn't really run my smart phone, email (like it could 15 years ago when compared to competition) and search engine etc. Etc. Etc.
Are these posts an attempt by Republicans to false-flag as mentally insane Democrats just to incite the majority unaffiliated and centrists to vote Trump?
Because hearing the same idiots going on and on about Trump 24/7 makes voting for him a kind of emotional gratification where it didn't exist before.
I'd say it's working. I'm itching to vote Trump even though i'm not American, and if it works on me then it works even better on Americans who are in the epicenter of the nuclear butthurt spewing radiation directly at them.
Or maybe this hyper-inflated anti-Trump wave of hate is a Russian psy-ops, you never know.
Or even Chinese psy-ops since i know for a fact that Chinese hack and attack Americans the most, and Russians getting flack instead of the Chinese is a most welcome event for the Chinese.
Either way it's working.
Now please stick your Modern Life Services you know where.
You're an idiot...
Go watch Sargon or BPS and get educated you bot.
It's because of people like him so can bitch freely about him kiddo....
I found out today what Trump and Putin were talking about during their private meeting.
:)
They talked about golf and grandchildren!!
(Just like Bill and Loretta on that plane.)</quote>
You, I like
End of Line.
...I mean, given their stellar track record at everything, who wouldn't want Microsoft to manage their life's details and activities?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Bravo, my good man.
Now, can you do a similar write-up for Facebook, Google and Apple?
It's tough to avoid giving money and/or information to one of the monstrous conglomerates that exist now. It's even tougher to convince the general population that posting your every thought, word and deed to the book of faces is a really fucking stupid idea. You really want the entire universe to know you're going on vacation for two weeks and the house will be empty for long enough for the crooks to just back a truck up and walk out with whatever they want? Great plan, dipshit! Brilliant!
Sorry. Just too much stupidity surrounding these companies. Microsoft at this point isn't even the worst of them, though they are pretty damn shit.
If Microsoft could stop being a dictator and start giving user choice back, it would be a step in the right direction.
Windows 10 forcing spying down your throat, all services have telemetry enabled. Heck, even Development tools were putting in telemetry in home grown code.
They've lost our trust
Better than Lotus
Give us your data and money and we will not improve anything.
Did I read that right?
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
Break the monopoly on gaming, M$.
Release DirectX for the world as FOSS. fund and promote OpenGL.
Anything less is just a camel nose under the tent of *nix as a way to gain power and EEE.
(WOW! How many M$ stories can we push on the FP every day? Welcome to the M$ blog.)