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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
{Wake me up when Microsoft does something interesting and useful.};
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
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.
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!
Microsoft: "feed my AI so I can sell ________ to you, because I want to know you want it before you do."
"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!
The last original idea they had was the Ribbon. I for one do not find that useful.
Now please stick your Modern Life Services you know where.
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...
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?
WTF Dude? You're supposed to go out an buy a new computer when Windows 10 updates brick your machine. You have deliberately deprived your computer vendor of two new hardware sales. Do you want them to lose money?
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.