The Nokia purchase was a boon for MS and under Satya's leadership is finally bearing fruit. Have you seen the new Lumia 640? Good reviews are ablaze. MS NEEDS to get a foothold in the mobile market. And they are. Not sure why you think they're going to kill it off.
Are you kidding? They were making poor business decision after poor business decision. They've completely turned everything they were doing on their head. I know I got rated down because I must be a M$FT fanboi, but realize I'm an investor and know good business practices when I see it. Just to name a few...
1) Backwards compatibility on Xbox One. Since the Xbox 360 uses big-endian it's no easy task to import all that to the Xbox One's little-endian architecture. But the fact they're doing this on a business rather than technical level screams a huge dedication to their users, who they could have just left out in the cold. It makes money because people will be more willing to buy an Xbox One if they can take their 360 collection with them. This is a complete reversal of the previous decision.
2) A change to the subscription business model. The slow change to the subscription based model is a step up for revenues everywhere and demonstrates that MS is business savvy and knows how best to earn revenue from consumers.
3) To the cloud! The cloud is just something people are going to have to accept one way or another. Because of the growing proliferation of the internet and the introduction of the IoT, everything will soon be connected to one global netspace. It's unavoidable and MS is (smartly) one of the few (like Google) leading the charge. If it wasn't them it would just be someone else.
4).NET goes open source. MS does care about developers who develop on their platform. Increases market proliferation. And as much as people whine about it not being enough, it's more than reasonable from any business perspective.
Skype's update service became so obnoxious that the more savvy users, to prevent their older client from upgrading without their permission, replaced the updater with a dummy file. That is, an empty file that doesn't do anything.
I usually defend MS against people who I believe unfairly attack them, but you've really struck a nerve.
I don't know what team is responsible for Skype, but they have done such a mind boggling horrible job I'm half convinced they're intentionally trying to kill it, cut it into small pieces, then burn the remains before firing the ashes into the nearest black hole.
Every single version they push out has been worse than the last, and the last good version was 6.18. I loathe the day when they finally kill this version to force people into their newer, more broken, buggy, and less featured version. And to boot it wasn't enough that they started forcing people to update by patching it through Windows Update. I started my computer one day to find Skype completely uninstalled -- all because of Windows Update (which I now review for all updates after this tragic experience). Somehow it managed to uninstall itself and then couldn't reinstall itself because I replaced the update file with a dummy.
They keep removing features but *promise* to put them back in... And even years later the features still haven't back in added. But hey that's okay because now Skype can use even larger emoticons. Well fucking thanks for that useless fucking feature. That's all Skype gets nowadays, useless improvements and worse performance. The calls I get with 6.18 are perfect but with any version 7 I may as well just write letters and send them through the mail.
Oh but wait they changed the UI to be even worse! Now you have chat bubbles for some stupid fucking reason.
Microsoft we deserve an explanation for this total fucking incompetence. Maybe you should hire actual software developers instead of monkey interns who think smashing their face into a keyboard is an acceptable way to write software.
Yeah stupid people making UIs for end-users and not for programmers!
I'm sure graphic designers have a load to complain about how you're incompetent too, while we're at it. Show me a bad metro UI by a graphic designer and I can show you an awful UI by a programmer. The opposites of this are also true. It's almost as though you'd have to work together as a team to produce something that's simple, clean, aesthetically pleasing, intuitive, and functional! But actually communicating what you need to a non-programmer? The horror!
GUIs are the way of the future and the metro style is here to stay. But if you don't like that you're welcome to go play around on COBOL or something.
It's strange that businesses oppose raising wages. It's like the prisoner's dilemma and everyone wants to screw everyone else over.
Look, you'll pad profits for a short while (maybe), but in the long run it's detrimental to the entire economy since the bulk of the population ends up with less spending power. If corporations were forced to pay their workers fair rates everyone would benefit.
You've picked the wrong field if you wanted something like that. Technology evolves fast. Keep up or drop behind; if you don't like it then maybe you should have been a history major.
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No.
Definitely no.
The Nokia purchase was a boon for MS and under Satya's leadership is finally bearing fruit. Have you seen the new Lumia 640? Good reviews are ablaze. MS NEEDS to get a foothold in the mobile market. And they are. Not sure why you think they're going to kill it off.
Unless Google, Netflix, and etc. can get bigger campaign contributions.
It's sad that the only reason net neutrality happened is because even bigger companies lobbied for it.
Are you kidding? They were making poor business decision after poor business decision. They've completely turned everything they were doing on their head. I know I got rated down because I must be a M$FT fanboi, but realize I'm an investor and know good business practices when I see it. Just to name a few...
1) Backwards compatibility on Xbox One. Since the Xbox 360 uses big-endian it's no easy task to import all that to the Xbox One's little-endian architecture. But the fact they're doing this on a business rather than technical level screams a huge dedication to their users, who they could have just left out in the cold. It makes money because people will be more willing to buy an Xbox One if they can take their 360 collection with them. This is a complete reversal of the previous decision.
2) A change to the subscription business model. The slow change to the subscription based model is a step up for revenues everywhere and demonstrates that MS is business savvy and knows how best to earn revenue from consumers.
3) To the cloud! The cloud is just something people are going to have to accept one way or another. Because of the growing proliferation of the internet and the introduction of the IoT, everything will soon be connected to one global netspace. It's unavoidable and MS is (smartly) one of the few (like Google) leading the charge. If it wasn't them it would just be someone else.
4) .NET goes open source. MS does care about developers who develop on their platform. Increases market proliferation. And as much as people whine about it not being enough, it's more than reasonable from any business perspective.
Nadella turned the company around.
You would be a completely blithering moron not to invest in their stock right now.
Why would they do that when they can add even bigger emoticons.
Let's get your priorities straight.
You'll have to pry it from the NSA's cold dead fingers.
Yeah then they can all switch to Apple.
Enjoy your locked down hardware/apps.
Because you need someone to blame.
That's how this works. I do the illegal stuff, the guy who calls me out on it takes the fall.
Like what? Because I'm fond of the old UI.
I've looked for other things but haven't found anything.
Skype's update service became so obnoxious that the more savvy users, to prevent their older client from upgrading without their permission, replaced the updater with a dummy file. That is, an empty file that doesn't do anything.
This. So much this.
I usually defend MS against people who I believe unfairly attack them, but you've really struck a nerve.
I don't know what team is responsible for Skype, but they have done such a mind boggling horrible job I'm half convinced they're intentionally trying to kill it, cut it into small pieces, then burn the remains before firing the ashes into the nearest black hole.
Every single version they push out has been worse than the last, and the last good version was 6.18. I loathe the day when they finally kill this version to force people into their newer, more broken, buggy, and less featured version. And to boot it wasn't enough that they started forcing people to update by patching it through Windows Update. I started my computer one day to find Skype completely uninstalled -- all because of Windows Update (which I now review for all updates after this tragic experience). Somehow it managed to uninstall itself and then couldn't reinstall itself because I replaced the update file with a dummy.
They keep removing features but *promise* to put them back in... And even years later the features still haven't back in added. But hey that's okay because now Skype can use even larger emoticons. Well fucking thanks for that useless fucking feature. That's all Skype gets nowadays, useless improvements and worse performance. The calls I get with 6.18 are perfect but with any version 7 I may as well just write letters and send them through the mail.
Oh but wait they changed the UI to be even worse! Now you have chat bubbles for some stupid fucking reason.
Microsoft we deserve an explanation for this total fucking incompetence. Maybe you should hire actual software developers instead of monkey interns who think smashing their face into a keyboard is an acceptable way to write software.
Yeah stupid people making UIs for end-users and not for programmers!
I'm sure graphic designers have a load to complain about how you're incompetent too, while we're at it. Show me a bad metro UI by a graphic designer and I can show you an awful UI by a programmer. The opposites of this are also true. It's almost as though you'd have to work together as a team to produce something that's simple, clean, aesthetically pleasing, intuitive, and functional! But actually communicating what you need to a non-programmer? The horror!
GUIs are the way of the future and the metro style is here to stay. But if you don't like that you're welcome to go play around on COBOL or something.
The horror!
We may end up with intuitive and user-friendly software, oh no!
Why not include both?
How much money will it cost to reach a compromise?
I expect a prompt reply, I've got a golf game at three.
It's not like it's going anywhere, right guys?
I'm an investor. I prefer thinking for the long term.
It's strange that businesses oppose raising wages. It's like the prisoner's dilemma and everyone wants to screw everyone else over.
Look, you'll pad profits for a short while (maybe), but in the long run it's detrimental to the entire economy since the bulk of the population ends up with less spending power. If corporations were forced to pay their workers fair rates everyone would benefit.
It starts at the top. There's a reason why those things didn't happen when Ballmer was in charge.
You've picked the wrong field if you wanted something like that. Technology evolves fast. Keep up or drop behind; if you don't like it then maybe you should have been a history major.
I'm writing this from a das with Cherry MX Blue keys. And I'm only a hobbyist programmer.
They do have a fix. It's called privatization.
In other words they want the system to keep failing so they can push private schools.
I'm an investor, so yes.
(Just kidding immigrants do it for cheaper.)
Wait, you wrote stuff for .NET and you can't port it to other platforms?
Have you ever heard of design paradigms?
Google seems intent on going the wrong way.