> we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7
If Microsoft had really wanted to avoid that, they'd have made Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user. Instead they jammed it chock-full of spyware and malware-tier garbage that nobody wants, and treat the installbase as a testbed for forced updates that could easily (and have) render machines inoperable.
Windows 7 will become the next XP, and Microsoft has nobody to blame for it but themselves.
End users and tech people always knee-jerk about anything that changes, whether it's a positive change or not.
The Ribbon interface they introduced in Office back in 2007 was a huge improvement over the mess of dialogs, toolbars and menus they had before by every metric. People still bitch about it, almost a decade later. The people who bitch about it benefit as much as everybody else from the increased usability, but that doesn't stop the bitching.
And it's not just Microsoft. People bitched at Firefox when they moved the menu into the tabs. People bitched at Chrome when it removed "http" from the URL bar (I just noticed it seems to have come back at some point), people bitch about everything all the time. Not because they genuinely didn't like it, or because it makes their life more difficult, but because they simply hate change.
The only way to keep these people happy is to change nothing, ever. Is that really what you want? It's not what I want.
Not sure I agree. Sure, there's lot of change-bitching (like people complaining about Facebook timelines), and every change breaks someone's workflow (https://xkcd.com/1172/), but quite a lot of those changes people complain about are really making the applications worse.
You brought up Office's ribbon. Sure, it was a "look&feel benefit", but it also significantly hurt discoverability and reduced the number of features available. Nowadays I can't find the more advanced stuff I know that worked in Excel and Word in the past. Is it just a discoverability problem, or did Microsoft go with that stupid new trend of dumbing down software to the lowest common denominator? I don't know, but the interface doesn't allow me to find out.
People bitched at Chrome because removing "http" was seen as a first step of removing the address bar altogether, dumbing down both the browser and peoples' perception of the Internet. The less you demand from your users, the dumber they get. Sure, it may be good for the quarterly sales report, but it's disastrous for the future of technology.
> You brought up Office's ribbon. Sure, it was a "look&feel benefit", but it also significantly hurt discoverability
That is simply not true.
In fact, the major impetus for creating the Ribbon was the Office team dealing with the constant feature requests for features they'd already implemented, but users couldn't find how to activate/use.
> and reduced the number of features available.
Also untrue, unless you're going to say things like "being able to drag a menu off the menu bar and hover around like a toolbar" are a "feature".
Or put another way, it did reduce configurability, but the number of actual useful features was not reduced.
> Is it just a discoverability problem, or did Microsoft go with that stupid new trend of dumbing down software to the lowest common denominator?
You should know I mentally translate the phrase "dumb down" to, "I don't like this because of a knee-jerk but I've never bothered to think about it long enough to express why".
> The less you demand from your users, the dumber they get.
Seriously?
How about: the fewer obstacles you put in front of your users, the more useful work they can get done.
> Sure, it was a "look&feel benefit", but it also significantly hurt discoverability and reduced the number of features available.
I think that the ribbon design itself actually helped discoverability, at the expense of familiarity for long-term users of the old interface (OTOH, I think that simultaneously with the introduction of the ribbon, they also made it so a lot of options that previously were on the UI required customization to actually have them surfaced at all -- which they also, IIRC, did in some previous versions without changing the UI structure -- and, IIRC again, they reversed some of the most egregious of those in 2010.)
You should watch the talk[1] by Joe Peacock of fark.com about updating the site (the infamous "You'll get over it" incident).
The solution isn't "change nothing". Instead, you involve the people that use the old (current) version in the process, keep them informed, and get some kind of buy-in. Most importantly, you respect that the user has their own schedule and needs with a migration path that allows the user to make the transition at their own pace.
What you don't do is surprise users at random times, revoke any agency they had, and force changes on them without any consideration fo the user's situation.
My thought as well. If you have sneak in and force your users to upgrade, your doing something wrong.
And everyone frames this upgrade tactic like it's good for the user. In reality, this is good for MS, and it happens to have some benefits for the user. Lets quit acting like MS is being altruistic here.
> Instead they jammed it chock-full of spyware and malware-tier garbage that nobody wants
Can people stop spreading this meme? Worst case, anonymized telemetry is hardly spyware.
> Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user
It is, regular people around me love it.
> and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user.
I (and many) do, if only because it is immensely better than sticking to Win7 whose non-extended support ends next year or something.
> Microsoft has nobody to blame for it but themselves
MS made a couple missteps, but people just love to blow whatever MS does way out of proportion (the same way they do for Apple, only for other points) so instead of having reasonable discourse, all we have is a pile of knee-jerk reactions (not even flamewars!)
We get it, MS is bad, Apple is bad, Google is bad bad bad. Oh nasty corps. Probably end user should stick to pen+paper.
EDIT: not even a dozen seconds and downvotes are pouring in. Is it still possible to have some reasonable talk instead of yelling at each other?
How about stopping the meme that everyone should accept spyware?
> anonymized telemetry is hardly spyware
Without the explicit informed consent - which means opt-IN and an accurate and full manifest of what is included - then "telemetry" is spyware, by definition.
As for making the data "anonymous", have you seen the specifics of how that works? When Google claimed they made the IP addresses in GA anonymous they only masked the lowest 8-bits. Uniqueness (and the ASN) was completely recoverable.
The only way to make "telemetry" anonymous is to cook it so much that it isn't useful anymore. If you doubt this, you don't understand how easily modern methods can find correlations between data sets. But that's only about the data inside the packet. Just logging arrival times of packets that have any kind of common identifier can build a detailed picture of someone's pattern-of-life. Just because think it's ok to spy on users doesn't mean you get to make that decision for everybody else.
> regular people around me love it.
So what? It's a fallacy to extrapolate that opinion onto other people.
> support ends next year
Which means support is still available.
> Oh nasty corps.
Willfully misrepresenting the people that criticize Microsoft (et al) is never a good way to argue.
> Probably end user should stick to pen+paper.
Insults like this are why you got downvoted.
> reasonable talk instead of yelling at each other?
>MS made a couple missteps, but people just love to blow whatever MS does way out of proportion (the same way they do for Apple, only for other points) so instead of having reasonable discourse, all we have is a pile of knee-jerk reactions (not even flamewars!)
>We get it, MS is bad, Apple is bad, Google is bad bad bad. Oh nasty corps. Probably end user should stick to pen+paper.
>EDIT: not even a dozen seconds and downvotes are pouring in. Is it still possible to have some reasonable talk instead of yelling at each other?
Haha yeah I wonder why people have a problem with your comment?!???!?!?!?!? You're just so reasonable here!
The downvotes are pouring because you suggested that telemetry shipped by Microsoft being spyware is a "meme". This is seen as both arrogant and wrong at the same time - the best combination to collect downvotes.
(I didn't downvote you but I think you are very wrong).
Isn't it true that originally Win10 previews logged a lot of things, but M$ pretty much stopped doing most of that with the release versions of Windows 10? I.e. people seem to be criticizing present Windows 10 by what it was before it was officially recommended for general population.
If Microsoft had really wanted to avoid that, they'd have made Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user. Instead they jammed it chock-full of spyware and malware-tier garbage that nobody wants, and treat the installbase as a testbed for forced updates that could easily (and have) render machines inoperable.
Windows 7 will become the next XP, and Microsoft has nobody to blame for it but themselves.