Microsoft withholds Windows 8.1 from devs, sees many editions leaked

[ET3D]

MS policy is not likely to change for around 12 months as it will take that time for the new management to bed in. Hopefully they may start to listen to their customers (or potential customers).

MS listens well to its customers. I have yet to see a company change so many big decisions based on feedback. The problem is, MS doesn't learn. It should be able to make more decisions which don't cause a backlash. There should be someone there saying: "this is not going to go down well, let's just not do it."

 

[Vrmithrax]

MS policy is not likely to change for around 12 months as it will take that time for the new management to bed in. Hopefully they may start to listen to their customers (or potential customers).

MS listens well to its customers. I have yet to see a company change so many big decisions based on feedback. The problem is, MS doesn't learn. It should be able to make more decisions which don't cause a backlash. There should be someone there saying: "this is not going to go down well, let's just not do it."

I have to add a little caveat to your statement... MS does not listen to its customers, it listens to their wallets. Cases in point:

The Xbox One was a miserably limited and locked down console when originally announced. Massive backlash in the tech and gamer community did nothing but push MS into a hardcore PR push to try to justify all of their awkward (and often anti-consumer but pro-profit) feature decisions. Then Sony announced the PS4 features list, the crowds rejoiced, and MS was quiet for a few days. Pre-order numbers started filtering in, and the Xbox One was losing as badly as 4 to 1 to the PS4, which obviously pointed towards a financial catastrophe if MS didn't do something. So, they backpedaled to garner favor with the gamer community again, and try to regain some of the Xbox user base that they had alienated with their initial decisions. The ploy worked, and Xbox One was on the road to acceptance. Ironically, one of the big initial features that customers really liked, even in the face of their other poor decisions, was the revolutionary sharing concept. Rather than sticking with what their customers liked, and figuring out how to properly implement it with their suddenly changed marketing directions, Microsoft ripped that feature away... Many (including myself) viewed that as a petulant punishment for their customers not bowing to Microsoft's original plans. But, it didn't matter, their about-face had put some polish back on their new console, and tearing this one feature away wasn't enough to seriously dent their pre-orders, so there was no reason to even try to make it work...

Windows 8's direction and focus were a big middle finger to the HUGE Windows user customer base, going against much of the feedback that those users were providing prior to official launch. Microsoft's "big fix" with Win8.1 ignored most of the big issues their user base reported, and is instead that very same middle finger to the long-time Windows customers, but with a manicure and some nice nail polish this time. But hey, Microsoft OWNS the OS market, so customers will just have to buy whatever MS deigns to provide them. It's a mentality we saw with the hard sell on Vista, all over again.

WindowRT sales were so dismal that MS had to take a massive hit and write off tons of unsold inventory, yet it appears they didn't listen to their customers who wanted nothing to do with RT, and are relaunching the product with a few updates to hardware, but this time losing the "RT" portion of the name, which just makes it confusing and potentially tricks some average consumers into grabbing one. After all, a confused customer and their wallet are soon pilfered.

Those are just the latest examples... It's becoming painfully obvious that MS cares about our wallets, not our feelings. Which, honestly, is exactly what I would expect from a successful corporation. Still, it would be nice to get back to the MS of old, the one that looked at their focus group and beta testing feedback and tried to actually make their products better for their customers, not just more profitable for the company. The change has been fairly obvious as MS pushes into transitioning from a software company into becoming a "devices and services" type of company.

 

[VitalyT]

Skipping core features we've had for years in the "obsolete" OS's is exactly the missing polish that they are getting smashed over. Really that is the lesson they should have learned with Vista.

They did learn from mistakes in Vista, and fixed them in Windows 7, but those were different ones. At the top of the list the problems were: a) It was a huge resource hog that no hardware could handle at the time; b) Many issues with drivers compatibility; c) Very intrusive user-rights elevation.

The mistakes they made in Windows 8 are new ones, they are not repeating They were probably like - we never dumped the useful features before, might as well get started, so let's pick the top 10 most useful features and throw them away, that should freshen up the market, give us plenty of room for improvements in years to come.

 

[Darth Shiv]

They did learn from mistakes in Vista, and fixed them in Windows 7, but those were different ones. At the top of the list the problems were: a) It was a huge resource hog that no hardware could handle at the time; b) Many issues with drivers compatibility; c) Very intrusive user-rights elevation.

Vista changed the graphics driver level (lessened the ability of graphics faults to BSOD the OS). They removed things like horizontal and vertical spanning. Win7 partially added it back. I'm sure there are more of these scenarios but that was the specific one I was thinking.

 

[ET3D]

I have to add a little caveat to your statement... MS does not listen to its customers, it listens to their wallets. Cases in point:

Of course Microsoft, like practically every company, is making decisions that it hopes will bring in more money. But just because you quote a particular case, that doesn't mean that you can show this directly in most cases.

Example: After saying that Visual Studio 2012 Express will only be usable for developing "Metro" applications, not desktop ones, there was a developer backlash, and Microsoft decided to allow desktop development.

So sure, it's possible that Microsoft figured that in the long run it will help it financially, but it's a free product that Microsoft isn't making anything off directly.

 

[Vrmithrax]

Of course Microsoft, like practically every company, is making decisions that it hopes will bring in more money. But just because you quote a particular case, that doesn't mean that you can show this directly in most cases.

Example: After saying that Visual Studio 2012 Express will only be usable for developing "Metro" applications, not desktop ones, there was a developer backlash, and Microsoft decided to allow desktop development.

So sure, it's possible that Microsoft figured that in the long run it will help it financially, but it's a free product that Microsoft isn't making anything off directly.

I fully understand what you are saying, but your example is an even more effective case of how self-serving Microsoft's attitude is of late... The very fact that they were planning on making VS2012 "Metro only" was a heavy-handed attempt to push everyone to the new UI that they (not their millions of users) thought should be the future. And, push everyone to pay for the upgrade, which of course would bring billions in revenue to MS.

When the devs freaked out, it's not hard to see that Microsoft's backpedal and 180 on the decision was purely self-preservation. With a growing amount of alternative platforms to consider developing for (particularly in the mobile market), the last thing MS wants to happen is the developers throwing up their hands and walking away. The biggest thing Windows in general has going for it in today's market is that the pure size of the software library available for it dwarfs any competing OS. Lose your developer community, and that can change quite rapidly.

You can literally look at every decision being made by MS lately, and see the strategy to maximize profits. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, they are a business that lives or dies on profit, so it is to be expected. But, let's not kid ourselves, the only time MS listens to their customer feedback is when it serves to benefit their bottom line.

 

[ET3D]

You can literally look at every decision being made by MS lately, and see the strategy to maximize profits. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, they are a business that lives or dies on profit, so it is to be expected. But, let's not kid ourselves, the only time MS listens to their customer feedback is when it serves to benefit their bottom line.

What you're saying is so obvious that it doesn't need saying. Yet it's still an interpretation, which is less important than the facts: Microsoft has made quite a few unpopular decisions, and it went back on them. That is unusual. Not many companies backpedal so often, and as I said, this shows that Microsoft does listen to its customers (the reason doesn't change this fact). The problem is that it's making bad decisions in the first place, and that shows lack of understanding of its customers, which is a serious problem.