Microsoft and Its Customers: Out of Phase, Orthogonal, and Confused
May 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I am writing this post using something called Open LiveWriter. I switched when Microsoft updated our Windows machines and killed printing, a mouse linked via a KVM, and the 2012 version of its blog word processing software. I use a number of software products, and I keep old programs in order to compare them to modern options available to a user. The operative point is that a Windows update rendered the 2012 version of LiveWriter lost in the wonderland of Windows’ Byzantine code.
A young leader of an important project does not want to hear too much from her followers. In fact, she wishes they would shut up and get with the program. Thank, MSFT Copilot. How’s the Job One of security coming today?
There are reports, which I am not sure I believe, that Windows 11 is a modern version of Windows Vista. The idea is that users are switching to Windows 10. Well, maybe. But the point is that users are not happy with Microsoft’s alleged changes to Windows; for instance:
- Notifications (advertising) in the Windows 11 start menu
- Alleged telemetry which provides a stream of user action and activity data to Microsoft for analysis (maybe marketing purposes?)
- Gratuitous interface changes which range from moving control items from a control panel to a settings panel to fiddling with task manager
- Wonky updates like the printer issue, driver wonkiness, and smart help which usually returns nothing of much help.
I read “This Third-Party App Blocks Integrated Windows 11 Advertising.” You can read the original article to track down this customization tool. My hunch is that its functions will be intentionally blocked by some bonus centric Softie or a change to the basic Windows 11 control panel will cause the software to perform like LiveWriter 2012.
I want to focus on a comment to the cited article written by seeprime:
Microsoft has seriously degraded File Explorer over the years. They should stop prolonging the Gates culture of rewarding software development, of new and shiny things, at the expense of fixing what’s not working optimally.
Now that security, not AI and not Windows 11, are the top priority at Microsoft, will the company remediate the grouses users have about the product? My answer is, “No.” Here’s why:
- Fixing, as seeprime, suggests is less important that coming up with some that seems “new.” The approach is dangerous because the “new” thing may be developed by someone uninformed about the hidden dependencies within what is code as convoluted as Google’s search plumbing. “New” just breaks the old or the change is something that seems “new” to an intern or an older Softie who just does not care. Good enough is the high bar to clear.
- Details are not Microsoft’s core competency. Indeed, unlike Google, Microsoft has many revenue streams, and the attention goes to cooking up new big-money services like a version of Copilot which is not exposed to the Internet for its government customers. The cloud, not Windows, is the future.
- Microsoft whether it knows it or not is on the path to virtualize desktop and mobile software. The idea means that Microsoft does not have to put up with developers who make changes Microsoft does not want to work. Putting Windows in the cloud might give Microsoft the total control it desires.
- Windows is a security challenge. The thinking may be: “Let’s put Windows in the cloud and lock down security, updates, domain look ups, etc. I would suggest that creating one giant target might introduce some new challenges to the Softie vision.
Speculation aside, Microsoft may be at a point when users become increasingly unhappy. The mobile model, virtualization, and smart interfaces might create tasty options for users in the near future. Microsoft cannot make up its mind about AI. It has the OpenAI deal; it has the Mistral deal; it has its own internal development; and it has Inflection and probably others I don’t know about.
Microsoft cannot make up its mind. Now Microsoft is doing an about face and saying, “Security is Job One.” But there’s the need to make the Azure Cloud grow. Okay, okay, which is it? The answer, I think, is, “We want to do it all. We want everything.”
This might be difficult. Users might just pile up and remain out of phase, orthogonal, and confused. Perhaps I could add angry? Just like LiveWriter: Tossed into the bit trash can.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9. 2024
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