Koroush Ghazi is an expert PC user with extensive knowledge about OS/System customization and performance enhancement of applications running in the Windows ecosystem. On his website TweakGuides.com he shares some thoughts about the newest edition of Microsoft’s OS (8.1), and he’s not very kind about it.
On the other hand, I cannot but agree with his disappointment in Redmond’s choices, which seem a rather blatant attempt to force users to adopt the Metro environment, so Microsoft can cash in on Windows Store purchases and associated mobile device sales…
It’s understandable that, given the general decline of desktop/laptop solutions and the rise of mobile devices like smartphones, tablets et similia, Big M is trying to prevent some serious revenues damage and ensure a large part of users will migrate to Microsoft (or Nokia) based devices… But there must be a way to do it right, without managing to make all (potential) customers unhappy, and Redmond doesn’t seem to find it.
Actually, probably also because of the impending end of the Ballmer era, Microsoft seems to struggle in finding the right strategies in general, or at the very least in implementing them coherently: the whole XBox One launch process has been a total disaster and culminated in the most shocking resignation of the industry to date (or since the Activision/Infinity Ward case).
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it’s plain stupid not to change idea, especially if you do so in order to acknowledge your mistakes… But the amount (and scope) of changes in the XBox One affair is staggering and could indicate a difficulty in getting in touch with the market and give users what they want (even if they still don’t know it). This “magic touch” is what made the fortune of people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Ballmer has many merits, but it’s clear that at some point in the early 2000s Microsoft lost its way, even when the vision of the future to come was spot-on.