Windows 10: 'The next chapter' event set for 21 January 2015

[HEXUS]

Continues the story of Windows 10, focussing upon the consumer experience.

Read more.

[Saracen]

All very interesting, I'm sure, but it's mainly just feeding the hype machine, keeping the pre-marketing going. That's all that's been going on so far, but personally, until we get clear and definite decisions on issues, like how the interface choice (if any) exists, and EXACTLY what 'monetising' means, then all the hoopla is merely speculation. If MS were more prone to adapting to feedback from user reception, then fine. But in the past, they've ignored most of it, like the MUI backlash, and bulled (and bullied) ahead anyway, only accepting months later that users can't be forced to, literally, buy into MS's world view.

This time, UNLIKE Win8, I'm not parting with a single penny until I KNOW, for certain, that those decisions result in a product thats not a god-awful retrograde step, like Win 8 was for me, because I'm not lashing out on another pile of .... garbage, only to leave it sitting on the shelf and reverting to W7 (or Linux).

If, and only if, final decisions lead to a product I find acceptable will I upgrade. If not, any new installations will be Linux, and suitable old ones will stay with Win7 .... or in some cases, already are staying with XP.

Meantime, until FINAL decisions are made and locked in, and made public, I personally don't give a left-handed flying .... fig .... about ongoing MS marketing hoopla and hype.

[tribaljet]

Windows 10 has stock UX design that's as/more unpleasant than Windows 8.x when released but can be customized into working condition? I'll give it a try.

Windows 10 edition/feature segmentation will end up being the OS's DLC scheme? Things are looking dim now.

Windows 10 ends up confirming the rumors of having a forced online account requirement for OS logon? Thanks but no thanks.

With all this considered, they better think right on what they intend to release to the public, otherwise many (myself included) will stop at Windows 8.1.

[OilSheikh]

An insider has told me that Windows 10 will look like this :

[peterb]

Well, it's a 'chapter' in a book that I have pretty much closed, and therefore unlikely to be read by me.

[Saracen]

Well, it's a 'chapter' in a book that I have pretty much closed, and therefore unlikely to be read by me.

I wonder if MS's recent activities, with Win8, and some XBO decisions, will be used as a case study in future business or marketing degrees of 'How to hump off and alienate loads of customers', or 'How not to handle PR?'

If so, they're, erm, textbook examples. Maybe that's the book this is the 'Next chapter" of?

[TheAnimus]

I doubt it, I think they will be seen as a bit of a bumbling bafoon type.

You know how Kodak is pretty much the textbook at failing to adapt to disruptive technologies, ones they invented no less. (The whole we make so much money from film, why would we want to be involved in digital cameras which will eat away at our film profits thing).

I think MS will be seen as this failure to get anything right in the 00s. They had such a lead over Netscape in terms of features, many young developers forget that back in IE4 days, it was the best by far, Netscape was the slow failure, concepts such as AJAX which power the modern web were an invention by the office guys, but the impact, the promise was completely ignored by the rest of the firm. They correctly saw, and in 2005 had a pretty good attempt at the mobile tablet revolution, it's just the hardware wasn't there. They stuck with intel far too long, despite windows (NT) always having been designed for multi instruction set environments, then when they finally got a version for ARM that is actually really good, it was too late, because the consumer demand had already flicked over to iPads. The not as versitile as a PC but light, and battery life was already filled with an incumbent that couldn't be disrupted.

Now the thing is, it's not remotely uncommon for people to have an idea, but fail on execution / market adoption. Look at say Apple TV or Ubuntus attempt at the phone/docking concept.

I mention that last one because this is what many people are hoping MS will do. Currently, only MS has a decent offering that lets me write apps in a framework that runs cross CPU, but also cross device. HTML apps don't count because they are far too limited in flexability.

If MS can get the adapting UI thing right, they could well be onto something. My desktop, is a 5 year old CPU. It has more than enough power with my 16gb of RAM for my development tasks. This was never the case 10 years back. Modern innovations in power engineering of CPUs and the like I think means many peoples needs are met by something that is smartphone sized. At the moment people rely on 'cloud' sync technologies, look how effortless it is to get this document between my phone, tablet and desktop snigger. If you can get one device, where apps are effectively aware (response in web dev lingo) of the situation they are in, using the same code under the hood but adaptive UI-isims, then they could be really on to something big. I doubt they can do that.

[RobbieRoy]

If you can get one device, where apps are effectively aware (response in web dev lingo) of the situation they are in, using the same code under the hood but adaptive UI-isims, then they could be really on to something big. I doubt they can do that.

I just wonder why we can so easily say what it is that would be good but then a behemoth of a business with the financial might of a country can't identify the same thing and deliver it.

[Saracen]

I don't disagree with that, TA, but it's not quite what I was getting at. It's not so much the product development, or the UI design, but the way MS handled the PR side.

For instance, had they had a UI capable of "adapting" to it's environment, either by detecting hardware (like presence of a touchscreen), or manually, by simply letting the user choose MUI or W7 'classic', I doubt they'd have had a fraction of the W8 backlash. Instead, they tried to shove it down user's throats.

The futility of it is how fast several 3rd-party developers csme up with utilities to make E8 look and feel how users want, not how MS marketing execs decided we should want it.

Personally, MS lost ALL goodwill from me by virtue of the arrogance of their approach. I have not bought an XBoxOne because of Kinect, and because of initial 'always-connected' decisions. Do they give users the choice? No. Do they try to shove their demands on us? Yes. Can they guess precisely where I would like to suggest to them shove their demands? Probably.

Similarly, Win8 UI. For me, on a desktop, MUI not only has no advantages, but no appeal. I can revert it almost exactly to W7 feel with 3rd party utils, but why the hell should I? As far as I'm concerned, the UI decision was ALL about MS trying to get a marketing advantage, and forcing those of us that want to work how Win7 works to abandon it. And for what? So MS can try to leverage mobile device hardware sales off the back of desktop users OS's?

So, through marketing decisions, MS have lost any chance of selling me an XBO, or any games, peripherals, etc for it. And they finally managed to force me to explore Linux. I'd bern threatening to for years, and tinkered once or twice. But MS finally convinced me to seriously look at whether I can use Linux, and Linux apps (like Libre) for my primary computing environment, and hey, guess what? I can, and it's nowhere near as hard as I thought it would br, to switch. So now, MS gave an uphill struggle to come up with ANY implementation of Win10 that will convince me to pay for Windows, Office, etc.

Finally, I'm sufficiently angry at them over MUI that I'm not even prepared to consider Windows-based tablets or mobile phones.

Obviously, my individual actions, either way, aren't going to cause too many sleepless nights in Redmond, but a LOT of people are taking a similar position. Their actions over the last couple of years have been damaging to MS in a deep way that may take years to become obvious. They have alienated, to a greater or lesser degree, a LOT of users, some of whom they've slready lost. Permanently. The price is loss of goodwill.

[LANCode41]

Even though Mac updates are free I have not been getting on with it for the past few year perhaps my Mac book pro is a lemon. Anyway I've been using Windows 8.1 for the past few months and I'm loving it can't wait to see what Windows 10 has to offer. Makes the surface pro 3 more appealing now