So your measure of first is the first successful? It isn't the person who actually made the first one, just the one who made it successful? That isn't how reality works.
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Satya Nadella Appointed Microsoft CEO as Bill Gates Shifts from Chairman to 'Technology Advisor'
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So your measure of first is the first successful? It isn't the person who actually made the first one, just the one who made it successful? That isn't how reality works.
"Single Window UI" ?? I just opened dozens of new windows in Desktop. Reviewer is either incorrect or the oversight has been corrected.
"Double Desktop" - funny, I've noticed that Win8.1 uses far less memory than MacOS or Windows 7, whether I'm running the Desktop environment or not. Also, which of the two you use is entirely up to the user. You can even boot directly to the desktop if you want. I don't see how it's a cognitive overload if you pick the one that works best for you and stick with it.
"Flat style reduces discoverability"? Not necessarily. They've eliminated most of the things you cannot interact with. This example?
EVERYTHING on that menu is clickable.
"Low information density" - This is not a bad thing. This calls attention to the information that is important, and allows you to scale the info you do see rather than confusing you and overloading you with information.
Live Tiles are new, and not everybody has figured out how best to use them - as the author stated, they are a double-edged sword, and when good, are VERY good.
He also disses the hidden UI elements, but I've been HIDING UI elements for YEARS so that I didn't have to stare at them all the time. Sure, it's something you need to learn to do at first, but it's something many people did ANYWAY, and I've had zero trouble with it.
I can't talk much about it's usefulness on a tablet, since the only touch UI I use is on my Nokia (where it works incredibly well).
I think perhaps the author was either a bit preemtive with his review, or just doesn't like any sort of change. In any case, I'm not so sure it qualifies as a "scientific study", since much of it is subjective and completely ignores factual information as I've pointed out.
In any case, it appears as though he has similar things to say about iOS. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ios-7/
Edit - one more thing, Windows 8/8.1 have surpassed 10% in only a touch over a year. This isn't so bad. Consider if you will how long it took OSX to solidify itself in the Mac userbase. ...and also consider that it's more than a little ironic to see someone on a Mac user site diss a product because it has a low marketshare. ...especially when Windows 8/8.1 have about the same amount of marketshare as ALL versions of MacOS combined.
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Microsoft needs a visionary at the helm and what they ended up with is a company guy who's been around Microsoft for 22 years. From the quote above, taken from his email to all employees regarding his appointment as CEO, belies one of Microsoft's biggest problems - the inability to articulate what they do for their customers in a way that an ordinary person can relate to and respond to. The quote above is practically gibberish. "Intelligence will become...ambient?" "Software and hardware will...intermediate and digitize?" Geeze it's practically psychobabble. What exactly are they selling?
When Apple introduced new products, they (particularly Jobs) excelled at explaining what the need was and how using its technologies and products solved that need in very practical terms that anyone could understand. So far, it appears Microsoft still suffers from its basic age old problem of simply explaining itself.
In spite of his qualifications and experience, ultimately what matters is what is he going to do for the stock price?
If that doesn't budge then it's going to be "Off with his head" cries from Wall Street analysts and board of directors.
Who cares for long term planning and stability anymore?
If that doesn't budge then it's going to be "Off with his head" cries from Wall Street analysts and board of directors.
Who cares for long term planning and stability anymore?
MS for many years had a notorious "stacked ranking" system where all employees would be ranked and the ones ranked at the bottom would be fired. Rank and yank is still popular in corporate culture, as I believe both Amazon and Yahoo use it.
But MS's implementation was extremely rigid, and what that led to (confirmed by many ex-employees) was a culture where people would rather be on a weak team than a strong team, where currying favor with upper management was valued above all else, and thus many great ideas and projects never saw the light of day.
I wonder if this CEO will really change the culture where people are more concerned about making great products and less concerned about being yanked.
But MS's implementation was extremely rigid, and what that led to (confirmed by many ex-employees) was a culture where people would rather be on a weak team than a strong team, where currying favor with upper management was valued above all else, and thus many great ideas and projects never saw the light of day.
I wonder if this CEO will really change the culture where people are more concerned about making great products and less concerned about being yanked.
Funny, with memory they mean actual brain memory. Or the amount of context information you need to have present to understand, why the computer behaves different under some conditions.
You still need to be aware that things work different should you ever enter the other desktop accidentally.
On the other hand, the human brain tends to instantly forget everything we don't see anymore. Its a huge productivity killer. People forget what they wanted to do.
Our spatial memory helps us to find things based on where we have seen them last. Therefore John Siracusa always wanted to bring the spatial finder back. Shifting things around is hampering rediscoverability. Changing their appearance is absolutely destroying it. Live Tiles are the worst.
First you need to learn them and then you need to remember them without any visual clues. If that would be any easy, we could have sticked with the command line and avoided GUI-computing altogether.
Change is also a killer of productivity. Nothing should ever change, unless it makes everything more obvious.
He is right. There is no doubt about it, iOS 7 sucks. Swipe Ambiguity is the worst.
I'm also dissing iOS 7 no matter the marketshare. I am both a user and a hater of it. I am not using Windows 8, mostly because Microsoft wants me to pay for it. The problems of a software company, it needs to create reasons for payed upgrades. The horror of Vista was a good reason to upgrade to Windows 7. Now Microsoft must pay me to leave it.
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No surprise there, Microsoft is and has been an Indian run operation for a long time. No Innovation whatsoever comes out of Microsoft these days, I could care less about the next windows or their next Service Pack. I find more excitement in Apple's beta updates!
-Mike
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-Mike
-Mike
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Huh? Sounds like modern day Slavery!
-Mike
It's not that they can't explain themselves ...
Microsoft to enterprises – Our system runs on every hardware so we are always the cheapest.
Microsoft to manufacturers – You can install Windows on all your machines or on none of them.
Microsoft to competition – Either you stop competing with us or we will destroy you.
Microsoft to users – What else can you use and stay compatible with our proprietary standards?
... more that the message isn't appealing.
They also have a growing strength in mid-tier software and analytics. I think the fact this new executive is not from the OS or Office division bodes well for MS. A different perspective on where they need to grow. From what I read he is quite intelligent - not just from an engineering perspective - but intellectual and has a strategic view.
Nothing is guaranteed but I think it was a solid pick. The easy choice would have been a known outsider who might have good managerial talents - but not necessarily the insights into MS - both on its strengths and weaknesses.
The dude doesn't know what he's talking about
The fact he thinks MS ripped off Netflix's DVD Delivery service to create Xbox Live was a dead giveaway
Actually, it is becoming quite obvious that he's a loyal Apple fan and will say anything as long as it ends with a reason why 'all of Apple's competition sucks'. Just look at his prior post about their messaging.
No they said google is making money that isnt right and compromised user experience with an own build software.
Wether it be out of spite, or to hamper a competitor doesnt really matter its still bad.
Surface 2 is actualy one of the best out there. For content creation several tims better then ipad/android .
Stereo type much.
You need to take off that hood with the apple logo, take a few steps back and get some perspective.
Calling the Xerox Star an Alto by another name is a gross oversimplification, even more gross than calling the Mac a Xerox Star by another name.
Fine, I grossly oversimplified.
My main point was actually that Xerox put out a computer that used a mouse years before the first Macintosh.
He looks sooo much saner than Ballmer; hopefully fewer theatrics at product launches, and more substance.
You obviously don't have a clue on what you're talking about, you're all wrong.
Nadella led the teams that brought a lot Microsoft infrastructure services online, not necessarily applications. I'm talking about the Azure platform, so things like SQL Server, VMs, Active Directory, ASP, .NET all being ported to a cloud infrastructure hosted in Microsoft datacenters - THAT is what he did. It's probably one of the most important things Microsoft did in the last decade, in preparation for the next decade, so in my opinion, there is no person MORE qualified than Nadella to lead Microsoft at this time.
Is he Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? Probably not, but he'll certainly be 100x better than Ballmer.
You are right about one thing, though: Office 365 is a weak product, but that wasn't something he oversaw.
Uh, no. Powernap is reliant on an Intel function - for which drivers were available on Windows PCs several years ago, long before it found its way into OSX.
TBH, if I wasn't building a new machine and didn't need to buy a new copy of Windows, I'd have stuck with Win 7 on my laptop and Mac OS on my desktop, but my Mac was getting to be insufferably slow and the OS kept getting more and more bloated. I needed Win 8 on another machine at one point and was shocked by how lightweight and snappy it was even on older devices. When I decided to ditch the iMac and build a new workstation, I went for 8.1 because it was current and will serve me well into the future without having to upgrade. Did I also like the UI and overall lightweight nature of the OS? You bet. If I'd had Windows 7 for free would I have bought it? No. But that's beside the point.
Windows 8 isn't perfect. Neither is Mavericks, and iOS7 leaves a lot to be desired. The point is that Microsoft is actually being INNOVATIVE, and that's something we should praise, even if they don't always pull it off exactly as we'd like, because it's a new course for the company - they spent decades in Overlycautiousville.
I think Ray Ozzie was the father of Azure. Satya was more like the executor. And a good one at that.