Satya Nadella Appointed Microsoft CEO as Bill Gates Shifts from Chairman to 'Technology Advisor'

[Gudi]

Funny, I seem to be able to seamlessly move between Windows 7, 8, Mac OS, iOS and Linux without any trouble at all. I wonder how dumbed down things need to be to please you and this author?

You are still young and learn quickly, but that will change. Here is how dumbed down things need to be.

From the Isaacson book: After looking at a bunch of screenshots, Jobs jumped up, grabbed a marker, and drew a simple rectangle on a whiteboard. "Here's the new application" he said. "It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says 'burn'. That's it. That's what we are going to make" Evangelist was dumbfounded, but it led to the simplicity of what became iDVD. Jobs even helped design the "Burn" button icon.

The alternative is a burning program like this:

Does anyone know what the distinction between OK and APPLY is good for?
​

That's like saying you need to be aware that the car will drive backwards when you put it in reverse.

And say you don't need to be aware!

Dude, you can't compare putting the mouse in a corner or swiping from the side of the screen to using a command prompt, they're simply apples and oranges. That's just silly. It's really not hard to learn to mouse over to the side, or swipe from the side.

Why would they make it hard and hide it?

 

[roadbloc]

Everyones! The Xbox is a copy of Sonys PlayStation, its Kinect sensor was just to counter Nintendos WiiMote and Xbox Live wants to be Netflix. Virtually everything Microsoft does, down to the smallest product feature, can be traced back to some other company having success with something and Microsoft wanting to get in on that market. Some program called WordPerfect is becoming famous, surely the next year version one of Microsoft Word. Its always been like that. Maybe Microsofts only original idea, without a proven concept to copy from, was the Tablet-PC and they couldn't make it work.

Innovation requires inspiration. Not many people here realize this. Virtually everything Apple does, down to the smallest product feature, can be traced back to some other company having success with something and Apple wanting to get in on that market. See how this works?

 

[Digital Skunk]

Driving innovation by copying other companies business models. Here is hoping that Microsoft will never again have power or influence over anything. We don't need another Zune.
Microsoft already is another Apple, after buying Nokia they are an integrated software and hardware phone and tablet company. They are just not very good at it. Also with Bing! search and maps they are another Google, also not very successful.
Everything at Microsoft takes at least 18 months to happen. So nothing in the next few months.

Just about everything here is wrong. The Zune was by far a better product than the iPod, it just suffered under the weight of bad marketing, lack of 3rd party licenses and Steve Ballmer.

Everything else is just made up hogwash.

I see a lot of fanbois complain about how Apple is slow to update or ship new products. That's because they take time to refine it before releasing it into the wild. MS should do the same. Win 7 was what Vista shoulda been, 8.1 was what 8 shoulda been.

Not quite. Not as bad as others, but still bad when considering that even the vocal minority on these forums aren't complaining about how Apple is slow to update. Even a casual reader can see that most, and the vocal minority want more diversity in the lineup.

There's nothing separating the iPhone 5s, iPad Mini, and iPad save for screen size. iOS is the works OS available when screen size is taken into consideration; e.g. no task gets easier to accomplish as screen size goes up or down, so why even bother getting a larger or smaller device.

Apple probably takes even less time to "refine" a product before it's out. Mavericks has been a rather bad release considering how solid Mountain Lion was before it, and if you go back far enough Snow Leopard.

So no, on the contrary, we can con ourselves into believing things that aren't true, or we can take things at face value.

To the contrary! The Zune was one of the best mp3 players to market. It was too late, not supported well, marketed terribly, but ask anyone who used a Zune and an iPod, and they'll tell you that the Zune is better. What Microsoft needs are more Zune's, but with a better marketing team

TELL 'EM MONK!

And yes, after owning a plethora of iPods and Macs, I picked up a Zune for ****s and giggles and was amazed at how stupidly easy it was to navigate the menus. It really made the iPod look like it was designed for 4 year olds.

 

[uknowimright]

that Zune HD was so nice looking

 

[Digital Skunk]

....

Or you could tell the truth.



Or at the very least tell us what program that is you have a screen shot of.

Here's another app that I used in my "I hate Windows but WAIT this stuff isn't anywhere near as difficult as I thought" days. It was called Roxio Creator 2010 Pro. And they also make Toast for the Mac.



The point is, you're making things up, and that's really just not right.

 

[Daalseth]

You are right about one thing, though: Office 365 is a weak product, but that wasn't something he oversaw.

That's a relief. I'd hate to see the moron that did O365 in charge. Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[Gudi]

Just about everything here is wrong. The Zune was by far a better product than the iPod, it just suffered under the weight of bad marketing, lack of 3rd party licenses and Steve Ballmer.

The Zune was so good, it never left North America. In September 2010 Microsoft finally announced the Zune would launch in the U.K., France, Italy and Spain. A full year after saying they intended to take the Zune brand international. In October 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finally confirmed that the company had no plans to bring the device to Europe because, "we need to focus on Windows Phone 7". Of course Windows Phone 7 itself was a dead-end without any upgrade path to Windows Phone 8. Which helped to destroy the trust in Nokia and make it cheap for Microsoft to take over. Funny how those stories play out.

This is the biggest technologically development since curled fries.

 

[bawbac]

You are still young and learn quickly, but that will change. Here is how dumbed down things need to be.

From the Isaacson book: After looking at a bunch of screenshots, Jobs jumped up, grabbed a marker, and drew a simple rectangle on a whiteboard. "Here's the new application" he said. "It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says 'burn'. That's it. That's what we are going to make" Evangelist was dumbfounded, but it led to the simplicity of what became iDVD. Jobs even helped design the "Burn" button icon.

The alternative is a burning program like this:

Image

Does anyone know what the distinction between OK and APPLY is good for?
​

And say you don't need to be aware!
Why would they make it hard and hide it?

I just right click and do a Send to Disc to burn any files.
That was hard...

Apply only becomes active when changes have been made.
When clicked, persists any new changes and leaves the window open.
Cancel allows you to not persist any changes you made and closes the window.
OK persists any changes and closes your window.
OK will also close you window in general.

 

[Digital Skunk]

The Zune was so good, it never left North America. In September 2010 Microsoft finally announced the Zune would launch in the U.K., France, Italy and Spain. A full year after saying they intended to take the Zune brand international. In October 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finally confirmed that the company had no plans to bring the device to Europe because, "we need to focus on Windows Phone 7". Of course Windows Phone 7 itself was a dead-end without any upgrade path to Windows Phone 8. Which helped to destroy the trust in Nokia and make it cheap for Microsoft to take over. Funny how those stories play out.

This is the biggest technologically development since curled fries.

Yes, again, Steve Ballmer and the MS marketing team pretty much sealed the deal with the Zune.

I remember whispers of MS finally getting an all around multi-platform music service, player, database, Windows Media Player killer, but instead we got XBox Music. Which is nice within itself, but even i can't get down with it's limited abilities on Windows 8.1.

Lucky for me, my Tablet can do something even an iPad can't do . . . . run the full version of iTunes.

I still compare the Zune to the Betamax of yore. Superior tech, with terrible marketing and therefore terrible adoption, and therefore death.

For a more recent example, take a look at XQD and CFast. Both of which are better than SDXC UHS-II but neither of them will ever be adopted because SD is EVERYWHERE.

 

[subsonix]

I still compare the Zune to the Betamax of yore. Superior tech, with terrible marketing and therefore terrible adoption, and therefore death.

Really? Both used essentially the same tech, and neither of them was the first portable digital player afaik, and iPod preceded the Zune, again afaik.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Fine, I grossly oversimplified.

My main point was actually that Xerox put out a computer that used a mouse years before the first Macintosh.

I know, and I'd question the value of that point. What argument does it support?

 

[Michael Goff]

I know, and I'd question the value of that point. What argument does it support?

It supports my side of the argument that there was a computer sold using a mouse before the Macintosh. The person I was discussing this with said that theoretical things that weren't sold didn't matter.

 

[Gudi]

Or at the very least tell us what program that is you have a screen shot of.

The program is called Nero Burning ROM and was one of the best in the early days. Later it changed its UI multiple times to become a bloated suite of apps you don't really need.

It was called Roxio Creator 2010 Pro. And they also make Toast for the Mac.

I deleted Roxio Toast Titanium on my Mac (freeing almost 1GB of disk space) when I realized, iTunes could burn Audio-CDs, the Finder can burn Data-CDs and Disk Utility can burn Disk Images. Here is what you get, when you install Toast on your Mac:

• Disc Cover 3 RE
• DiscCatalogMaker RE
• Get Backup 2 RE
• Mac2Tivo
• Spin Doctor
• TiVo Transfer

And a new subfolder in your Applications folder to keep all that mess organized. I don't even have a TiVo. Why are you installing all this stuff on my hard drive? And that's not even the Pro version. Toast Pro additionally comes with:

• Toast 11 HD/BD Plug-in
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 9
• FotoMagico 3 RE
• SoundSoap 2 SE
• SoundSoap 2 AU Plug-in for Toast
• Sonicfire Pro 5

Roxio, could you please go away and die?

The point is, you're making things up, and that's really just not right.

What am I making up? Don't tell me, you know and use all those features Toast only offers to justify its retail price.

 

[Gudi]

I just right click and do a Send to Disc to burn any files.
That was hard...

That also wasn't a part of Windows during the days of record empty disc sales.

Apply only becomes active when changes have been made. When clicked, persists any new changes and leaves the window open. Cancel allows you to not persist any changes you made and closes the window. OK persists any changes and closes your window. OK will also close you window in general.

And you find that obvious? I know people who click 'Apply' just before they click 'OK' just to make sure the changes do get applied. This anxiety only exists because changes are not applied automatically when made. Why does the window have an 'X' button, when the two ways of closing it are either 'OK' or 'Cancel'? Does 'X' the same as 'Cancel' or is 'Apply'+'X' the same as 'OK'?

 

[Gudi]

I remember whispers of MS finally getting an all around multi-platform music service, player, database, Windows Media Player killer, but instead we got XBox Music. Which is nice within itself, but even i can't get down with it's limited abilities on Windows 8.1.

It's a well-known Microsoft business strategy to take the wind out of a competitors sails by announcing vaporware. Whenever someone has created a promising new technology (for example an extensible multimedia framework container called QuickTime) they quickly announce, we will have something similar in the next version of Media Player for Windows and ours will have all those same great features and many more. People who don't know Microsoft yet, take it at face value and buy the lie. Some customers will hesitate to buy into the new thing, because they like to wait what Microsoft has to offer. Years later when Microsoft finally releases its rubbish copy with half the promised features, it's old news and the early competitor long forgotten.

I still compare the Zune to the Betamax of yore. Superior tech, with terrible marketing and therefore terrible adoption, and therefore death.

I don't know if I should be mean about the Zune, I thought it maybe too zuun.

 

[IJ Reilly]

It supports my side of the argument that there was a computer sold using a mouse before the Macintosh. The person I was discussing this with said that theoretical things that weren't sold didn't matter.

That point is not disputed, but I don't think it's merely theoretical to say that the Mac was the difference maker in this market. It comes down to how you define what matters. Meanwhile, it is also worth mentioning that the pointing device was not even invented at Xerox, it was something Douglas Englebart worked out years earlier. Proper credit where it is due.

 

[knewsom]

You are still young and learn quickly, but that will change. Here is how dumbed down things need to be.

From the Isaacson book: After looking at a bunch of screenshots, Jobs jumped up, grabbed a marker, and drew a simple rectangle on a whiteboard. "Here's the new application" he said. "It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says 'burn'. That's it. That's what we are going to make" Evangelist was dumbfounded, but it led to the simplicity of what became iDVD. Jobs even helped design the "Burn" button icon.

The alternative is a burning program like this:

Image

Does anyone know what the distinction between OK and APPLY is good for?
​

And say you don't need to be aware!
Why would they make it hard and hide it?

"Young"? That's a relative term. I'll be 34 in a couple months. I remember when I was a teenager dealing with people my age who couldn't figure anything out on a computer. Guess what, they still can't, unless what they're doing is simple, and yes, I STILL get called to fix my parents and grandparents' computers. I can't wait until my kid can take over such duties and I can pretend to know nothing about computers so he'll fix them while I read a book or something. Now, am I a fast learner? You bet. I've learned foreign languages in a matter of months, and I don't really require instruction to learn computer programs - I explore and google when necessary. I'm an odd specimen. ...but I won't suddenly become a slow learner or be unable to handle new ideas as I get older. I'm USED to dealing with new ideas, new interfaces, new paradigms.

The point is frame of reference - this is something that people who have been using computers for a long time have, but that old feller doesn't. ...and there's a NEW frame of reference in Windows 8 that some users have that some users don't - the language of touch and swiping, on a DESKTOP. People like the old man in the video you posted do not represent a growth market for Microsoft. People like me do. I generally make the purchasing decisions for electronics in my house. I have a wife, and a child. I own a business. I make the purchasing decisions for said business as well. I'm a HUGE win for Microsoft. That old man? Microsoft is trying to steer customers like that away from keyboards and mice and towards TOUCH. Does he need a big desktop like that? No, what he needs is a Surface 2, and he'd probably be a lot happier. Which he'd know if he went into a Microsoft store and spoke with someone there. ...but if he doesn't go that route and instead buys a Mac? They still win, since he'll probably buy Office anyway.

The picture you posted of the menu. Always hated those. Each tab you click on rearranges the others. Total nightmare. Windows 8 has far fewer such shenanigans. Thank god. ...oh, and what does "Apply" mean? The same thing it means on a Mac. It means "make it so, but don't close the window." Sheesh.

People are dumb enough already, do we need to treat everyone like complete novices when it comes to computers and touch interfaces, or can we have a moderate expectation of intelligence and some sort of common language already?

 

[subsonix]

I remember when I was a teenager dealing with people my age who couldn't figure anything out on a computer. Guess what, they still can't, unless what they're doing is simple, and yes, I STILL get called to fix my parents and grandparents' computers.

The mistake with this line of reasoning is that it puts the blame on the people using the computer instead of realizing that it's a tool that should enable and empower it's users.

 

[Liquorpuki]

That point is not disputed, but I don't think it's merely theoretical to say that the Mac was the difference maker in this market. It comes down to how you define what matters. Meanwhile, it is also worth mentioning that the pointing device was not even invented at Xerox, it was something Douglas Englebart worked out years earlier. Proper credit where it is due.

It's hypocritical because earlier in the thread the guy was saying MS does nothing but copy. Then it's pointed out Apple is also a second mover. So he backtracks on his argument by saying it doesn't matter who creates the tech, all that matters is who capitalizes and mass markets it.

AKA it's ok if Apple copies but not ok when other companies copy

 

[LordVic]

I will for you.

It is excellent on a tablet.

And 8.1 is excellent on the desktop.

In fact, Since 8.1 came out, I've found it more pleasurable to use than Mavericks.

My Hackintosh has gone back to being a Windows Computer full time. (THought my Macbook is still using Mavericks for now...)

----------

Or you could tell the truth.

View attachment 459713

Or at the very least tell us what program that is you have a screen shot of.

Here's another app that I used in my "I hate Windows but WAIT this stuff isn't anywhere near as difficult as I thought" days. It was called Roxio Creator 2010 Pro. And they also make Toast for the Mac.

View attachment 459715

The point is, you're making things up, and that's really just not right.

He's not necessarily making things up.

What he's doing is reading highly biased sites and forming his own opinion based on others opinions, rather than based on fact.

The screenshot he showed of the "burn" screen in windows is more complex than simply pressing "burn" button.

But, Then again, if all the options you have is to "burn" or "not burn". you' don't really have a very advanced platform now do you?

There's trade off with simplicity of UI. You lose out functionality. look at those options. Those are cool options to have. (plus thats only an option screen, not the real "burn now" button screen).

I know I would rather have a screen that looks like that as an options menu, than have absolutely no way of customizing how my software actually works.

Plus, "OK" saves current options and closes window. "Apply" just applies the current options and keeps the window open.

It's not that complex of a formula. It is also preferential in many cases to features that auto-apply themselves.

also, nvm, I just realized you were responding to Gudi, who has been notoriously wrong about most things and has often pushed that his opinions are more important and right than facts

 

[IJ Reilly]

It's hypocritical because earlier in the thread the guy was saying MS does nothing but copy. Then it's pointed out Apple is also a second mover. So he backtracks on his argument by saying it doesn't matter who creates the tech, all that matters is who capitalizes and mass markets it.

AKA it's ok if Apple copies but not ok when other companies copy

It could be hypocritical if the argument is made to support a vague or amorphous point, but it doesn't have to be. Comparing the Xerox efforts to the Mac, it's easy to see how far Apple advanced the art of the GUI over the earlier work. It is much more difficult to argue that Microsoft advanced the art created by Apple with Windows.

 

[knewsom]

The mistake with this line of reasoning is that it puts the blame on the people using the computer instead of realizing that it's a tool that should enable and empower it's users.

Tools need to be learned. If you tried to use a table-saw without knowing how to use a table-saw properly, it could cost you a finger, or maybe your life. If we reduce the function of tools down to the point where anybody can use them, there would be no CNC routers and table saws in the world, only hand tools.

 

[LordVic]

It could be hypocritical if the argument is made to support a vague or amorphous point, but it doesn't have to be. Comparing the Xerox efforts to the Mac, it's easy to see how far Apple advanced the art of the GUI over the earlier work. It is much more difficult to argue that Microsoft advanced the art created by Apple with Windows.

But the initial argument gudi made was that Apple was first.

And when they weren't first. They were still first because they were what popularized it.

in his statement, The Xerox wasn't technically the first because it was Apple that popularized it, so they should get credit for being first.

its completely irrelevant to him that Xerox had their products out first since it didn't have mass appeal.

The counter argument that everyone else is saying, is that it's hogwash. First to invent something is first to invent something, regardless of popular appeal.

Apple might have been the first company to mass market a PC with a GUI and mouse to the average consumer of the time. But they were NOT the first with a GUI and a mouse. Doesn't discount what they did do for the industry.

 

[iSunrise]

Does anyone know what the distinction between OK and APPLY is good for?
​

Yes, if you press "OK", you apply the changes and close the options window, whereas if you only "Apply" the changes, you only "Apply" the changes. Makes sense, doesn´t it?

 

[subsonix]

Tools need to be learned. If you tried to use a table-saw without knowing how to use a table-saw properly, it could cost you a finger, or maybe your life. If we reduce the function of tools down to the point where anybody can use them, there would be no CNC routers and table saws in the world, only hand tools.

The point is that we are discussing a critique of an interface and usability here, any such critique is useless if you it's immediately discredited with a "the user is stupid" remark. It gets you no where.