Microsoft, Stop The Bleeding!

**Disclaimer: I am going to warn you right now. If you are a Microsoft fanboy in any capacity, you might not want to continue reading this post. I’m venting here, and I’m probably going to get pretty scathing as I’ve nearly lost all faith in Microsoft (and I had very little to begin with).**

In the late 90’s and the early part of last decade I was extremely anti-Microsoft. I did not use Windows; I used Slackware Linux with Windows running in a VM only when I absolutely needed it. As my programming skills improved I started to get more into .NET. Then, when Windows XP came out, the XBox, and Visual Studio, I turned a new leaf. I liked using Windows XP, I played XBox games quite often and I really enjoyed coding in Visual Studio; I even attended a Visual Studio launch event. Windows 7 became, hands down, the best version of Windows I had ever used and it actually gave me a ray of hope in the direction Microsoft was heading (despite the bizarre behavior of Steve Balmer).

Then came the Zune. I just rolled my eyes and shrugged it off as a fluke; but no lesson was learned. Microsoft announced a new OS, Windows 8. When I knew nothing about it, I was curious, maybe even vaguely excited for a new version. Then they talked about tablets and this “metro UI” and I started getting worried. The Zune was a failure, what on Earth made them think that repeating that same mistake would render different results? As the beta testing progressed for Windows 8, the criticisms became worse and worse. It was not going well, and Microsoft seemed to not even listen.

They released Windows 8 to cruel feedback and harsh reviews. When Microsoft feigned acknowledgement of the flaws in the OS, the Financial Times referred to it as:

one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago [source]

.. and they still didn’t listen! The “changes” in 8.1 do NOT address the users’ concerns. They are insulting our intelligence!

Why people are still being seduced by Windows 8 is beyond my capacity. Every time I have tried out Windows 8, I feel physically ill. Every single person I talk to – family, friend, co-worker – I strongly urge them to avoid Windows 8 like the plague (because clearly it is a plague). I’m getting really tired of having every Microsoft related publication shoving “Windows 8 Apps” in my face – like they have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near the 900,000+ apps available on iTunes.

At least they still have XBox! No. Wait. Yea, they just slaughtered that cash-cow. The XBox One is “One” brilliant flop in the making. Yea, let’s take our only thing worth a damn and completely alienate the gaming community. Whose cocaine induced idiocy was this? Let’s make a “gaming” console that isn’t backwards compatible and you can’t play used games on it. I think a shorter way of saying that is “Let’s give gamers the middle finger”!

The current direction Microsoft is taking console gaming and their OS is mind-numbingly frustrating! I’m seriously on the precipice of falling back into my old anti-Microsoft pattern. I think the only thing that is keeping me around is how much I enjoy using Windows 7 and how fun it is to develop software using Visual Studio (RAZR is just some amazing stuff!).

They need to do something to stop the bleeding because I’m sure my confidence isn’t the only thing fading away.