quote:

The most important ingredient in Windows 10's success during its first 12 months wasn't even a product feature, analysts said today as the operating system completed its freshman year.
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"It was the fact that Microsoft was willing to learn from its mistakes, then make course corrections," Steve Kleynhans of Gartner said when asked to pinpoint Windows 10's most significant accomplishment. "There was a lot more of that with Windows 10. Microsoft made subtle adjustments, like the pace of updating the OS for enterprises, and they eventually softened on some of the more aggressive techniques for [the] Get Windows 10 [upgrade campaign]."

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, echoed Kleynhans. "I can answer that with one word: 'listening,'" said Gottheil when asked the same question about 10's first 12 months.

Microsoft launched Windows 10 on July 29, 2015, and since then has convinced customers to put the operating system on more than 350 million devices, a record adoption pace. But the process of creating, updating, modifying, tweaking and upgrading Windows 10 ended up being more important in the eyes of experts than the OS itself.

"To make a better product, you have to become incredible empathic, which is what Apple does, or poll and collect feedback and listen, and at each step knock off the rough spots," said Gottheil. "It's a little inelegant, but if you don't do bad things, what's left is pretty good.

Microsoft chose the second path, said Gottheil, and for a good reason: "They don't have a lot of empathy for most end users," he said. "So that's what they did with Windows 10."

The result? "It's a lot smoother product than Microsoft has produced in many years, or perhaps ever," he argued.

Kleynhans concurred. "The Windows 10 Anniversary Update is a much more polished product than Microsoft shipped last year. It's polished in ways not even thought of last year. I like that feeling that they're being responsive."
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Microsoft's transparency within Windows' development has waxed and waned, then waxed again, over 30 years. The regime run by former executive Steven Sinofsky was the waning part of that cycle -- Windows 8 was developed under tight secrecy -- but Microsoft loosened up with the skipping-a-numeral successor.

Considerable credit to the listen-learn-release model's success must be given to Windows Insider, the preview program Microsoft has run for nearly two years. Feedback from Insiders, the company said incessantly, was crucial to guiding 10's development. But analysts also called out other sources, notably the largest and most important corporate customers, who aren't shy about giving the vendor a piece of their minds. "There's lots of feedback that isn't as visible as Insider," Kleynhans said.

Yet Microsoft didn't sail through the year without missteps and blunders; plenty bedeviled Windows 10, even as it garnered accolades from reviewers and hundreds of millions of users.
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"They had hoped to get more people to upgrade than they did," said Kleynhans, pointing out Microsoft's recent retreat from a goal of putting Windows 10 on a billion devices by mid-2018. "And they didn't get the totally positive spin in the press that they were expecting," something that curtailed upgrades on the part of people who otherwise would have pulled the trigger.

Among the things mishandled, Kleynhans highlighted the concerns over Windows 10's aggressive telemetric data collection and the even-more-combative upgrade campaign.

Gottheil focused on the latter when asked whether any false moves came to mind. "I'd say the whole 'We're going to fool you into upgrading,'" he said, referring to the deception Microsoft practiced between March and June.

During those months, Microsoft interpreted a click on the red "X" in an upgrade-now pop-up as authorizing the upgrade rather than ignoring the notification, bucking decades of convention as well as Microsoft's own design guidelines. Microsoft repealed that interpretation four weeks ago.

"This was Microsoft saying, 'We know what's best for you,'" Gottheil said of the initial stance.

But that didn't stop him from praising Windows 10's debut year. "I'd give it an A-," Gottheil said. "There are still some hiccups, but doubling down on Cortana and adding Ink is important for the long term."

Kleynhans marked Windows 10 with two grades, not one.

"Windows 10 is a really solid product," Kleynhans said. "But the messaging and PR and general handling of all that detracted. The product deserves an A, Microsoft has provided some good updates and 350 million [copies installed] is an outstanding number. But Microsoft's handling of Windows 10, that was a C or even C-. So overall, B for the first year."

Snapchat A Titty posted:

someone change this so the cat flips off the viewer

cremnob posted:

https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/759054411939258368

Sir Unimaginative posted:

I'm still wondering why a ninja cat.

Maximum Leader posted:

so if you enable some assistive technologies you can still upgrade for free?

Maximum Leader posted:

so if you enable some assistive technologies you can still upgrade for free?

lazydog posted:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

you don't have to enable anything. the faq says there is no restriction to any specific assistive technologies. if you feel that you have been assisted in some way by technology, you can still upgrade for free. maybe your keyboard assists you when you want to type something, or maybe your browser assists you in using The Internet

anthonypants posted:

rip Ultimate

quote:

Microsoft: if you don't do bad things, what's left is pretty good.

lazydog posted:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade

you don't have to enable anything. the faq says there is no restriction to any specific assistive technologies. if you feel that you have been assisted in some way by technology, you can still upgrade for free. maybe your keyboard assists you when you want to type something, or maybe your browser assists you in using The Internet

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

a big pile of garbage that you should never choose over windows regardless of its shortcomings?

BangersInMyKnickers posted:

a big pile of garbage that you should never choose over windows regardless of its shortcomings?

Malcolm XML posted:

wheres the satya edition

Blue Train posted:

id like to thank windows 10 for reminding me how good linux is

Buttcoin purse posted:

This never happened to me:

pre:

[btcpurse@redhat ~]$ 21 mine
You just got a bitcoin!
[btcpurse@redhat ~]$

Congratulations! You can now upgrade to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10!
Hit Enter to start the upgrade process:^C

Interrupt received, starting upgrade anyway because why wouldn't you want to upgrade?

I feel like I'd like to start working on ReactOS.

Am I the only one who prefers Windows 8 because it might have a crazy user interface but it at least still does what you want it to do? Everyone I know seems to say "at least 10 is better than 8", maybe it's just me

error1 posted:

magical reasoning lol

Sir Unimaginative posted:

error1 posted:

8.1 was a better OS than 10 as long as you had Classic Shell installed

It fits in with the bad-good-bad cycle as well

95 good
98 bad
98se good
ME bad
2000 good
XP bad
7 good
8 bad
8.1 good
10 bad

[edit] Vista didn't exist

atomicthumbs posted:

2. "oh yeah windows 8 is fine except for the entirety of it that shows on my screen and which I interact with. that bit's awful. but the rest of it is fine"

Buttcoin purse posted:

I never count 2000 since it wasn't really used by non-business types AFAIK

jony neuemonic posted:

lol if you didn't know pc gamers who thought xp would waste precious resources and ran 2000 instead.

jony neuemonic posted:

lol if you didn't know pc gamers who thought xp would waste precious resources and ran 2000 instead.

Buttcoin purse posted:

I never count 2000 since it wasn't really used by non-business types AFAIK, so:

95 good
98 bad
98se good
ME bad
XP good
Vista bad
7 good
8 bad
10 must be good?


This but unironically.

I mean occasionally I hit the Windows key and some horrible full-screen start menu replacement comes up, I type a few letters to identify the program I want to start and hit enter, and then I'm back to the mostly-familiar desktop. And Classic Shell can fix that but to be honest most of the time it's a lot nicer to just type stuff and not have to scroll anyway, so I can kind of live with the start screen.

Windows 8 just felt to me like 7 but I got forced into starting my programs in a more efficient way, which is hard to complain about (except when the search takes a really long time to complete). Maybe I'm just looking back with rose-tinted glasses though.

I hope nobody is offended by my bad and incorrect opinions decorated with punctuation

ADINSX posted:

*raises paw*