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What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

blog.usejournal.com

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Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#91

Post by munchbunny »

dleslie wrote: post #78
munchbunny wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting the shared files inside the Linux instance is a non-starter for me. What requirement do you have that has to be managed without going over to the Linux side of the system?

Unity and its suite of tools. Anything that slows access to disk IO can add significant time to my large-project build turnaround.

In the case of Unity, why do you need Linux crossover? I can see also having a Unity development setup in bare-metal Linux if you plan to target Linux gaming, but WSL currently doesn't give you graphics.

The game development scenario feels to me like a case where a Windows based toolchain is going to be more coherent. I might be missing something though.

Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#92

Post by abraxas »

zaphar wrote: post #42
pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not weird at all once you realise who Microsoft's management wants as its customers. The business people at MS really do not expect nor want customers to be fiddling around with technical stuff. They want customers to see MS as the one who can solve all problems. The business people at Microsoft prefer non-technical customers. Technically-minded customers are not the ideal customers for Microsoft. A great examp…

In 1995 this might have been a true statement. In 2020 Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall and realized that to stay at all relevant they need a seat at the table for cloud services. The only way to succeed at that is to win over the ultimate power user, developers. WSL{1,2}, Windows Terminal, SQL Server on Linux, too many intiatives to count all focused on catching up to the reality that webservices and infra…

Microsoft feels very schizophrenic at this point. On the one hand I think there exists a faction that wants to move more into the open ecosystem. On the other though there appears to be an entrenched faction that's hell bent on retaining as much proprietary status quo as they feel they can get away with. Thus the command line is still incompatible with any Unix shell, the SQL syntax subtly different to make it a pain for those coming from other databases, proprietary sockets, threads API's and so on. It's possible to make a Windows ecosystem interact with the rest of the world, it's just a big pain in the butt caused by an endless stream of small pains.

Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#93

Post by pwdisswordfish2 »

abraxas wrote: post #92
zaphar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1995 this might have been a true statement. In 2020 Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall and realized that to stay at all relevant they need a seat at the table for cloud services. The only way to succeed at that is to win over the ultimate power user, developers. WSL{1,2}, Windows Terminal, SQL Server on Linux, too many intiatives to count all focused on catching up to the reality that webservices and infra…

Microsoft feels very schizophrenic at this point. On the one hand I think there exists a faction that wants to move more into the open ecosystem. On the other though there appears to be an entrenched faction that's hell bent on retaining as much proprietary status quo as they feel they can get away with. Thus the command line is still incompatible with any Unix shell, the SQL syntax subtly different to make it a pain…

From what I know of the company's history some of those pains were intentional to thwart interoperability, created at the direction of Gates himself.

Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#94

Post by yellowapple »

WalterGR wrote: post #77
Grumbledour wrote: post #16

I actually don't get Powertoys at all. They provide basic functionality I would not even class as for power users. Yeah, they are nice, they were nice in win95. Why do I need a separate Program 25 years later to rebind some keys or switch windows, yet every new win10 version tinkers with cortana? People say it would add "bloat", but somehow basic functionality beneficial to many users is bloat while candy crush and x…

If a feature is missing from Windows it’s a bad thing, it should be in the default installation because it’s not bloat, and users are viewed as helpless to remedy the issue. If a feature is missing from MacOS or Linux it’s a good thing, it was rightly left out of the default installation to avoid bloat, and users are viewed as empowered to install software themselves. Can’t win.

That argument falls flat on its face when you consider Cortana or Candy Crush. Windows including every last bell and whistle would be a reasonable design choice if those bells and whistles were actually useful.

Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#96

Post by genr8 »

piggycurse wrote: post #25

Why is this blog post so negative? Microsoft are trying and giving all of the developers the tools to help affect the project along the way. The Terminal project was only announced 1 year ago[0]. As I understand it, they had to more or less split how the whole conhost.exe work in order to allow Terminal to even exist. The settings UI is far from sexy, but they're working on it[1]. I think it's impressive to know that…

M$ will only open source things that don't make them their money, while at the same time, tricking developers that they care by appropriating the communities work and extracting as much value out of Linux for free as possible, for their own benefit. Providing second rate hybrids masquerading as innovations, is all they can really do, to keep people locked into Windows. I stayed on Windows desktop for 20 years even while using linux for servers, and just gave it up this year. Linux has its own problems but if I disagree with the status quo of programs, I can either switch to another distro, mod the open source code myself, or file a bug report so a real person actually does something about it. This is too little, too late, from Microsoft, and accepting it now will just lead to the demise of Linux.

Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#97

Post by genr8 »

abraxas wrote: post #92
zaphar wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1995 this might have been a true statement. In 2020 Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall and realized that to stay at all relevant they need a seat at the table for cloud services. The only way to succeed at that is to win over the ultimate power user, developers. WSL{1,2}, Windows Terminal, SQL Server on Linux, too many intiatives to count all focused on catching up to the reality that webservices and infra…

Microsoft feels very schizophrenic at this point. On the one hand I think there exists a faction that wants to move more into the open ecosystem. On the other though there appears to be an entrenched faction that's hell bent on retaining as much proprietary status quo as they feel they can get away with. Thus the command line is still incompatible with any Unix shell, the SQL syntax subtly different to make it a pain…

MS is so large, one hand doesn't know what any other division is doing, and their community interaction is horrible because they make more money when people are ill informed and just go with the flow. So even if 10% of the company is "new blood" and was pushing open source out the back door for the past 5 years, the upper management is just now catching on that "hey maybe they were right".

Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#99

Post by genr8 »

4cao wrote: post #68

The history of Microsoft is the history of workarounds on top of workarounds, year after year, rinse and repeat. Here's a novel thought: instead of providing yet another iteration of workarounds for the power user, how about just fixing it for every user. Take for instance the Start Menu. When the Win-X "quick access" menu was added years ago, it was essentially an admission that the Start Menu is not the best way to…

Microsoft is so large, and so disjointed, its not as simple as you make it out to be. The corporate culture prevents it. You forgot all the bureaucratic middle managers whos sole job is to enforce IT Silo'ing and gatekeep other teams from intruding into their area. I hate to say it like this, but the boomers created this mentality on purpose. Its rampant in incumbent tech/IT/dev, and fundamentally opposed to freedom of information and open source, because its focused on maintaining control and power and keeping people in their pre-designated place. If it was only a tech problem, we could absolutely solve this, but its a socio-political one first.

Re: What Microsoft got right about power users, but not quite

#100

Post by genr8 »

projektfu wrote: post #21

I think this site might want to reconsider using Medium. All of the animated screenshots were covered with ads in Safari on iOS, with no apparent way of getting past them. I had really no idea what they were talking about.

You might want to reconsider using Safari on iOS...
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