Reflecting on my expectations for Microsoft's forthcoming Windows "Blue," I'm reminded of a favorite "Deep Thought" by Jack Handey, from "Saturday Night Live." In this passage, instead of taking his little nephew to Disneyland, Handey takes him to a burned-out warehouse and tells him Disneyland has burned down:
He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke.Is Microsoft playing some kind of trick on us? Forgive the corniness, but the early scoop on Windows "Blue" has this tech analyst seeing red.
It's the customers, stupid
Why am I so indignant? I'm not going to say it; instead, I'll let a comment off Paul Thurrott's Windows Supersite about the new features do the talking. There, Grapemanca says:
But there's got to be much more than this, right? As a Desktop user who runs Win8 with Stardock's Start8 and ModernMix, I'm not sure I can see anything here that I'll even notice. We still can't boot directly to desktop. We still waste an amazing amount of space around the Modern [Metro] UI edges. We still can't see basic functions on a UI that is purportedly a graphic user interface. We still can't resize Modern apps to the dimensions that suit us. We're still forced to use a keyboard to maximize efficiency ... à la DOS. We still don't have a brand-new Windows that's maximized for the desktop. Talk about underwhelmed.
We'll know soon enough if we're being led to Disneyland or a burned-out warehouse. If it's the latter, will it be too late to go back? If Microsoft really wants to show customers that it's listening, it needs to drop the secrecy immediately and spell out the changes it plans to make to address the complaints.
Otherwise, Microsoft risks making them so angry that by the time the company gives them what they want, they won't care anymore.
Windows 'Blue' will leave Microsoft customers seeing red | Microsoft Windows - InfoWorld