Friday, March 2, 2012

Windows 8 shows the problem again of UX getting severely dumbed down & feedback being ignored at Microsoft

Windows 8 Consumer Preview is here and there are no improvements to the problems I pointed out to Microsoft. I reported these through the Send Feedback Tool, through the B8 blog and forums and email. All in vain.

Explorer still auto sorts all files. (Problem since Vista)
You still can't manually arrange items in Explorer. (Problem since Windows 7)
The servicing (CBS) store still grows in disk space significantly with every installed update so your free disk space reduces over time. (Problem since Vista)
Updates still install dog slow compared to XP. (Problem since Vista)
Explorer Status bar still hides important details. (Problem since Vista but worse in Windows 7)
-  Everything is “simplified” and has less options
-  The new Task Manager still has the same problems I pointed out. (New issue in Windows 8)
You cannot customize your window appearance like title bar size, caption buttons etc. (New issue in Windows 8)
-  Start Menu is gone.
-  Shutdown, Logon and Logoff sounds are gone (New issue in Windows 8)
-  Network Map is gone. (New issue in Windows 8)
-  Flip 3D is gone. (New issue in Windows 8)
-  Chkdsk scanning details at startup are gone. (New issue in Windows 8)
-  Once again, many shell features are broken
-  Personalization features are further removed

.....see the full list here.

But Microsoft doesn't care. They only know how to force their changes on users and say "This is by design". Even bugs are "by design". Before or after the product ships, no design changes requested by end users are made. They only create the illusion that they are listening to their customers and making changes based on their feedback. Regressions in functionality are not fixed with top priority. Microsoft has become a company just like Apple. They think they know what's best for everyone. Their software has far too limited configurability.

They do listen to a handful of customers. But that's 0.000000000000000000001 percent of a billion customers. Rest of them face constant migration fatigue and loss of functionality in an "upgrade". How would you feel if you were forced to dump your old house or old car (okay even if that's fair enough given it's getting obsolete), but you have no choice but to buy a new one and let go of lots of things because the new one doesn't have the things the old one did, and then you are stuck with that inferior product that you paid more for and got less value?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're right.
Windows 7 was nice but it seemed less productive suite than winXP. I really don't see the point of windows 8 on PCs.

Anonymous said...

The next version will be Windows IUE (Idiot User Edition).

I have sent several replies to MS on things to fix, and as you note, MS ignores everything except "W7 is great and I Love it".

Gaurav Kale said...

Next version? This version itself is Idiot User Edition.