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So, let's see: Microsoft is
thinking that a lot of the
future of their business is
new versions of a user interface. They might make some money this
way, but I have to doubt it will
be very much money. Why? At the core, from their
computing, people want some
significant utility, content,
functionality, etc. E.g., I
come to HN for content and
find the user interface to be just
fine except too often there
are too many characters per line
and to see the whole like
I have to use horizontal
scroll bars twice for each line or just
copy the screen into my favorite
text editor and reflow the lines
to fewer characters per line. Satya, for developers, there is a lot
that is good in .NET. Now, if you
would do much better documenting it,
then it would stand a much better
chance of taking off like it should
and a lot of developers wish it would. I'm doing an ambitious startup: By
a very wide margin, far and away
the worst problem was working through
5000+ Web pages of Microsoft
documentation of .NET and SQL Server;
the quality of the technical
writing was not good -- need
better explanations and
for the jargon links to
a glossary.
The next worse problem was having
to rebuild the boot partition
as attempts at SQL Server installation
ruined it. The next worse problem was rebuilding
the boot partition after
malware ruined it. All the work
unique to my startup was fast,
fun, and easy. Mud wrestling
with Microsoft's work wasted literally
YEARS, seriously hurt both
my startup and me, and nearly killed
at least my
startup. It appears from the article and more
that Nadella is short on good, new
ideas for new directions for Microsoft,
is ignoring a lot that users are
screaming about, e.g., security
and system management, and that
developers are screaming about,
e.g., better documentation,
and is having vague,
ethereal, dreams about
the power of new user interfaces. Uh, Satya, I don't really have
any problems with translating
foreign languages; for any
serious content in a foreign language,
no way would I trust a machine
translation; I don't want my
computer talking to me; even when alone
I don't want to talk to my
computer; no way in front of
others will I talk to my computer. Satya, for my computer giving
me advice, no thanks. For
unsolicited advice, no way.
The second or first time my
computer tries to give me
advice, I will look how
to turn off that functionality. Satya, what you call artificial
intelligence I call at best
trivial and otherwise nearly useless,
silly, annoying, insulting,
absurd, a pain in the back side,
and just genuinely stupid. Satya, I am NOT going to talk
to my computer. That is just
not negotiable. And, I'm not
going to wear a helmet or
funny glasses.
And I do NOT want a touch
screen interface. I WOULD
very much like a better keyboard,
e.g., as good as the old IBM
PC/AT keyboard. Satya, let me give you some
warm advice: Computing is the
greatest opportunity in the
history of civilization, but
you are addressing it with
all the seriousness of
toys in Cracker Jacks boxes.
Satya, get real, get serious. |