I kept hearing "Nadella" as *Nutella* and wondered WTF.
*Cough*
Seriously though, I think MS is headed for the toilet.
Bill G. kept crowing about "the cloud" as the way forward for MS, even after all the revelations about NSA being able to scrape everything you do online, over a cellphone, or anywhere in view of a (security) camera?
How many American business' have started pulling back on their offerings of cloudy services because there's a growing number of the populace whom no longer trusts the ability of "Cloud Providers" to secure their files?
How many foreign companies are pulling back from doing business with American companies in anything "cloudy" because there's no assurance that the NSA isn't assisting GCHQ et al in spying on their citizenry?
Didn't the EU Committee just say something to the effect of "America better behave or we're taking our business back!"?
So with all this budding backlash, the possibility & probability of it developing into a major backlash is a real & credible issue.
And you want to gamble the future of the corporation on the government reigning back their NSA goons, scaling back their spying, and Doing The Right Thing by & for The People?
What planet are you on, Billy Boy?
Your foray into the hardware market (the Surface line) took a sharp header off a short pier.
It's taken you dropping the price on the original model Surface by nearly *HALF* in order to get it to sell worth a damn.
Of the Surface RT and Surface Pro, the Pro is the only one that deserved to ever see the light of day, but for the price you're asking for it, nobody wants to blow that kind of cash on a tablet when they can buy a laptop with better specs, more RAM, a larger HD/SSD, for less money.
Ok, so you updated them to the Surface RT 2 and Pro 2, but they're still over priced, the RT still doesn't run x86 software, and the Pro 2 still costs more than a laptop of similar specs.
You want it to sell well?
Drop the price by half on the Pro 2, and then maybe we'll talk.
But when I can buy a Thinkpad L440 with a 4th gen I5, 8Gb RAM, a 500Gb SSD, AC WiFi & BT, Gigabit LAN, an SD slot, for barely HALF of the cost of a Pro 2 with the base CPU, RAM, and storeage?
No contest, and I hate Lenovo right now.
Be more aggressive with the Windows Phone platform.
Your Windows App Store has an abysmally small selection, and that's what drives people to want to buy the device in the first place.
Good specs in the phone itself are nice & good, but if there's nothing to RUN on it, it doesn't matter if the hardware is bleeding edge with decade old pricing.
No apps = No Sales.
Develop the apps, get more, better, and more usefull apps available.
You could improve the phone hardware market, too, but It's The Apps, Stupid.
Admit Windows 8/8.1 was a flop.
Of the machines running Windows in the public, ~30% is running XP, ~40% Win7, ~11% Vista, and 8/8.1 has only *barely* gotten past the 12% mark.
It's taken 8/8.1 HOW long to finally have a better market presence than Vista, the second most vilified version you've ever produced after ME?
Win7 has the lion's share of the customers using it, with XP right on it's heels; in comparison, 8/8.1 is so far in the dust it can't even see which PLANET those other two are on.
At this rate, it'll be what... 2050 before 8/8.1 catches up to XP?
Give it up, admit 8's a failure, and stop forcing your hardware vendors to push sales of 8 so hard.
HP just recently began offering their desktops & laptops with Win7 again "because customers requested it so often".
If one of your MAIN supporters is going back to selling Win7 machines openly, what does it take to make you get the damned hint?
If XP is "good enough for Gramma" on her decades old machine, then when it's finally time for her to upgrade from the system *dropping dead*, she'll be left with a choice.
Buying a new computer with Windows 8/8.1 on it, and having to relearn everything she's ever known just to use it worth a damn,
or buy a Mac.
Either way it involves a new machine, relearning her computer skills, and essentially getting to know a whole new operating system.
If she's got to make the choice anyway, and she turns to her TechGeek Grandson for advice, she'll be walking out of Best Buy with a brand new Mac under her arm.
Because while it's more expensive in the initial purchase, the savings in support calls, repair calls, & general frustration will make it seem like the sweetest deal on the planet in comparison.
So MS either needs to pull it's head from it's a3 & get it's act into gear, or it'll quickly find itself irrelevant in the modern world.
"But we've still got government contracts!"
Yes, that may be so, but how many governments are rapidly coming to realize that the cost of a Windows machine, the Windows OS, the Office Suite, and all the support costs, can easily be replaced by a Chromebook with half the hardware requirements, an essentially free OS, a literally free productivity suite, and a ZERO upkeep cost?
Sure you've both got Admin tools to handle the needs of thousands of employees using your machines, but what does it say when the server required to admin those other machines can, itself, be another Chromebook that cost them ~$400 versus that $1,200 Windows workstation?
*Sighs*
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