Yawn
So, Microsoft is previewing an OS that "skips a version to signify a new generation of Windows" and won't be fully baked for another year. The stunning innovations contained therein are features that other desktops (oooh, multiple virtual desktops) have had for one to two decades and reversals of previously made bad decisions (Welcome back Start button. We spent a pile of dough in '95 to get people to press Start to shut down their computers, and it must have worked, because man-oh-man did people get irked when we took the button away).
It must be Xbox keeping Microsoft in business, because it surely isn't "innovation" like this. Is _anyone_ really waiting for Windows 10? Here is the question for the geniuses at Microsoft: if they hadn't put a bullet in XP, how many people would STILL be running it? Here is another question: despite the lack of official support, how many people ARE still running XP? It simply stuns me that 4 subsequent generations (Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and now Windows 10) have failed to improve on a 13 year-old OS in any significant way, other than to plug security some security holes.
Of course, Office is cut from the same cloth. Microsoft has made it "collaborative," has put it on a subscription model (benefitting Microsoft, and not the customer), has made a complete hash out of a formerly usable menu structure, and has invented several new file formats to confuse and delight, but is there _anything_ significant that a new copy of Office can do that a vintage copy of Office 97 can't? Microsoft can't even compete with itself (from almost 2 decades ago), much less with the plethora of free products out there that are perfectly adequate for day-to-day document processing needs.
This used to be the most feared competitive company in the industry. Now, it is like the unmasked Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi -- a pasty-faced, overweight former tyrant with some good in it.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
