Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use - improve them.
Far too much of my Microsoft using experience is of a solid technology which is idiotically annoying, and a new version which ups both desirable features and irritation at the same time.
I mean the remote desktop client which has a ton of user experience flaws which hasn't improved for years, then developed another security warning to pass through every new connection.
I mean the mess of software licensing which got no better, then worse with KMS/MLK keys.
I mean the web browser which is now a web browser with a first time startup wizard full of pestering questions.
I mean the event log viewer which was basic and fiddly, and is now massively complex looking and still fiddly.
I mean the scheduled task list which is now a scheduled task maze.
I mean the Control Panel which is now a Control Panel Advent Calendar.
I mean the Exchange Management Console which morphed into a Half-a-management-console-half-a-scripting-language.
I mean the Windows Explorer which locked up a Pentium 4 when accessing an optical drive or network still locks up a Core i7 920 when accessing an optical drive or network only now it tries to hide the optical drive first.
I mean the IIS6 tree which became an IIS7 "lets arrange everything inspired by our favourite abstract artist!" mess.
On and on and on, they sell me on industry leading desirable features like Branch Cache and Outlook Anywhere and yet my everyday experience is Microsoft the Bully.
"Come here, jodrellblank, we have a brand new system for you to try with $newfeature!"
"Wow! run run run"
Security warning tripwire, Are you sure checkbox, Did you notice the information bar? Would you like to move or copy files from this location? Error 0x28003210D ha ha! F1 for help? Sorry, we removed that help system in this version. Online search? Ours is awful, you'll never find that error. Helpful utility? You no longer have rights to run it, "admin".
Want $feature? Why don't you just come and get it then? It's right here... FOREVER OUT OF YOUR REACH.
> "Word or Excel teams use any other word processor or spreadsheet."
Reinforces your point and his. Word and Excel are best in class, nothing else comes close - OpenOffice, Google Docs, Documents to go on mobiles are ok substitutes but not as good as the real thing. This as real impact on your productivity which is why I use office.live.com, can't believe that is free at the moment.
I'm not sure it's comparable: the work of making Visual Studio is much the same as the work that people would do with Visual Studio. But if you are a Word developer, while you'd use it to write a letter, you might not have much experience of using it for a truly large document, like an entire book.
Maybe not an entire book but might you not read/write a large requirements or design document, set of test scripts before it goes into Quality centre for example. Write-up a lessons learned document or review a threat model for a security push before the new version gets launched?
I can't up-vote this enough. Prediction: If Microsoft were to fix all of this in a new version of Windows, 1,000,000 IT support jobs will disappear within a year or two of its release.
Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use - improve them.
I actually wonder if, at the MS scale, that can start to be an impediment between the developers living inside the large MS sphere of software and their understanding of what it is like for average users who don't live entirely inside that sphere.
I mean, isn't one of the complaints that they don't make their tools interoperate and play nice with non-MS software enough... don't use open standards and formats enough? Well, from their perspective that would make sense; they are dog fooding inside an all MS zone. Inside that zone, interoperation is shifted down in priority from where outsiders would put it.
They don't just have to dogfood it — they need to do so in a manner such that they get a fresh Out Of Box Experience at least once per week. Make it so they can't get comfortable in their customized setups for long, make it so that they have to confront the defaults and the byzantine ridiculousness involved in getting rid of them.
As it is now, they'd lose every developer's entire Monday to inane wizards, waiting for installers, and dismissing pestering dialog boxes.
Far too much of my Microsoft using experience is of a solid technology which is idiotically annoying, and a new version which ups both desirable features and irritation at the same time.
I mean the remote desktop client which has a ton of user experience flaws which hasn't improved for years, then developed another security warning to pass through every new connection.
I mean the mess of software licensing which got no better, then worse with KMS/MLK keys.
I mean the web browser which is now a web browser with a first time startup wizard full of pestering questions.
I mean the event log viewer which was basic and fiddly, and is now massively complex looking and still fiddly.
I mean the scheduled task list which is now a scheduled task maze.
I mean the Control Panel which is now a Control Panel Advent Calendar.
I mean the Exchange Management Console which morphed into a Half-a-management-console-half-a-scripting-language.
I mean the Windows Explorer which locked up a Pentium 4 when accessing an optical drive or network still locks up a Core i7 920 when accessing an optical drive or network only now it tries to hide the optical drive first.
I mean the IIS6 tree which became an IIS7 "lets arrange everything inspired by our favourite abstract artist!" mess.
On and on and on, they sell me on industry leading desirable features like Branch Cache and Outlook Anywhere and yet my everyday experience is Microsoft the Bully.
"Come here, jodrellblank, we have a brand new system for you to try with $newfeature!"
"Wow! run run run"
Security warning tripwire, Are you sure checkbox, Did you notice the information bar? Would you like to move or copy files from this location? Error 0x28003210D ha ha! F1 for help? Sorry, we removed that help system in this version. Online search? Ours is awful, you'll never find that error. Helpful utility? You no longer have rights to run it, "admin".
Want $feature? Why don't you just come and get it then? It's right here... FOREVER OUT OF YOUR REACH.
cries in a corner