Microsoft's "New Coke" Moment? 786
theodp writes "Remember New Coke? Twenty-eight years ago, Coca-Cola replaced the secret formula of its flagship brand, only to announce the return of the "classic" formula just 79 days later. Had it launched in 2013, Coke's Jay Moye suspects a social media backlash would have prompted it to reverse itself even sooner. In a timely follow-up, ZDNet's Steven Vaughan-Nichols points out that Microsoft is facing its own New Coke moment with Windows 8. 'Does Ballmer have the guts to admit he made a mistake and give users what they clearly want?' Vaughan-Nichols asks. 'While it's too late for Windows 8, Blue might give us back our Start button and an Aero-like interface. We don't know.'"
Re:Wishful thinking. (Score:3, Informative)
And if you think they will, look at when Microsoft originally wanted to EOL WinXP, and when they actually did.
Re:When will this bullshit ever stop? (Score:4, Informative)
Vista did suck when it came out for quite a lot of people, but the core problem wasn't Vista. The problem was that the driver model changed and there was a lot of immature drivers out there. But for your average home user, all they understand is that the computer has Vista and isn't working as well as their older XP one did.
Windows 7 didn't share that problem because by time it came out the drivers had matured.
Windows 8's problem is that it's two UIs that don't play nice together in the same place, and people who know how to use Windows 7 (or XP) don't want to learn the new one and figure out when they're going to switch back and forth. It's a blunder on Microsoft's part that the two don't play together more nicely.
That, and what moron thought moving the "shut down" button into such an obscure location was a good idea? Yes, people do in fact turn PCs off fairly regularly.
Re:New Coke was a Flop? (Score:5, Informative)
The corn syrup thing is just a myth [snopes.com]. They switched from sugar to corn syrup five years before the introduction of New Coke.
Re:OSX is better anyway (Score:5, Informative)
If you have web software that requires IE on Windows to work, the problem is on your end.
Re:New Coke was a Flop? (Score:4, Informative)
They switched from sugar to corn syrup five years before the introduction of New Coke.
So, that's not what the link says. It says:
The relevant question, which Snopes dodges, is "was all Coca Cola Classic manufactured using 100% HFCS when it was reintroduced"?
An alternate way to disprove the assertion would be to show that all bottlers were using 100% HFCS six months prior to the introduction of New Coke. But Snopes's carefully chosen words suggest that wasn't the case.
Re:OSX is better anyway (Score:2, Informative)
Deficit refers to cash flow and not cash on hand. It's entirely possible to have cash on hand and still run a deficit. What you're thinking of is debt, not deficit, but even then it's still possible to both be in debt and have cash on hand.
Re:OSX is better anyway (Score:4, Informative)
I checked when our bosses wanted to get a mac for media editing (which is comical by itself).
Media editing is actually one of the areas where Macs excel. There is a wide variety of software available, and they have been favored by creative professionals for quite some time.
It works with exactly zero of our software suites. ZERO. No CRM, no office, no database apps, nothing. In fact, Firefox and Safari don't work with our ASP software either.
Firefox and Safari for OSX are standard web browsers. If they don't work with your "ASP software" then that means the software is crap (probably designed to be IE-specific) and needs to be fixed. It's not a problem with the OS or the browsers. Why a media editing system would need CRM or database apps isn't clear to me, but you certainly can get MS Office for OSX if you need it.
There's already 3rd party fixes (Score:4, Informative)
Re:New Coke was a Flop? (Score:4, Informative)
.
The above was from memory. This 7-page How Stuff Works article [howstuffworks.com] is from the first hit of a google search of "HFCS vs sugar".
Re:New Poke (Score:5, Informative)
Re:New Coke was a Flop? (Score:4, Informative)
And you really need to read up on how sucrose is what we call a disaccharide composed of equal parts glucose and fructose
And how does the glycosidic bond get hydrated? You're talking about component monosaccharides, I'm talking about metabolic processing rates. Rates, rates, rates (just to be clear). The liver does not have the capacity to process an infinite amount of fructose - it's rate limited. Intestinal sucrase production rates balances the liver's processing rate.
One must consider the whole system, not just tally a simple molecular inventory.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OSX is better anyway (Score:5, Informative)
OP is not at all wrong, and it's bullish of you to suggest that a business should simply change its entire operating strategy to account for the limitations of the install base of the operating system. I worked as a CTO for a niche retail business (wine) which had certain custom measures to track in order to maintain basic levels of inventory management (e.g. multiple vintages and sizes use the same SKU). The stores had already deployed Macs for their POS due to the business decisions of my predecessor. I spent months trying to find a POS system that could handle anything beyond the "my first retail system" level. I found three retail POS systems at all. One of them we were already using -- and it didn't work, one of them was similarly barebones and locked down all of the database material so I couldn't export to something like Quickbooks, and then there's Lightspeed, which is big, costly, and spends more time and energy on advertising "It Works on Mac!" than it does providing any utilitarian function whatsoever. I gave up and installed Windows 7 on the systems through BootCamp, opening up at least 30 wine-retail specific POS systems for my pleasure.
Nearly all cross-platform software suites don't talk to one another. Quickbooks won't talk between Mac and PC. More specialized office applications and database applications won't talk to one another. There might be a FEW that will provide interoperability, though it's often buggy beyond belief, and most don't provide critical features necessary to certain businesses. Try and find an actually usable service-based POS (QSRs and restaurants). There are none. I'm sure that's because the Mac hardware is not touchscreen, which makes the OSX unusable to an entire industry.
If the general topic is about replacing your fleet of bulldozers with pickup trucks, parts commonality between the trucks and bulldozers is a pretty important metric.
Re:New Coke was a Flop? (Score:5, Informative)
"How Stuff Works" isn't the best reference for recent metabolic research. Try Pubmed.
A small amount of sucrose is broken down by stomach acid and absorbed into the bloodstream, so you'll feel that quickly (but glucose is the preferred sugar for diabetics who need a quick shot of sugar, because it does not need to be metabolized first, ignoring the 5-6 fructose conversion).
The majority of sucrose is metabolized by the sucrase produced at the microvilli of the small intestine.
HFCS is like consuming pre-digested sucrose. The fructose and glucose are both absorbed fully and quickly and the liver gets easily overwhelmed by the fructose. There are studies where they do side-by-side comparisons of the two and measure the triglyceride levels in the blood shortly after - it's a stark difference. Check out the research.
Re: New Coke? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with Zune wasn't that it was a bad product. When it was released it was probably the best MP3 player if you ignore the ugly brown color.
The Zune was not a success for multiple reasons. First of all was MS execution. MS really botched the marketing and advertising on it. MS thought that being obscure and mysterious would make them seem cool. MS just doesn't know cool. Looking at the commercials for the Zune you had no idea it was a music player from MS. It could have been gum.
Contrast this with the first iPhone commercials. They were 30 second demos and actually very minimalist. Each of them covered the basic information the consumer would want to know: What is it? (A new smartphone). Who makes it? (Apple) Where do I get it (Apple or AT&T stores). How does it work? (A simple hand using fingers is used to operate it).
The other issue with the Zune was that the main feature, squirting was so crippled by DRM that it was not a feature. Without it, Zunes had a very power hungry alternative to syncing with a cable. Later Zunes even omitted squirting as a featire.
Mostly the main issue with the Zune was it was designed to beat Apple's last generation iPod not the next generation. When Apple released the iPod Touch, it was game over for the Zune. Unlike the Zune, the Touch had the interface/design to be a portable computing device. Wireless wasn't a useless feature as users could surf or email with OOTB applications. It also had a strong 3rd party app ecosystem which Zune never had.