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.'"
New Coke? (Score:2, Interesting)
More like Old Joke. (This has happened before, you know.)
New Coke was a Flop? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll debate that while New Coke didn't work out, the aftermath resulted in Coke classic dominating the cola wars with a solid lead for decades now.
If it wasn't for new Coke, Pepsi would have overtaken Coke in the mid 80's and never looked back.
Not New Coke - more Jumping Shark (Score:2, Interesting)
To say this is a "New Coke" moment is to fail to identify Microsoft's slow but irreversible decline. It's just another punctuation on the way down.
Re:New Coke was a Flop? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, New Coke and then the switch to "Classic Coke" concealded the real changes from using sugar to using corn syrup as a sweetener. Classic Coke was *not* identical to the old Coke formula, it was considerably cheaper to make because of that switch to corn syrup.
We might see something similar with the taskbar, where they re-organize the taskbar in Microsoft's classic non-backwards-compatible ways but conceal them behind the restoration of any taskbar whatsoever.
Re:New Poke (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole point of the Metro interface is to be inconsistent with the old UI.
How else can you charge developers for writing an application they could have just as easily have written using the old interface for free?
Microsoft doesn't care about PC anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
What these critics all miss is that Microsoft is now betting on the tablet market, and doesn't give a damn what its PC users think.
Re:Microsoft doesn't care about PC anymore (Score:5, Interesting)
If that's really how they're thinking, they're dead and don't realize it yet.
Windows on the PC is known by just about everybody. Microsoft's tablet offerings are not. If people hate what Microsoft is offering them in Windows 8, why would they ever seriously consider buying Microsoft in the tablet market?
People don't have a lot of choice in the PC market, but MIcrosoft is a nobody in tablets. If your experience with the last MIcrosoft thing you used sucked, why would you go with them in a market where they're nobody when you could just get a known commodity in either Apple or Android tablets?
Microsoft needs to leverage their PC users to grow their tablet base, not beat them and hope they come back for more. That is not going to fly.
Windows 8 Is the Innovation MS needs (Score:0, Interesting)
I hope not. I hope they stick to their guns. Look, I am not the biggest MS fan, but Windows 8 is probably the most innovative and certainly the boldest thing MS has done in years. Maybe, ever.
the start button is an afterthought, it was something to get rid of how we used Windows 3.11 (which was permanantly opened folders). It was neat, it worked, but that is the past. The part people don't seem to grasp is that window with all those boxy icons IS the start menu. it is just visulazed now.
they will cave, because that is what MS does, but they shouldn't. Windows 8 is fantatic, and MS should grab their users and drag them out of 1995.
Re:Windows 8 Is the Innovation MS needs (Score:5, Interesting)
You can't be serious. Windows 8 makes it damn near impossible to run a multi-windowed environment - which is what the OS was named for. It is pretty clear that Microsoft panicked with the tablet boom and forced a tablet onto a desktop. Yes, tablets are probably going to be used for a single app at a time, but I still need a desktop that let's me access multiple windows at once since I normally run about 13 applications at once.
Re:New Poke (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows 8 sucks at every single level. Even the Metro interface, while the design is interesting and unique, ultimately isn't all that use friendly. Very few applications have actually done something useful with live tiles, and the whole pastel colour thing goes to hell when other apps choose to make multi colour logos instead of the style Microsoft uses. Install a few apps and the whole metro screen looks dreadful and unwieldy and unusable. It's like Android widgets, clever idea but I haven't seen anything beyond weather widgets that you would really want on your home screen. And it's now so quick and simple to get to much used apps or Google Now, and sharing is so easy in Android, widgets seem pretty superfluous except as shortcuts to apps.
That is on top of the other issues. The one reason I haven't switched to Macs until now is that the easy familiarity and efficiency with using Windows will take some time to learn on a Mac. Windows 8 kills that argument, a few minutes with it and I realize if I am learning something new I might as well move to Mac. And maybe if Windows 8 followed Vista we would be more open to it. The problem is Windows 7 is so amazingly good at staying out of the way and letting you get things done, it makes Win 8 even more jarring.
Windows 8 is also being pushed out on the same cheap laptops with low res screens and awful touchpads, where a gesture based interface is no fun to use. I got one for my mother, and I regret not just getting a chromebook. As soon as Google get proper offline editing of MSOffice files, chrome will become a better option for so many people.
The only version I've ever seen where... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:2013 the year of the Apple Desktop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"You're holding it wrong" (Score:4, Interesting)
Rarely ever will a CEO admit a mistake. It's the user's fault for not loving it.
And don't forget, they're on record blaming the OEMs for not making enough touchscreen devices. According to MS, it's all their fault. Like 100%.
Windows 8 User Here (Score:5, Interesting)
I have to admit, it works wonderfully. The system definitely performs better and the interface on Windows 8 is nice.
Here comes the obvious: Metro is pretty shit.
The full screen apps are useless and the main interface has no appeal. You know what my biggest problem is? The thing that bothers me the most? When I search for a program, there is no default "Show All". First it only shows programs installed, and then "Settings". Often I'm using it to find windows components like Device Manager, and it requires additional mouse clicks and movements to get there. Likewise on a tablet, it would require more touches. It's the simplest, most obvious thing, and if they overlook little things like this I don't have much hope for the rest of Metro.
The OS itself it pretty nice though.
Re:It's like deja vu all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:New Poke (Score:5, Interesting)
Metro would be ok as a concept at least if it was a Windows component you could choose to install.
Look at Windows Media Centre for example - outside of a media PC there will be many Vista and 7 owners who never use it, and aren't affected by it even being installed. There are others, such as myself, who use WMC daily in the lounge, on a PC that is sat inside a AV cabinet operated by a remote control.
This is critical to understanding why Metro is such a failure. People with desktop computers will likely be sitting some distance from their monitor, and it would be uncomfortable in most cases for them to operate its touchscreen when it sits vertical on the desk. Notwithstanding that usability issue I would assume that it is still the case today that the vast majority of Vista/7 users do not have touchscreens, and in my experience Metro is pretty underwhelming without one. The use of a touchscreen is antithetical to using a desktop computer for the most part, yet MS seemed to think that the transition would be fluid and that the marketplace was just crying out for someone to fill this void.
This would all be just a misstep if it were possible to get to the main Windows desktop and stay there and retain all of the functionality you had in Windows 7 (Start button, etc). Instead Metro apps and utilities drop you to the old desktop seemingly on a whim and without warning, which is quite jarring, and you can't even really choose to stay there if you wanted to with ease (at least not without third party utilities to help you recreate the old UX). It is quite a shock to drop from Metro to the old desktop, the UX is completely different - which is fine for a seasoned user but is it really the experience MS wanted people to have?
That W8 drops you to desktop with a totally different UI smacks of MS really not having a clear direction or dedication to Metro, which is something you can't really say of Apple for example. Apple are notorious for having a walled garden approach to their software, and the OSX UX is very much "they'll take what we give them", but Apples customer base is used to that UX, they are familiar with it, and it is not change for changes sake.
Metro would've imo made a great Windows component in the same vein as Windows Media Centre - something you can choose to install or even boot to IF you want to, as it is it's an affront.
Re:Wishful thinking. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't care for Windows 8 as much as the next guy, but they're not going to reverse field; Microsoft is all in on this.
I'm sure if you had asked Coke executives in May-June 1985, all of them would have said they were "all in" on New Coke. People generally don't attain high-level executive positions by being indecisive or publicly showing doubt. But when customers don't want to buy the product you're selling now, and they want to buy the product you used to sell but don't any more, then it doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out what you should do. And if you don't make that decision on your own, then eventually someone higher up will do it for you. If not the leader of the Windows team, then Ballmer. If not Ballmer, then the Board of Directors. And if not the Board, then ultimately Wall Street.
Re:New Poke (Score:5, Interesting)
It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to shut down my computer in Window 8. Windows 7, you press the windows button and there's a shut down option.
And, as I've posted previously, there's a good chance you didn't really shut down the computer - instead you just logged out and hibernated. (Which is what "shutdown" does now.)
Actually shutting down the computer all the way involves a hidden setting somewhere in the power options - you have to "change what the power buttons do" and then uncheck "fast startup." Only then will shutting down the computer allow you to do a clean boot at a later point in time.
As an additional exercise, figure out how to log out. Remember how it always used to be an option in the shutdown menu? It's not any more.
The answer: turns out your account name on the start screen can be clicked on. I never noticed it was even there until it was pointed out to me, because my use of the Windows 8 start menu was almost exclusively "press start key, type search terms" - which makes the username vanish.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OSX is better anyway (Score:2, Interesting)
I proposed we switch to a legendary CRM that also has a point of sale interface, stable database underpinnings, great support, great price, and getting a contract for updates and support. They bosses declined it. Now all the users and the IT dept is pretty pissed that the old CRM can't talk to our new Exchange 2010 server that we just got about 5 years later that we should have (due to budget reasons and bosses).
This is how IT reality actually is so put down your college textbook and welcome to how the IT world really works. I just got done with a contracted project at a call center that just migrated off of pentium 3 desktops with 2GB of PC133 and they chose Dell laptops that had a RMA rate of 1/5th of them in the first week. So this isn't even as bad as it gets. Also, their head IT manager just quit so now it's 1 IT to 500 employees instead of 2:500.
Re:New Coke? (Score:4, Interesting)
Except netbooks. Which, in a way, is another solid example of Microsoft losing their their shit. Having to keep XP "alive" for a few extra years maybe did a bit to hobble Vista growth.
Re:It's like deja vu all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
bullshit... search in windows vista, 7, and 8 are total crap.
You can only find 'microsoft approved' files and types. Quick... go into your windows. find *.log and *.bak within the last 30 days only... yeah. you can't. How about all files that changed in the last 3 days.. not just media files... ALL files.. yeah.. can't do that either.
And it's fucking slow too. On top of needing indexing running all the time which is itself fucking slow too.
search worked much much MUCH better in 2k and xp.
they fucked it up. as a result i simply removed the entire search and indexing system from windows 7. and used a plain ol freeware version for my finding files needs.
Yet another core component of windows... i have replaced with a FREE and much better alterantive... One of these days i'll have nothing left of 'windows' but the core... and thats the time to switch totally to nix or android.
Windows+F .log hit enter (autofills in type:=.log)
click Type filter
type
click Date
drag select April 1 to May 1 (autofills date:=3/1/2013...5/1/2013)
click search
Done.
methinks mr AC has never acutally used search on windows 7.
andindexing runs fine on my 6 year old pc.
maybe its time for you to upgrade there, Anonymous Rex.