They were sure about Cortana too. That flopped hard.

Honestly we won’t have to worry about this in a few years. Every time Microsoft launches something new, they create the most impressive thing nobody uses or wants. Every single goddamn time they do anything different, they fuck it up or give up on it way too soon, all because they cannot shake the idea that the last time people liked their core product was windows XP and everyone compares using a computer then to whatever they do now. Microsoft won’t win that game. And they don’t care to even try.

Windows 8? Fucking brilliant response to the iPad, even if it was late and the surface was big and heavy. The OS made perfect sense there and was pretty and clean and simple. So they PUT IT ON EVERYTHING when it only made sense in the one thing it was designed for. Completely ruined it. They arrogantly thought they could convert the entire industry over to this way of doing things and letting OEMs use the surface as a template for their own version of what Microsoft predicted a computer would be. Flopped hard. And Apple? They copied some of the better ideas and put it on the iPad and since it was managed better at the time it succeeded.

Windows phone? Very late to the game, Google went out of their way to fuck Microsoft however they could, and Microsoft alienated every developer interested in giving them a chance. they did create a good product with interesting ideas and execution. But every step Microsoft took worked against them. They did literally everything wrong in carrying this out.

Windows vista wasn’t entirely their fault. They were promised by hardware vendors that things powerful enough to run vista comfortably will be flooding the market by the time it releases. The problem? Microsoft believed them. So the first experience people had with vista was the last one they wanted to ever have. It got better by the end of that cycle but the damage was done.

What about a simple fitness tracker and notification widget? Microsoft made a wearable called the Microsoft band. It was a clunky, bulky thing but the core idea was sound. It was a simple, clean, stripped back interface on the wearable that didn’t cater to the adhd of what an Apple Watch could do. It just did what people wanted to use it for at the time and nothing else. It was poorly promoted and it didn’t become a blowout success in the 5 minutes it was on the market so they killed the entire thing rather than fix what was actually wrong.

Outlook is used by damn near everyone and its ancient codebase is making it crazy hard to keep stable. IT people have lots of tricks to keep that broken shitbox going and they do so because Microsoft accidentally made a product people love. So they release a new version of outlook. Let’s do it experimentally, adding features as we go, so that out of the gate, people will get the experience of vista all over again. Also, it’s nothing like the old version people actually liked. But it doesn’t crash all the damn time now, so we think you’ll love it.

The mismanagement of every single fucking thing Microsoft ever released guarantees the AI bubble will burst. Microsoft will throw everything into it because the the US economy has nothing but AI going for it anymore and when they fail to make it dance and sing the way they promised investors it would, it will poison the well and the money for all AI projects will disappear. Investors will pull their money out and tank it.

And Microsoft? They are big. They are connected. They have shittons of unethical traps they have forced industries and governments into. But it’s still going to hurt like hell. They don’t have any part of the business left that isn’t dependent on this AI shit in some way so when it blows up, it’s taking everything down with it.

PCs have viable options outside windows. Just throw KDE in front of a boomer and they won’t know the difference. Want something you have to pay for? Mac is still stumbling along. It’s pretty, modern, has a more classical customer experience people like and many are willing to pay for. But this last release cycle was rough and everyone hates the new UI. It doesn’t matter how great apple silicon if nobody wants to interact with it. And their customer service, once a stinging star in the industry, is all phone trees and outsourced call centers now and despised you are paying more for the same shitty experience you fled from before.