Many of Microsoft's early successes seemed predicated on listening to user and developer feedback.
It is simple to believe that they've taken that as a strong core principle of the company. The over-reliance on deep telemetry metrics, for instance, seems kind of a natural evolution of a company that cherishes as much feedback as it can get.
It seems reasonable to think that the immensely negative feedback on Windows 8 or the sad market response to Windows Phone sparked so many shifts in priority precisely in the way that any heavily feedback-focused (even slightly neurodivergent) person might over-react to negative feedback and try to do everything "not that" to make up for it, even if those were good ideas and the negative feedback was more concerned about execution of them rather than the ideas themselves.
I've been accused of "fanboying" Microsoft at times because I like pointing out the good parts of ideas that Microsoft has had over the years (like how the Charms bar was a good idea poorly executed) not to blow smoke up Microsoft but to remind them, as a feedback oriented company, of ways they've over-reacted to negative feedback, to wonder where they would be if they didn't just kill such good ideas at the first sign of disinterest/complaint but instead gave them room to grow/evolve. Sometimes it sounds like they need a lot more positive feedback to be a better company because all they seem to hear is the hate of some of the noisier crowds.
> The over-reliance on deep telemetry metrics, for instance, seems kind of a natural evolution of a company that cherishes as much feedback as it can get.
Telemetry is almost the opposite of user feedback as it completely disregards the human element of the user. You may be able to tell what is used often, where users drop out but you don't know why and you don't know what is important to you users. So what telemetry ends being used for more often than not is to back up the developer's own preferences by seemingly backing them up with data without actually doing so.
Microsoft seems to have a crapload of competing teams with each fiefdom vying for attention and authority over decisions, whereas Apple, at least from an outsider perspective, more looks like an authoritarian, top-down corporate hellscape. Another very important distinction that explains this is that Apple doesn't give much about backwards compatibility, whereas it was a core part of Microsoft to keep backwards compatibility even at very high cost.
Both methods of corporate behavior have their advantages and disadvantages.
WorldMaker|3 years ago
It is simple to believe that they've taken that as a strong core principle of the company. The over-reliance on deep telemetry metrics, for instance, seems kind of a natural evolution of a company that cherishes as much feedback as it can get.
It seems reasonable to think that the immensely negative feedback on Windows 8 or the sad market response to Windows Phone sparked so many shifts in priority precisely in the way that any heavily feedback-focused (even slightly neurodivergent) person might over-react to negative feedback and try to do everything "not that" to make up for it, even if those were good ideas and the negative feedback was more concerned about execution of them rather than the ideas themselves.
I've been accused of "fanboying" Microsoft at times because I like pointing out the good parts of ideas that Microsoft has had over the years (like how the Charms bar was a good idea poorly executed) not to blow smoke up Microsoft but to remind them, as a feedback oriented company, of ways they've over-reacted to negative feedback, to wonder where they would be if they didn't just kill such good ideas at the first sign of disinterest/complaint but instead gave them room to grow/evolve. Sometimes it sounds like they need a lot more positive feedback to be a better company because all they seem to hear is the hate of some of the noisier crowds.
account42|3 years ago
Telemetry is almost the opposite of user feedback as it completely disregards the human element of the user. You may be able to tell what is used often, where users drop out but you don't know why and you don't know what is important to you users. So what telemetry ends being used for more often than not is to back up the developer's own preferences by seemingly backing them up with data without actually doing so.
mschuster91|3 years ago
Both methods of corporate behavior have their advantages and disadvantages.