Early Exit for Ballmer Amid Course Change at Microsoft

Well, what do you know... Didn't we just recently speculate that this might happen? The Windows 8 fiasco does seem to have a nice cleansing effect after all, first Sinofsky, and now Ballmer. Whether or not this may lead to positive developments, of course, remains to be seen. Anyway, their stock jumped 6% on those good news.

 

I wouldn't be optimist.
The problem is much bigger than Ballmer. Mircrosoft went from a culture where the software was open to everyone to another where they want to force feed everyone the touch model.
My expectations are negative since i see them try to force feed the cloud model as the next unique model too.

The most amusing is this that could born new tactic for CEO's to make a bunch of money

Ballmer Quits, Instantly Makes (Almost) $1 Billion - Forbes

 

What, hamstring their corporation and then quit to the cheers of investors? Yeah, I don't expect that will catch on.

 

He was a flake he never understood how M$ got big as what it was and what made it so good and different and TOP dog of the O/S. Now he is learning a hard lesson lmao...yeah right....GOLDEN parachute...lesson....they never learn....executives officers leaving previous and he didn't see the light coming down at the end of the tunnel. Maybe this time we get real thinking outside of the box that makes M$ the leader again. And does some serious discussion not frivolous debates but real thinking of where it goes next and not try to be Apple....Metro...might be there eventually but til then they need to get the Desktop right before ramming Metro down and thinking oh they will like it eventually....not going to happen when you force people that always has the opposite effect....

 

Penny Arcade - M$

 

Dang that's a lot of money for leaving. Suggestions seem to be to get out of the consumer market and focus on business.
You know that would be a really good start - building something useful, instead of trying to imitate the next fad for consumers.

 

As if business doesn't have fads and are not consumers too..

 

Focus on what and where you want the company going. Trying to be everything to everyone everywhere doesn't usually work very well. Big companies become unresponsive when they are in this situation. At their own peril.

Besides, those weren't my suggestions they were the analysts and oracles. I just happen to agree.

 

What is "everything, everyone, everywhere"? Without qualification of those words it means nothing.
If you are talking about Windows and its openess to hardware, software then that is what made them great.

But it is interesting they tried with Windows 8 to force a path contrary to their story and culture and got burned - trying to force touch and putting road blocks for desktop users. Ended real well isn't it?
Again spooked by Apple closed system they tried the same crap with xbox users putting a lot of draconian limitations. Burned again.

These are a great answers from Microsoft to the elitist journalist. Pitty Ballmer didn't forced that for Windows 8.

Microsoft's Ballmer: Why Microsoft doesn't want to be IBM (or Apple) and more | ZDNet

 

Only issue is him staying 12 months. Unless a new heading is taken while under his control that time frame could be too late. The only good point of it is most other companies will not want to dive in to compete against M$ as they probably would not be able to release until then and if M$ decides under new management to get straightened out, well we all know with the past what M$ will do to competition.

So while this is probably great news for Windows 9 I doubt it will have much effect for Windows 8 unless we are talking late in the game for the OS..............

 

I guess you didn't like that statement of mine. It is just an opinion derived from buying their products for 23 years. It's a culmination of let downs, being actively ignored and watching them pursue markets then just drop out. If you liked one product they'd be sure to change on the next upgrade and tell you it is better - when it's not. Not very consumer friendly, though I think they do a little better with businesses - probably because they have to.

I'll let the journalists eat up his remarks and regurgitate it for their readers - doing what they have to for a dollar. In my case I would've like to have saved a few over the years.

On the lighter side of things: "It's By Design" - could they at least stop using this excuse. Talk about denial.

I was hoping for a thread where we could yell in all caps at MS and they would actually read and listen. This will have to do, but really there are better things for me to do than argue about them and their future.

 

Says more about MS's owners and shareholders than anything else, doesn't it..?

 

Not really, it says that the market didn't have too much confidence in Ballmer. Existing shareholders can't make the price go up.

 

IMO, this was long overdue and as the markets suggest quite welcome. Having Ballmer running MS was akin to having your competitor running your business. Ballmer was a numbers guy since he came up the ranks from Sales.

All under his watch which were failures: Vista, Windows 8, Zune devices, Zune Pass, Windows Surface tablets Pro/RT and you can add the recent XBOX ONE Launch. So many backward steps after announcing their plans for their next gen console and Sony pouncing on their screw ups.

The company continues to lose market share to their competitors like Apple in the Tablet space. He said the iPhone would not catch on, it would be a fad. He did not react to the iPad until it was too late. This of itself is worthy to be shown the door. He's repeating history of companies I used to work for in the 80's like Wang Labs who refused to accept the PC and PC networks as a viable alternative to mid-range and mainframe computing.

What MS needs is a visionary who comes from the Tech world who has a vision for future technology. If you could combine someone with the visionary skills of Amazon's Jeff Bezos and a tech person you could have a winning combination.

Bye bye Steve, don't let the door hit you on the way out !

 

I don't think he said the iphone and tablets were a fad, he admitted that form factor was the natural progression of things. He just blatantly missed the train. They could have easily pushed Windows in a mobile form factor much earlier with an extension of Windows XP, when netbooks made a debut, but they really didn't bother. Instead they offered Windows XP Starter edition which was nothing more than a severely gimped XP.

 

M$, really?

I have been cracking my brain trying to figure out why people do this and I seriously can't come up with a logical, non-childish, non-trollish reason. Perfectly fine on sites like engadget and gizmodo where you'd expect the bottom dwellers but in a forum where measured, curated, intelligent discourse is to be had, it really is disappointing.

Why do you do it?

1. 'M$' loves money.
Sure, all companies are benevolent at heart and do their utmost to minimize profit, donating any excess to charity.

2.'M$' uses/used their dominant market position to force the rest of the world to do their evil bidding.
Sure, you don't have a choice in the matter because the only products available are 'M$' products which you cannot modify.

3. 'M$' makes money hand over fist?
This is the reason they have the highest profit margins, have the highest market cap and rake in the highest revenue.

4. Or maybe 'M$' just outright steal from people?

5. Or maybe some people are just blindly biased and hate 'M$'?

Its truly exasperating always seeing this. Never any Appl€, Googl£,etc. Just try and sit back, take off those rose-tinted glasses and look at everything through the same critical eye.

All companies strive for the same things.
All of them will use underhanded tactics to get what they want.

Seriously! Use your head.

 

I was thinking more about the idea that people believe their product is good, but simply marketed unsuccessfully.

I agree it's childish. But it's because they have been choosing to make uniquely expensive pushes in order to for example press out competition (by lowering prices and selling essentially at a loss, in order to keep the market share - so they can artificially inflate the price later on). Or simply bribe people to adopt their solutions with subscription deals that lock the firm or organisation to using Microsoft products. Where support then dries up, in the event of new OS releases, and new sdk solutions.

All of which of course are utterly incompatible with any other solution in the world, making sure that MS-supported companies quite literally are unable to send a simple text-file to something that isn't using the same solution. Which again is by design.

Meanwhile, developers are axed (they do such things as sack their internal developers as a routine, while employing anything down to students and interns to complete projects that the previous developers simply failed at due to inadequate funding and time -- which again was by design, as any other pitch for the project failed. I.e., the cheapest, most naively hopeful intern-driven project pitch wins.

And this is Microsoft's solution on the administrative level, extremely consciously. To spend money to keep market share and presence on the market intact. While cutting all and any corners on the actual development side.

So while you can surely admire the Microsoft leadership's ability to earn money for the company itself, to it's bottom line.. Or their will to push for marketing in dimensions that no other company would think of. Both of those can be attributed to good instincts, at least in one sense.

But their ability to create something sustainable, that evolves into a real product people don't have to be forced or goaded into using - that frankly leaves something to be desired.

What I'm saying is that they use money, and they use ridiculous amounts of money - but don't actually produce good solutions in return.

 

I think microsoft's biggest problem during the Ballmer era has been lack of vision. They've adopted this strategy of waiting until a new market segment has several large entrenched players and then just nosing in and throwing money around in an effort to establish themselves. Sometimes it works, like with XBox, but mostly it doesn't (Bing, Windows Phone, Windows Tablets).

 

I will say to little to late for W8 as it be hitting the grave-sight early....after he leaves....

 

It's spelled grave-site not grave-sight. and I agree with StormJumper, they need to get rid of Win 8 really soon or I predict that their stock will go down not up.

 

MS just has not innovated in a long time and it will catch up to them. Dating back to IE, it has been a series of trying to catch up to one competitor or another. They have been somewhat successful, but it's taken a lot of money to make ground.

 

I have been around since before M$ DOS! I have used "M$" since those days. It was meant then they (The people) were no longer the hobbyists but part of corporate America at the time. The fact of its relevance and Microsoft lovers are now taking offence is kind of telling and yes I use my head.................

Edit; Apple and the majority of the other software people entered into computers as commercial entities. I still remember the Apple 6502's you had to purchase. Personally I used an Atari 4800, also 6502 based, and cut my teeth there with Assembly and basic.

I do not think they can "get rid" of Windows 8. M$ needs to do a serious repackage. This could be where they specify Blue as Windows 8 mobile then do a Consumer "Brown" Nose and label that version as Windows 8 Complete making options for desktop only computers. The "Complete" version could also be for any other I/O UI options too. Making the UI mode adjustable is about the best thing IMHO they could do.

 

I agree that MS or Ballmer put them in a box wrt W8. The only way MS can get past W8 is by speeding up the release of Windows 9 and hopefully they won't make the same mistakes they did with W8.

The smartest move is to get people's minds off of W8 and onto W9 as the consensus right or wrong is that W8 is Vista II.

 

That could be the issue, give up on Win8 and let it be written into history as a failure or do a quick "Fix it right" and just let it be a short term oooops? Either way it needs to be done quickly to prevent as much loyal consumer base loss as possible...............

 

Steve Ballmer's biggest regret is Windows Vista, codename Longhorn | WinBeta

 

And to be honest Vista, as far as the OS, is way worst that the few issues of win8. The UI's are another story but also win8 is not over so it is hard to measure full regret........

 

But there are other things wrong with Windows 8 besides UI. The OS is just smeared with levels of inconsistencies in how it wants to interact with the user and there is a SERIOUS LACK OF FLOW as well.

There is also something screwy about how hard links are handled in Windows 8 vs W7. I've seen the WinSxS folder compress and decompress with little changes to the OS. I've seen the WinSxS compress by up to 2-4GB while initiating a disk cleanup routine then watch it decompress to its original size. And this process can take anywhere's up to 1-3 hours depending on the computer.

The Start Page screen is also a giant mess and just takes more input to go where you want to be. So instead of using a mouse to navigate through the UI we are back to using keyboard shortcuts because the OS was enhanced for touch screens and shortcuts is the quickest way to get from point A - B.

Windows 8 is just a flat out mess of a design. It's like 20 programmers all put their ideas in a giant hat and Steve Ballmer stuck his hand in the hat and pulled out 10 random ideas and they made those ideas fit in the design of W8.

 

Agreed the UI is a hot mess for mouse users and I haven't tried it as touch......................

 

IMO, not much better there either.

Just put 7 back on the shelves - and put a cold compress over the eye.

 

I don't think Ballmer was forced out. If Microsoft's board were going to do so, they would've earlier, and they wouldn't have him stay on for a year. Sure, W8 has been a disappointment. But we're still in the short term for W8, and it could end up working out well for Microsoft long term. I don't think Microsoft necessarily expected Windows 8 to be super-popular right away, either. And Ballmer is 57. It's not that early of an age to retire, especially if you've got billions of dollars.

The Zune (device, software, and Pass) were actually pretty good. I've used all but the hardware myself, and from that what I've read and heard (including from people who've also used and worked with iOS devices), Zune was actually pretty good. It just was way late to the market, and by that time Apple already had a monopoly on the mid-to-high-end of the mp3 player market. Had the Zune come out a year after the iPod, or even around the same time as the iPod Touch, I think it could've done pretty well. At least Microsoft came out with a good mp3 player under Ballmer's watch.

I like the Surface Pro as a computer, too. It's well-designed, the problem is it doesn't fit enough people's use cases to meet its sales goals. But had it been targeted as a smaller segment of the market - positioned as something like the Dell Adamo, as a flagship example of what could be done - rather than trying to get a lot of market share, I think it would've been seen as a success. The regular Surface, I think the biggest problem was not being compatible with x86 software and thus not having a hard time competing with tablets running other devices.

But I agree, Microsoft could really use another tech-oriented visionary.

Do you have personal insights into this, or is it just speculation? You write it as though you have some insights, albeit very negative ones. From what I understand (both from reading and from contact with people who are/have been at Microsoft), being employed at Microsoft can go poorly as a result of their practices, but can also go really well. It can vary a lot by team, manager, and so forth.

 

I am not sure he was being shown the door or just saw it being opened for him. Either way the new OS issues were telling of his departure. This has been seen, and predicted, by many. So in the end for whatever reason this all is no shock.

The problems for the PC industry was telling well before Windows 8. So this is not exclusively M$'s fault. A better OS that would have inspired people to upgrade their hardware would have been welcome by the hardware industry, but this was not to be the case. M$ was banking on that new hardware being "Touch" PC devices but consumers just do not seem willing to fork out extra on the production machines for this or they just do not want it at all. As far as consumption devices there are cheaper alternatives that are already well seasoned.

 

That's a little to much koolaid drinking don't we think? The writing was on the wall failed Surface, and failed W8 and also failed to listen to testers and users and called them incompetent that doesn't go well and loosing money for shareholders that is also a dagger in the back. Even if he got money he will have hard time explaining how he didn't help Windows perform any better then when he started.

Too little to late...Zune got gamed by Ipod and never looked back...good doesn't sell...No, they had problems with it and not iTunes so I doubt Zune was even on par with iPod to begin with.

Unfortunately they market it and made one debacle aftter another on Surface to kill their own touch pad. So the only one they can blame is themselves. Surface pro is no computer even though it tries to act like one there is a big difference when one says computer ie means Desktop and Laptop surface was akin to a tablet and that is not the same as Desktop/Laptop not but the closest margins.

Yes, I agree like listening to tester and endusers that had good feedbacks about what could make it sell and beat out Apple but no they called the us users/testers incompetent and never did the think outside of the box instead was thinking inside of outside the box mentality.

Same here I saw the writing on the wall when I preview Windows8 is was like disaster after disaster for my experiences and it's long I been M$ user since DOS/BasicA for those that remember the M$ heydays.

No, but they didn't help themselves by not seeing the writing on the wall ... innovate and improve on the windows experience not alienate the users that are your bread/butter if no one buys then you can guess what will happen to your company. Trust me a better O/S called Windows 9 like Windows 7 but better improved would've got me to buy and save for future upgrade but force feeding Windows 8 does nothing but leaving a bad after taste. PC are saturating the market that was a given considering the evolution of the PC market anyone could tell that or should've been able to foresee that coming. PC also are better they have cheap and high quality depending on what you willing to spend. But with so many used PC on the market that still will run Windows 7 anyone could tell that more PC wasn't going to increase the market share. Even I have my Desktop from 2009 and laptops from 2008 that run and works with Windows 7x64 Ult Sp1 and runs very good. So more New PC on the market doesn't translate to more market shares if they older one can still run and work with Windows 7.

 

It's a shame regarding the Zune. I have a Zune HD I use to this day and it's an outstanding device that MS mishandled. The sound quality is off the charts, the UI was simple and intuitive, battery life was good and the FM Radio HD was icing on the cake.

Yeah even I beat that. I have laptops from 2007 that have NO problems running Windows 7. Even Apple has seen the iPad and iPhone cannibalize their Mac sales. We most certainly are in a Post PC world.

 

Not more market share but sustained presence. PC's as a whole will be on the decline as consumption devices will replace some of the use. A lot of consumption device owners though will still require a production machine as well. The same goes visa versa as production machine owners want highly portable secondary consumption devices. I do agree abandoning their loyal consumer base was a HUGE mistake.

The old machines though running windows 7 is why I say the hardware industry is in trouble. Windows 8 as an OS runs fine on the old hardware even Vista came out on. Maybe more ram or better storage but otherwise the same hardware. So why buy new? Mostly it is just replace worn out hardware only. It would have been nice to see a the new OS with new hardware give us something we did not have before, M$ thought this would be touch but again for production machines it is just not doing it for most people.

IMHO 2 other things could make a huge difference.

1.) AI, and I mean a real AI. One where as far as data entry and commands can tell the difference between the two by a sentences content and context. Not where the users has to go through convoluted steps etc..

2.) voice recognition that also uses a camera to read lips. In this way it can better understand spoken text as we do and also be better able to separate that input where other voices are present. Just as we do in a crowded room or say in a bar.

These techniques are possible now and would make for better use of the powerful CPU's and GPU's of todays machines.

3.) Visual cursor movement. This is being explored now somewhat but if the mouse cursor could be controlled by iris movement and then simple clicks off the touchpad or other input device? Again these input controls would press our new faster hardware to earn their keep.................

 

Who are all the competitors offering OSes usable with a variety of inputs, and thus encouraging the growth of convertible tablets? Nobody besides Microsoft is encouraging devices like the Vaio Duo line, the Lenovo Yoga line, etc. Apple and Google have basically ignored this convertible form factor, and Canonical is following, not leading.

 

Convertible tablets were kind of a failure the last time around. Not to say that this newest batch is the same, but the idea is kind of weak. I'd rather have a notebook and a tablet rather than one device that isn't particularly great at being either.

 

This picture explains what i have to say about this.

Also, when people heard that Ballmer is going out, microsoft shares went up in price.

 

The stock going up was a temporary excitement on hearing his leaving. It meant nothing as he will still be in command for another year and do much damage by not doing anything to fix win 8 for those that want productivity. I predict the stock will go down. We'll see. Edit: Actually it has gone down since the announcement of his leaving on Aug 23rd.

 

It should also have markings of what Microsoft's competitors were doing. Like the iPhone corresponding with the huge fall in 2008, and with the iPad in 2010 causing a downward force that canceled out the upward momentum from Windows 7. For comparison, there was very little competition in the Gates era; Apple was in a "bailout or bankruptcy" position back then.

They were a failure last time around because Microsoft's OS back then was a frickin' joke in terms of touch input, and because the hardware wasn't ready (in terms of either computing power or battery life in a mobile form factor). Hardware has caught up to permit the concept (the Vaio Duo 13 weighs less than 3 pounds, delivers ~9 hours battery life, and is speedy in day-to-day tasks) and Windows 8 is the first version of Windows that's genuinely made an effort to be friendly to touchscreen input.

If convertible tablets are such a bad idea, why are companies that generally know what they're doing (such as Lenovo) currently going hog-wild for them? Go to lenovo.com and count all the different convertible options they offer. There's currently nine models (Twist, Helix, Tablet 2, X230t, Yoga 11S, Yoga 13, Lynx, Miix, Horizon).

Someone early on made the comment that Microsoft used to let everyone choose, and now is trying to "force" people to use touch. That's not true. Windows pre-8 was far more brutal for touchscreen users than Windows 8 is for KB&M users. Windows pre-8 forced people to use KB&M; Windows 8 was intended to give respect to both KB&M and touch use and simply mucked up some of the details (on both fronts); Windows 8.1 and further refinements will help address those details. But Windows 8 is more "choice" oriented than any prior version of Windows, which were "KB&M-way or the highway."

 

I still don't see why you can't have a touch based system and a KBM based system.

And at the end of the day, a convertible tablet is either a tablet with a keyboard attached or a clunky folded mess. We're about a year after Win 8 was released and I think we can safely say that they're not really selling.

 

People like jack-of-all-trade devices. That's why, for motor vehicles, more people are buying "crossovers" than a Wrangler AND a minivan. That's why the smartphone crushed the idea of a dedicated cell phone AND a PDA. Look at the collapse of dedicated e-readers as all-purpose tablets get cheaper and better. Note how high-performance laptops have hamstrung the desktop PC market.

There's a whole lot of utility in having my documents and data on one device I can use two different ways, transitioning form factor as I work and move around, instead of continually shuffling and syncing my documents and data between two different devices.

They are "really" selling because buyers like me are just as "real" as buyers like you. I don't have exact sales numbers, and it looks like you don't either. But here's the thing. Lenovo is the most profitable PC OEM out there right now. If nobody was buying convertibles, Lenovo wouldn't have expanded their lineup to nine models.

 

Having all your stuff on one device is nice, but that doesn't mean everyone wants to use it the same way for touch as they do for KBM. There doesn't need to be a compromise. There just is one because Microsoft couldn't be bothered to make an elegant solution to the problem they created.

And if people were buying them, Windows 8 adoption figures wouldn't be abominable. I mean, there's virtually no evidence to indicate that Windows 8 is anything but a failure.

 

M$ is not very good at market research, because they don't have to be. When they try to get into the hardware market using domination through use of their software, things don't turn out as planned. They severely overestimate people's goodwill, as well as why people buy their products to begin with. The software market has matured, the big consolidations have occurred - the writing is on the wall.

It is really difficult to attribute stock prices to any one absolute - not that it can't be done. Parabolic charts are symptoms of greed and irrationality, i.e., detachment from reality. Any successor to Ballmer is going to be faced with the same company culture and marketing environment. Every other company on the planet has to compete, none are above it, not forever anyway.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out with the changes that must come.

- These are just my musings.

 

Short and to the point !

 

Let's not let the fact that ALL Windows PC sales, regardless of Windows version, regardless of form factor, have been in increasingly-rapid decline since the iPad's release get in the way of bashing Windows 8 or Steve Ballmer.

A shrinking market makes overall adoption numbers an incredibly unreliable test of which particular form factors are popular and which aren't. OEM interest in particular designs is the best evidence we have of which form factors are selling. And judging from OEM interest, while Windows RT is dead in the water, core-i-powered convertible tablets are definitely selling. That's why convertible tablets have gone in one year from (1) one Lenovo model and no other models, to (2) nine Lenovo models and a host of other OEM models, including the Vaio flagship model.

 

That is nine models available but also we need a few months to see if they sell compared to desktop comparable systems and if they can compete in sales to Windows 7 variants, that is so long as they are available at reasonable costs. The point is not what is available but what if anything is selling.

The market, to date, has made no qualms with showing consumers as of yet are not adopting convertible windows 8 machines. The reason could lie in the phone companies as well. A lot of the smart phones, and even some tablets, are reliant on the 3g or 4g networks. Most people coming from one of these devices does not also want their PC's reliant upon those networks and then pay those premiums. Also The phone companies get them into the devices at severely discounted prices with long contracts.

Another attack is that a low end consumption only Android tablet can be had for under $100. Even a few Kindle Fires could be bought for the price of just one convertible PC. If you already have one good running PC in a family of four which do you buy, one convertible laptop or everyone gets a new tablet and maybe even some left for another low end PC?

I would love to be wrong and see PC market resurgence along with Windows 8 being a success. A lot here predicted it would not happen, of course it is obvious it has not happened and lastly it doesn't look as if it will happen. At least though for Windows 8 adoption and acceptance it needs to get fixed, not the 8.1 fixes it somewhat deal. M$ needs to fix the UI for KB&M in its entirety, not just because it can be done but because consumers wanted this from the get go and it could have been released that way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edit; Sorry M$ the consumer is ALWAYS RIGHT, no matter how big you are.......................

 

No matter how you slice or dice it, Windows 8 has been a commercial disappointment. Even selling legit keys of W8 for $15 has not helped. I gave my friend a $15 upgrade key of W8 Pro and he hasn't installed it yet. He decided against it.

But even though some would like to see evidence that W8 is holding it's own, it really is not. Dell wants to exit the PC market and HP sales have reportedly been lackluster. You have tech analyst who follow this stuff and it's the consensus amongst them that W8 has been a commercial bust.

Just think, if W8 was really doing great Steve Ballmer would not need to retire but instead would push to expand W8 into W9. A good portion of declining PC sales has been due to consumption devices and aged hardware running current OS'es but it's more than that. Because W8 was introduced with it's own tablets which has underperformed where MS is literally begging people to buy them. The Surface Tablets were another misstep by MS and it has nothing to do with 50% of your storage taken up by the default recovery partition or poor selection of apps but they pissed off they key allies by deciding to build their own line of tablets instead of letting the tablet makers do it themselves.

The whole W8 ecosystem OS and associated hardware is a mess thanks in part to the way MS handled it from the get go.

 

So they're carving out an increasing portion of what is, by your own admission, a sinking ship. They've failed to gain ground against iOS and Android tablets, settling for (apparently) cannibalizing existing traditional PC sales.

 

O.k., let's start with some lousy analogies, well selected so as to convey the impression of a general rule. The astute observer, of course, will notice that the Swiss Army Knife indeed has not replaced people's knives, screwdrivers, scissors, etc.

We follow up with an irrelevant observation...

...and finish bashing a straw man mixed in with a non-sequitur.

Impressive.

 

Hopes that Windows 8.1 RTM would correct some of the problems from earlier builds prove very wrong

A first, jaundiced look at Windows 8.1 RTM | Microsoft windows - InfoWorld