What a Fool Believes (Premium)

Microsoft’s announcement this week that it has finally abandoned the Groove Music Pass subscription was greeted as both a surprise and a betrayal. It was neither. And it’s time for the community of fans who love and respect Microsoft to wake up to a few realities.

The first is that Microsoft has never really resonated with consumers, despite decades of trying and one lonely example—the Windows 95 launch from 22 years ago—that fans still cite as proof to the contrary.

But consumers first latched onto PCs and, later, Windows only so that they could learn and use the same software at home that they did at work, and in the process advance themselves professionally. Over time, as the PC market matured, and PCs became the center of our digital lives, consumers did everything on PCs: Work, play, browse, read, and learn. But as friendlier, simpler, and more mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—appeared, consumers couldn’t drop the PC fast enough. Today, the PC is just a tool, for most, something associated solely with the drudgery of work.

The second is that Microsoft’s consumer offerings have never, not once, earned anyone’s trust. Microsoft has flitted from fad to fad over the years, following others—like Apple with the Zune—inventing technologies that no one wanted or needed—Smart Displays, Portable Media Centers, about a thousand others—and trying to parlay its success with businesses into something that makes sense for normal people; think Windows Home Server.

Even Microsoft’s biggest fans are moaning this week about how often the software giant gives up on their favorite products. But that’s mostly unfair. Groove Music Pass, the complaint du jour, was in fact supported for 11 long years, far longer than any other company would have needed to get the message.

(Yes, Microsoft Band. But come on, Microsoft never seriously marketed the product, and it seemed to approach the device as an experiment, not a real product. Anyway, there are always exceptions.)

See, the thing is, Groove Music Pass—nee Xbox Music Pass and Zune Music Pass—was never actually successful in any measurable way. And let’s be fair, this Music Pass nonsense, like Zune, Windows Media Player Marketplace, Plays For Sure, URGE, and whatever other wastes of time Microsoft engaged in before that, were exercises in corporate self-delusion: Even Microsoft believed its own myth of “build it and they will come.” It took decades for them to realize that no one was coming. Consumers abandoned their products and services as soon as they were offered better options. And developers stopped listening too. I’ve pegged the 2003 Longhorn announcement as the inflection point on that one.

Looking at Microsoft’s consumer offerings today, I see good, bad, and ugly.

Groove was in the “ugly” category, sorry, and I gotta tell you, we are way past the point where I’m going to even entertain the notion that, had Microsoft simply stuck with its “superior” Zune system several years ago, things might have gone differently. When you show up five years late to a market that already has a dominant, beloved market leader—the iPod in that case—you aren’t winning. Especially when consumers had already been ignoring you in the first place. The same thing happened to Windows phone. Exactly the same thing.

You know what else is in the ugly category? Microsoft Movies & TV, and if you’re looking for a future headline about the firm dropping yet another consumer offering, my money is on this dog. Folks, I have been warning anyone who will listen, for years, to never buy content from this service. And there are so many better options, including Apple and Amazon. (Renting is fine, of course, as rentals are ephemeral.)

Also ugly: Skype, which continues its bad manners by alerting me to conversations I already completed on other devices and by ringing multiple devices for too long when I’ve already picked up. And let’s not get started on the new UX that everyone hates so much.

Bad? We could debate. But I’d argue that this category belongs to those Microsoft solutions that pointless are, not malicious: Microsoft builds high-quality wares for the most part, and its heart is usually in the right place.

On that note, Windows 10 has some good and some bad; the bad being the pointless push for 3D and Mixed Reality, two niche usages that will never be mainstream on PCs, the unnecessary twice-yearly feature updates, and the advertising. Let’s not forget the advertising. Surface, with its rampant reliability issues, unclear roadmap and release schedule, and the weirdness of it competing with Microsoft’s partners. Bing, too, is on the bad list, not because it is “bad,” per se—though it is not as good as Google, obviously—but because it exists only to serve some corporate need, not because it does something better for users. Cortana and its stillborn ambient devices strategy is in there too.

Are there good Microsoft consumer services? Absolutely. Office 365 Home remains a “no-brainer.” OneDrive has turned the corner and is so good again that I’ve actually dropped (ahem) DropBox. Outlook.com is getting there too, and if the Calendar and People updates match the quality of the inbox refresh, I’d say they’ve crossed the line.

And then there’s Xbox. This is, I think, the crown jewel of Microsoft’s consumer offerings, the shining exception to the rule. Minecraft gets to come along for the ride, too, though I guess I’d lump that into Xbox generally. Actually, they may both just be great.

But unfortunately for Microsoft, Xbox has never been truly successful. The original console was an also-ran, the Xbox 360 sold 80 million units but still came in third place out of three, and we all know the issues with the Xbox One, which is being outsold by over 2-to-1 compared to the PS4. I love the Xbox One, and I love Microsoft’s strategy, but the former is not popular and the latter was driven by need. Even Microsoft’s best consumer offering is kind of out there on a limb. And given the climate at Microsoft under Satya Nadella today, it’s only natural to wonder about the future.

Speaking of the future, Microsoft this week also announced two interesting mobile initiatives: A version of the unpopular Edge browser that runs on Android and iOS and a new version of its Arrow Launcher for Android, which has been formally promoted out of its Garage birthplace and brought into the family fold as Microsoft Launcher.

Coming just days after Microsoft’s terrible Groove Music Pass announcement, these announcements were nonetheless greeted with cheers from the fan base. See? Microsoft does have a mobile strategy, I was told repeatedly this week. And maybe, just maybe, Microsoft will make a comeback in the hardware space with Android handsets that run Microsoft Launcher and are packed full of Microsoft’s super-popular mobile apps and services. Maybe they’ll even drop the Google Play Store and make a platform play on the back of Android. Maybe…

Guys, seriously.

What bothers me most is that I can see it. I can see Microsoft actually doing some of this. And while I will remind myself—and you—that such an offering should be targeted solely at enterprises, we all know Microsoft well enough to know that the software giant would hedge and make some statement, as it did for Windows phone in its waning days, that these devices were, in fact, for the fans too. Microsoft’s self-delusion will never end, no matter who is running the company.

I’ve been following Microsoft for almost 25 years, and if I’ve learned one thing over the years about its consumer offerings, it’s that this company will keep trying, will never give up, damn the odds, and damn the past. And that its fans, myself included, will delude ourselves into believing every time.

So I’m providing this warning for myself as much as I am for you: Don’t believe it. This ship has sailed. In fact, it never left the dock.

But seriously, Microsoft. About that Android phone idea…