Collateral Damage or Silver Lining?

Either of the above could be the title of this post. I recently posted Microsoft: So long, and thanks for all the fish… and some of the replies to that really got me thinking.

Collateral Damage was my first thought. Am I just an acceptable loss to Microsoft as someone who won’t buy into their rather restrictive vision? No, I don’t want to always use Edge thanks, the stuttering I get on videos is horrendous, and doesn’t seem to affect other browsers (same goes for the occasional online games I play). And no, I really cannot see how you are helping my productivity by moving the cheese around twice a year and cluttering my PC with stuff I neither need nor want.

But. Whilst some see the recent MS reorg as taking the spotlight off Windows, I can see a potential Silver Lining here. Windows is mature, it doesn’t NEED a whole lot of anything done, let alone the MS vanity projects which seem to find their way into the OS. Is the reorg actually going to give me the stability I crave in a desktop OS, or are MS going to make collateral damage of all of us whilst they cram the MS-way down our throats and try to milk every last penny/cent from the cow (sorry, I believe they call it monetizing the OS).

Bottom line is that MS either lack clarity of vision, or they have the vision but lack the ability to communicate it. Right now they come across as desperate and directionless. This wouldn’t be a problem if it only affected some obscure system, but we’re talking about something I personally use for a minimum of 10 hours almost every day.

I was holding out for the next wave of MS mobile, but you know what? I’ve still got the scars from Windows phone. I’m not waiting with baited breath for another year for a product which takes 2 years to mature and gets trash canned 2 years after that.

I’d love to know what others think on this one. I do wonder if my young kids will grow up and never use an MS product. I can really see that coming. In the same way I used to know who IBM were and what they did (but now have no idea what they do), will it be the same in 10-15 years time for MS? I this what they ultimately want, or are they just sleep walking into it anyway?

So many questions, so few answers (at least from MS…).