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I agree on the product direction, but I do think the memo had definite unintentional humourous qualities. Or maybe that was the direction that was unintentionally humourous? I can see the benefit of sampling dogfood (I've certainly done it more times than I care to remember), but expecting people to - when their work depends on a tool - seems sad.
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TTFN - Kent
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I too am a firm believer of dogfooding.
However, the digs at the competition struck me as unprofessional, and the general hard sell gave the impression that the company is feverishly trying to convince users (both internal and external) that the recent changes to Yahoo Mail are improvements, when in fact the public has raised several valid concerns about usability and feature loss.
There's nothing wrong with not getting it right. But turning a blind eye to one's users is an almost sure-fire way to ensure you soon won't have any.
/ravi
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Developer Media’s latest mobile developer study illuminates key insights to help marketers with messaging, perspective and strategy for this growing market. Or at least are mobile. Sometimes.
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The Xbox One's Upload Studio is designed to help you share your most exciting gameplay clips with friends. But as some early console owners are already finding out, using profanity during those recordings can have consequences. Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that it is handing out temporary Xbox Live bans for select gamers found to be using "excessive" foul language in content created with Upload Studio. "Excessive profanity", directed at a Microsoft product? Is that possible?
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That's the problem with integrated authentication. You swear at your XBOne, and suddenly lose access to MSDN, Outlook online, Skype, ...
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
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Microsoft has finally said what most of the world has already guessed: Windows RT will die. It won't happen right away, but there's no doubt now that it's in the cards. Maybe. Eventually.
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According to sales it's never borned...
I'm not questioning your powers of observation; I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is (V).
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Yes I thought that myself!
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Have they actually said it's metro/RT that will die? All the Koolaid since 8.0 first leaked was that the plan was for the classic desktop to eventually die.
Metro and WindowsPhone8 are similar enough to merge; but doing the same with desktop and WP8 is probably impossible without totally replacing both. With MS stating that:
Quote: "We should have one set of developer APIs on all of our devices. And all of the apps we bring to end users should be available on all of our devices."
The conclusion that makes the most sense to me is that MS is still doubling down on Metro and intending to kill the classic desktop.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Dan Neely wrote: The conclusion that makes the most sense to me is that MS is still doubling down on Metro and intending to kill the classic desktop.
Yes, agreed, but that's metro, not RT. I think they are barrelling ahead with attempting to kill the classic desktop and shoving some sort of metrodeskual version, but using a Win8 core (minwin) ported to ARM/whatever the phone uses.
Of course, she very well could have meant that the one version they'll keep is the RT version, but that would just be silly. As the main Win8 is also the main server OS, I can't imagine them trying to force administrators to work with an RT-style "one (and a half) app at a time" model.
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TTFN - Kent
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Killing the desktop is a win by default for RT because all windows systems will have the same capabilities as RT does. RT's failing now because of not having desktop apps. Once the desktop is dead if your windows computers CPU says AMD, Intel, Qualcom, or Samsung fundamentally won't matter any more than if your PC currently says either of the first two or your phone/tablet says any of the last three.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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They should have introduced it from the beginning as a way to write store apps and/or desktop apps. i.e. They should have made the WinRT technology work for either environment and not locked everything so tightly into the store apps and metro environment (yes there are addons that let those run in the desktop).
The desktop application is not going to die. Put simply, the big blocky full-screen metro look and feel and user experience doesn't provide whats needed for all apps. There will still be a need for regular desktop applications. Just like everything is not a web app, everything is not a full screen touchscreen over-simplified app either.
It is yet another example of "the new way of doing things" introduced by MS later to be killed off. Was always surprised to see people write about WinRT and metro as though it was replacing existing technologies. It didn't replace anything it just added something for store apps but did nothing to satisfy what is needed for regular desktop apps.
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I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I see pro-W8 "don't-call-it-Metro" articles like Scott Hanselman's "Run more apps and show more tiles[^]" blog post.
Wow, you can see three apps at once on a 1080p screen? That's, like, totes amazeballs. It's not as if there are any screen-shots from Windows 1.0 showing four apps running at the same time or anything.
Oh, wait: there are[^].
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I suppose they should of called it Retro instead of Metro
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Welcome to the world of compilers. Writing your own compiler can be a very rewarding process. "I see you have constructed a new lightsaber. Your skills are complete. Indeed you are powerful, as the Emperor has foreseen."
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IBM doesn't make consumer, desktop operating systems anymore for a reason. {Insert a Sun Tsu quote here, or maybe "Those who do not study history..."}
Or maybe, "If you sleep with sharks, you'll make a Microsoft"
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Kent Sharkey wrote: Those who do not study history...
... will go on to create Windows 8?
The article raises quite a few points where you can substitute one or two words to get a quote which applies to Windows Store apps:
- "OS/2 ran Windows apps really well out of the box, so they could just write a Windows app and both platforms would be able to run that app."
(Windows 8 runs desktop apps out of the box ...) - "IBM even started paying developers to write OS/2 apps."
http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4124548/microsoft-paying-developers-cash-for-windows-app[^] - "Warp stood for 'warp speed,' ... IBM’s famous lawyers were asleep on the job and forgot to run this by Paramount, owners of the Star Trek license."
(Metro, anyone?) - "Windows application vendors saw no reason to recompile their apps for a new platform, and most of them didn't."
(Don't need to change a single word for this one!)
Doomed to repeat it indeed. 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Oh my. I didn't notice that. That is creepy! Well found.
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TTFN - Kent
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Microsoft Enterprise Library has a long and prominent history. Over the years, it has evolved into a mature collection of application blocks, each focused on addressing specific cross-cutting concern. New blocks have been introduced, while others become deprecated with the evolution of the .NET Framework and other Microsoft technologies. More Microsoft going open(ish)
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The rest of the executive team at BlackBerry will follow former CEO Thorsten Heins out the door. More news I thought already happened (or maybe just 'should have' happened already)
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Motorola has signed a multi-year deal with the first maker of 3D printers and services to build cellular phone parts that can be functionally and aesthetically customized for owners. We might actually get those pluggable cell phones after all
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I like to think of Stack Overflow as running with scale but not at scale. By that I meant we run very efficiently, but I still don’t think of us as “big”, not yet. Let’s throw out some numbers so you can get an idea of what scale we are at currently. A peek inside the kimono
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Nice article - thanks!
/ravi
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Kent Sharkey wrote: A peek inside the kimono
Now we know what your fetish is. 
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