Microsoft's 13 Worst Missteps Of All Time

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Microsoft's 13 worst missteps of all time? You know your list might need a little help when you put Windows 8 on it twice. :D

Microsoft has had more than its fair share of bad mistakes; 2012 alone was among the most tumultuous years in Microsoft history I can recall. This year you can bet that Redmond will do everything in its power to prove 2012 naysayers wrong. To do so, Microsoft must learn from the following dirty baker's dozen of its most dreck-laden decisions, the ones that have had the very worst consequences.
 
I agree with most of them except the Zune maybe, I think the Zune was just a missed opportunity due to Apple zealots, I really liked the Zune, and really, Apple Spearheading the cloud?, I find the Cloud too overhyped IMHO.
 
If you were a music-slash-tech geek, there is no way in hell you'd ditch the Zune. Oddly enough my first introduction to it was from a hate-post by an self-proclaimed iPod fan...
 
There's no way Zune belongs on there. About the only thing it ever did wrong was not having an Apple logo on it. Quite frankly, most of the list is pretty terrible, being used mostly as an excuse for gratuitous MS bashing.
 
If you were a music-slash-tech geek, there is no way in hell you'd ditch the Zune. Oddly enough my first introduction to it was from a hate-post by an self-proclaimed iPod fan...

+1. The Zune is awesome and is just more of a missed opportunity than bad tech. Same thing for the iRiver iHP-120 series of players. Direct mp3 ripping from an optical source. Let's see another player do that!

To contrast, no other software has made me want to gouge my eyes out more than iTunes.
 
And by the end of the article, I'm starting to despise the word... "ecosystem".
 
Zune is pretty awesome +1

Win8 ROFMLAO, im NOT surprised.

give us(the majority of customers) back the Old UI or GTFO .

Metro as a forced move (no choice) is a bad move. Choice is prosumer.
 
I use my ZuneHD still today. I still have an active Zune pass as well which I guess is an Xbox music pass now.
 
Microsoft's 13 worst missteps of all time? You know your list might need a little help when you put Windows 8 on it twice. :D

If you put Windows 8 on it twice, that just means you skipped one.

Windows Phone 8 - the ARM edition for Cell-Carriers that was supposed to be binary compatible with Modern Style UI applications.

Windows 8 RT - the ARM edition for tablet vendors that was supposed to compete with Android and IOS

Windows 8 - the ARM and x86 / x86-64 version that was supposed to supersede Windows 7.

Given that a SINGLE product designed to extend across three different form factors evolved into 3 different products, a comprehensive list of biggest failures would have to include all 3 versions.
 
Idk about you gusy but I hated my Zune (1st gen Zune 20GB?). Software was shit, I mean I had to use a third party patch to get it to work on W7. Making playlists was a pain, everything was retarded. I only got it because it was super cheap I think like $60? When the ipods were around 200. It broke pretty fast afterwards as it just started to crash every few mins. I liked my creative media player (forgot what it was called) sooooo much more than the Zune. Though this was my impression from the Zune 20GB, it could have changed afterwards but when I jumped it the whole Zune ecosystem was SUB PAR (only thing good was the unlimited music for $15 a month that didnt have songs I wanted) compared to the iPod.
 
Most of that article was an okay read. People still don't have any idea what exactly a cloud is though and it's pretty obvious it means a ton of different stuff to different people so even though there's no unified idea of what constitutes a cloud, everyone wants to be onboard with the idea of a being in the cloud. It's so lame.

That and IE6 is awesome except compared to Lynx.
 
Actually - this list is totally bogus because the missed the Grand-Daddy of them all:

The Social User Interface Experiment - AKA MS Bob

That thing took the cake. Go do the research - that one was the one that stands out.

If you include Hardware - do some digging on the MS Easy Ball too - wow that was a mess as well.

hehe I am still laughing remembering all those items
 
That list was pretty legit. You guys are just looking at it through Magenta tinted Microsoft glasses...
 
I agree about the zune. very nice MP3 player. apple just has everyone thinking apple is the most high quality product.
 
I was happy to see IE6 on the list. With it's myriad of bugs, glitches, and security flaws, I call it the "death trap browser."
 
The biggest mistake Microsoft has made is that burning CDs with Windows Media Player, there still isn't an option for gapless playback.
 
Actually - this list is totally bogus because the missed the Grand-Daddy of them all:

The Social User Interface Experiment - AKA MS Bob

That thing took the cake. Go do the research - that one was the one that stands out.

If you include Hardware - do some digging on the MS Easy Ball too - wow that was a mess as well.

hehe I am still laughing remembering all those items

MS Bob is mentioned on Page 1 of the linked article.
 
Wow...this was one of the stupidest waste of time articles I have actually read. To say the author is a moron would be an understatement. Can I get my fifteen minutes back please?
 
The biggest mistake Microsoft has made is that burning CDs with Windows Media Player, there still isn't an option for gapless playback.

You actually want CD's made from MP3's?




I'm not going to call that a 'Microsoft' mistake...
 
I owned the first Zune & loved it very much. I was quite sad when it died on me. After that, my adventure into the headaches of dealing with a restrictive OS (iOS) on 2 gens worth of the iPod Touch really showed me that Microsoft had gotten it right. MS seems to like screwing themselves out of true success with some of the products they kill off.
 
Ballmer is a twaty fucking stupid that will eventually run the company into the ground. The guy just plainly sucks at anything else besides being a bean counter.
 
Perhaps I'm a bit fortunate having been a Windows user for so many years without ever having any real issue with most of this list. Most of it I would disable, bypass, or just not use. I think it has enabled me to get more enjoyment from having a computer.

I find it interesting that so many people seem to have worse things to say about IE6 than any other version, but even at that time, I was constantly talking about all the problems it had....and everyone talked to me as if they thought is the best thing since sliced bread (kinda like so many of the things that get said about things now).

For a long time though...it was just easier to concentrate on the best things Microsoft did....NTFS and Excell. That is until I started using Open Office.
 
I love my 2nd and 3rd gen Zune. Never bought the brick but the HD was definitely top of the line, it was beyond any other MP3 device out there. Sad that they killed it off, I am just hoping they bring the Xbox Music/Zune market to android already!
 
Had the first gen brick Zune, I liked it while it worked but it died after only a year.
 
Good article. They didn't claim Zune was a bad product, just that it was too late to the market to have an impact. They certainly had things in the right direction. The kin test videos on the other hand... A lot of the failed portable devices start to explain the desire for more powerful mobile software like Windows 8. Maybe with Windows 8 they'll resolve the resolution dpi and touch issues, but I wouldn't expect any impressive touch devices until the next mobile version of windows.
 
I think the biggest thing they missed is Games for Windows Live. What a fuckin turd that is.
 
I thought the only reason people have iPods was for their cars. All Zune needed was an adapter that already worked in a car! I would still prefer my original Rio mp3 player over iTunes. That is one of the worst pieces of software ever created.

MS Bob and Windows ME bring back some painful memories while going from High School to College.

I find it funny that you can use a gmail account to logon to Xbox Live.
 
I thought number 2 would be number one. Many of their best people have left, but they are still stuck with Ballmer.
 
That was a good read. I agree with others about the Zune. It was a good product that was overshadowed by the iPod. Not necessarily better, but definitely a worthy adversary prior to the complete Smartphone/Android takeover. I still have a refurb Zune mini 4GB that refuses to die.
 
I think some of these are playing the "hindsight is 20/20" card ... MS has certainly botched its fair share of products (some of which other companies have been able to successfully launch), but some of their failures were simply timing ... although Gates was a superior CEO to Ballmer in my opinion, even he didn't have the marketing and sales chops of Jobs, Bezos, and Zuckerberg ... for a lot of the MS hardware failures they seemed conflicted and really didn't market or push things like they should have (the MS mice and keyboards were considered top of the line items for years and they could have done similar things with other hardware) ...

I think that the perceived monopoly of MS caused many of their problems since it prevented them from buying some of the competing companies and getting some fresh blood and ideas into MS ... if MS had merged with Intel (when Intel was experiencing problems in the 80's) or Apple (when they had their problems in the 90's) or one of their hardware partners (Dell, HP, etc) then they might be unstoppable today ... it is too bad that Gates is comfortable doing his charity work now ... MS could really benefit with someone of his caliber coming back to MS ... they really need a wily cut-throat leader right now and I don't Ballmer fits that bill ;)
 
The good thing is that they learn from their mistakes.
Not.

They missed one in the #7 Branding section of email clients, before Outlook there was Microsoft Exchange, the client for Exchange Server.
Which reminds me of the Bedlam DL 3 incident that I survived while at Microsoft Ireland.
I got to see a couple hundreds of these emails before my email crashed...

bedlam_dl3_back.jpg
 
This was a bit whitewashed.

Microsoft's internet mistake wasn't IE6, but rather almost missing the Internet boat altogether. And it just about did them in. No only did they have no dog in the race, the web was becoming a cross platform, platform.

So they moved quickly and forced you to buy IE when you bought Windows and created enough conflicting standards on the Web and got control of enough Web oversight to stifle innovation and cross platform advancement. Close call.
 
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