Dave McClure is Not Happy with the Windows 8.1 Update – Not at All

We don’t want your stinking Metro user interface, we do not want your Microsoft store, and we do not want your incomprehensible applications.  We want our Windows back.  Now.

In the grand tradition of a company that has no idea how to name products, this one is given the inspired name of “Windows 8.1 Update.”  So what is updated?  You now have a way to close the crippled Metro applications without having to boot the operating system.  Oh, and they save you a whole mouse-click to get to the desktop you really want to work on.  Wow.

Meanwhile, it is pretty much shove-it-down-your-throat business as usual from Microsoft.  Oh, and they do promise to bring back the useful “Start Button.”  You just have to wait until a future upgrade, perhaps later this year.  One has to wonder, why is that?  What was so difficult about adding back in in the same functionality you can find by right mouse clicking in the lower left corner of your desktop screen?

I wish I could say that this arrogance was something new, but it is not.  I watched in the Eighties as Lotus 1-2-3 imposed a truly stupid security scheme on their spreadsheet product.  By the time they realized they had locked out their own user base, they had lost enough market share to die a grisly death.  The same thing happened to the world’s most popular word processor, WordPerfect, when they decided they were too wonderful to ever be unseated.  Last I heard, they were a tiny division of some Canadian company, used by almost no one.

Somewhere, there are lessons in this for Microsoft, but I doubt they are listening.  After all, how many times do your most loyal users have to tell you that you have gone astray before you change your ways and make things right?

The OneDrive cloud storage system still doesn’t sync with the desktop, and seems more oriented toward stealing your photographs for Microsoft’s use than anything else.  Oh, and you can’t back up your computer to OneDrive, no matter how much free storage they give you.  So what is the value to the customer?  Nada, Zero, Nothing.

Office 13 doesn’t sync with anything, particularly with your desktop or your cell phone.  So much for collaborative computing.  And good luck accessing your Office 365 apps from a computer on the road.  Or reading text files.  Or…oh, you get my point.

I truly wish that I could find one nice thing to say about Microsoft today, but I can’t.  I’m mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore.  Will someone please put these Redmond clowns out of business, so we can get back to being productive?