A Public appeal to Bill Gates: Save Windows!

I do remember when XP came out in the fall of 2001. It was magic. 

Finally PC software was entering the era of user-friendly software, I even thought that Microsoft CEO Bill Gates had been enlightened by the study of Leonardo's Codex Leicester, which is basically a pamphlet that centers its attention on the human being's possibilities. 

As a matter of fact with the coming of XP Microsoft overcame Apple with the most intuitive OS I' d ever seen before. I was happy, we were happy. With the coming of XP, users felt to be like kings, we were in absolute control over our PC machines, you run a command and there you are. You got what you were looking for.  

Everything started from the magic Start button:  programs, accessories, control panel, but the very magic was Customization. 

And that's exactly what Microsoft lost along the years: Customization. 

After the huge success of XP these genius developers started to think in narcissistic terms and like in the worst tradition of big mistakes along human history they relied on themselves and stopped thinking about the Windows final users. 

Recently I just bought a new PC and I have Windows 7 installed because I don't even want to think of having to deal with that nightmare of Win 8. The simple fact they removed the start button it makes you immediately realize of a Microsoft Developer's psychological eviration.  

Windows was the START button. 

By removing it, Microsoft developers evirated Microsoft not only of its masculine properties but of its own identity and consciousness. 

At each new version that was released after XP, Microsoft seemed like it wanted to destroy every good thing they have been developing with XP. Since then, they completely changed their attitude of willing to realize great software. 

Like in a pseudo-philosophical shift they stopped thinking to the final user, the Microsoft customer, and started thinking on how to destroy the lives of millions by making every single thing more complicated. 

Take Windows 7 for example, there is no "Show Desktop Icon". Why? Why they did remove such a crucial thing for any PC user? 

Let's take another example, the internal search engine. XP had the BEST search engine ever. It showed you three options that included the most common categories of files you might be looking for: Images & Movies, Documents and text or all  files. It was just magic. It was easy!

Here in Windows 7, you have a simple box over the start button, and it makes everything much more difficult because if you look for a movie you have to put the file extension, but file extensions among videos are of several types, they can be .avi, mpg, mpeg, .mov, wmv, so if you don't know the extension you must make 5 searches instead of one and obviously other than making everything more difficult you feel completely exhausted thereafter. 

Why? Why deteriorating a perfectly working system? 

Let's take the tray icons, which in Windows 7 you can't customize it. No matter what. You always have that arrow-up that hides all the tray icons and puts a further step between yourself and the notification icons. Why? 

Why I cannot have my tray icons that can be customized the way I like? The only option you have is to turn all the icons on or to select to have some of them but in that case they are being hidden again by that  arrow that for some reasons is hiding all my tray icons! Why you make an icon tray if you then hide it behind an arrow which I have to click on to see what's happening? Why putting further limits on your own functions? Why Microsoft Developers are putting new limits not only to the CUSTOMIZATION of my software but to those functions that perfectly worked before this? 

Why I am not free to customize the way I love my Windows functions? Can you explain me why please? Do you realize that every single action that prevents us, the Windows users from customizing our own PC is a limitation of our personal freedom other than making my time completely wasted because I have to try to solve by myself the problems you created with no apparent reason but to put me in trouble and most of the time with no solution to your mess? 

Let's talk of Office Word 2013. Did you see it? It's a nightmare. They changed EVERYTHING. They completely destroyed a software that was absolutely perfect. 1) They changed the menu names, completely. They spread all the icons around like if they threw them. If you click on file it even opens A NEW PAGE!!!! Hence when you click on the file menu a NEW PAGE POPS UP!!!! And you have to find the way to go back to your document and see where you left. Don't you realize this is completely crazy and idiotic? 

Why did you make such an idiotic mess? Why destroying a perfectly working Word format software?   

This is a personal appeal message to Mr. Bill Gates: Mr. Gates, could you please tell your retarded developers that when a software works there is no need to change it? Could you please take over the development of Windows 9 by personally supervise its development? 

Do you realize that PCs are the very basic tools for the evolution of our species? Don't you realize how important is this? Do you realize what kind of responsibilities you have? Please take action now!

I am using Windows 7 and I am going through a real hell to perform my daily tasks. I won't ever use Windows 8, that's for sure and I am seriously thinking of going back to XP even if by following this genius policy of Microsoft there won't be new updates for XP. 

Mr. Gates, I warmly invite you to think about this situation which I would define as desperate. What your developers need is a totally change of their mindset, of their attitude of their objectives in terms of software usability. We, the final users are those who use your software not you and your developers, whose minds showed to be absolutely corrupted as the products they put on the market in the past few years. 

E Pluribus Unum

Gianluca D'Agostino 

Gianluca D'Agostino

Gianluca D'Agostino worked for CNN in Washington DC and for Associated Press in Rome and Tirana. 

Holds a Ph.d in Theory of Information and Communication and worked as Researcher at the Department of English at Stanford University / Visiting Scholar at Media & Communication Dpt of Fordham University and @ the Film Studies Program UC Berkeley

www.mataweb.com

www.gldmktg.com

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twitter: @giallucad

Why Microsoft Sociopath attitude won't stop

By naming as its new CEO Mr. Satya Nadella, Microsoft made a precise statement: we'll keep up with our sociopath behavior.

Indeed Mr. Satya Nadella comes from the Business Solution division and he has in practice no experience on the Consumer side, which at present is the weakest link of the Microsoft business chain. 

I am not referring to their market fall on the mobile division but to their attitude as a company whose main objective is to make "great software" while being completely unsuccessful to help people having an easier experience with their computers and ultimately with their own lives. 

What I am reporting here is the fact that Microsoft completely lost its vision of Consumer supplier, they lost its most important purpose, which is helping people living the easiest accessible experience while dealing with Windows which is the most spread software worldwide.

I speak as a Microsoft consumer and I can witness I had my worst experience ever since I interacted with Windows 8. 

Last April I bought a new acer notebook  and once I turned the PC on, the software kept asking me to log in with a Microsoft account otherwise I wouldn't have got access to my computer, nor to certain applications like "sky drive" for example. This is the first sociopath attitude I encountered while using the new OS, the attempt to enslave the user by forcing him to do what the company wants and not what he wants to do. 

This is the worst attitude a supplier can have towards its own customers. You can't force myself to do what you want, freedom is the most important basic right among the human rights and forcing people behaving the way you want only because you are in the position to do so is something that reminds the worst dictatorial regimes. You have to understand that software today is the tool through which people interact with their loved ones, with their co-workers, with their healthcare providers, their food suppliers, you can't impose me the way I interact with the world. This is not fair, this is not human, this is against the basic human rights and you are behaving like those dictators of the past who restricted people's freedom. An imposition is an imposition it doesn't matter if it happens through a computer or a megaphone. 

Regarding the functions, the most astonishing incredible discovery was to find out that the Windows 8 search function had become SLOWER than the one of XP. 

I made a quick comparison by putting the same files on the same directory in my two computers, one that run Windows XP while the other had Windows 8. I started the search and with my greatest surprise I found out that XP showed its search results after seconds, while Windows 8 took forever and not only! At the end of the search the results of Windows 8 were absolutely irrelevant respect to the search term. 

Less than a month ago, my father bought a Hewlett Packard laptop with Windows 8 as its Operative system. After one week his pc got completely stuck and it had to be returned to the store with great distress for my father who is more than seventy years old and who expected his new pc to be a working machine except maybe for the software that did not work.

I bought my laptop last April and now it lies in a closet and I can't use it because once you turn it on, a weird echo sound starts playing without I even touch anything. Besides, I can't use it because the computer gets suddenly stuck and you cannot even restart the OS because it won't restart. You have to take out the battery and then replace it in order to make it run again and most of the times it doesn't restart. 

Is it possible that a company, a team of people who have been developing the same product for years (the various versions of Windows) instead of making progress they go backwards and make a product that is even lesser developed than the previous ones? 

But this is still nothing indeed. Do we want to talk about the lack of the START button? Isn't just for its absence, if the software would have proposed a working alternative but the real question is WHY? 

This is the most sociopath aspect of the new Microsoft policy. You realize that when they developed Windows 8 they did not think about the human beings who would have been suffering while going through this new pattern of things, they just thought of their own selfish pleasure of having a new experience in developing it but they did not think about the people, the human beings who are the final users of the product they developed and the possible distress they would have undergone while experiencing their "new great software..."

This sociopath behavior of total indifference towards their own customers it says all about their attitude which I define as pathologically sociopath. Because only a sociopath would play with the lives of millions of people with such indifference without thinking of the consequences of making their lives more difficult of what is already. 

They did not think to the elderly, to the disabled people, to the Microsoft users who are in their 40's and 50's who do not have time nor the energy to explore and discover new paths to make a simple word document or to watch a video. They just thought to their own narcissistic self-accomplishment, "we made something completely new". This is the attitude they showed to have while developing a product that would have affected the lives of millions.

Here it comes the usual objection, "well if you don't like our product you can buy something else". 

This is the worst answer ever. We still live in a world where the market offer and the consumer's options in terms of software are very very limited and Microsoft is still the market absolute leader in the OS distribution and the majority of software consumers in the whole planet are mostly familiar with the Microsoft products. 

This situation implies a concept that is known as "Responsibility" which is based upon consciousness, which is based upon empathy, awareness that all lead to a wider caring attitude towards "the other" whom in this particular case are your own clients. 

Have you ever considered for a moment that your final user would have found some difficult not finding the start button? Did you ever think at least once that the product you developed was going to be a real hell for the majority of your own clients?

But the real question now is not "why you did not think of it?" the real question at present is "why you are not thinking of it even now?"

Months ago, after Microsoft discovered what a bad reception Windows 8 received they decided to release an update with the start button, while according to the latest news coming from Microsoft, the company has now no intention of releasing an update that would provide their own clients to download the start button.

This is nothing. The sociopath behavior has been confirmed by other meaningful actions like the statement that Microsoft will stop releasing updates for Windows XP. 

Windows XP is the only working product ever made by Microsoft. 

99% of both public and private companies I work with they still use XP as their main OS.  Turn on your tv and watch any reality show that involves a business they all run XP on their pc's. 

Do they pose themselves these questions at the Microsoft headquarters? Do they have a marketing office up in Redmond? This is unbelievable. Instead of talking to each other closed in their own offices those marketing people should walk down the street or go to Facebook and ask the people of this planet what the hell they need from their Operative System.

This lack of empathy, this total lack of interest for humanity in general and for its own clients!!! it confirms the totally sociopath vision of a company which is not interested in the consumer's best interests but they are only thinking in dark selfish terms. Yes because only the darkest reasons would be possible behind such a hateful behavior towards humankind. 

How can you be that sociopath?

Do you realize how sociopath is the perception that people have of your attitude of software developer and mostly of human being? 

These people at Microsoft they are still stuck in the 50's, they think like a retail-shop owner who just make products and sell them. That's it. 

Microsoft is instead the largest software manufacturer  on the planet and software today is the very basis of human life. Do you realize what kind of responsibility you have? 

Have you ever heard the word "Social responsibility"? or "Social Awareness"? I am really flabbergasted about the fact that Bill and Melinda Gates who are the most active people on the planet about helping those in need they have such a huge problem of social responsibility within their own courtyard and they don't know it. 

I have met Bill Gates once only at a press conference in Italy and I was asked to question him about his antitrust case to which question I obviously received no conclusive answer. 

Although now I think I deserve an answer, I want an answer, the whole planet deserves an answer on why Microsoft has completely abandoned its customers and lost its humanity, by showing not the smallest interest towards the most basic needs of its own clients.

Instead of naming a new CEO they should fire their marketing dpt who planned a whole OS for Martian users who run their PC without the start button. 

My thoughts go to all those users with disabilities, the elderly citizens whose PC skills are heavily diminished respect to the average user. Elderly people have diminished abilities to adapt themselves to major changes, if you take off such a crucial element as the start button is like chopping their hands off. 

Instead these Microsoft people have no empathy nor consciousness, they think their products are going to be used by their mind-readers. How can you be such a selfish sociopath? this is simply unbelievable. 

The lack of sensitivity, empathy, care, awareness and mostly consciousness of these people is simply shameful.