Izenda CEO and founder Sanjay Bhatia ran into a scrolling issue on his computer on the day Windows 10 launched. Glitches can be expected on the day a product launches, especially when it’s a major upgrade of an OS. Bhatia got a pleasant surprise when the bug was patched within two hours.
The quick response, says Bhatia, highlights a major shift for Microsoft. Who in the past would have expected immediate fixes from Microsoft? For that matter, who would have expected Microsoft to have addressed so many user complaints and requests with this new operating system?
“The world view of what type of company Microsoft is has changed—today was day to shine by not screwing up,” Bhatia said. “This is a big change from the old Microsoft world, when [we see] the feedback cycle has gone from months to hours.”
Windows Vista didn’t work and Microsoft didn’t listen to consumers and other customers on Windows 8, either. As a result, few customers updated their OS over the past six years. In fact, one of the more popular updates was a change to restore the Start Menu, last seen in Windows 7. Reviews of Windows 10 have been generally positive. But will users choose to upgrade to Windows 10, if they’ve learned to live with Windows 7? If Microsoft addresses continues to fix problems quickly, the company may be able to reclaim some of its tech mojo – especially given the new UX, which is a vast improvement over Windows 8.
And it’s not just about Windows 10. The new release of Visual Studio 2015 embraces mobile platforms and gaming – a surprise for many developers who had low expectations for the long-awaited upgrade. Released just a few weeks ago, Visual Studio 2015 is an important component of Microsoft’s Universal Windows App strategy. Visual Studio 2015 strongly embraces cross-platform development. A company no longer has to develop for Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, WebTV, Xbox or Kindle devices separately. Visual Studio 2015 lets you compile your code to deploy across multiple platforms, using one code base.
With the latest upgrades to Visual Studio, Windows and other products, Microsoft seems to have looked at where they had gaps, and focused on that. Microsoft also is focusing more on ISVs and startups, “targeting the small, fast fish first,” according to Bhatia.
With Windows 10, Microsoft also introduces the new Edge browser. Web developers might find the new browser easy to accommodate, but whether users will flock to it after struggling with Internet Explorer – and abandoning it for Chrome and Firefox – remains to be seen. Having used it for a few months, Bhatia gives Edge a strong recommendation.
Edge’s tie-in with Bing should help with revenue for Microsoft. But the latest upgrades to their OS and Visual Studio seem to indicate that Microsoft is looking less at monetization and more at their vision for the rest of the decade. Under Nadella’s leadership, the company has identified where they had gaps, and focused on addressing them. For end users, that means a more elegant user experience, and for ISVs and startups, faster development and deployments.
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