14 DAY TRIAL // When Satya Nadella took over from Steve Ballmer earlier this year and officially became the new Microsoft CEO, he promised that the software giant would eventually become a company obsessed over customers, with all products to be launched in the coming years to be built on user feedback.
Since then, most of the updates released by Microsoft included statements that said pretty much the same thing, repeating the “based on consumer feedback” motif over and over again.
And even though these products were indeed more or less based on consumer feedback, there’s something much more exciting coming that appears to be designed in such a way that everyone would be happy with it.
I’m talking about Windows 9, the next big project in Microsoft’s lineup which should come to the market sometime next year, while a beta build should see daylight in just a few weeks.
The leaked screenshots that reached the web this week helped us have a glimpse into the feature lineup of the upcoming operating system, which at first sight is indeed bringing quite a lot of improvements that are first and foremost aimed at consumers.
Listening to consumer feedback is not a decision of its own
Windows 9 indeed comes with options that have been requested by customers and the most obvious is the Start menu that was originally removed in Windows 8.
Microsoft said this feature would come back in Windows at the BUILD developer conference this year, and although everyone expected to see it going live in a new Windows 8.1 update, the company is actually keeping it for Windows 9. Because Windows 9 is at its core an operating system designed to address consumer complaints received after Windows 8, so the Start menu perfectly fits this product.
Multiple desktops is also a feature that has been around for a while in other operating systems, including Linux, but even though users almost begged Microsoft to bring it into Windows, this never happened. Windows 9 will fix this too, again in an attempt to give customers what they want.
There’s no doubt that listening to consumer feedback is a smart decision, but unfortunately, this isn’t a decision that Microsoft is making because it wants to. It’s because it needs to.
Windows criticism has grown so much lately that many people actually started considering moving to a different platform, which obviously led to increased competition in the operating system industry, with Linux and Mac OS X both experiencing important boosts.
While Windows still holds more than 90 percent of the desktop market, every single mistake gives rivals the chance to grow, so Microsoft has to stop taking the same wrong steps over and over again.
And Satya Nadella knows it. That’s why listening to consumer feedback is basically the only option to survive in a market where working on the desktop is no longer the only thing we do.
At this point, Microsoft isn’t living beyond the desktop, and Windows 9 could more or less give the company a chance to expand beyond this environment if it makes everything right. Tackling the tablet and the smartphone market with new features and devices is the right way to do it if they’re indeed based on what people request.
How come there’s still no LED notification support in Windows Phone?
With Windows 9, Microsoft is showing the world that it’s finally ready to get closer to buyers and listen to their demands. But the company has so much work to do that it would take weeks or maybe months to listen to all complaints coming from buyers who do not necessarily want Microsoft to make its products different, but want them to be better.
In a way, that would help them get things done faster, easier, without ever thinking of using another device.
Windows Phone is for me the best example. I like Windows Phone so much that I’ve tried almost every single Lumia that’s on the market right now and I was minutes away from sticking to a 930 after its launch. So what stopped me? The lack of features that users have been asking for since forever, but are still not there. Notification LEDs, Google apps, a powerful browser beside Internet Explorer, apps, a (more advanced) hub to manage email accounts, a more helpful notification center. They’ve all been requested, but they’re still not there.
Notification LEDs, for example, are critical for my work and staying up to date with everything that happens online and in my life. They’re essential for knowing when a new text message, email, Twitter, WhatsApp, or Facebook message arrives on the phone, without actually waking the device. And without interrupting my work.
Blinking LED notifications are still missing from Windows Phone, even though there’s no doubt that Microsoft improved its phones A LOT in the last couple of years. And the problem with this is that many people actually want it.
One of the most voted feature suggestions on the official Windows Phone forums is the support for LED notifications. It was posted on August 5, 2011, so more than three years ago, and has nearly 38,000 votes. This means 38,000 Windows Phone buyers who connected to the Internet, browsed the web, accessed the Windows Phone forums and created an account to submit their vote, want LED notifications in Windows Phone. Imagine how many don’t have the time to do all the above.
Microsoft’s answer to this suggestion came 3 years later and included a statement that’s as vague as it is almost completely unrelated to the request itself:
“Thanks for your missed calls suggestion. Always great to see such great feedback and excitement about this feature and while we didn’t implement this exactly this way, we have made it possible for device manufacturers to deliver notifications without having to wake the phone up. For example, Nokia’s Glance screen shows you time and missed notifications without having to wake the phone up.”
The bottom line is as simple as it could be: Microsoft indeed started listening to customers, but the work shouldn’t stop here. Not if Satya really wants Microsoft to be successful.