Before I had to try twice for Fedi reasons, I was mostly pushing it for the joke.
But honestly, this is so on brand for MS. They came up with a superficially marketable idea, botched the execution, then botched the marketing even harder. Then Apple came up with the same feature and everybody liked it.
The idea that this is them playing the long game is hilarious. Not only is that not how big software companies work, it is definitely not how MS works. People just want to sound worldly and cynical and instead come across paranoid and delusional. The idea that everybody working on this knew it sucked and they shipped it anyway is extremely plausible.
Can they execute? Sure! But can they also get stuck failing to push back on a bad idea until they end up shipping something nobody likes? Often, objectively. And almost always subjectively because they also consistently suck at branding their stuff, both the good and the bad.
Before I had to try twice for Fedi reasons, I was mostly pushing it for the joke.
But honestly, this is so on brand for MS. They came up with a superficially marketable idea, botched the execution, then botched the marketing even harder. Then Apple came up with the same feature and everybody liked it.
The idea that this is them playing the long game is hilarious. Not only is that not how big software companies work, it is definitely not how MS works. People just want to sound worldly and cynical and instead come across paranoid and delusional. The idea that everybody working on this knew it sucked and they shipped it anyway is extremely plausible.
Can they execute? Sure! But can they also get stuck failing to push back on a bad idea until they end up shipping something nobody likes? Often, objectively. And almost always subjectively because they also consistently suck at branding their stuff, both the good and the bad.