WW 682: You're A Crybaby!

Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…

What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!

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I’m surprised at your reaction to the Slack story. I don’t know much on the legal side, but their general premises are dead on. I’ve switched jobs this year, but both this organization and the one I came from made the exact decision that Slack is describing. In both cases, the consensus was overwhelmingly that Slack was better (and I agree, it’s still a better communication tool. Teams just integrates with other things, but it doesn’t do the chat part nearly as well), but because the “full” version cost something and Teams was “free” (already paid for with our Microsoft agreement), we’d be going with the lesser product. We even abandoned Slack in favor of Teams for this very reason, even though it wasn’t as good. I hope you’re wrong about this being a sign of Slack’s demise, because it’s a better product, and more flexible for non-enterprise uses as well. But it wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft bullied out a better product (Word Perfect, Lotus 1-2-3, it looks like maybe VmWare eventually, etc.)

I was offered 2004 (emailed Mary Jo Foley earlier, but realized Twit had a thread here!). I do not plan to install it as I’m on still-supported 1909. Likewise, 2004’s Release Information shows plenty of known issues (and many “known” but not posted).

This is on a Spectre x360 13t (late 2019) with Ice Lake.


A link to the Medium blog Paul mentioned:

Not only does Microsoft have legacy browsers, legacy runtimes, legacy UI, but also legacy blogs. I can only salute the people who can feign long enough interest to read these communication marketing channels.

As we design the future of Microsoft 365 experiences, we’ll continue to champion these qualities so that we can move the needle forward, together.

And this post was written by the Head of Microsoft Office design.

I think it also comes down to want you want our need.

We use Teams 80% for video conferences with suppliers and customers, 18% internal video calls and around 2% chat messages, going by the statistics.

All our suppliers want Teams, Zoom, GoToMeeting or WebEx meetings. I haven’t had a single contact who uses Slack.

I’ve never used Slack, and so I don’t know anything about it, but my friend who does use it, says it’s just an over glorified front end for IRC. If it is truly a good product, one presumes the market will know this and the company would have nothing to worry about. If, on the other hand, it’s not really that magical… then it seems to me they’ve done something very simplistic, and are whining that other companies can also do the same simplistic thing to compete with them.

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I don’t even think it’s about Slack being better or worse, but their, sadly, lame actions. If they think they’re not as good, which the numbers supposedly show, then they should better get their act together and work harder instead of stomping their feet and crying like a baby. It’s a tough world, you should learn from your failures (if that’s how they see it, which I disagree with) and improve your scores.

It’s sad, and it made me lose a whole lot if respect for them. I admire those who strive for their goals instead of asking for things to be done for them.

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I’m not feeling the hype for the possibility of running win32 programs on an Android device (like Duo) through a virtual hosted Windows desktop. Taking an application that was designed to be used with a mouse/keyboard while sitting in a chair and simply chucking it onto a mobile, touch-only device makes for a terrible user experience (not to mention one that’s been possible for years).

Ironically, this is what Citrix, that company that the WW crew love to grief about, has been doing about as well as it could be done since the 2000’s. The only difference is whose server it’s running on.

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I don’t think Slack is going to win this one but it is an interesting debate and I’m curious to see how it all shakes out. A few questions come to mind like do you think should Dropbox file a complaint because OneDrive is included with Microsoft 365, or Evernote file a complaint about the bundling of OneNote? Where does Microsoft have to draw the line at adding value to a suite of productivity apps? If they had evolved an existing product (e.g. Skype for Business or Yammer) to include more Slack-like functionality or UX would that be okay?

Onenote has been part of Office for nearly 20 years, longer than Evernote has existed. Likewise, Onedrive has been around in one firm or another as a free service since the late 90s, or early 00s.

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Yep. And Microsoft has had Yammer and its channel-based messaging since 2012, and Skype for Business/Lync/Office Communicator with its chat/audio/video before that-- and these are all parts of a broader suite of productivity software that Microsoft offers to customers in a range of packages.
I don’t see how a regulatory agency could say that Teams, which is a reconfiguration of existing MS services, needs to be spun off as a separate product. What rules or regulations lead to the unbundling of Teams but not the rest of the M365 services? I’m not a legal scholar, but I don’t see it.

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OneNote launched in 2003, EverNote launched about 3 years later.

OneDrive launched in 2007, a couple months after Dropbox launched, they are the granddaddies of this type of service.

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Onedrive replaced Microsoft Mesh, which came along much earlier and in business there was already Sharepoint.

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Microsoft Mesh?

Do you mean Windows Live Mesh?
That’s based on product they bought in 2005 but didn’t release as their own until 2008.

OneDrive has very little in common with the SharePoint from before 2010 and practically nothing in common with SharePoint’s first release in 2001.

A topic I’d be curious to hear about on this week’s episode, @MaryJo: where is Chredge development?

Major “promised” features don’t seem any closer to stable, even as Windows 10 stable development continues unabated:

  • history syncing still MIA (how long is “summer” in Redmond?)
  • vertical tabs still MIA
  • smart copy is still MIA

You would’ve thought, for a browser whose major code is already known-working, adding functionality should be faster. Especially some two years later for a development powerhouse like Microsoft.

Looking at Tech Community, most upcoming features (vertical tabs aren’t even listed here) are 30 to 40 weeks stale on the tracking page. Not a single one has even hit Canary.

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Good point. Let me ask and see if they’ll say anything new on this. Thanks

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I’d also like to understand why Windows 20.04 didn’t ship with Chredge already installed, or at least why the install doesn’t immediately kick off after first boot into 20.04. As far as I know, even the Preview versions aren’t even including Chredge, which means it’s not getting any Preview testing at all, assuming Preview is in fact about testing, and I think maybe @thurrott would argue it can’t be, being how much of a flop it has seemingly been at detecting many of the past/current issues.

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I guess they wanted more time. As we saw with 2004 itself, even 15 months of testing wasn’t enough :slight_smile: Plus, 2004 was “done”/RTM’d in late 2019 or very early 2020.

They have said Chredge will ship alongside 20H2, which is due this “fall.”

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It’s been said better before by others I’m sure, @MaryJo, but I’ve always been a fan, and I am really happy that you’re so approachable and active here on the community. It really makes the podcast feel more interactive. In future better times I hope I have the chance to get to a meet-up to cheers you in person :beers:

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Thanks! And yes, one day we will meet IRL! and toast with real, non-virual beverages :slight_smile:

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Unsurprisingly, no comment from Microsoft officials on why these features aren’t yet available. I hear “soon” ™. I do know some MS employees have shown off that they’re using vertical tabs, so maybe “soon” actually does mean “soon.”

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