Microsoft Is Doing Everything Wrong

For those of you who don't know, I run a site called Mendoa. It doesn't get much traffic, but it is meant to be a forum where you can argue a topic with clearly delineated pro and con arguments. The fact that Microsoft is screwing up royally lately has been on my mind, and I've been meaning to make a post on it, but I decided to put it into Mendoa, just in case someone wanted to argue the point with me. You can find the post on Mendoa here, but for your convenience I'll include the post text below:

Microsoft is making some terrible decisions lately.

Windows 8 will be a disaster because they're forcing a tablet oriented operating system onto desktops. The metro style UI will not work well with traditional mice. As useful and intuitive as touch interfaces are, there is still a place for mice and keyboards in computing. Microsoft is trying to pull us into using the new metro style dashboard which just won't translate to a traditional mouse and keyboard.

Speaking of the dashboard, Microsoft seems to be trying to kill off the traditional desktop environment, albeit slowly. Yes, the desktop is still available, but Microsoft is already starting to segregate the two environments by locking some applications and APIs to just the metro dashboard. Internet Explorer 10 comes to mind; the desktop and metro executables are separate, and never share information; not even bookmarks and history.

Moreover, Microsoft seems to have forgotten why developers have flocked to them over the years. Windows has always been easy and cheap to develop for. If you could get your zeros and ones to your customers, then you were in the clear and good to go. Now, if you want to provide a metro style app for Windows, you'll be forced to use the Windows App Store. Oh, and to use the App Store to host your application will cost you $50. Microsoft is slapping its developers in the face.

The only thing they seem to be doing right is the upcoming Surface, which has still yet to actually see the light of day outside of the initial announcement and is actually alienating their hardware partners.