I always wondered if personalities like Satya Nadella browse these forums under different identities to understand what the rest of the tech world might be saying? Wouldn't it be pragmatic for them to align 80% of their priorities with their core users? I guess they can still use the remaining 20% to focus on their obtrusive advertisers!
To further this idea, while Twitter is probably paying for the privilege of being pre-installed, for Windows 10, I wouldn't be surprised if (shortcuts to download) Candy Crush and Twitter are the result of market testing and focus groups and such. Not understanding being able to download apps via the Windows Store may be totally foreign to us, but non-technical users may need some hand-holding.
HN is probably not their core Home Edition users, but I'm pretty sure it's a good window into their Professional and Enterprise Edition users, those who don't nee the crap addendum but just need to work
No, even for Enterprise software we're far at one end of the spectrum in terms of competence at using a computer. You're forgetting the vast majority of the work force who work in normal offices, using computers as a tool to get their work done.
That said, we probably articulate our issues better than some, so we're probably still worth listening to.
HN is a fucking tire fire when it comes to comment toxicity for certain segments of readers. We're no better than Reddit or anywhere else really. MS would be wise (and justified) to ignore us completely.
I would be very surprised if anyone at Microsoft in a position of power gave a damn about the user experience on Windows Desktop these days. I'm pretty sure it is their goal to kill off personal computing.
