Mighty Microsoft, Sahib...

And it needs to be different. A lot different.  Back when they were trying to recover from the disaster that was Windows Vista, and were re-working it into Windows 7, they released a series of public betas to us for testing, and the early ones had a nice little icon on the desktop identified as 'Feedback'.

Millions of us, literally, used that to send them enough feedback to keep them reading for the next 20 years. And it worked like a charm. Windows 7 in its finished state has been one of the very best and most popular versions of the Windows platform ever. Then along came that pompous ass, what's-his-name... Sinofsky....and started telling us what we ought to damned well better like or else. And a lot of us dropped the F-bomb on that bastard and went looking for things like the Unix derivative PC-BSD, which "just works" as we say. And it doesn't have anyone like Sinofsky behind it, telling us what we ought to like or else. There's a lesson there, Mighty Microsoft, so grab it and
run with it.

 I'm doing this on a Windows 8 system, and I've just checked Windows Update, and there's nothing there for me this morning, and today is Patch Tuesday. No 700 Mb update to my still-evolving Windows 8.1 because I have resisted the urge to use it, pending its completion. And I already know where to find free third-party programs that add all the goodies I want to my Win-8
to make it as useful as it should have been from Day One. Programs like Classic Shell which restores the Start Button and Menu and other tweaks, and 8GadgetPack which restores the Sidebar and even more Gadgets than we ever had in Windows 7.

Sinofsky spread the rumor that gadgets were a security risk, to get us to use his convoluted GUI for Windows 8, and that proved to be bullshit, because as anyone with half an eye and a functioning asshole knows, the same security that protects the rest of your system also protects whatever's in your gadgets.
And that kind of bullshit and attempted manipulation is what has pissed off a hell of a lot of Microsoft's customers, including me. You can't imply that your customer base is a mob of ignoramuses, and tell them what they'd better learn to like or else, and expect us to love you for it. It just doesn't work that way. If we're buying the tickets, then we're deciding if the show meets our approval or not, and we're going to say so, whether the producer likes it or not.

Microsoft should have kept its 'Feedback' icon on the Desktop, and kept reading the input they got from it. We may not know code from Shinola but we do know what we like or don't like, and that ought to be useful knowledge to those producing an operating system for 90% of the world's computers.

And I wish Microsoft would stop inviting me to upgrade to Windows 8.1 - I've already tried it, and I didn't like it, and I removed it again and went back to the original Windows 8 with my own added improvements obtained from the freebies available on line. I'm quite happy with it this way, and I'm sure I can continue quite comfortably until Windows 9 or PC-BSD 11 comes along.