Speaking as an ex-PM at MS, just about every individual contributor PM I've met at MS cares far more about reputational impact than making some little metric go up (even if it's a revenue metric).
I get that it's easy to use the PM discipline as a whipping boy because it's a PM's face that is associated with product changes, but I've rarely seen one at MS actively push for this kind of stuff. In the overwhelming case, they argue with their management structure for a while and get dragged kicking and screaming into a decision that they think is dumb, but they're told to own it anyways.
Typically the decisions of the boneheaded variety are made much higher up the org chart by higher-level middle management in the company who don't use the products they own and are (often) pretty thoroughly unaware of what their users actually care about. These decisions suck really bad too, because they overshadow countless other great decisions made by truly excellent people in similar positions.
Of course, it's entirely possible that everyone involved in something like this thinks it's awesome right up until it gets announced/released. I've just never actually seen that before.
I have issues with a LOT of stuff, but ads on the login screen, telemetry that can't be opted out of, privacy invasion, Cortana that is literally malware and the list can go on for days - which people did push for this? The janitors?
Excuse me, but your explanation is just a personal anecdote. Management approved on all this crap and bloatware, you can't realistically cop out that "ohnoes all the PMs at Microsoft I've ever known are more interested in the company's image etc and haven't been actively pushing for this stuff".
I mean, we SEE IT. How tf did all this stuff end up in the OS? Somebody stumbled and landed face first on a keyboard and this crap wrote itself?
Edit: how can upper management ask for this stuff from their underlings if they have no clue about what is happening or what the users want? I also apologise for the harsh tone, but I am so done with Microsoft products I can't help being upset.
And what's that person role? Someone I feel its not a VP of quality insurance who made that decision.
I think there’s not so much an incentive problem, but more of a “hiring the wrong people” problem. People that literally don’t give a crap about anything but their next bonus or raise.
Chances are that those managers will be able to deliver their features on time, meeting all KPIs & OKRs, while accumulating a stack of technical debt for future maintainers.
Isn’t that life in a nutshell?
I think last time Apple "pulled a Microsoft" was when Ive removed a bunch of really really useful stuff in MacBooks (e.g., the ports-gate). I can imagine some forces inside Apple went like "that's it, enough." I'm genuinely curious how management in Apple works and how it promotes ideas that are truly worth it.
I’ve never worked at Apple, but my understanding is that they have/had gatekeepers, from Jobs himself on down, to tell you your idea isn’t part of the vision and we’re not going to do it. And a lot of workers hate that!
On the other hand, is not as if every single other company doesn’t do it, which doesn’t excuse but does explain it.
Regarding the ports on macbooks, IMO it's just that Ive left and so everyone was allowed to design practical devices again, instead of admirable but impractical art pieces.
It's a major turn off.
The only other advertising system within iOS that I’m aware of is the App Store, both in recommendations and search, and of course, that Apple will advertise their own services for iCloud, Storage and so on.
Is Apple an advertising-based company? Not really. Are they marketing-driven? Absolutely. I think the difference is about user value and user impact.
Apple tends to go the Amazon route of trying to capture value from the interactions users might already do, though their iAds network from a decade ago did show an unsuccessful attempt to capture the in-app ad market.
But I can’t think of the last time I would have seen an “ad” in settings, though since App Clips appear in settings for up to 10 days once installed, I can see why some might think so.
I’m not sure whether that applies to the wallet but it definitely works for Siri.
Reminds me of that Better Call Saul episode where Jimmy makes a lavish TV ad to find members for a class action lawsuit, and finds a ton more people, but does it without getting the law firm's partners' approval, and they are angry with him because they care more about the law firm's reputation than the ROI for a particular case.
Edit: With that said, I'm not convinced this is the kind of the king that would actually hurt MS's reputation outside of geek circles.
That's why Google has been so successful with Stadia.
[0] I use Linux, but no, Proton is not fully there. Plenty of games either do not work or have enough glitches that make it unacceptable.
My personal preferences is owning a game library, because not always I play games, that require co-op or connection, but if the future is that you are opening browser and playing game from vast library of games on TV, for wich you pay subscription fee, then Stadia is on the right track. Actually, Stadia would be only one of many services and most probably that would be combined with Microsoft gaming. Looking in retrospect, most of the things are logical from what Microsoft was doing, but the question to me is always about if this is something I want as well. Looking on how automatic updates behaves on my Windows 10, it seems that 2022 is the year, I am abandoning Windows. And Stadia here is least thing I am worried about, because I don't.
Starlink's latency is probably barely OK for multiplayer games, but not for remote rendering.
GeForce Now and Stadia didn't have the games I wanted to play so I wasn't able to use them.
I guess you didn't live through the "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" era, which later became the "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft" era that seems to be ending.
Teams is an abomination; something to be cast into the fires of Mount Doom. Slack is miles better for everyday communication.
(I did move the goalposts from "deployment size" to "quality").