It took far more than that to earn the trust of consumers. Microsoft decided to sit back, collect rent on Windows/Office, and let other business do the hard work of customer service and let their customers deal with malware on their laptops.
Contrast with Apple, who put customer service front and center, opened stores that my parents could go to and talk to someone if they had a problem. They took ownership of the product. And now they are rewarded with the profits.
Microsoft had all the cash in the world to make it happen. But instead, they put Candy Crush in the start menu.
Weak take. Microsoft was very active with numerous mobile offerings -- Pen Computing, Windows Mobile, Tablet and Embedded Windows. You can debate why they ultimately failed -- too early, insufficient hardware, too Windows-centric -- but @billg was never content just "collecting rent" and not innovating, especially in mobile, internet, and connectivity.
Your bias is obvious when you describe MSFT as "collecting rent" (negative connotation) and AAPL as "rewarded with profits" (positive).
Even on the business side, Microsoft never understood or cared about their users (besides maybe Word and Excel users), and marketed towards CEOs and COMPANIES.
see: Sharepoint which is the most financially successful Microsoft product ever, yet every end user despises it.
They never tried or cared to work backwards from a consumer user or what they wanted, they just started from "how do we make billions of dollars from licensing fees".
And got rid of Pinball. :(
they're an OS developer and they can't spend a day figuring out a floating point bug?
maybe redirect some of the time integrating Candy Crush
> Hey everybody asking that the source code be released: The source code was licensed from another company. If you want the source code, you have to go ask them.
OK, which company?
> they're an OS developer and they can't spend a day figuring out a floating point bug?
Maybe it’s bad to argue by appeal to authority, but I take Raymond Chen’s side that it was a hard problem to debug in the time available over some internet sneering that it must have been easy, any day.
Well they haven't ported it in the decade since.
> in the time available
Same response.
They upped their game with the built in Windows Defender to the point where you don’t need third party AV because it’s rated so highly.
> Contrast with Apple, who put customer service front and center, opened stores that my parents could go to and talk to someone if they had a problem.
Like all the retail stores Microsoft opened, which people in this thread are saying provided a really good experience?
> Microsoft had all the cash in the world to make it happen. But instead, they put Candy Crush in the start menu.
Contrast with Apple who put sponsored results in the App Store and prevent you from deleting default apps in macOS Catalina? https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/dfetr4/comment/f32q81e
Yes, the Genius Bars are just fantastic! You make an appointment and then you get help from someone knowledgeable, in person, for free. And that person is authorized to accept repairs, etc.
The Big Idea of the Genius Bar is that it's there to help. It's not there to upsell like Geek Squad. It's not hoping you'll go away like typical CS reps. Its mandate really does seem to be "make Apple customers happy."