Edible Apple

Yahoo reports on the development process of Windows 7:

To design Windows 7, Microsoft analyzed billions of pieces of data. It studied exactly what PC users do in front of their screens. It tallied hundreds of thousands of Windows surveys. It got feedback from people all over the world who tried different versions of the software.

One of the new features in Windows 7 will give users the ability to re-organize the order of running applications in the taskbar.  The reason why?

Microsoft’s research showed Vista users commonly launching a series of programs, then closing and immediately reopening some. Microsoft realized that these people wanted their programs to appear in the same order on the task bar every time.

Really? Microsoft needed user feedback to realize that this limitation has been a nuisance since, oh I don’t know,  Windows 95?!

In keeping up with the good-natured Microsoft ribbing today, this is a pretty apt quote explaining why Vista seemed like a convoluted mess at times.

Another bit of dysfunction stemmed from Microsoft’s corporate structure. Windows employs thousands of people divided into groups that focus on search, security, networking, printing – the list goes on. With Vista and earlier versions, each group built the best solutions for its isolated goals. For example, two separate groups added similar-looking search boxes to Vista’s control panels and its Start menu. Yet typing the same query into both boxes produced completely different results.

Okay, time to put down the haterade.