That mindset is why every tech product is turning to shit. They're not consumer focused. All Nadella cares about is making the stock price go up and extracting value.

At some point we went through the looking glass where the stock is the product.

Is this a new phenomena? Stocks aren't new. Why is the modern market treated like this? Did Henry Ford make his vehicles shitter to increase his stock value?

Companies with insufficient competition treated customers badly always. Antitrust enforcement weakened since the 1970s. And investors demanded short term gains.

It's the private equity era. Much like how legislative behaviour is now dictated by the wealthy even to the point of contradicting the will/desire of informed voters, corporate behaviour is now dictated by private equity investment to the point of contradicting the demand from informed user/consumers.

> Did Henry Ford make his vehicles shitter to increase his stock value?

You should really really read about Dodge vs. Ford case. It all started with that case.

It’s the same with Apple. Sure, their product is proprietary, but the producers are not the only ones with a stake in it.

Stock price does not equal good software. Quite the opposite because your trying to exploit the end user for more profit.

I'm assuming they were referring to a non-monetary goal.

Through Azure, Office, LinkedIn, gaming. Not so much Windows.

They're fucking up even gaming, that awful gamebar is a pain to disable. Had to do it from powershell and even after it's gone Alt + W won't work in games.

I have a de-bloated win11 build running on my gaming rig, and I still occasionally get the prompt "no program to open link: ms-gamebar://" or something similar

Indeed! That's why they moved Windows to the B team.

Sorry you’re getting downvoted. Ideally downvoting would be for unconstructive posts, or posts with good info / good contributions that are presented unconstructively.

You’re just being controversial.

That’s not a strong enough reason to downvote someone.

Thanks for pointing this out. I don't participate in HN discussions like I used to because the HN crowd and I don't agree on much, and down-votes is not an engaging counter-point.

It’s possible the HN crowd has more lurkers lately with things getting more controversial.. maybe seeing your voice more would help bring balance.

After all, you might be part of a silent majority!

Fwiw I think it’s perfectly fine if people downvote me if they disagree with me. I think that’s an unavoidable effect of having up/down arrows, regardless of what the rules say. If i say something controversial I expect some downvotes. I just hadn't expressed myself clearly enough initially, everybody took me as a “money makes right” capitalist (not a weird assumption, theres plenty of those here on HN) and fortunately could still edit to clarify.