Microsoft: Building Windows 10 was like ordering pizza for 1.5B people
This statement may seem funny at first glance, but if we sit down and think about it a little more... how easy is it to order a pizza that would please 1.5 billion people? Probably not that easy after all!!! How Microsoft tackled the challenge of upgrading one of the most popular operating systems in the world.
When Microsoft set out to build Windows 10, the company had a challenge to face: the operating system needed to cater to the large portion of people who already use Windows.
“We were joking with our team, ordering pizza for 1.5 billion people,” said in his interview Mohammed Samji, one of the key program managers of the team at Microsoft.
In order to serve all these users, Microsoft wanted Windows 10 to work well for people regardless of the interface they chose. Windows 8 was criticized by people who believed that Microsoft had gone too far with functionality in order to address and adapt to tablet users. The company took some steps back with its changes in Windows 8.1, but this new upgraded version is designed to further attract traditional keyboard and mouse users as well as owners of touch devices..
To facilitate this, Microsoft has been working with external stakeholders on the operating system since January 2014, when the company reached out to some of its enterprise customers to begin discussing Windows 10 under the guise of privacy. Since then, the company has launched the WindowsInsider Program, which did not allow anyone to get a pre-release version of the operating system to try out.
«We have really changed the design”, said Samji. “We added and removed things based on feedback from our 5 million best friends who actually test the product for us»
There are now 5 million Windows Insiders, and their feedback has helped shape the operating system. Thanks to changes made based on feedback from Insiders, the operating system features elements more similar to Windows 7's Aero Glass, and a new Microsoft Edge browser includes a dark theme.
Overall, Samji said, Windows 10 should have something for everyone, including an interface that works well whether people use a mouse and keyboard, a touch screen, or some combination of both. The operating system's interface actually changes for the different interaction methods, which is important for the increasingly popular 2-in-1 devices that can behave like a laptop or tablet.
Reviews for Windows 10 appear mostly favorable so far, which is a positive sign for Microsoft's initial efforts.
Of course, it remains to see if users will accept the new operating system. Microsoft hopes that there will be 1.000.000.000 devices with Windows 10 within three years. Wednesday marks the first day the operating system will be officially available to consumers, and it will be interesting to see how many of them will participate.
