For a company that primarily specializes (in addition to cloud computing solutions) in software, Microsoft is remarkably terrible at committing to its software.
Since I fell in love with technology, I’ve stubbornly convinced myself that I love Microsoft’s software products, but years of disappointments and the arrival of a new smartphone (the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 we reviewed) have broken the spell — I’m tired of fighting Microsoft to use its products.
I’m taking this opportunity to partially divorce myself from my Microsoft dependency, because I genuinely can’t trust this company to actually care about anything that doesn’t translate to short-term profit. All that matters to the current Microsoft is its bottom line, and that apparently isn’t Windows, Office, Xbox, or any of the other products I’ve relied on for so long.
My love/hate relationship with Microsoft
I was always a nerd, but my journey as a tech nerd began somewhere around 2013-2024. I no longer consider myself a “baby” in the industry, but I still started a lot later than many of my coworkers and editors.
Back then, I was mostly falling in love with the ambitious rise of the flexible and unapologetically chaotic Android on mobile devices, the stable and admittedly boring domination of Windows on laptops and desktops, and the intricacies of high-end audio equipment (at the time far out of reach for my teenage budget).
When I knew I’d be getting my very first smartphone, my wishlist included devices like the Motorola Moto X and Nokia Lumia 1520. What I got? The entry-level Nokia Lumia 520 — and I adored that tiny phone and its square tiles.
I've invested a lot of years in the Microsoft ecosystem, but Microsoft has made me regret that multiple times.
My family had an original Xbox growing up, and my grandparents impulsively bought my siblings and I an Xbox 360 S. The combination of these factors converted me into a hardcore Microsoft fan, and the more I dived into the company’s consumer offerings, the deeper I fell.
I changed my angsty Gmail for Outlook, paid for a Microsoft 365 subscription, and wholeheartedly committed to Windows, including buying the Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, a Surface Pro 4, and an Xbox One S across the span of a few years. It’s cliché to say, but I feel it in my heart — those were the golden days for me.
I eventually had to give up my beloved Windows phone for Android (we all know why), my job drew me away from Surface to companies like Lenovo and HP, and I became disillusioned with many of Microsoft’s other products… even the steadfast Xbox brand that held a tight grip on my heart has shaken my faith. So what happened?
Like people avoiding therapy, Microsoft hates commitment
Microsoft is so massive, it regularly deals with numbers too vast for any human to properly visualize. Microsoft is on track to become worth $4 trillion, highlighting the immense success the company continues to see with Azure and the cloud.
Because of the sheer size of this corporate entity, Microsoft has put a lot of eggs into a lot of baskets. There aren't many areas in technology Microsoft hasn't dabbled in, but there are just as many abandoned experiments, dying projects, and forgotten initiatives.
Microsoft has the resources and expertise to pursue the latest trend or attempt to create new ones, but it's also famously terrible at actually following through on anything that isn't an immediate success.
There are literally multiple websites dedicated to tracking the Microsoft Graveyard, with everything that Microsoft has killed (and it's not even fully up to date). Windows phones, Windows Mixed Reality, Skype, Surface Duo, Cortana, Kinect, Zune — I could go on forever, and I've not even mentioned all the canceled video games and shuttered studios.
Despite being one of the largest and most successful companies, Microsoft is seemingly incapable of creating lasting consumer-facing products.
Half-baked first attempts, obvious lack of continued investment, constant backtracking and overhauling, unnecessary cannibalization from overlapping Microsoft projects, inconsistent and unreliable communication, shameless trend-chasing — Microsoft suffers from it all and never learns from its mistakes, leading to a lot of shattered potential (and a whole lot of lost jobs).
Microsoft is allergic to commitment, unless your name is "cloud" or "AI."
Microsoft is allergic to commitment, unless you're an enterprise, the cloud, or artificial intelligence. Yes, we can't forget Microsoft's messy charge into AI — much of which no one even asked for, but that hasn't stopped Microsoft from pushing its employees to rely on its AI tools.
We recently put together a list of 5 good products that it feels like Microsoft has forgotten about, and not even 24 hours later, it was announced that Microsoft shut down its Movies & TV service completely. You can't make this stuff up.
Like my colleague Jez Corden said, Microsoft has made it impossible to be a fan of Surface, Xbox, and Windows itself.
It's time to make some space — hello, new phone!
Don't get me wrong, I understand that failures, shutdowns, and pivots are inevitable in the tech industry, and companies have to make difficult decisions to survive. Google has its own graveyard that's just as depressingly impressive as Microsoft's.
The difference is that Google's ecosystem feels stable for consumers, while Microsoft has drifted from disappointment to disappointment, oftentimes forgetting to even tell us that it abandoned yet another product.
Microsoft is still going to play a massive role in my life, but I'm honestly tired of fighting this company to be a fan. It feels like Microsoft doesn't actually want to be a consumer-facing business, and it certainly hasn't earned an iota of trust from consumers in recent memory.
This company feels fickle and directionless, driven only by the greed of its higher-ups and shareholders. When Microsoft fails, though, it's the consumers and regular employees who suffer, because the executive paychecks certainly don't.
I'm honestly tired of fighting Microsoft just to be a fan.
So, now that I'm getting a shiny Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 to replace my trusty Fold5, I'm going to cut a bit of Microsoft out. I'll still use Xbox, Microsoft Edge, Outlook, OneDrive, Phone Link, and Microsoft Authenticator, but everything else is out.
No more fighting with Microsoft Launcher not working properly or playing nice with foldables. No more waiting for the SwiftKey keyboard to get a meaningful update that isn't some random AI injection. No more wading through the bloated OneNote app that doesn't even have my Sticky Notes.
I'm dropping To Do, I'm certainly never using Microsoft Teams (it's just bad), and Microsoft has done nothing to actually convince me to care about Copilot or any of its other AI things. There are lots of other random Microsoft experiments that I'm no longer paying attention to, as well.
I'll be relying more on Samsung, Google, and other third-party solutions for my software needs moving forward, and I don't have much faith in Microsoft to regain my trust in the future.
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