Creating Products that Frustrate – A Microsoft Case Study

Microsoft's Office 2013 and Windows 8 provide examples on products feature decisions that anger users. This is an ongoing list of surprises I encounter while using Microsoft's operating system and applications.

I build custom workstations to support my business, product and software development activities. Stability and consistency are very important. I don't like surprises or unexpected functionality when using my workstation.

Outlook 2013

• Migration of Outlook 2007 format PST file to Outlook 2013 caused loss of UTF-8 encoded text. Some of my Outlook contacts have Cyrillic-character notes. While these contacts appeared correctly in Outlook 2010, the Cyrillic language text now appears as white boxes in Outlook 2013. Being careless about your customer's data is a sure way to get them to hate you.
• How to undermine credibility by making Technical Mistakes with IMAP Folders

Office 2013 Upload Center

Microsoft added Skydrive integration to Office 2013, but it has not explained why I should use it. I don't trust my important, confidential Office documents to Microsoft's online storage. Microsoft does not have credible security capabilities. I do not want to use Skydrive. But Microsoft Office 2013 software thinks it knows my needs better than I do.

Adding a surprise feature to an important tool will make customers angry at a company's arrogance. I did not know about the "Upload Center" until a new icon appeared in my task bar. That is not the way to communicate new features to customers. To remove this unnecessary, undesired and surprise feature, I have to edit the Windows registry. Microsoft intentionally did not provide a simple way to turn off the "Upload Center" and wants to keep this software running in the background.