While MS may have lost loyal users who had used Office 2003 or 199X for years when they introduced the Ribbon, but they gained a bunch of new users. The goal was doubtless to 'freshen' Microsoft's (or more specifically Office's) image, and it worked at least for a while. It is not uncommon to see applications trying to be user-friendly blatantly rip off the Ribbon, for example WinZip (not to be confused with WinRAR or 7zip). There are many reasons why this is a silly, useless thing to do, but the sentiment was definitely out there: people were overreaching when they said that Microsoft had revolutionized the word processor user experience, but that still shows that many people reacted favourably towards the ribbon, and that is real. I don't think it really affected the long-term perception or fate of MS, though. Two things still keeping the behemoth in place are an odd sort of nostalgia, back to the time when larger parts of the general public still thought of Microsoft as technologically-minded innovators, like recent articles about Bing Translate now featuring Klingon (emphasizing that the Microsoft engineer who worked on the project was fluent) hearken to; and tech deals - it is just one extra step to have to install something else over Windows rather than over a blank disck, which takes no more practical effort but has the added difficulty of convincing yourself that the advantage of having Linux or whatever is greater than the convenience of just using the substandard but already available OS, Windows (and this is for the consumer that even knows of Linux, and how right it's price is, and it's advantages). -Arlo James Barnes
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
