My First Day as Microsoft CEO

Greetings,

First of all, thank you all for being here today, in my 800 bedroom cabin atop the humble foot hill called Mt. Everest. I hope your parachutes all provided a smooth arrival?  It is an honor having you here to listen to me pontificate about my vision for Microsoft, now that I’ve been voted Ultimate Excecutive Officer, or UEO. I plan to outline changes which I feel will help launch our fine organization to the “next level” (air quotes).

Before I continue, I’d like to take a moment to thank Satya for all his hard work.  He exemplifies all of the qualities and traits a CEO and leader should have, of which I have none.  But that’s beside the point.  Actually, he doesn’t yet know I’m the new CEO or UEO, he thinks the plane he’s on is taking him to meet Oprah for an interview, but I paid the pilot to fly in circles over some place near Antarctica, and I had all the door locks changed.  Please thank Satya, if you ever see him again, for the open bar.

So, first things first:

As of today, all former prefixes like “Active”, “Live”, “One”, “Visual” and so on are being changed to “Awesome”.  So it’s Awesome Directory, Awesome Studio, and Awesome Drive.  Get used to it.  And from now on, no product will have a name that takes more than 5 syllables to pronounce.

Licensing is going to change as well.  A new program called “4th grade review” is going live today.  We will randomly-select a 4th grade student in a random school in Kenya.  They will read the EULA to their classmates, and if even one student looks confused, they get to rewrite it.

Servicing channels are going to be renamed yet one more time.  They went from “Current Branch” to “Semi-Annual blah blah”.  But now we’ll have the following names:

• “I hate change!” (formerly LTSB/LTSC) is now once every 5 years
• “What’s the hurry?” (formerly CBB/Semi-Annual) is now once every year
• “I kind of miss getting updates” (formerly CB/Semi-Annual Targeted) is now twice a year
• and “Where the fuck are my updates?!” (formerly Insider Preview) is now every week

Changes to Windows

Windows 10 “Enterprise” SKU images will no longer include games or media services apps.  In fact, we won’t even allow those to be installed.  If you want them, buy the Home edition.  The Professional edition will offer it as an option, but not installed by default.

The Control Panel will be entirely migrated into Settings by the time I leave the stage and run out the back door.

We have a new edition called Windows “In-Your-Face” edition, which will be entirely FREE as long as you agree to so much telemetry and advertisements that you might forget what apps you were trying to launch.

All application installations will have to be MSI, C2R, App-V or portable .Exe only.  No more legacy garbage.  Stubborn app vendors can suck it.

Other Products

Office 365 is now going to be entirely browser-based.  No more installations.  Every single feature you had in the C2R and MSI packages will be in the new browser-app.  You’re welcome.

A new driver “service” (air quotes again) is being released.  The code name is Device Optimization Universal Configuration Hardware Emulation, or just DOUCHE for short.  All vendor drivers will have to check into our portal and we will manage a true PnP experience without any manual intervention required, ever.  As in never, or ever, or which ever never you ever never prefer.  Vendors can no longer install drivers without coming through us.  PnP is now going to work the way we envisioned it should work, back when we were eating mushrooms atop some mountain in Chile.  Good times (drifts off with a dazed look)…. Oh, yeah, it’ll be like a toaster.  Plug it in, and watch it burn the toast.

More 

All versioning will be consistent across all products from now on.  No more 10 for this, 2017 for that, or 2.3.5550.0000.1000 for the other. There’s going to be one version format only.  We haven’t settled on it yet, but whoever wins the beer funnel challenge gets to pick it.

We signed a deal with Jeff B. to get Alexa installed on every Windows SKU.  We will be including an app that lets you pay to watch Alexa and Cortana fight in a 3D virtual cage of death, only with our Hololens product, obviously, and all proceeds going to charity.

SQL Server is now renamed to Awesome Database Server.

All external web portals like Fast Track, Partner, Azure, O365, and so on are being merged into one web portal and one credential set across all of them.  And speaking of credentials, you can now open multiple Azure instances in a single browser using separate credentials.  You’re welcome.

We will also start a new customer loyalty program next week.  The plan is simple.  Once a day, the first person to show up in front of a Microsoft store with a bullhorn, shouting “Java sucks and so does Flash” gets a t-shirt.

I’d like to continue with more, but I was just told that Satya’s plane is on the way back so I have to meet my Uber ride out back.  Sorry I don’t have time for questions. Thank you!