Something strange happened during the Microsoft Build 2015 keynote on Wednesday. I suddenly felt excited to use Windows again. It just looks so good.
I’m actually really excited to use Windows again. Looking so so good.
#NoThisIsNotAPaidForTweet— Hilton Tarrant (@hiltontarrant) April 29, 2015
And I’m not the only one. I’m seeing friends and acquaintances on Twitter expressing very similar sentiments.
Is it Satya Nadella – someone who’s breathed new life into the lumbering Redmond giant? Is it the fact that Microsoft actually gets the cloud? That Azure has caught up and suddenly sprinted past its competitors? That Windows 10 has finally managed to ‘unconfuse’ me from that schizophrenic mess of live tiles and a start menu interface that never made sense. The early Windows Phone stuff in 2010 and 2011 was so promising, but fell short. Is it that Windows 10 will be free? Surely not.
Having the foresight (and guts?) to turn Office into a platform of its own? Apps inside Office… Yes, Microsoft demoed Uber integration right inside the Outlook calendar. Not just on the desktop, but in the browser and natively on any device (including an iPad). That just locks down its hold on the enterprise ever further.
Maybe it’s HoloLens, something that is quite literally mind-blowing (and yes, that word is overused these days) – a completely new paradigm for computing. Think Google Glass, but with an actual job-to-be-done, as per Professor Clay Christensen’s landmark theory. Yes, there’s entire future to still be invented, but the few use cases demoed (engineering, learning, communication) were truly compelling.
Amazing. #Build2015 #HoloLens pic.twitter.com/RmcODgbxDF
— Microsoft Developer (@msdev) April 29, 2015
Most impressively, Microsoft also seems to have taken the most-hated web browser on the planet and spun it 180 degrees. Microsoft Edge even got nods from non-Windows developers in the keynote audience…
Today, Microsoft delivered a (largely) focused message. What’s astonishing is that more than one of the announcements made today could have been a keynote of their own. Instead, they were crammed into the marathon 178-minute Build keynote. This isn’t only true of Microsoft. It’s the same with Apple and with Google. This is the speed at which the world is now moving.
This is Satya Nadella’s Microsoft. It’s hard to believe he’s only been CEO for 15 months.
He’s only just hitting his stride.
Perhaps it’s not only that Microsoft is cool again, but that it’s relevant. – Hilton
(Disclosure: And no, I’m not on a press tour. For the first time in a decade, I’m a paying tech conference attendee. Not that that should matter.)