Lion effect
According to the result of 1+1, we can divide three fields with completely different characteristics:
The first is the field of 1+1=2. The basic characteristic of this field is mechanical superposition. The objects in the field are independent of each other. This is true of many things before the Internet. This need not be detailed.
The second is the field of 1+1>2. The basic characteristic of this field is that it will have network effect. The more people use it, the better the effect will be. This is true of fax machines, the Internet, social networks, etc. When all your friends are WeChat users, it is inherently more valuable than just one or two friends.
The third kind is the field of 1+1<2. I checked it, and it seems that no one has named the characteristics of this field, so I temporarily named it the male lion effect. It means If two male lions want to form a group to fight like wolves, they can't do it, because they are pinched before they find the enemy, and the pinching is doomed to be no winner. This lion effect has not been paid much attention before, but in reality, there are many. For example, Mr. Lee Kaifu once said to Mr. Bill Gates that there are many smart people in Microsoft, but together they are negative effects. This is the lion effect mentioned above.
Compared with many people who think about products and platforms with network effect, they think much less from the perspective of lion effect, but such things are also true.
For example, when sailing ships compete with steam boats, people will also think of making a mixture of sailing ships and steam boats. But in fact, this thing has no prospects, because it is two different things. It requires ships to evolve in different directions. If you stack the two together, they will suppress each other's strengths. Similarly, gas electric hybrid vehicles must have no future.
This problem also exists in software. The superposition of two top-level portals usually does not become a super portal, but a top-level portal at most. Social networks and e-commerce are both top entry points. When they are combined, social networks are usually injured, and e-commerce cannot continue to play. Who can say that WeChat business does not hurt the circle of friends?
In this way, it is very obvious that if you want to stack two things into one product or platform, you must first ensure that there is no lion effect between them, or they will bite each other, and the parties involved will struggle to please. On this road, it is a congenital mistake, not a problem of execution.
Why is Microsoft running on the wrong road with Windows 10?
Since Windows 8, Microsoft has just chosen a direction where the lion effect is very obvious - it wants to use a set of interfaces to deal with both PC and mobile phones. This is most obvious in the back and forth of the start menu. In essence, it is not very different from the sail steam boat and hybrid vehicle.
To understand why PC interface requirements and mobile phone interface requirements bite each other like two male lions, it is necessary to review the development history of interface (UI).
Regardless of the interaction between paper tape and computer in prehistoric times, the development of the interface actually went through three stages:
In the first stage, people interacted with computers mainly by typing words, At this time, users should remember many common commands, such as the command to display the current directory, the command to sort the specified content, and so on. At this stage, the main interactive tool is the keyboard. It can be said that the main role of computers at this time is actually word processing. If you remember what Lei Jun did in those days, you will remember how brilliant WPS was in the era of DOS.
The second stage is the graphical user interface (GUI) that we are very familiar with now. The key to Microsoft's rise is a product that focuses on multitasking and fully implements the graphical user interface: Windows 95. At this stage, the main interaction tool is the mouse. The main function of the mouse is precise positioning and interaction. At this time, although games and other things began to appear, word processing was still the top priority. So in a very long time, Microsoft's two major cash cows were Windows and Office, and Office was just a heavy word related application.
The third stage is the touch screen that we are more familiar with. The landmark event should be the release of the iPhone in 2007. At this time, the main interaction tool becomes people's fingers. On mobile phones, word processing is no longer a priority. Entertainment and communication become the main lines, so precise positioning is not necessary. This can be well supported by the App that takes the most time each time.
It is very obvious that, On PC, it is necessary to enhance the experience of word processing, which requires precise positioning, but these two points are completely irrelevant on the touch screen. One is inclined to work and the other is inclined to life, which are two very different directions. What Microsoft is trying to do is to put these two things together to create the ultimate experience. The inevitable consequence of such a move is that both sides are not pleasing. for instance:
In order to avoid the difficulty of operation, Microsoft took great care to remove the start menu. As a result, it can accurately locate something that is said to be so useful. Why do you remove it? Finally, it is added back.
This kind of compromise and reconciliation should continue and be reflected everywhere. For example, this Cortana is very important in touch screen systems, but not so important in office systems. It undoubtedly needs compromise and reconciliation when dealing with it. Unfortunately, generally speaking, the final result of such compromise and reconciliation is thankless. It usually gives people a feeling of rigid grafting, and the actual benefits of the two are not obvious.
On the one hand, there is the lion effect. The product team needs to spend a lot of effort to tame the conflict between keyboard and mouse word processing, precise positioning and touch screen non word processing and no precise positioning; On the one hand, this kind of acclimatization is not always able to bring surprises at the level of user perception. How can we say that this is not a wild run in the wrong direction?
What kind of value does it bring to users?
If it is true that a compromise between the two biting directions can create unique value that users can perceive, then this compromise may be worthwhile, at least in a certain transitional period, the corresponding products will still have value. For example, hybrid cars can at least solve the problem that there is no place to drive a rechargeable car, which is very valuable when the charging system is not perfect. Therefore, hybrid cars may still be sold in the short term, even if they do not represent the future on the long-term axis.
However, the direction Microsoft is trying is different from that of hybrid vehicles. It is difficult for us to understand what unique value will be created by unifying these two interfaces. It seems that this is just a product of the inertial thinking in the PC era.
In the era of PC, the user interface is relatively complex, so if the changes between different versions are too large, users will be a little confused and do not know where to start, so it is very important to ensure the stability of the interface.
But if an extreme experience is really created on the touch screen, even if the interface is inconsistent, the learning cost is very low. Who needs to spend a lot of time learning to operate the iPhone? In this way, if the PC and mobile phone have the same set of interface system, there is not much benefit from the perspective of users.
This means that even in the short term, this is not a very valuable direction.
epilogue
On the whole, Windows 10 is unlikely to bring much change, and people are more likely to upgrade it as a habit. As I said at the beginning, it is more like a big stone, which will lift the starting ripple, but the ripple will soon subside. The internal reason is mainly the lion effect mentioned above, while the external reason is that it is often said that all the time, the world and the sky are working together, and heroes are not free. Microsoft really missed this wave.
