Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time. ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go something like this:
"Windows Vista isn?t really as bad as they say. Honest. Please don?t be mad at us. We promise our next operating system will be better. Pinky swear."
Those aren?t exactly the words they use, but it is certainly the tone of the ad that Microsoft has started running on its site. I can?t find it, but Ed Bott at ZDNet did and has a copy here. It shows a painting of a tall ship with the headline ?At one point everyone thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows Vista.?
That promotion leads to a page that acknowledges that Vista had problems:
"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your early encounter. Printers didn?t work. Games felt sluggish. You told us?loudly at times?that the latest Windows wasn?t always living up to your high expectations for a Microsoft product."
It takes a minute to figure out where to find Microsoft?s response to this criticism: You need to click some arrows on the page. (Why can?t Microsoft use the plus Icon popularized by Google and lots of others?)
The company asserts that it is now compatible with the vast bulk of software and hardware. It also boasts that Vista is more secure, faster, uses less energy and is even ?sexier.?
"Sure, Windows Vista gets a lot of compliments on its aesthetics. But its style serves an important purpose: to put everything within a click?s reach and make you more productive."
Microsoft, is probably right that Vista gets a bit of a bum rap. Lots of people find that Vista works fine and is an improvement over Windows XP. I use Vista on a home computer with little trouble. (And no, I don?t hate Microsoft, despite what some commenters say. I am a big fan of Word 2007, and I even pay for Microsoft?s OneCare anti-virus and backup software.)
But this is still a dreadful place for Microsoft to be. It is fighting Google on one side and Apple on the other. And both of those companies have flaws, products that don?t quite work right, have gaps and disappoint users. But both Google and Apple have products that you don?t need to be told to notice they are sexy. That changes how people see the more prosaic parts of their product lines and makes people far more open to considering new products.
Even if you are a big fan of Microsoft, consider which you would rather read about first: a something new from Google, Apple or Microsoft?
After spending $500 million, Microsoft might be able to convince people that Windows Vista is not awful. But just because you can show the earth is not flat, doesn?t mean you will rule the new world.
Vista is an ME re-run. From the users POV the best thing they could do is not release the next OS until they get it right. REALLY get it right.
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Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff
How many chances do they get? Remember how long they worked on Longhorn (Longwait)? And when marketing started to kick ass and demand a release, they started stripping out promised features (Shorthorn)?
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Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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I recently setup a brand new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop for a customer. It came with Vista. I updated it to the latest and installed AOL
9.0VR (downloaded from the AOL web pile). When I ran a full scan using Avast 4.2, it found 2 or 3 "virusus" in the AOL installation files. They were probably false alarms, but who knows.
Anyway, you don't need a real virus to find a virus on your computer.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
That won't happen. Users only buy upgrades in the vain hope that the next release will fix the bugs of the current version. Of course that never happens because features and functions are added faster than bugs get fixed. There's always hope, but it never seems to happen.
If Microsoft actually did release something that was bug free, nobody would upgrade to subsequent versions, resulting in a predictable revenue loss. Therefore, it is beneficial to Microsoft (and other software vendors) to intentionally leave a few major bugs in their current products.
How it works:
It takes 18 months from initial release for a major software product to be worth buying. Microsoft seems to take a bit longer at about 24 months.
Subsequent upgrades add bloat, fix a few old bugs, add more bugs, slow down the machine, and require additional RAM and diskspace.
After about 3-5 years, the products usually stabilize into a consistent level of mediocrity. The product doesn't really get better, but the customers learn to tolerate its idiocyncracies and bugs. If left alone, the customers get very comfortable with the product and refuse to tolerate any furthur changes. This is bad for selling updates, so new bugs, instabilities, and preformance issues need to be introduced in the latest updates, to inspire such conservative customers to update.
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Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I would add that, in order to further discourage customers who refuse to pour more money into "upgrades", Microsoft mixes together must-have security fixes with updates that are designed to drive the customer to a newer version, mixing them together with almost identical descriptions. Later, they announce an end of support so that, for example, a security flaw in code that is shared by Windows 2000 and Windows XP only gets patched for the Windows XP users. In the Linux world, a patch is made available to all versions that share code, even if the code has not changed since version 1.0.
Here is Bill Gates himself, confirming that what you describe as...
"Users only buy upgrades in the vain hope that the next release will fix the bugs of the current version. Of course that never happens because features and functions are added faster than bugs get fixed. There's always hope, but it never seems to happen."
Microsoft Code Has No Bugs (that Microsoft cares about)
Source:
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In this interview, Big Bill gets distracted and reveals his contempt for you, his loyal customer.
In an interview for German weekly magazine FOCUS (nr. 43, October 23, 1995, pages 206-212), Microsoft`s Mr. Bill Gates has made some statements about software quality of MS products. [See executive summary, below.] After lengthy inquiries about how PCs should and could be used (including some angry comments on some questions which Mr. Gates evidently did not like), the interviewer comes to storage requirements of MS products; it ends with the following dispute:
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FOCUS: Every new release of a software which has less bugs than the older one is also more complex and has more features...
Gates: No, only if that is what will sell!
FOCUS: But...
Gates: Only if that is what will sell! We've never done a piece of software unless we thought it would sell. That's why everything we do in software ... it's really amazing: We do it because we think that's what customers want. That's why we do what we do.
FOCUS: But on the other hand - you would say: Okay, folks, if you don't like these new features, stay with the old version, and keep the bugs?
Gates: No! We have lots and lots of competitors. The new version -- it's not there to fix bugs. That's not the reason we come up with a new version.
FOCUS: But there are bugs an any version which people would really like to have fixed.
Gates: No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.
FOCUS: Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word swallows the page numbers of a document which I printed a couple of times with page numbers. If I complain to anybody they say "Well, upgrade from version 5.11 to 6.0."
Gates: No! If you really think there's a bug you should report a bug. Maybe you're not using it properly. Have you ever considered that?
FOCUS: Yeah, I did...
Gates: It turns out Luddites don't know how to use software properly, so you should look into that. -- The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in lots of new things that people are asking for. And so, in no sense, is stability a reason to move to a new version. It's never a reason.
FOCUS: How come I keep being told by computer vendors "Well, we know about this bug, wait till the next version is there, it'll be fixed?" I hear this all the time. How come? If you're telling me there are no significant bugs in software and there is no reason to do a new version?
Gates: No. I'm saying: We don't do a new version to fix bugs. We don't. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say "Would you buy a new version because of bugs?" You won't get a single person to say they'd buy a new version because of bugs. We'd never be able to sell a release on that basis.
FOCUS: Probably you have other contacts to your software developers. But if Mister Anybody, like me, calls up a store or a support line and says, "Hey listen, there's a bug" ...
90 percent of the time I get the answer "Oh, well, yeah, that's not too bad, wait to the next version and it'll be fixed." That's how the system works.
Gates: Guess how much we spend on phone calls every year.
FOCUS: Hm, a couple of million dollars?
Gates:
500 million dollars a year. We take every one of these phone calls and classify them. That's the input we use to do the next version. So it's like the worlds biggest feedback loop. People call in -- we decide what to do on it. Do you want to know what percentage of those phonecalls relates to bugs in the software? Less than one percent.
FOCUS: So people call in to say "Hey listen, I would love to have this and that feature?"
Gates: Actually, that's about five percent. Most of them call to get advice on how to do a certain thing with the software. That's the primary thing. We could have you sit and listen to these phone calls. There are millions and millions of them. It really isn't statistically significant. Sit in and listen to Win 95 calls, sit in and listen to Word calls, and wait, just wait for weeks and weeks for someone to call in and say "Oh, I found a bug in this thing."...
FOCUS: So where does this common feeling of frustration come from that unites all the PC users? Everybody experiences it every day that these things simply don't work like they should.
Gates: Because it's cool. It's like, "Yeah, been there done that - oh, yeah, I know that bug." - I can understand that phenomenon sociologically, not technically.
-----
Executive Summary:
So...
Bug reports are statistically, therefore actually, unimportant;
If you want a bug fixed, you are (by definition) in the minority;
Microsoft doesn't care about bugs because bug fixes are not a significant source of revenue;
If you think you found a bug, it really only means you're incompetent;
Anyway, people only complain about bugs to show how cool they are, not because bugs cause any real problems.
--
Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff
Well, in my case MS have just bought themselves another 3 years of development time since I will be staying with XP on my next computer, due this August. I only upgrade an OS on hardware changeover.
--
Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff
Why anyone would use either when Open Office and Firefox are available free is beyond me.
--
Dirk
http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff
Thanks. Fame and fortune will surely follow. I'll have it framed.
Yep. With statistics and sufficient creativity, I can make numbers say almost anything. If I also write the interpretation of those numbers, I can do even more.
Most companies maintain a bug list or database not so that they can schedule fixes. They do so that they don't waste internal resources on fixing known bugs.
It's not just Microsoft. It's like that with most software companies.
I've had quite a few arguments with support and development people trying to report what I consider to be a bug. In many cases, the employees and zealots consider themselves the first line of defense for "their" product. It has to be really bad and easily reproduce able to get them to consider it a bug. In addition, there's considerable truth to what Bill says about user incompetence. I've had to slog my way through a huge mass of incoherent and irreproducible bug lists. In my opinion, the overwhelming number of reports are not bugs, but user problems. A substantial number are also just opinions on how things should operate (unexpected behavior) and are very subjective.
However, that may apply to the GUM (great unwashed masses), but should not apply to Microsoft's own beta testers. I was involved in the rather huge Windoze 95 beta test. Thousands of users submitted bug reports and found problems during the tests. I spent considerable effort documenting bugs. When the product arrived, most of the bugs we found were still there. It took years for some of them to be fixed.
Software companies expect a predictable number of bug reports from their customers, beta testers, and developers. If the bug reports don't appear in the designated quantities, they are deemed to be useless loafers.
Yeah, but that was 13 years ago, when things were somewhat different. I don't have any direct contact with Microsoft and am not familiar with how they operate. However, I was involved with SCO for many years. If you want bugs fixed, SCO had to allocate the resources. There was a small group that did maintenance on existing code, but the really big fixes and added features required that big OEMs (IBM, Compaq, HP, etc) to pay SCO to fix them.
For a while, I lobbied to have only the minor and easy bugs fixed. The product was looking rather shabby, with a large number of easily fixed bugs becoming apparently permanent. As Bill Gates clumsily hinted, nobody wants to pay to have those fixed. I suggested that instead of concentrating on the really gross bugs, that require considerable resources, testing, regression testing, documentation, errata notices, install packaging, and time. Anything that could be fixed without affecting other parts of the OS, should be fixed without the attendant bureaucratic overhead for perhaps 3 or 4 months. In other words, a general cleanup effort. It didn't sell to management because it was decided that the allegedly necessary change documentation cost would exceed the value of the bug fixes. It would also impact the schedule for fixing the revenue generating big bugs. Grumble.
I have some rather specific issues with Vista. However, they're not really bugs. They're design decisions that I consider to be a mix of stupid, sloppy, inept, and not necessary. For example, look in the root directory of a Vista computah. There's the usual "Program Files" directory. There's also a new "ProgramData" directory. That's fine, but what happened to the space between the words "Program" and "Data"? Apparently, someone discovered that environment variables can't have spaces in them, so they correctly solved the problem by removing the space from the environment variable, but also incorrectly removed it from the directory name. Not a big deal, and probably doesn't affect anything other than my sense of aesthetics, but is indicative of some rather shabby design. There's plenty more of the same in Vista, but I don't wanna unload here.
It will be interesting to see if a few million dollars wasted on public relations will improve the customers perception of Vista. I predict it will backfire and be perceived as damage control and making excuses.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
By itself, Word also gets a bad rap. It's actually very, very powerful software - and that is its downfall. Most people (even programmers) don't need that kind of power in a word processor.
I eventually took the plunge and got familiar with the Word object model. After that, the whole package started to look a lot more "friendly", even inviting. Word actually has the largest object model of any of the business apps, even Excel. Which is counterintuitive, at first glance.
But I agree. For the guy who justs wants to shoot off a quick business letter, the first time Word gets a few settings out of whack, it can be quite tempting to throw the whole thing out the window. No pun intended.
I remember people standing in the lines in the front of the stores at the release day of Windows 95. MS XBOX and optical mouse caused some hullabaloo, too.
Vista is an attempt to do the things finally in the right way, when everything had gone too far for making changes.
I am perfectly all right with the functionality of MS Office 97. The further releases only introduced the incompatibilities.
What I dislike is that MS is selling not the utility software but the BS concepts of "cyberspace" and "the digital style of life".
Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant
Everything on a windows machine is viral. Do you like to be spied on all the time ? Most people don't ! Are you happy to have your computing behaviour monitored ? The number of pages you sent to your printer ! How many Emails you replied to... etc etc !
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