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Microsoft's Technical Glitches at CES Explained
Thomas Hawk writes "Sean Alexander is one of the guys on the Media Center Team at Microsoft who was involved in the CES presentation with Bill Gates. Sean also runs a very interesting blog called Addicted to Digital Media. Gates and Microsoft have taken a lot of heat over the course of the last two days for the technical glitches in Microsoft's presentation at CES. Sean offers us the rare glimpse on why the glitches happened and what it's like to be backstage at the big Microsoft presentation at CES. Very good follow up on Sean's part." Update: 01/08 19:03 GMT by T : Hawk writes with a static link to Alexander's story.
Has anybody ever seen an OSX box crap out on Steve? I have not heard of this or seen it.
Hmmmm.
Good excuses are still just good excuses.
JsD
The most interesting part of this story is that Alexander still has all his fingers left to type a report on the debacle.
The other most interesting part of this whole story is that the rest of us don't have Alexander, the MS Media Center Team, or the Windows source code. So when we get the BSoD, we're left scratching our heads. That's why we use Linux: with Open Source, we're as privileged as Bill Gates, to whom Windows is Open Source, because he's got the keys to the vault. His CES debacle should open everyone's eyes to the difference. Especially the "communists" in the global IT community who'd rather not spend more on Gates' closed source, and get less - and get hung out to dry with a crashed Windows app thousands of times a day, around the world.
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make install -not war
And notice that despite that, M$ still manages to be the software that is everyware.
Excuse my ignorance but, wouldn't it have been better to use a RF remote as oppose to an IR one?
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
Explaining what went wrong in the demo, and how environmental factors contributed to the glitch/crash, misses the point that the audience so obviously got:
Microsoft products have problems with crashing. Everyone who uses them knows that. Conan knows that. Bill knows that.
The amusement factor is that even the leader of the company knows that and experiences it in the most sensitive moments.
If you need software to run critical proceses in a nuke plant or an airplane, would you use Microsoft products?
All year I read about how Bill Gates is the wealthiest, most successful businessman in the world. I don't want to hear about internet access challenges when you are showing off technology that uses the internet. At that point in the keynote I began to wonder why is Microsoft even at the show (nevermind the keynote address)? Shouldn't the keynote be given by a person from Sony/Apple or some other vender that can deliver reliable hardware and software?
The Forza Motorsport demo should have been a slam dunk. Who wants their console gaming experience to be more like a pc experience? With the Xbox Microsoft is introducing unreliability in the gaming console market. Bravo.
They should only have a small booth in the back of CES in my opinion.
In my other life I do tech for a local community theatre group. Folks, anything can happen during a live performance. No matter how much you might prepare, stuff happens, and it happens in front of everybody. Power can fail, body mikes can break, lamps burn out, RFI can wreak havoc. You can't prepare for every eventuality, but you can handle the situation with grace.
It sounds to me like the Microsofties did fine.
Say what you will about Microsoft but I think it's really great the amount of communication that they are sharing with the public through blogs and posts like this. I think that to work somewhere where you can post a blog entry about technical glitches at CES and not get fired is pretty cool. Microsoft's most famous blogger, Robert Scoble, is often offering up posts that many might find to have "anti Microsoft" tones and he can do so without fear of losing his job. Sometimes criticism, even self criticism, can be a good thing and allows us all to improve. What impressed me the most about Sean's post is that it was allowed to happen at all. It adds a very human element to Microsoft and opens up a way for Microsoft and the public to directly communicate. I think the tollerance that Microsoft has and the willingness to be open about problems and issues with their software is refreshing and will make the company and the software that much better in the long run. Kudos to Sean and his team. They did a great job and pulled off a great recovery in one of those awkward technical moments that we've all been through ourselves in the past.
I've said this before many times... Apple isn't innovative, they are an early adopter. With a good track history of picking the right things to adopt.
Apple was the early adopter in the GUI/mouse controlled interface, 32-bit systems, 24-bit color displays, laser printing, powered serial bus, CD-ROM in every system, the sacking of the floppy, Combo driver (DVD read/CD writer) in every system, network capability in every system, 64-bit systems...
In none of these cases did Apple invent the technology, nor were they the first to market. In all cases Apple implemented the technology in their systems well before the technology/ideas started to be implemented elsewhere in the PC industry.
This is directed toward Sean. Great explanation of the events leading up to the hiccups. All-in-all, it sounds like you guys did a bang up job. I'm a bit curious, however: Roughly how long was that USB extension, and how much did the USB repeater cost? I've been a bit interested in that. And, as said above, cell phone fan is being, at a minimum, unduly harsh. I could almost understand a post like that if the reason for a failure was "we forgot to test" or "the media center PC had spyware". It was a live show. I've done live shows and demos, I've taught multiple classes, and I know how things love to go wrong. (Ugh... that senior citizen's MS Office class.... bad memories...) None the less, it sounds like you and your team handled it gracefully, with a witty ad-lib recovery (which, I might add, was appropriate because of Conan's presence). And right now, you're doing what Microsoft as a whole should be doing: being open and transparent, and explaining everything that could get wrong.
Your brain is not getting the message that the OS needs to be stable enough to handle changes like that. The proof of the kernel crash is the BSoD, regardless what caused it. What happens to the thousands of home users who do something like that, call Alexander? It's not acceptable to peddle something that fragile to unsophisticated users who just want to watch their movie in their darkened living room. Especially when they will *have* to use that piece of crap, because their movie is sold with DRM forcing them to play it on a Microsoft rig. Drop the baseless Microsoft apologies, flamer, and leave the "troll" accusations for mods who can't even post a hollow attack like yours.
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make install -not war
Unlike Apple, Microsoft does not have tight control over the hundreds of thousands of parts that go into the development of a PC. At least Apple can maintain a high level of quality control over hardware along with their OS.
Ahhhh, that explains why Linux is so stable. Torvalds rules over the hardware manufacturers with an iron fist!
(if you hadn't noticed, linux runs on much more varied hardware than windows does, and is much more stable. MS has no excuse anymore)