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Microsoft's New Mantra - It Just Works

Posted by Zonk on from the we'll-see-when-we-see dept.

bonch writes "Fortune has a story about Microsoft's new philosophy--'It just works.' Jim Allchin details various planned Longhorn features to meet this goal, such as auto-defragmenting in the background, the ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously, and the new ad campaign Microsoft is running to get people excited about Windows. Mentions are also made of the competition from Linux, OS X Tiger, and Google."

5 of 985 comments (clear)

  1. Slogans for the prior versions of Windows by AllTheGoodNamesWereT · · Score: 1, Redundant
    Microsoft has been using "It just works" as the slogan for Windows since prior to the release of Windows XP. Here's a comment that was posted to rec.humor.funny in May 2001:
    Microsoft Windows slogans
    wc@speakeasy.net (John B. Williston)

    After first seeing Microsoft's slogan for its upcoming Windows XP operating system, "it just works," I couldn't help wondering: what were the slogans for all the previous releases? After thinking about it for a while, they became obvious.

    Windows 1.0: Good joke, eh?
    Windows 2.0: Still funny, isn't it?
    Windows 286: Yeah, we're still kidding.
    Windows 386: Going boldly where Desqview has been for years.
    Windows 3.0: It's finally worth buying!
    Windows 3.1: It's finally worth using!
    Windows 95: Going boldly where the Mac has been for years.
    Windows 98: More usable! Less stable!
    Windows 98SE: More stable! Less usable!
    Windows ME: Less usable AND less stable!
    NT 1.0: Give me more hardware! NOW!!!
    NT 2.0: Dammit, I said MORE HARDWARE!!! NOW!!!!
    NT 3.0: Which part of "more hardware" do you not understand?
    NT 3.5: With enough hardware, I'd work. Honest.
    NT 4.0: Does less than Win98 with twice the hardware at one-half the speed.
    Windows 2K: Works almost as well as Windows 98! Honest!
    Windows XP: It just works.
  2. Files in more than 1 folder? in linux long time! by homerito · · Score: 1, Redundant

    ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously

    Isn't that the same as?

    ln -s

    Is been in unix/linux for decades now...

  3. shared files... by micromuncher · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Another M$ innovation ...

    link -s file

    --
    /\/\icro/\/\uncher
  4. Holy shit! by humungusfungus · · Score: 0, Redundant

    "the ability to have files in more than one folder simultaneously"

    They've re-invented hard links! The daring! The innovation!

    --
    No sig.
  5. Re:Well... this should work for microshaft, too... by davidsyes · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Too bad erudition doesn't always lead to employment. Hence, I am in the process of building a screenplay/manuscript tracking application which I hope to release under dual-licensing conditions.

    I'd **prefer** it release to F/LOSS users, but since I'm building it (either as a deployable app or as a prototype by which SO/OO.o developers can try to mimic to help give Linux/Open Source users an addition "flagship product") in Lotus Approach (IANAD (I am NOT a developer)), I have to get my timing right. I also have to copyright it officially, initiate an expensive patent pending process (not to obstruct others from what I am doing, but to prevent the microsofts of the screenplay software industry from trying to pinch off pieces and ideas and then patent them themselves... this way, my ideas are open to all, or to none, but not to just a few greedsters or opportunists...) and STILL try to get the attention of the F/LOSS/Open Source database and GUI tools creators.

    Far too many Linux-based apps out there have a "geek edge" (I am not necessarily any better, just frustrated...). It's not apparent to me that there is a mogul or philanthropist or IBM of sorts out there acting as a "best runner-up clearinghouse" for deserving OpenSource/FLOSS apps that are whiled away out of passion but sequestered to privacy out of fear of being exploited by others and to the economic exclusion of the inventor.

    I hope to release this thing in the next 3 months and then get feedback on it. I tend to think of myself as an "end-user-oriented" database too developer, but being not a programmer, my focus is on "cool", "neat" and "functional". Hence I stick with Lotus Approach, Lotus WordPro, and other parts of Lotus SmartSuite. I am sorely upset that IBM and Lotus aren't allowing the OpenSource community to have pieces of SmartSuite as a challenge to improve the languishing suite. It ought to be criminal that a suite as nice as SmartSuite is sequestered only to windoze land.

    For IBM to port or allow external adaptation of SmartSuite for Open Source users would be, simply/simplistically, along these lines:

    1. Target skilled, available, passionate developers who know windoze land and its strengths and weaknesses from a non-zealot perspective compared to Linux/F/LOSS and who are passionate about getting more robust and polished apps to Linux users and corporations

    2. Set up and deliver some 25 to 50 laptops preloaded with Wine/Linux and Lotus SmartSuite (alternatively, windoze 98 in Mandrake or Fedora or Debian set up with Win4Lin...)-- these laptops would have to be stripped of data-passing ports or interfaces, electromagnetically sealed, data/key-stroked, and running the minimum of apps, excluding ANY development tools.

    3. Insist the developers who opt into the program are to use the laptops for up to 5 hours per day or about 20 hours per week, randomly, but log in to the Internet accounts they have, surf, and correspond via documents created in Lotus WordPro, calculate things in Lotus 1-2-3, and develop ad-hoc database apps based on pre-canned activities by IBM and Lotus to ensure the user/dev/tester is forced to develop and think like a hybrid user/developer within the limitations of SmartSuite (eschewing SO/OO.o... Corel and ms orifice...). The MAIN goal here is that the developers get a feel for the capabilities and limitations of Lotus SmartSuite as compared to OO.o/SO, Corel's suite, and ms orifice.

    4. As the users wrap up their 2-3 week testing period, the laptops are returned to IBM, inspected for tampering (you KNOW geeks WILL try to crack or nose around the box...), and the level of individual ingenuity and collaborative work integration is evaluated, IBM then selects some 25 engineer candidates to be whittled down to 15 developers who agree to be flown out to an IBM-sanitized/cleanroom site, with minimal to non-existent facilities for outside visitors. (This is to reduce or eliminate the risk of "external contamination".)

    5. IBM/Lotus bring from their own or from a cons

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"