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Tales From Behind Microsoft's Firewall
lizzyben writes "CIOinsight.com is hosting an interview with Robert Scoble on life after Microsoft. 'By blogging for the world's largest software company, Scoble changed the way companies communicate with the world and became an industry celebrity in the process.' He talks about MS culture, senior management and the benefits of blogging from inside the belly of the software beast." More from the article: "We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, 'I hate Microsoft,' I could see that and link to it, or I could participate in their comments, or send them an e-mail saying, 'What's going on?' And that told those people that someone was listening to their rants, that this is a different world than the one in which no one listens. It was an invaluable focus group that Microsoft didn't have to pay for."
If I was behind a Microsoft firewall, I'd just feel insecure ;)
Is it just me or is it not going to upgrade to Vista in here?
"We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, 'I hate Microsoft,' I could see that and link to it"
That's sure to be a short list
What are "CIO" and "Insight" doing in the same word anyway? Are they leveraging an optimized something or another?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Robert,
You may have responded to some rants on how Microsoft products work (or don't), and that is all fine and dandy, as it was appreciated. However, the problems are *still* there. I still get the little hardware wizard that wants to help me when I plug in a new mouse, or Windows will still notify me that there is either a new network found or that my computer is at a security risk because of virus subscription expiration in the middle of a Powerpoint presentation!
It's stuff like that (and much more) that are driving people to alternatives
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Why didn't he just read Slashdot? Faster, cheaper, and probably holds the core user/developer base that would have the most to say on the subject of Microsoft software. Face it: even the most virulent criticism of MS here would contain enough useful information that if Gates & Co. actually paid attention, they'd find innumerable ideas for improving their wares. And all for free.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Actually, I beg to differ on the characterization that the world's blog is being considered like a big focus group. When a real focus group pans a product idea, the maker doesn't try to rationalize the current design, the maker drops it or improves it and starts over. Blog writers are howling into the wind, and it doesn't matter if they are heard or not: Microsoft will just go on doing what Microsoft wants to do, because they're big enough and the market is big enough that they feel they can ignore the whiners.
[
"...we'd have a one-shot amazing piece of software that would set a new standard for useability and reliability."
But I doubt we'd have any interoperability.
Microsoft have tried to support a *real* O/S, Xenix. I used this on AT class hardware many years ago and this got me hooked on Unix and other derivatives (AT&T SvR4.3, Minix, SCO Xenix, SCO Unix, Novell / SCO Unixware, and obviously Linux). ( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix for a brief history of Microsoft's involvment in Unix) But, as you note, they seem to be primarily a marketing company, and it's in their best interest to promote the O/S that sells and gives them the greatest return for their investment.
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." ~A. Einstein
I have one of the "I hate Microsoft" web sites he linked to. I used to read Scoble's blog and comment on it occasionally before he become famous. As soon as his blog started to get any traction he stopped posting anything intelligent. He became a pure evangelist who claimed Microsoft should listen to the haters, then bashed anything critical of Microsoft. And in the end, not much if anything changed. Microsoft used him to try to improve their image. And having this fake power Scoble became full of himself. He's a tool. Microsoft still ignores critics.
Developers: We can use your help.
...I never quite understood Scoble's impact or why so many people considered his tenure at Microsoft so important. I can't think of a single Microsoft product that has significantly changed as a result of his interceding on some poor user's behalf. It was more like a grand, and public, experiment in listening to the users. Considering they let him leave and especially since they haven't replaced him, it says they've heard enough.
I think your observation is flawed. Throwing money at problems almost never efficiently solves them. The fact that MS has been so successful indicates they've made very good use of their money, really. If they were able to spend their "marketing" cash on OS development instead, they'd (in an ideal world) end up with a teriffic OS, but one that most people weren't aware of or convinced to switch to.
It's hardly a surprise to learn that deliberately publicised information is being found and read - that's the whole point, surely? I remember reading a comment from the BBC News web team a while ago saying pretty much the same thing - people were saying it was scary when the Beeb team replied to them. Er...why?
Cheers,
Ian
Microsoft did hold back the industry for about three decades, but they finally dropped the DOS based line of operating systems with XP.
We can still complain about their illegal and unethical business practises, and of course specific software glitches. But today, their OSes are as real as any other provider.
Perhaps they don't want to realise they have a choice. They aren't like us, computers aren't "fun" for them, they are just a tool. What OS they use has little meaning to them, but they wouldn't want to have to learn another, even if it were better. Having to choose an OS would only confuse and anger them. Sorry, I love Linux as much as the next rabid slashdotter, but people who care about what OS they use are a tiny minority.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They have a vast collection of tremendously bright people. I think they've just reached the limits of how massive a monolithic system can be maintained, even given effectively infinite coding muscle. The UNIX model, on the other hand, doesn't run into this issue; the layers provide well-defined interfaces, and apart from that, remain blissfuly ignorant of each other. This design bothers a lot of people, but it does having the overwhelming advantage of scaling much better than the MS approach.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
NT is a real OS. It's just saddled with a bunch of buggy insecure CRAP in userland, including userland that gets too friendly with parts that should be privileged (I'm looking at you IE) and a poorly-documented afterthought of a commandline toolchain born of a culture that actively disdained anything not graphical. Underneath all the cruft is a damn nice OS.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Microsoft licensed it from AT&T and marketed their derivative (which included some BSD enhancements) as Xenix, a full-blown UNIX for 16-bit x86 computers. For a while, it had the majority of the UNIX market share. Xenix was eventually dropped by Microsoft (and sold to the old SCO) when they started developing OS/2.
At the moment, Microsoft are working on Singularity, an OS using type theory as the basis for security (based on similar ideas to the JNode operating system).
Over the last three decades, Microsoft has developed three 'real' operating systems; Xenix, OS/2, and Singularity. They have developed Windows NT, which is quite a nice OS buried under a pile of userspace crap written for backwards compatibility. The closest thing to a real OS that they have been able to sell is NT, and that's because of all the backwards compatibility junk, rather than the strength of the OS.
The moral of the story? You can build a better mousetrap, and the market will decide it's rubbish because it doesn't come in purple.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Not to mention that an OS like Linux would be a disaster for your average user. That's the problem with the views given at sites like this. They are coming from people who are generally very technically adept whereas your average user is not.
>>> They always say "What is Linux?" After I explain this, they say "What is an operating system?" And after I explain this, they always say "Don't I already have one of those?
I spent ages trying to switch people too. Now I just show them the 'door' and they are the ones that have to go through it. Linux requires an enthusiastic user if that user is the one who is going to administer it. Its usually easy to set up (Ubuntu) and once its set up it works fine day to day, but like with anything (cars/plumbing/Ikea products) it takes a certain amount of 'competence' to make adjustments. While you have more control over Linux than Windows, with that control comes great responsibility, and some users are just not cut out for that.
twitter fails to understand that this is a public forum, and expressing one's opinions will eventually result in one's opinions being questioned in one way or another. Most of the people who "troll" twitter are simply requesting that he qualify his remarks, which more often than not are simply hysterical FUD and misguided attempts at "evangelism", which in his head are somehow good for the free software community.
twitter acuses anyone who does not toe his line of being "M$ PR astroturfers", tries to spread outrageous FUD left and right and then links to things that happened seven years ago to try to prove that Microsoft is out to get him. This kind of behavior should not be rewarded.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Apple appears to have a pretty good strategy at the moment of taking over all the fun things that talk to your computer one by one until Microsoft is completely surrounded.
Vista as a release, product and beta program is vastly different and superior to any other Microsoft OS. I mean public builds, public scrutiny, nearly a quarter million beta testers and release and release of consistent updates.
That's identical to XP and 2000, just with more beta testers. There's really no change at all with Vista's testing and public scrutiny. As for a vastly different OS, they made vastly different OSs with 95 and NT, so this really isn't anything new either.
Microsoft was forced to release the Xbox in a different way than they are used to. It was a completely new and different market and they were the underdog. It had nothing to do with public feedback or demands from users. They pushed into a market the only way possible. And they're still losing ($).
Microsoft has not changed at all. They've had the same business model for over 25 years. They've had only two departments (currently only 2 products) ever turn a profit. They've been eating up competitor companies for two decades. They put out more PR people to interact on forums so their customers feel better but the results are the same. Bug rates haven't drastically dropped and after their major security initiative a few years ago nothing is more secure. Read the blogs of Microsoft employees to see how management still doesn't listen. Both internally and externally nothing has significantly changed.
Developers: We can use your help.
I frequently hear that "Microsoft pays attention to the user." There is a lot of evidence, including this article, to support it. Microsoft products are constantly trying to give the users what they want.
The problem is, Microsoft has always tried to appease users instead of trying to help them.
The difference is expertise. Users know what they need to do, but they're mostly not software engineers or UI designers, so they aren't able to say exactly how their needs should be met. Even if they have some idea of what they want, they're very unlikely to be informed of the implications of what they're asking for.
A good UI designer has that expertise. He knows how to meet the user's needs. He doesn't just do whatever the user wants; he examines their complaint, realizes what the real need is, and programs an intelligent, usable solution. Then that solution is rigorously tested to ensure it is actually better than the situation it was aiming to solve.
Microsoft doesn't have this expertise. For all their supposedly brilliant minds, I see no evidence of their recognizing any principles of good software design. Instead, they just appease users by doing exactly what the user tells them to do, regardless of the consequences. Even if the addition makes things worse. They don't help the user; they pander to the user.
The user says, "There are too many items in these menus." Microsoft responds with "personalized menus." They addressed the complaint but they didn't help the situation at all. The real solution would be to better organize the menus. Any programmer can look at the menus of, say, Word, and intuit a better arrangement.
The user says, "There are too many icons in my system tray." Microsoft responds with a button that collapses the tray. This is a band-aid solution, which doesn't address the real problem: too many programs staying resident for no reason. The real solution would have been implementing a software certification program (they already have one for drivers, supposedly) that frowns on or utterly fails software which employs undesirable practices like cluttering up the system tray.
The user says, "There are too many things in the Programs menu." Microsoft responds by telling vendors to install programs under submenus which bear the vendor name. It's a horrendous solution. It's the last way anyone would choose to organize anything. No one organizes their books by publisher. Hardly anyone remembers the publisher of most of their books. And indeed, few people remember the publisher of their software.
The user says, "It takes too long to log in." Microsoft responds by showing the desktop before it is "ready"; you can move the mouse, and you can bring up some menus, but they will be forcibly unposted in a few seconds, and attempts to start applications are no faster than they would be if you waited for all the startup items to finish.
The user says, "Windows isn't intuitive, I should be able to know right away how to do things." Microsoft responds with Bob.
There are dozens more examples. The point is that I see Microsoft listening to users, but it is as if Microsoft has no experience with designing usable software, even after all these years. It could well be a case of management paralysis. I don't know the cause, but the symptoms are pretty consistent.
The Internet is full. Go away.