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Microsoft's Battle For Software Mindshare
chemicaloli writes to mention a BBC article about Microsoft's battle to convince users they need to buy new software. The article explores the changes to the UI in Microsoft Office 2007. Along with the changes prompted by the adoption of the 'Ribbon', the article also looks at some of the software's new features. From the article: "'One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough,' said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Office 2007 goes on sale to business on 30 November, the same date new operating system Vista is launched. 'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 — the software doesn't really expire,' said Mr Capossela, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Business Division. Many large businesses will have Office 2007 delivered as part of existing IT contracts but small business and individual consumers will need persuading to make the change."
They didn't.
That's why they died.
Curiously, the ones using Project determined which other mice would die.
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'Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire,'
...Yet.
From a sales standpoint, Microsoft is pretty smart with Office. They always make sure it's 100% backwards compitable, but add enough changes to the .doc and .xls format to ensure that a document from the new version cannot always be opened in a prior version. At the companies I've worked for, this has typically been the driving force of upgrading.
... after a while there's real benefit in upgrading vs. replying to hundreds of messages with "Can you please save this in an earlier version of Word, I haven't upgraded yet". As long as Microsoft can give away or sell enough O2007 copies to large corporate accounts, there will be a trickle down effect to the rest of corporate America.
There's nothing more annoying than receiving an e-mail with a Word 2003 document and not being able to open it in Word 2000
Huh? Don't mind me, I'm just the new guy.
Whiter than white? Like #GGGGGG?
(old joke, I know).
Upgrading Office isn't about getting new features. It's about being able to read the new .doc and .ppt files that you get from other companies in your e-mail. I use Open Office for this, thus breaking the endless cycle of unneeded upgrades. However, I have to deal with font-mismatches, and occasional glitches, like embedded Visual Basic macros that don't work. I haven't seen a really innovative feature in Word/Power Point/Excel in years. There was nothing wrong with Office 97.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
This just goes to show what I've suspected for a while... there is a problem with the software industry in general. The goals of a software company ultimately have a contradiction with the goals of software itself: The software company must fight its own products.
This is one of the reasons that, although I am a programmer by nature and by trade, I have a really hard time with the idea of starting up some kind of software company. I'd rather other people take those risks and hire me. As I see it, there are two problems with starting a software company:
1) Your product is inherently easily copied, giving it low value no matter how good it is. In fact, the more popular it is, the more likely it will be pirated, thus the better it is the LESS value it potentially has. This is definitely counter-intuitive.
2) Once you create a product that does what it needs to do and is easy to use, what then? Software eventually always reaches a plateau, and it becomes a question of "now what?" At this point software companies start to add "features" that bloat the software bundle and aren't wanted by customers, in the hopes that they've at least acquired a dedicated customer base that will buy the new version simply because it is "the newest version".
No, as I see it, it's better to do software in your spare time, and release it for free. Not because I'm some kind of altruist, but just because I see it as being a much more viable way to focus on the "product" rather than the "profits".
To clarify -- I'm certainly not any kind of anti-profit advocate. I'm a capitalist. I just don't see software and other information-based services as fitting into a capitalist model very well. As soon as you are a software company, you must focus on getting customers to upgrade, rather than on making sure they have a good experience with your product. Any industry in which it's in a company's interests to make sure its own customers are having a bad experience is in contradiction with itself, as far as I can see. I think the same thing goes for anti-virus products -- it's in their interests to make sure there are viruses around. They have built up their flagship products on the existance of something evil. There is simply something wrong with that.
This is why I tend to trust open-source products. I know that they have no reason to exist except to "get the job done", and therefore they do what they are meant to, and nothing else.
I used to believe this too.
I believed that all you had to do was give people the chance to learn the basics of what they were doing with a PC, the basics of what is actually happening when they open a file or copy a file, or start a program, and some magic light would go on in their heads and they'd "get it."
Then I started working in desktop support.
This was back in 1990. There was no web and no email at work (except for a few executives who used Procomm to connect at 33.6 kbps to the corporate mail server). Most companies had adopted PCs for use, but many, like mine, were still integrating them into their daily business tasks. We were experimenting with this newfangled thing called "desktop publishing," and the accounting department was debating the relative merits of Excel for Windows 3.1 vs. Lotus 123 for DOS. Some holdouts insisted on using Quattro Pro.
I was young and idealistic. I thought that the only problem most people had was lack of familiarity with these new, powerful tools. I thought a little education would fix it.
Boy was I wrong.
I gave seminars, I took time to explain what was happening every time I fixed a problem for someone. I wrote simple memos with pictures -- "How to Format A Floppy Disk" was one of my masterworks, as was "There are two kinds of hard disks -- those that have failed and those that will fail. So make backups!". For five years, I tried, and I believed I could make a difference.
I gave up and switched jobs. But I learned something from the experience.
I learned that the problem is twofold: 1.) the vast majority of the population doesn't care how a computer works and 2.) the vast majority also lacks the mentality required to understand what's happening inside a computer. I'm not saying these are unintelligent people; I'm saying there's a certain mindset that you need to understand what's happening in your computer, and you either have it or you don't. Just like some people really get off on balancing a ledger, or closing a sale. I've worked with janitors who went from not knowing how to turn the machine on to writing Macromedia Director presentations in less than a year, and I've worked with lawyers who were baffled at the complexities of saving a file to a floppy (and who never seemed to quite get the hang of it).
Call me cynical, but my conclusion is that's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be, regardless of how much education people receive.
The need to compel people to adopt a solution is not, in itself, an argument that the solution is unnecessary. Applying game theory, even given a dominant strategy consumers may actually choose the weaker strategy because they lack the cognitive level required to understand which strategy is better.
Many consumers will choose what is familiar over what is better, even given a clear-cut advantage. For example, many dial-up users will refuse to switch to a broadband connection, even if the offer has all of the following properties:
This type of decision making can also be observed in solar panel sales. A consumer who can afford a $25,000 solar panel setup and has the government offer a $25,000 subsidy (effectively paying $0 for a lifetime reduction of 80% of their energy bill), will still not have it installed. This behavior is a result of 3 related fallacies. The "Burden of Proof", "Appeal to Tradition", and "Fallacy of Pride".
Burden of Proof - It is much harder for Microsoft to prove Office 97 is inferior to Office 2007 than it is for a user of Office 97 to prove Office 2007 doesn't meet their needs as effectively as Office 97 does. This is because Microsoft does not know the needs of the user in question, only the user does, and therefore the burden of proof is on the person making the assessment.
Appeal to Tradition fallacy - This is what I've always had and it has always worked for me, therefore it must be the dominant strategy.
Fallacy of Pride - People want to believe the initial choice they made was intelligent. Changing strategies would imply that their previous choice was not intelligent. Therefore, the intelligent choice is to not change strategies.