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A Microsoft-Speak Timeline - From Altair to Zune

Posted by Zonk on from the always-he-is-looking-to-the-future-to-the-horizon dept.

netbuzz writes "No company has had more to say about software over the past 30 years than Microsoft (for better or worse). How they've said it — the actual language used — reveals a lot about the company's evolution and is the focus of a new timeline. There's a look back at a 'tag cloud' provided by the Seattle P-I. In addition to analyzing the linguistics of about 90 documents, there are also links to such gems as Bill Gates' Playboy interview and his famous 'Open Letters to Hobbyists.' From the article: 'We're talking all the way from Altair to Zune, with stops along the way for every technology the company developed, bought or borrowed, right on through to current entanglements with Vista, Linux and Google. The tool allows for an at-a-glance view of company priorities as they evolve and shift.'"

3 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Keep on getting away with it... by PurifyYourMind · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just like with politicians or rich movie stars, there's a giant marketing machine that can erase past wrongs/lies/etc. by blasting the message of the week. Even when you catch them in a blatant lie, with evidence--like those Jon Stewart clips comparing what Bush said a few years ago to what he says now--they can shrug it off, because they know people will A) forget or B) only get exposed to the message of the week or C) be too cynical/disillusioned to act.

  2. My favorite quote by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    from TFA:

    "Who were we imitating . . . When we did the Altair BASIC? . . . And who were we imitating when we did Microsoft Word? When we did Excel? It's just nonsense"

    Bill, you must've been kidding. Those were exactly the same sort of imitiations that your company now accuses FOSS of and derides them for it.

  3. A lack of Progress? by Mystic+Silverfox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not that should surprise any of us here, but I found somewhat humorous anyway. In the time line, for November 1984 is an ad for MS Word. While praising "Spell"'s ability to have custom words added to a dictionary they used the words cryptococcosis and aepyornis as examples of technical terms that could be added. Interestingly enough, 20+ years later, they're both still "addable". If a company was aware of these words over 20 years ago why not add them to the built-in dictionary somewhere along the way?