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Microsoft Concedes Vista Launch Problems
notdagreatbrain writes "Maximum PC just posted a lengthy feature looking back at the myriad problems that went into Microsoft's 6 billion dollar failure of the Vista launch. Aside from running benchmarks comparing Vista at launch how its performing now, they also found a Microsoft exec who was willing to speak frankly about Vista. The Microsoft source blamed bad drivers from GPU companies and printer companies for the majority of Vista's early stability problems and described User Account Control as poorly implemented but defended it as necessary for the continued health of the Windows platform. He assailed OEM system builders for including bad, buggy, or just plain useless apps on their machines in exchange for a few bucks on the back end. Finally he conceded that Apple appeals to more and more consumers because the hardware is slick, the price is OK, and Apple doesn't annoy its customers (or allow third parties to)."
There's no question Apple is improving its brand.
However, the reason for Apple's popularity is a massive generalisation:
The hardware is slick, but it seems to be getting worse (or being exposed to more scrutiny) as it becomes more and more mainstream. The hardware also has little to do with MS and its products success or failure, in the sense that it is perfectly possible to spend Apple-type dollars on a Windows PC and get a very solid, high performance machine.
The price is ok - I won't restart that debate but it remains the case that Apple is typically somewhat pricier for the equivalent hardware.
But the last part really annoys me - I have been an Apple customer from time to time and they annoy the absolute crap out of me. They deny problems, use proprietary software, aggressively attack anyone who attempts to open up their hardware platforms, and generally act in a self-righteous manner.
What Microsoft needs to realise is not that Apple is gaining on it because it "just works", it is gaining because it works at all, unlike many aspects of Vista.* There are plenty of ways to attack Apple, but unless you have a product that is at least competently made there is no way you can do it.
A case in point is the revised Zune - it looks like in many ways (other than MS's bullshit DRM/proprietary interface stuff) it is the equal of the equivalent ipod. If MS can do the same with its OS, then suddenly it has a product as good as Apple and 80%+ of the PC market already in its corner.
* and yes, I do know what I'm talking about, I have done several Vista uninstalls which have dramatically improved stability and performance of new laptops
Read Pynchon.
No, he admitted that UAC was poorly implemented.
Microsoft has no control over the shit quality of drivers released by hardware manufacturers.
They have no control over the shit quality of apps loaded by OEMs.
I can personally attest that everything he said is true. I own an Acer laptop, which ran like bloody hell with the OEM shartware installed. I also own an HP laptop, which ran like bloody hell with the OEM shartware installed. Upon formatting both drives, partitioning them more sanely and reinstalling Vista (Home Premium) on both, using the included Anytime Upgrade (or Reinstall) DVD, Vista ran wonderfully.
I still installed Kubuntu on both. Windows is nice to have around if you ever need it (BIOS updates on the HP, or calling for tech support on either machine, for example) but really not right for daily use for me.
The Acer has Intel graphics. All is good and will with Vista there.
I've had the HP (ok, it was originally a Compaq, which they warranty-replaced with a better HP model when it completely failed -- though both have the same video hardware) for a year and a half, now. For the first 9 months, the nVidia drivers were crashing the damn thing fairly regularly. It wasn't until 9 months ago that they released a driver that didn't crash this laptop.
I also run a desktop, which I use for music production, running Windows-only software (it runs in winE, but not as a fully functional application). I run Vista Ultimate (free from MS for participating in a "spyware" program, which I installed on a laptop which was used only for YouTube and other cutesy flash crap) on this machine. I've had both ATI and nVidia cards in this machine. The ATI still doesn't have a workable driver. The nVidia, same as with the HP laptop, no good driver until 9mo ago.
I purchased an HP printer for that desktop system. It literally took me a week to get the damned thing to install.
Other than that, I actually like Vista Ultimate. Now that I have stable video drivers and the printer actually works, neither of which were Microsoft's fault, it's wonderful. Being a retail install, it never had any OEM shartware installed on it.
Runs smooth and quick.
And yes, UAC is poorly implemented. That's Microsoft's fault, all the freaking way.
$0.02 from a full-time Linux user and fanboi. Vista has its place, even in my home. My HTPC runs Linux, though; the DRM in Vista still scares me.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
2GB isn't even enough. I bought a Lenovo laptop where 2GB was "suggested". Ran like crap until I updated to 4GB... which is the max the motherboard can handle.
So much for my theory that paying more will lead to a longer lifespan for my laptop. Vista smells like WinME - maybe it's getting to be like Star Trek movies, you should avoid every other (or in this case every third) release...
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
An interesting read, but this telling comment was on the last page:
Yes, the June conversation was dazzlingly candid, and we were looking forward to an equally blunt follow-up meeting--a scheduled late-July on-the-record interview with Erik Lustig, a senior product manager responsible for Windows Fundamentals. But then the universe as we know it returned to normal, and Microsoft became Microsoft again. Our interview with Lustig was overseen by a PR representative and was filled with the type of carefully measured language that we've come to expect from Microsoft when discussing "challenges." A "challenge" is Microsoftese for anything that isn't going according to the company's carefully choreographed plans. In the text that follows, we've combined the information conveyed during the mid-June background conversation with decoded translations of the "on the record" conversation we had in July. The contrast between the two interviews is stunning.
The part where Microsoft was open to admit mistakes - even if done with back-handed compliments to Apple and slaps to other developers - began to sound like a breath of fresh air.
But the article itself is highly qualitative and lacks coherence, as if we're missing the director's cut. (Yes, I am comparing a bad movie as superior to this written word - knowingly.)
Nothing to see here, move along.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Why would you want a new kernel in it? I do kernel development on a daily basis and the NT kernel is by far the best in popular use.
XNU is an ungodly slow mess of code with so many redundant APIs at every level that it's not even funny. Take a look at L4 to see microkernels done right -- hint, it was created to be a less retarded Mach.
Linux is poorly documented, has little to no code reuse, no real design (leading to modules being rewritten to fix bugs and design flaws while introducing even more), a ton of race conditions (causing stability and security issues), and scales very poorly in an SMP setting (the BKL is a joke).
Solaris is quite nice, but it's not used nearly enough. I've heard good things about the kernels in the BSDs, but I don't have enough experience to talk about them.
A lot of Windows is horrendous, but people talking about the kernel as this terrible thing need to learn what the NT kernel actually does and assign blame where blame it's deserved -- base services and shittacular drivers.
Disconnect and self-destruct, one bullet at a time.
But why not pick at least a few users that didn't like to talk about how much Vista sucked? The "after" part made sense: the previous haters were now lovers. Still, if you leave after the first part of the commercial ("Bathroom break!"), all you'd have heard was how bad Vista is.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I entirely agree with you that Vista requires far more system resources than it ought to, and as usual, Microsoft has understated in the official requirements the amount of computing power you really need to run Vista smoothly. This isn't new for Microsoft either, they have a long history of grossly understating minimum requirements, presumably to maximise potential upgrades. I remember the Windows 95 requirements stating that 4MB (8MB? This is a long time ago) was enough to run a fully functional Windows 95 system. Well, yes, it was, until you actually tried to load an application inside the operating system, at which point everything would grind to a halt.
But a significant portion of the blame lies with the OEM's as well, the people who choose to sell 'x' system with Vista pre-installed aren't complete idiots, as much as we'd like to think they are. They in all likeliness know that performance will be anything from sub-optimal to atrocious, but they sell it anyway, because it will ultimately net them a profit, even if it comes at the cost of the customers enjoyment.
I think you're simplifying the objective of "The Mojave Experiment", while speed is definitely one of the largest complaints against Vista (and one of the most valid), it's certainly not the only one. Other prominent ones, for example, include the perceived application compatibility and the UAC stigma (Opening Notepad will result in a UAC confirmation dialogue). I'm not entirely familiar with Mojave mind-you, I'm not really the target audience ;) But I'd be very surprised if performance was the only criticism they are trying to address through it.
As for the Vista pre-cache, honestly, I'm not personally a big fan of it. I understand why it exists and I think much of the reasoning behind it is sound, but it's not ideal for many computer usage scenarios. I frequently dabble in virtualisation and have found that the SuperFetch functionality has an effect on VM performance, ranging from minor to severe, depending of course on what exactly the VM is doing. Thus, I tend to disable the SuperFetch service.
It's more than just RAM problems. I'm typing this from a 4G XPS 1530. It's a great machine. Runs Ubunutu 8.04 and XP wonderfully, but the pre-installed Vista is a piece of crap. At this moment I'm connecting via the Gigabit wired connection because wireless is unstable. Wired is SO 2005!!!!!
Seriously though, the wireless connection drops every couple minutes. Googling informs that it could be a bunch of things and I've tried each one. These include switching to high performance mode (so the wireless card doesn't get turned off to conserve battery) to upgrading the access point so it understands some new power save feature, to disabling IPv6 settings. None work.
Even with 4G I get those freezes. Googling indicates it could be SuperFetch. It might be the virus scan. It might be my graphics card crashing and silently restarting. Doesn't matter what the culprit is, it's just freaking annoying to be typing something and have the machine pause for 10 to 20 seconds at a time.
I agree with you that Microsoft shouldn't have OKed 512M configurations, but I think that was probably the least of their problems. At least with a minimum RAM configuration you could upgrade.
*Shrug!* I'm not the OP, but I know what I'd do: set them up with Ubuntu or Kubuntu (your choice) and let them go after setting up their connection and email. Odds are that after a week or two they won't have any more questions for you unless something goes wrong, and that will be rare. I know; my sister's a Windows refugee on Ubuntu, I'm her tech support, and she needs less help now than she did on Win2k because with Linux, It Just Works.
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Printer drivers are bloated in part because of the OCR code and reference images that they're forced to include. Seriously; try scanning and printing an American dollar bill, and see what happens.
If you are talking about the Mojave Project commercial, they didn't let you touch the computer. I know, I was one of them. All they did was show some of the basics built in the OS, like how quickly you could navigate through folders full of jpegs. But no 3rd party apps. It looked like bare bones, tweaked install on a top end HP laptop.
Anyway, I told them my wife has Vista on her HP and she hates it compared to her older Toshiba with XP. So they show me what they originally billed as their new OS in beta, code named Mojave, and asked if it seemed faster than my experience with Vista. I said yes, and I'm sure many others did too, and that's probably what they ran with in their ads.
What they didn't care to hear from me was that at the end of the demo, after I gave pretty good comments about the demo, they revealed that they demo'd vanilla Vista, not some new OS. So I ripped into them saying that then their installation sucks because my wife's stock computer is much slower and their GUI sucks because she has to relearn everything after getting comfortable with XP. They asked if I would be willing to put Vista on my other PCs and I said possibly, if they gave me free copies, otherwise they'll remain dual boot Ubuntu/XP machines. I don't think they used those comments...
The hell Microsoft doesn't have control over this. This is Microsoft's fault and it is rewriting history and denying the obvious to say otherwise.
Let's start with the fact that Microsoft execs overrode *internal* objections to shipping Vista, and they consciously certified marginal Intel systems as "vista-ready" when they knew they weren't. There's no reason they couldn't have made more of a push to have drivers ready, and they could have publicly identified the hardware that was incompatible. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they made a deliberate decision to push the new OS onto platforms for which it wasn't appropriate, and before the appropriate drivers existed.
What about the systems loaded with crapola? Microsoft has been bullying systems manufacturers for years. Microsoft could have required that in order to get the cheap wholesale price, the systems makers had to distribute their malware some other way (e.g., a rebate coupon if you run a CD and install all the crap). This issue simply wasn't on Microsoft's radar screen. It wasn't on their radar screen because the home user is not their target market. They care about 2000+ seat enterprise installations, and those folks buy machines that are built to order and precertified, and don't have the garbage software and buggy drivers.
Microsoft missed several things this time around, including the netbook boom (oops, guess we can't kill XP), the google/apple boom (turns out that home users now value reliability, simplicity, design, and enterprise capabilities, such as synchronized calendars, outside of the enterprise), and the internet's capability to severely punish arrogance and incompetence. They didn't realize that a lousy home experience was going to spill back into the enterprise.
This is a company that has $18 billion in annual profit on $60 billion in annual sales. They have the resources to get stuff done properly. What they do not have these days is competent management. They are on the way down. They are firmly ensconced in the corporate world, it will take a long time, but the direction is finally clear. I wish they were on the way up and making our computing lives better, but they aren't.
UAC is NOT poorly implemented. UAC implementation is much better than Linux's sudo. The programs are poorly implemented assuming administrative privileges for everything!