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Microsoft Feared Mac Vs. Vista In '05
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"
Which is just plain wrong. Consumers don't upgrade operating systems. They use the one that came with the box until they need a new box. Techno-nerds and enterprises upgrade operating syatems. In the case of Vista, enterprises have stayed away in droves.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Microsoft knows this and they know all about Tiger, they copied alot of it. What Microsoft was concerned about was rogue press saying things like Mossberg wrote. Anyone who knows technology over the last 20 years knows that Microsoft is a marketing company before they are a tech company and this email just shows that. 'Don't let the public know there is something better' is all this says and that is SOP for Microsoft. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
"A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column]."
That suggests that when Microsoft received reports of a competitor offering a superior product that executives regarded the reports themselves as the problem and not Microsoft's deficient offerings; Warrier writes of addressing Mossberg's column, not of addressing the problems with Microsoft's planning and development processes which led them to an inferior market position.
Blaming someone outside the organization is smart corporate politics because it does not make enemies inside your own organization who might retaliate against you. But then maybe that is the problem with Microsoft management, that it is full of shrewd corporate ladder-climbing types instead of inspired artists and engineers.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Microsoft didn't sell the reason people needed Vista. They polished a dashboard up with some glassy looking graphics and slapped a pricetag on it. That's not relevant to 99% of users. Most people use their computers for the internet, or for writing letters. Could Vista do anything like that better than XP? No. And there's your answer.
If Microsoft wanted to sell Vista, they should have examined what the main concerns are of people and acted on them. Most people don't care about what is happening behind the scenes... that's what nerds are for. Most people care about what the computers can do for them.
Now if they wanted to sell Vista, they should have got Jerry Seinfeld to do the Vista commercials from the beginning, and keep Bill Gates out of them. Seinfeld would simply sell the reason people need to upgrade to Vista which is for security and for expanded multi-media capability.
Jerry could have also addressed most of the user objections to Vista openly and with a dash of dry comedy that people tend to admire in the comedian.
But they chose to do a faceless monolithic kind of ad campaign, to combat Apple's ads but that actually made people think about how good Apple is compared to windows which was the kicker-backfire!!!! OMG yes.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Why does Microsoft, and apparently Apple, believe what we've been waiting for is more features? I don't know a single consumer who is dissatisfied with their box because it lacks this or that feature. The consumers I know who are unhappy are unhappy with the user experience: box does something unexpected, unexplained, mysterious, unintended, or just plain wrong. So I don't understand the features war. I would think the vast majority of us aren't looking for the box to do something new and wonderful, but to stop doing things that are weird and obstructive.
It's news because it's not every day that we get to be party to these discussions. We're only finding out because of a law suit. As a linux/mac fanboy, I would be just as interested if not more so if we got the read the same discussions about Steve Jobs and Co. discussing how they were going to beat windows, and I read about the GNU and linux guru discussions about this subject when they make the front page of slashdot. (See, linux is open source, so the discussions are easier to access. :) ) So it's news, I'm interested in it.
Also, there's a sense, at least to many on slashdot, that Microsoft owes its position not to good software, but to its monopoly status. Thus, if the MS execs are concerned about the competition, it means maybe the end of the windows domination is that much closer.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
If Apple would simply allow their OS to run on generic PCs, Microsoft would have a true competitor.
If Apple would allow their OS to run on generic PCs, they would fall into a support hell.
In general, funding oversight should focus on inputs and outputs, not process.
Assuming that the committee will know better than each and every researcher is a bad idea, and inputs and outputs are easy to measure, meaning that monitoring them will probably require less bureaucracy than making sure that all dollars are spent in 'approved' ways.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
MAC = Media Access Control
Mac = Short for Apple Macintosh.
My friend, I fear that the computer you chose to use will have no bearing on what people already think of your intelligence.