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Microsoft Moves To Quash Case, End E-mail Revelations
CWmike writes "Microsoft asked a federal judge yesterday to end the class-action lawsuit that has been the source of a treasure trove of embarrassing insider e-mails covering everything from managers badmouthing Intel to others on who worried how Vista would be compared to Apple's Mac OS X in 2005. In seeking to end the case, Microsoft argues the plaintiffs have not demonstrated that the lowest-priced version of Windows Vista was not the 'real' Vista, or showed that users paid more for PCs prior to the new operating system's launch because of the Vista Capable campaign."
Your obvious bias aside, this is a court case that is trying to prove that Microsoft has misled customers to their detriment. They haven't yet tried to prove there is any detriment to the consumer, and are struggling to prove that they were being deliberately misleading.
I'm not sure why you'd think going to Apple would be any better. You get the exact same business tactics, just a slightly more stylish computer.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I worked retail during the period "Vista ready" hit the shelves and only a very small handful of machines meet what our team of salespeople would consider to be truly capable of running vista. The whole thing was a total scam to sell as many computers as possible during the typical iteration lull; when a new product is about to release, nobody typically wants the old one. The seriously funny part of Vista's release is how few people wanted it, but MSFT acted like everyone was going to love it, thus proving how out of touch they are with reality. The new Seinfeld ads prove this to be true. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
...of selectively disabling features in a software product and selling a product at a lower price. It's a bit different for things in the real world, where there's a real physical cost involved with adding extra do-dads and features to products. But in software, it's just flipping a few bits to remove features you've already developed. The crazy thing is, it actually costs *more* to do this, as the company now has multiple versions of the product to package, distribute, and support.
I'd much prefer the game industry's model of "premium versions" of a game containing extra bonuses. The core product is the same, but if you want to pay for it, you can get a few extras, maybe a "making of" DVD, or a CD containing the soundtrack, books and figurines, stuff like that.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I sincerely hope MS get their feet held to the fire over this.
As an ex-IBMer, I have wondered for years why Microsoft is not drowning in antitrust cases (or the modern fashionable class actions). For the 13 years the second A-T case against IBM ran, every employee signed off the Business Conduct Guidelines every year, and knew that a breach of the BCG was cause for instant dismissal.
MS doesn't seem to think unethical behaviour is even noticed.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
"The evidence refutes Plaintiffs' claims that Windows Vista Home Basic cannot 'fairly' be called Windows Vista," Microsoft said in the motion for summary judgment.
And yet their own internal communications talk about what a piece of crap it is, and how the "Vista capable" thing will blow up in their face, mislead consumers, etc etc.
Ultimate-ly (smirk smirk), the lawyers are going to be the ones to hash out these definitions, and it'll be a damn shame if "the big lie" technique succeeds, but factually speaking, Microsoft did intentionally mislead consumers.
Your obvious bias aside, this is a court case that is trying to prove that Microsoft has misled customers to their detriment. They haven't yet tried to prove there is any detriment to the consumer, and are struggling to prove that they were being deliberately misleading.
I'm usually not one to jump on the Anti-Microsoft hype machine (I don't think Vista is nearly as bad as people say it is - I use Vista 64-bit at work and it's great). But it *does* require a machine with a bit of horsepower to run it well. It's pretty obvious that Microsoft was willing to sacrifice a few customers to stay in good graces with Intel. Are you going to tell me that a consumer who purchased a machine with a "Vista-ready" sticker would seriously have expected or understood that it could only run the most basic version of Vista?
As shallow as it may seem to some, interface is big part of the computing experience. A consumer is going to be reminded of the fact that they have a "sub-standard" version of the OS every time they look at their screen. I know it would bother me, especially if it was sold under false pretenses.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Microsoft today issued a plea through its network of objective opinion-shapers: Don't let the journalists near it.
"We understand that many journalists use Macs," said CNet marketing marketer Don Reisinger. "This means they necessarily suckle at the Satanic rear passage of Steve Jobs. We cannot countenance their bias. Journalists are responsible for all those signs outside computer shops offering to replace Vista with XP. When was the last time you saw the entire technology field stop and wait for an announcement from any other company besides Apple? It's so unfair!"
Smears and slanders also come from obsessive overweight nerdy Mac-using Linux geek troublemakers who run "benchmarks" and "tests." "It's horrifying bias from the 'reality'-based community," said ZDNet marketing marketer Mary Jo Enderle. "We understand that, just because Vista was 40% slower than XP, the nattering nabobs of negativism are already writing that it's 'not enough of an improvement.' It's so unfair!"
"Mactards are like concentration camp guards," said Guardian marketing marketer Jack Schofield, "brutalising 'I'm A PC' users and" [This comment has been removed by a Guardian moderator. Replies may also be deleted.]
"The only reason Vista failed was because Microsoft planned for it to fail," said Reisinger in an earlier ad-banner troll post. "It was a fantastically subtle double-bluff! They did the honorable thing in the face of the vile calumnies spread by Apple. It's so unfair!"
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I'm not sure exactly the same is justified.
One thing Apple has always been very clear about, perhaps even a little too conservative, is the minimum system requirements for their products. Often those requirements are actually above a usable minimum, whereupon they take quite a bit of flack until someone hacks out the hardware check.
Apple actually found itself in very similar circumstances with the release of... can't remember which one. Tiger I think. Anyway, the new Quartz Extreme extensions wouldn't all run on older video cards. So what did they do? They were up front about it, but they also made Quartz degrade gracefully. Actually, the only reliable way we could tell was to drop a widget on Dashboard and see if there were any screen ripples.
From ieee.org, and other places: Unfortunately, 158 pages of internal Microsoft emails by employees like Michael Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management, tends to undercut Microsoft's insistence that there was nothing misleading with Vista. Nash wrote that he "personally got burned" by buying a laptop that was labeled as Windows Vista Capable: "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine." If their advertising can fool a VP then it surely can fool the plaintiffs. I don't think they have a leg to stand on.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
In January 2007, I bought such a "Vista Capable" computer and I'm usually not the one to defend Microsoft. However, on the box of the machine there was a sticker saying "Vista Capable", but the text next to it clearly identified the fact that it wouldn't run Aero and that it will be Vista Home Basic at best. [Relevant Journal Entry]. It was very clear to me: I can read....
That said, that machine was never meant to run a Microsoft product. The preloaded version of Windows XP MCE (the journal entry says Windows XP Home, but I was wrong), lived on it for a few months and then made place to Ubuntu.
Yes, indeed, just going by the sticker was quite misleading.... Actually reading the fine print was not. But then, I am a computer Geek and did understand what the fine print said.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
anyone who's been reading Slashdot since "Longhorn" started development would know that Microsoft had always intended for Vista to have different levels of UI capabilities depending on the hardware it is running on. that's not news to anyone here, and even without the fine print most Slashdotters wouldn't equate the "Vista Capable/Ready" sticker with "Aero Capable."
however, and this is a pretty big however, we're not the average consumer. unless you're a tech geek, you're not going to know these details about Vista, or know what Aero even is. just like unless you're a car-buff you're probably not going to know what kind of engine your new car has other than that it's a V4/V6/V8. should a car-buyer know the internal workings of the vehicle they are looking to purchase? i think that's debatable. but in this case it's completely besides the point.
consumers were clearly misled in this case with a combination of deceptive actions on the part of Microsoft:
you can't have it both ways. you either advertise your product as clearly having multiple tiers, or you deliver the full "premium" experience which includes all of the features advertised.
and, IANAL, but i don't think fine print by itself is sufficient defense against false advertisement charges. i highly doubt that there's anyone out there who's never missed a line of fine print, either in a contract they're signing, a TV commercial they watched, a magazine ad they glanced over, or (in this case "fast talking") a radio commercial. the very nature of fine print/fast talking makes it impossible, or at least impractical, for an ordinary human-being (as opposed to the radioactively-enhanced type) to catch all of the information businesses try to slip past consumers. just like it's impractical for a consumer to become an expert on every product they're looking to purchase.
"Turing-equivalent to a Vista Ready machine!"
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The Home/Pro versions of XP have a historical reasoning, though.
XP Home replaced Windows 98/ME.
XP Professional replaced Windows NT4 Workstation/Windows 2000 Professional.
Now, you could argue that XP should have combined these into one. I agree. However, I wouldn't have though too much of it if they were kept separate versions going into Vista.
Instead, Vista subdivided each of these markets in half:
XP Home to Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium
XP Professional to Vista Business and Vista Enterprise; although Enterprise didn't come until later and is the only version not to be on the same install media as the others.
Then there's Vista Ultimate for people who are naive enough to pay more to have the features of Vista Home Premium and Vista Business plus a few (IMO) useless extras.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
It's even simpler than that. Just consider the fact that MS lowered their standards for "Vista Capable" at the request of Intel. This is strong evidence that there was once a choice made as to what would be a reasonable level of capability to be called "Vista Capable", and it was lowered below that level. This whole case is that "Vista Capable" is below a reasonable level. It damn near proves itself. The only real counter-argument would be if the original standard was set too high, which given how poorly Vista runs on low-end "Vista Capable" systems, that's a pretty difficult position to defend.