Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Blamed Intel For Its Own Bad Surface Drivers (thurrott.com)
Paul Thurrott reveals a new internal Microsoft memo from corporate vice president Panos Panay which acknowledges "some quality issues" with their launch of Surface Book and Surface Pro 4. But an anonymous reader quotes a darker story from Thurrott.com:
Multiple senior Microsoft officials told me at the time that the issues were all Intel's fault, and that the microprocessor giant had delivered its buggiest-ever product in the "Skylake" generation chipsets. Microsoft, first out of the gate with Skylake chips, thus got caught up by this unreliability, leading to a falling out with Intel... Since then, however, another trusted source at Microsoft has provided me with a different take on this story. Microsoft, I'm told, fabricated the story about Intel being at fault.
The real problem was Surface-specific custom drivers and settings that the Microsoft hardware team cooked up. The Skylake fiasco came to a head internally when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with Lenovo last year and asked the firm, then the world's biggest maker of PCs, how it was dealing with the Skylake reliability issues. Lenovo was confused. No one was having any issues, he was told. I assume this led to some interesting conversations between the members of the Microsoft senior leadership team. But the net result was that Microsoft had to push out some existing designs quickly to get ahead of the reliability issues.
The Surface Book ultimately had a 17% return rate after its late-2015 launch, while the Surface Pro 4's return rate was 16%. So though Microsoft later pushed to improve subsequent releases, Panay's memo claims that "These improvements were unfortunately not reflected in the results of this [Consumer Reports] survey." The memo also reiterates high customer-satisfaction metrics, which Thurrott says "supports the contention that I made two days ago... Customers who spend more on premium products tend to be more satisfied even when they are unreliable because they need to justify their own decision-making process."
"He also suggests that what Consumer Reports calls a 'failure' is perhaps overly-broad and that some incidents -- like a frozen screen or unresponsive touch -- are not 'failures' but are rather just minor incidents that are easily rectified by the user."
The real problem was Surface-specific custom drivers and settings that the Microsoft hardware team cooked up. The Skylake fiasco came to a head internally when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with Lenovo last year and asked the firm, then the world's biggest maker of PCs, how it was dealing with the Skylake reliability issues. Lenovo was confused. No one was having any issues, he was told. I assume this led to some interesting conversations between the members of the Microsoft senior leadership team. But the net result was that Microsoft had to push out some existing designs quickly to get ahead of the reliability issues.
The Surface Book ultimately had a 17% return rate after its late-2015 launch, while the Surface Pro 4's return rate was 16%. So though Microsoft later pushed to improve subsequent releases, Panay's memo claims that "These improvements were unfortunately not reflected in the results of this [Consumer Reports] survey." The memo also reiterates high customer-satisfaction metrics, which Thurrott says "supports the contention that I made two days ago... Customers who spend more on premium products tend to be more satisfied even when they are unreliable because they need to justify their own decision-making process."
"He also suggests that what Consumer Reports calls a 'failure' is perhaps overly-broad and that some incidents -- like a frozen screen or unresponsive touch -- are not 'failures' but are rather just minor incidents that are easily rectified by the user."
>like a frozen screen or unresponsive touch
Had I just bought a device worth a few grand, and the primary interaction interface spontaneously stopped working, I'd bloody well call that a failure.
Interesting insight into corp culture at microsoft, no surprises really though.
"Customers who spend more on premium products tend to be more satisfied even when they are unreliable because they need to justify their own decision-making process."
Apple's business plan summed up in one line
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Good and poseur status are two entirely different thing. Poseur status is achieved by carefully created marketing memes to convince the public of the exclusivity and not the worth of a product, only the best most exclusive people can have it and nothing to do with the qualities of the product. This is exactly how you get the rich to piss thousands of dollar bottles of wine against the wall, or stupidly coating smart phones in diamonds or what ever else the shallow dick heads are pathetically convinced they need to pose with. Quality products can only ever reflect the workmanship that goes in them and how reliably they are fit for purpose, all else is nothing more than being a gullible victim of marketing. That we pillage out planet to achieve this, is rather disappointing.
News at 11 when has not M$ not blamed someone else to start with, customers, suppliers, the government, always, always, somebody else's fault until their marketing and public relations fail and then it was the new guy, yep, he did it, all his fault.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Marketing is a sleazy business.
Well said.
I have noticed many of my friends have laptops that they spent ridiculous amounts of money on and all they do is surf the web. Some have even justified their purchase saying that they need it for work which IMHO is a really stupid reason unless their work subsidises them. Even purchasing Office applications for basic home use is a waste unless you are running a business and even then LibreOffice is usually fine.
I find that a good desktop and a cheap but functional laptop is the best mix of computing hardware but obviously this depends on what you want your computers for and like you have said too many people want to justify their purchase even though they may not be satisfied.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
The easiest way to use up that much RAM is to run a VM or two.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."