Microsoft Had Doubts About the 'Vista Capable' Label 484
dionysus writes "Last April, Microsoft was sued over its 'Vista Capable' labeling, and in hearing last week, attorneys for the plaintiffs presented evidence that Microsoft employees were skeptical about the 'Vista Capable' marketing. Some of the most damning evidence comes from Microsoft executives: 'Mike Nash, currently a corporate vice president for Windows product management, wrote in an e-mail, "I PERSONALLY got burnt ... Are we seeing this from a lot of customers? ... I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine." Jim Allchin, then the co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division, wrote in another e-mail, "We really botched this ... You guys have to do a better job with our customers."' The judge in the case is currently considering the plaintiffs' request to make it a class-action lawsuit."
Sweet, sweet justice (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What happens... (Score:3, Interesting)
endemic (Score:5, Interesting)
Add in ideas that nobody had really tackled before, like the secure channel for content, driver signing, legacy app security rights vs. UAC, etc and you're bound to have a lot of latent problems that demand a longer period of testing. But this was after the 1st "scrap" so there really wasn't time to push the market off any longer, MS's ability to deliver was already in question.
it had many flavors of dysfunctional. but they've changed a lot and are starting differently with the next gen OS.
Re:I like Microsoft direction. (Score:3, Interesting)
No doubt corporate leadership caused the problem in the first place... but people pointing out the issues internally are what are needed to fix it. (Well, it can't be fixed, now. Maybe it can be avoided in the future.)
Editions (Score:5, Interesting)
Home Basic also does not include the Aero Glass UI, tablet PC support, Mobility Center, Meeting Space, SideShow, or Scheduled Backup. In addition to the ability to join a domain, Business and Ultimate include Complete PC Backup and Restore, Fax and Scan, Remote Desktop, and the ability to save your password when connecting to an SMB share. That's right, in Home Basic/Premium, the "save password" checkbox on the authentication dialog is missing (and command-line alternatives are broken). Finally, only Ultimate Edition includes BitLocker drive encryption.
I can understand why they might want to have two editions of the OS: Home and Professional, like they had originally with XP. The networking capabilities of Business/Ultimate really are integrated into the OS and can't be added on by a separate package. Plenty of small business users need these features, but they order new PCs for their employees without realizing which flavor of Windows is included, so they wind up buying an extra copy at retail, which makes Microsoft more money. It's evil, but from a business perspective it makes sense.
However, apart from Media Center, the features of Home Premium over Home Basic are things nobody would ever pay extra for. It makes absolutely no sense to me that Media Center should require its own OS version. Media Center should be a separate product, just as Microsoft Office is a separate product. Advertise PCs that bundle it as having "Windows Vista Home Edition with Media Center" instead of "Windows Vista Home Premium Edition". Let customers who bought PCs without Media Center go buy it, just like customers who bought PCs without Office can go buy it. Media Center is something that a lot of people do see value in and are willing to pay for. Let them do that.
Under promise over deliver. (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing is certain: the choice to have many editions of Vista differentiated sometimes by key features is causing Microsoft quite a bit of trouble. Had Microsoft enabled or disabled features like Aero Glass based on a machine's capabilities rather than the version of the OS in use, this suit would have likely been avoided.
So basically if they had based a machines capabilities at run-time based on it's hardware they wouldn't have been culpable but because it was done through marketing they may have mislead consumers.
Re:I like Microsoft direction. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't like many icons on the desktop. Even still, its easy to turn them back on.
Changing the names and locations of things with every new version so people have to learn all over again is an ordeal.
My Documents has been "My Documents" from Win95 until Vista. Now its simply called Documents. Ya, big stretch.
Internet Explorer 7 took away "History" unless you want to clutter up your screen with an explorer bar. Where did the history pull-down go.
Click the star icon. The explorer bar opens temporarly. Click History. Ya, difficult.
Parents want to check up on where their kids have been surfing. Why the hell would they take a feature away?
What feature was taken away? Nevermind that Vista includes Parental Controls.
It boggles the mind! Microsoft has made computing more complicated and confusing for the average user at every turn when they need to make it simpler. It is a shame they are still in business.
I've found it much easier. What's your answer? Linux I suppose? Or Apple, which is the lock-in leader in the computing industry?
Re:What happens... (Score:3, Interesting)
Layne
Back in '95 (an advertising anecdote) (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things I was asked was 'Will it run inside these specs', which I think was 2MB RAM, and not much disk at all..
The answer I gave was that yes it would, if you left it to boot up for a good 10 minutes, and didn't want to run any applications on top of it. Or install anything else either.
The resounding answer to that was "Great, we CAN advertise that it'll run on those specs". Even if I point blank told them it'd be useless, and to never advocate running it like that.
The point is that Advertising is all about pushing how far you can bend the truth (or lack of it) without crossing the line of blatant lying that'll get you sued or fined.
The "Vista Ready" sticker is an advertising token as much as anything. Yes, you can install Vista on it. Yes, it'll run Vista. Doesn't say anything about doing anything else with it (hey, it never said it'd run the latest greatest game, or even load your word processor!).
Re:I like Microsoft direction. (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone is making the assumption that Microsoft was in the driver's seat on this one. Microsoft has two major constituencies - The end user, and the OEMs.
I have a funny feeling that may bare out upon farther investigation, that it was the computer manufacturers that demanded the "Vista Capable" designation. After all, they have to keep foisting those 512MB Celeron machines on the store shelves of Walmat and Target on someone. We also know that those machines targeting the price sensitive consumer are targeting are simply not adequate.
What I will take Microsoft to task over is caving in to the OEMs.
Re:endemic (Score:3, Interesting)
Like any large company, MS has some interesting work (labs) and some great concepts (.net, silverlight) and some duds (msn) but some of the exec-level minding the Office/OS/IE stuff is overbearing. Its really too bad that Vista continued the large-kernel, tightly-bound-system-service idea. I would rather a much smaller OS and easier layering of the services, but the modern OS is a wild beast with many masters.
Honestly, I think they should build everything on top of a BSD kernel and join the world of Simply Great Applications, much like Apple. The amount of overhead in designing/maintaining/servicing their own kernel is a huge money loser. There's some sort of wacky notion that OS's design and system services are a "secret sauce" that must be kept in-house - but it is a fallacy. OS's are quickly becoming a cheap commodity, and all the interfaces are slowly edging towards public and standardized. If they directed all of the OS folks into wrapping a *nix-like kernel and building from existing, they'd instantly qualify for lots of other-OS software, closer standards to qualify at governments, interop with all file formats, etc. It's a no-brainer to me.
I think MS still wants to compete via tie-in. But I believe this is hurting them more than its worth. EU Lawsuits, standards bodies questioning them, strange/bad old Win32 constructs hiding in the closet - enabling ReallyBadSoftware to be written, and completely unique management platform. Sadly, they'd be able to leverage much more of their braintrust into making great *user experiences* than coming up with InventedOnlyHere tech for their OS. And still, all the real money would flow in from their licenses for corp servers and office (the big $).
But what do I know. I'm a developer guy. I just read the trades.
Mod parent up (Score:2, Interesting)
Mod parent up, he's spot on on this one. Having had to rescue many a PC or laptop whose rescue disk or partition has gone by bye bye means lots of things not working properly, and a long tedious hunt for drivers, of which only about 75% will work. For the rest, you'll find yourself poring over reams of forum posts to find the magical workaround to finish the last few.
Re:What happens... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:endemic (Score:2, Interesting)
As an example of too many meetings, my boss there typically spent 30-40 hours a week in meetings. I don't think he ever put in less than 60 hours a week, between time at the office and time spent working from home out of hours to try and get actual work done.
WRT the BSD idea, I agree completely from a technical standpoint. From a business standpoint, I'm less than convinced MSFT could execute successfully. All of the same culture/management problems that made Vista the non-success that it is (I don't want to call it a failure, but it's certainly no success, either) would exist if a project were undertaken to move Windows to a BSD kernel and userland with a Microsoft GUI on top of it, and then some. Microsoft's investment in the Windows franchise isn't just monetary, it's emotional, and it's very strong. So strong as to overcome reason. Thus, they will never go the BSD route, I'm pretty sure; it would mean not only admitting a *nix platform was better than Windows, but the implicit admission that it was better all along, and that Microsoft, starting from scratch, was unable to do better than an OS based on late sixties technology, not even after 20+ years of Windows development effort. Never mind the truth of that, MSFT the organization could not bring itself to admit it. And even if it did, the project would turn out to be another Vista, or worse. Heck, look how many false starts Apple had in that area before they actually got it done with OS X, and Apple is a far more nimble, innovative, and open-minded company than Microsoft.
Still, I'd actually like it if Microsoft moved to a BSD-based OS. It would benefit the entire industry, and Microsoft as well. But they'll never see that.
Re:What happens... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What happens... (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, my X-fi still doesn't have 32bit Linux support at all. Additionally my Ubuntu install has repeatedly changed my menu.lst to point to the wrong hard drive for boot. I don't even want to get into the headache that is Nvidia's driver for enabling dual display.
But more on topic, none of my PC is "certified for Vista" yet Vista runs quite well on it. Microsoft's upgrade tool tells me that I'd have problems running it, even though I don't. But just for the record I only ran the beta of Vista and I have felt no need to change from XP. I != fanboy