Microsoft Moves To Quash Case, End E-mail Revelations 158
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."
Re:Don't Let This Die (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Tales from the Past (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
"The big lie" technique (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:I've always hated the practice... (Score:5, Insightful)
This only applies to the media player, due to the knock-on effect on web-based video and music of having every windows pc guaranteed to have microsoft's codecs. This is the reason for the -N versions on the vista DVD.
There's no reason microsoft couldn't have split vista into two versions; home and business. All the extra 'ultimate' crap, and turning off aero entirely in basic was just segmenting the market to extract as much money as possible.
Re:Don't Let This Die (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Don't Let This Die (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
This is an absolutely true statement, but it overlooks one thing: the unfair advantage that is monopoly status and industry entrenchment.
I support open source because it's hard to leverage unfairly, but when I have to choose between Microsoft and Apple I choose Apple because they're the underdog.
When Microsoft's market share reaches 50% or less on desktop OSes and browsers, I'll re-evaluate my stance. They have the same business practices as Apple, but they have far more power until the ecosystem evens out, so they are capable of much more abuse.
Re:Don't Let This Die (Score:3, Insightful)
When Apple released Quartz Extreme they did not sell a machine that didn't support it. But they had sold machines in the past that didn't, and knew such machines were in use.
Re:Tales from the Past (Score:2, Insightful)
When having to choose between monsanto and microsoft as the supreme example of an outright criminal corporation it's a tough choice.
I don't know about you but when it comes to corporate monopolies I mind a lot more when it's food having less genetic variety compared to one company's OS being run on every computer; and then there are the dominant terminator seeds that spread to neighboring fields so that regular crops can no longer be grown... at least there's no virus on my Mac that uninstalls OSX and replaces it with Vista.
So I suppose that while *some* of their actions are similar, the bigger criminal is easily Monsanto.
Re:I've always hated the practice... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you determine what is a bonus feature and what was removed? Just shift names around and stuff and you can have exactly the same thing with the same effect.
There's really no problem with doing this.
I'd differentiate it by asking: Is the core product in the "light" version of the software intentionally crippled? Or, perhaps one could look at it a different way. Is the "standard" product the less expensive or more expensive one (i.e. the one that gets promoted)?
Using my example of the game industry (normal games vs "collector edition" games), you can clearly see that the standard package is the less expensive SKU. However, the game itself in both packages are identical. The "collector edition" boxes contain bonus material that is extraneous to the core product.
In the case of Vista Home, Microsoft decided to strip out features from their "standard" operating system. Why do I consider the Aero glass interface "standard" and not an extra? Microsoft advertised it heavily as a cool, new feature of Vista. And, the fact that its in four of the five versions of Vista would lend credence to this viewpoint.
Naturally, you're correct that it's a matter of perception. But when selling products to consumers, perception matters, right?
Re:Don't Let This Die (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I've always hated the practice... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is done with hardware for manufacturing costs and so on, as you state - only one set of tooling needed to make the chips, or the widget or whatever it is your company makes.
Then you can stream it at QA, which I know Intel has done in the past, and put lower quality batches as slower chips, selling them as such. The QA assures that they will work properly at say 1GHz, when it's literally an identical chip to the 1.5GHz in the more expensive box - it just failed QA at that speed.
Not that Intel are innocent of dodgy practices - I'm sure there's some skeletons in that cupboard, it's just a little different to intentionally cripple your software to try and milk the maximum cash out of the public, all the while advertising that the shitty thing they're buying is really the super sexy Aero-enabled, fully-network-working Vista Ultra Ultimate Pro with a free patch of Ballmer's ear hair in each box.
Re:Don't Let This Die (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, if Apple REALLY wanted a DRM free store, then it would be. Amazon REALLY wanted it, and they have it, and Apple has far more pull in the digital music front than Amazon does.
By the way, neither mp3 or aac formats are open. Both require a patent license for manufacturers and developers. ogg is open, and Apple does not support it at all as far as I know (it was definitely incompatible with iTunes in the recent past).
Finally, Apple's philosophy is to make money. That is the be all and end all for companies. NEVER romanticize this. I will give Apple that they have a great skill at image control, but they are just as ruthless as Microsoft when it comes to making money, MS just got the upper hand first so Apple can play the less evil underdog.
My bias: I use Linux (usually Ubuntu) for leisure/small tasks, XP and Vista 64bit for gaming/study/real work, and OSX at my part time job as a creative person, and honestly, I like OSX the least by far. I also disapprove of the abuse of the word irony.
Re:Don't Let This Die (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing truer ever said.
OS Bashing is lamesauce. All operating systems have their place.
I use Vista Ultimate X64 and Vista Premium on another laptop. Both my laptops are decent machines, a gig of ram minimum, dual core processors, etc.
But, Vista works well, just as well as Ubuntu on my "public" machine, even moreso, since I don't have all the wireless issues, etc. that I do on Ubuntu (yeah, it's normal to have to find a driver, then find a hacked version of the cards firmware, or have to run FWCutter to pull ROM off my wireless card. No, really, it's totally normal....).
If your machine won't run a current OS, it's time to upgrade.... IF YOU NEED A CURRENT OS. Otherwise, for most people, XP was, and still is, just fine.
I didn't upgrade per se, I ended up purchasing two laptops within the last year for different reasons.
--Toll_Free