Windows Vista: A failure in progress
Recently, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described Vista as “a work in progress” at an annual Seattle event (InfoWorld, Ars Technica). I don’t know about you, but I find that statement quite disturbing. Let’s take a look at what Ballmer said and see if we can translate it a bit:
“Windows Vista: A work in progress.” [Laughter, applause.] “A very important piece of work, and I think we did a lot of things right, and I think we have a lot of things we need to learn from. Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases. Can we just sort of kiss that stone and move on? Because it turns out many things become problematic when you have those long release cycles. The design point, what you should be targeting. We can’t ever let that happen again.”
Translation: Windows Vista: A failure in progress. A very important piece of works because, let’s face it, we never get things right the second time or fourth time. Why would the sixth time be any different? Actually it’s six years between releases, but who’s counting? Kiss my ass if you don’t like it. I know it took a long time but, you know, it’s hard to design this stuff. We can’t ever let anyone know that we don’t know how to design anything other than shit.
“Vista is bigger than XP, and it’s gonna stay bigger than XP. We have to make sure it doesn’t get bigger still.”
Translation: You upgraded and went from fat to obese. We know that. But diet and exercise won’t make it any smaller.
“So the desktop business, it’s our heart, it’s our soul, we continue to drive forward from this foundation.”
Translation: We know we can’t keep this up. So, we’re gonna try and buy up companies that aren’t a good fit for our core business, share a different philosophy, and does nothing but hurt the consumer. Three cheers for Microhoo! Woo-hoo!
Regarding the search market…
“There’s an opportunity to knock the socks off in terms of innovation.”
Translation: There’s an opportunity to kiss our competitors good-bye and innovate by stealing from them. Cause, you know, that’s just business.
“It’s virtualization time for Microsoft…We’re gonna make sure we democratize virtualization.”
Translation: We may be late as hell in the game but we’re gonna do for virtualization what Hillary Clinton has done for the Democratic party. We’ll lie, cheat, and steal our way to the top!
Imagine if you bought a brand new car, took it home, and within the first few weeks you noticed problems and annoyances. You filled it up with gas twice already after only driving a couple of hundred miles. Two of the tires have slow leaks. A weird burning oil smell keeps coming out of the A/C when you turn it on. The engine light keeps flashing at you telling you that your engine requires attention. The radio doesn’t play any CD’s except those distributed by Sony.
Now, imagine you took this car back to the dealership and was told that your car was a “work in progress” and wasn’t actually fully tested nor completed when it rolled off the assembly line. Would this be an acceptable answer for you? Would you put up with it? Didn’t think so.
