Steamd

I don’t think Steve Ballmer quite gets it. Obama owns an iPhone and even he gets it. Ballmer must run in the same camp as McCain. Funny how all these things are so relative.

A while back, I talked a bit about Microsoft’s efforts to boost their image through a series of upcoming ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld. Well, they came…

And then they went. What happened? Well, if you’re a Seinfeld fan, the commercials are quite humorous here and there. Otherwise, it seems most people found them to be awkward and, quite frankly, they didn’t do a damn thing to boost Microsoft’s image.

So, where does Microsoft go from here with the rest of their $300 ad budget? 

Now they’re aiming to redefine what “I’m a PC” really means with a new series of ads that attack Apple’s own ad campaign head-on:

And, here’s another version:

So, what’s the problem with this? Why will this campaign ultimately fail? As John Gruber of Daring Fireball pointed out, the characters in the Apple commercials are just computers personified. They don’t actually represent real computer users:

They’re not dressed as computers, they’re dressed as people. It’s postmodernism taken to a very silly and profoundly unserious commercial end.

Microsoft would have you believe that Apple is trying to put a stereotype on the average PC user. The reality is that Apple isn’t trying to stereotype the average PC user…just the average PC. And there in lies the problem with Microsoft’s campaign, that they still haven’t talked about the very thing that is causing all their problems to begin with: their product.

Seriously, do any of these commercials really make you feel that their products are any better? Do they? Do any of these ads make you feel like Windows is indeed better than the Mac OS? No? Why not? Because they don’t want to talk about Windows, that’s why. There’s nothing to talk about.

Just like the Seinfeld ads, there is absolutely no mention of Windows at all. Nothing. They don’t even talk about the very issue that is at the core of Microsoft’s problems, the fact that people are losing faith in Windows due to the abysmal reaction to Windows Vista. But rather than dealing with it, they’d much rather tell people that the problem isn’t with their product. No, the problem is you, the customer! It’s all in your head and it’s Apple’s fault because they put a stereotype in your mind!

Is it me or do you get a feeling like they’re just placating the viewer like a McCain/Palin ad? Strange how these things parallel. Wonder what a “Hello, I’m a Democrat.” “And I’m a Republican.” commercial would sound like? Hmm…

More “I’m a Mac” political parodies on YouTube!  :)

Yesterday, I finally had my fill of Windows Vista and gave it the one-fingered salute by hitting the delete key. I’ve never seen more problems in succession with any other operating system. Just wasn’t worth the hassle. A little bit of background on the issue.

I’m a Mac user and have been for nearly a year now. But I’m also a web developer and still need to use Windows to test sites with Internet Explorer. As such, I use Parallels Desktop to run Windows in a virtualized environment. Upside of this is that I can run both the Mac OS and Windows without having to reboot. I run a copy of Windows XP to test a variety of browsers in Windows as well as my ComicBase comic book database software since there is no Mac equivalent. I was also running a copy of Vista so that I could test both Firefox 3.0 and the latest Internet Explorer 8 beta.

Even before yesterday, I had problems running Vista right on my Mac. By comparison to XP, Vista runs like a dog in Parallels. It’s slow, sluggish, and takes forever to start. Granted, I’m on a Mac mini with 2 gigs of RAM so Vista doesn’t stand a chance of running quite as well anyways. But XP runs quite well and is quite snappy. I just don’t see why Vista couldn’t be the same.

First problem I encountered yesterday was a lovely message telling me that my copy of Vista was “not genuine”:

I know damn well that my copy of Vista is “genuine” because I have a CD that Microsoft themselves sent me in the mail. So I clicked the link, which opened up a page in Internet Explorer, and let it update the Windows Genuine Advantage software and activate Windows. Even now, I have no clue as to why this popped up in the first place. Didn’t make any significant changes to Windows or nothing. Just popped up out of the blue.

Next, I figured I’d go ahead and check for updates since I don’t keep Vista running long enough to allow it to update itself. So off I go into the control panel. Seems like every time I visit the new control panel I have to pause and wonder why it’s a confusing mess. I mean, compared to XP, I feel like I can’t find anything. After that, I end up spotting what I wanted and double-click it.

With Vista, Microsoft no longer uses the Windows Update website. If you try and visit the Windows Update site in Vista all it does is automatically open the Windows Update applet from the control panel. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing but it would be nice to have a choice.

One this is for certain though: updates take forever to complete in Vista! It took a while to get a list of the updates required. I’m not talking about just a few minutes here. I’m talking like more than five minutes. I mean, what is it doing that requires that much time just to get a list of updates for my machine? By comparison both my Mac and Linux are lightning fast when it comes to looking up available updates.

Once I do get a list of updates, apply them takes even longer. In this case, there were about 17 updates totaling about 100 megs. The download of the updates didn’t take long but apply them certainly did. Now, I understand that updates can take a bit to apply on any operating system. But the time it takes on Vista is ridiculous. I’ve always had a problem with the way patches and updates are applied in Windows. They even take too much time in XP and almost nearly require a reboot every time. So I let Vista finish the updates and reboot my virtual machine.

Upon rebooting, I was greeted with and black screen with white letters telling me that Vista could not boot due to a missing file and that I would have to use my Vista DVD to repair the installation. Sigh. Lovely. Another 15 to 20 minutes wasted. So I boot in with my DVD, repair the thing, and it slowly boots onto the desktop again.

At first, I didn’t see anything but a black screen with some text in the bottom-left that indicated that my copy of Vista was “non-genuine”. “Not that again!”, I thought. I was completely locked out so…I shut down the virtual machine and restarted it.

This time I got it to boot onto the desktop and, guess what? Another “not genuine” message! Isn’t that lovely! This time it wouldn’t even let me do anything till I validate and re-activate Vista:

Uh oh! Run to the hills! The Vista police are coming to take you away because you might be a victim of software counterfeiting! The Vista terrorists have struck again!

At this point I just threw up my hands and said, “That’s it!” I immediately shut down Vista and deleted the image off my computer. After all, I don’t really need Vista to test Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 8. Another image of Windows XP will do just fine for that task. 

I mean, really…does it have to be this hard and difficult to keep Vista running smoothly? I didn’t even use it that often but when I did it was like pulling teeth with each use. As to when I might use Vista again for testing, I have no idea. That day may not come until it’s absolutely, positively necessary. Until then though I’ll keep using XP for as long as I have to. 

So Microsoft gets an official one-fingered salute for giving me such a bloated piece of crap. Have a nice day.

Yesterday, I read an article on Ars Technica that really made me laugh:

Leaked memo: e-mail recovery will outlast Bush presidency

In a nutshell, millions of emails were lost between 2003 and 2005 for which thousands of them will likely never be recovered. The reason? Because the Bush IT shop decided to use Microsoft Exchange:

Archiving of government e-mail communications is required by federal law, yet the Bush administration has struggled since 2002 to comply with the requirement. The administration inherited a working archival system from the Clinton White House. But when the Bush IT shop decided to switch from a Lotus Notes-based e-mail system to one based on Microsoft Exchange, it broke compatibility with that software. Since then, the White House has repeatedly tried and failed to develop a new system. It first tried to retrofit the old Notes-based system to work with Exchange, but concluded that the approach was unworkable. It then took bids to design a new Exchange-based archiving system. According to one whistleblower, that system was finalized in 2006, but was reportedly mothballed at the last minute by White House CIO Theresa Payton, who cited vague performance concerns.

This is so laughable that it isn’t even funny. They ended up trying to implement a manual solution using the journaling feature in Outlook and Exchange. Not only is the Bush administration incompetent…but so is the IT staff! I only have two words for the Bush IT Administrator: Backup Exec!

I was an IT Supervisor at a small architectural firm for almost four years and one of the things I did while I was there was deploy an Exchange 2003 server. We were well aware of the requirement to backup and archive any email due to discoverability laws in effect that would require any and all email and documents to be put into question should a lawsuit occur. Thus backups were critical to the successful deployment of the server. If backups didn’t work we couldn’t deploy it. It was that simple.

The solution for us was Backup Exec. Not only did it allow us to do a full backup of our files every week with incrementals throughout the week but it also allowed us both full and incremental backups of our Exchange mailboxes as well. Although recovery was a pain in the ass, it was possible to restore a mailbox in its entirety should the need arise. Newer versions of Backup Exec are capable of more granular restore options, even down to the restoration of just a single email.

Even then, archiving email was a pain in the ass because everyone wanted to keep everything in their inbox. The question was: How do we archive email without it being in someone’s mailbox? The solution would have to be something that allowed you to move email out of your mailbox and into a repository that allowed for backing up and archiving email. Many solutions exist but the one we ended up deploying also happened to be a good project management solution: Newforma. Not only could employees store old emails for future retrieval but they could store them by project along with other important features that helped in managing the project. And since each email was stored in a file system as unique individual files, keeping routine backups was a no-brainer. Also, retrieving an old email couldn’t be any easier since all of it was indexed and completely searchable, even attachments. Newforma is just one solution for email archiving but I’m sure something just as robust and easy to use exists as well.

You’d think that out of any IT environment that the White House would have the best IT staff money can buy, right? I mean, this is the top-level of our government we’re talking about here. I can’t think of any place where the IT needs would require more attention and more care. The Bush IT staff can blame their problems on anything they want but I know better. Just because they’re using Microsoft Exchange doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to keep routing backups of all emails. That simply just isn’t the case. I just can’t believe that the IT staff in the White House is as incompetent as the Bush administration itself. Go figure.

When I heard that Microsoft has hired Jerry Seinfeld to do some Vista commercials, I didn’t quite know what to think. I mean, how exactly does Seinfeld relate to Microsoft’s core product? This is the guy who had a TV show about “nothing” with episodes talking about the “Soup Nazi”. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Seinfeld. [Don't get me started on talking about the dangers of chip double-dipping.] Granted, they may create some pretty funny commercials and it’ll all be in good fun. But does Microsoft really think they’ll be able to capture the same magic that is inherent in many of the “I’m a Mac” commercials?

Last month, Microsoft posted a website about a project called The “Mojave Experiment”, where they duped a bunch of people into thinking they were looking at a new version of Windows code named Mojave when they were really just looking at Vista all along. The problem with how they marketed The “Mojave Experiment” is that it’s just so blood subjective.

Some of the people who participated didn’t seem all that genuine, nor did they seem like the kind of candidates that most people would care about. Most of them just seemed…well…generic. I mean, which of them were business professionals, college students, power users, and/or information workers? When it comes to Windows users, those are the people you should be concerned about. Granted, your average home user is greatly important, but it’s the movers and shakers in the industry that you should be even more worried about because they’re the ones who recommend solutions to your average user. It just would have been nice to know who these people are and why a solution like Vista is so important to them.

Also, from the very beginning, you hear everyone talking about their initial perceptions of Vista, how they think it’s bad. So right from the get-go you’re hearing negative, negative, negative before you get to anything positive. That’s just bad editing and bad execution. It would have been much better to have heard some positives before talking about bad perceptions. People’s attention spans are small so you have to get to the point relatively quickly.

Another problem with this sort of campaign is that it’s a uphill battle. It’s like the Pepsi Challenge of Windows with Vista on one side and…uh…Vista on the other. Rather than focusing on how to make their own product better they’d rather spend their time and money on trying to get people think that Vista is better than what they think. The thing is though is that, although some of the issues surrounding Vista are just perceived issues, a lot of them aren’t and I think Microsoft knows it. Thus the reason for the Pepsi Challenge to begin with. 

And with Seinfeld on board, Microsoft will spend an estimated $300 million dollars their ad campaign to reinvigorate the public perception of Windows Vista, $10 million of which will go to Seinfeld. As Ryan Tate of Gawker pointed out:

Yes, because if there’s one surefire way to convince everyone Vista is cool, cutting edge and not liable to get frazzled by life’s minor complications, it’s hiring a 1990s sitcom star and professional kvetcher! Who, um, very visibly owned a series of Macs on his show.

Yep, rather than spending the $300 million on developing a better product, Microsoft would rather spend it on having a comedian tell you absolutely nothing about a product that you already know enough about in the first place. Microsoft isn’t just battling perception issues with Vista, they’re also battling perception issues with themselves.

InfoWorld has some interesting statistics about how many businesses are using Vista now that Microsoft is no longer selling XP. According to their stats, Vista is dropped in favor of XP for 1 in 3 business PCs. What’s the reason? As John Gruber of Daring Fireball joked, “They just haven’t realized yet how awesome Vista really is.”

The real reason is a loophole in the Vista license that allows for downgrading to Windows XP. Granted, it still qualifies as a Vista license but at least users can downgrade if they wish.

The other reason is the hardware requirements needed to properly run Vista. Realistically, to run Vista right you really need about twice the RAM of what was acceptable with XP and a juicy processor to boot. Unless you’re running with a minimum of two gigs of RAM and at least a fairly current processor from the last few years or so, be prepared to watch Vista run like a dog. For businesses where performance is critical this simply isn’t acceptable.

Take the architectural industry for instance. There is a growing trend towards the use of BIM capable software like Revit and Bentley Architecture. These programs require a lot of juice to run due to large project files and on-the-fly 3D rendering. As such, available physical memory and processing is critical to ensure that these programs run smoothly. Any major hiccups and you run the risk of your workers sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Time is money so the more efficient they are able to work the better.

Current 32-bit operating systems can only handle a maximum of 4 gigs of RAM. Now, when you put that in perspective with the overhead taken up by an idle copy of Vista running compared to XP you can see the problem. My own personal copy of Vista takes up a little over 380 megs of physical memory, and that’s with it running nothing but antivirus software. What about Windows XP running the same antivirus software? A little over 190 megs. That may not seem like much but it is relative because a running program can take up not only the necessary memory needed to run itself but additional memory required by the operating system for additional resources and sub-system overhead (video, audio, etc.). As such, running something like Revit in Vista might be a completely different experience when running it in XP. The resources required in Vista could skyrocket due to the extra footprint of the video subsystems needed for 3D rendering alone.

So what’s the solution? For starters, a faster computer with more memory. Another step up would be 64-bit processing which would allow for up to 16 gigs of RAM and plenty of processing power. But this is an added expense, one that many companies aren’t willing to partake in just yet.  It’s one thing if you’re an architectural firm and already have equated in the expense in your budget. But not every company is like this and thus the need to go to a 64-bit platform simply isn’t in the cards. So what do you do? You downgrade until such a time when it is in the cards. 

For Microsoft, the reality of the situation just hasn’t quite hit them yet. If they had released a version of Windows that was more powerful than XP, more secure, but just as efficient things probably would have been different. More companies would have been more keen to upgrade. But as it stands, companies are taking the safer route and only upgrading on an as-needed basis. As such, it’s no surprise that only 2 out of 3 business PCs are running Vista.

Who knows. Maybe next year we’ll hear that 2 out of 5 business computers are running Leopard.  ;)

John Gruber made some interesting points in his recent Memoranda blog post about the contrasting differences in leadership between Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer. The leaked email memos from each CEO do show quite a few differences (and a few similarities). However, there is one aspect that Guber only touched on. The main difference I see between the two CEO’s is that one of them seems to focus almost exclusively on the bottom-line whereas the other focuses on the product. 

If you look at Ballmer’s email, one thing you’ll notice is that he never really focuses on the product itself nor does he mention what the company has done right with their products. Granted, this is just one email but I’ve read and heard a multitude of other things from Ballmer and he always seems to just glaze over the particulars about a specific product line with just broad brush stroke. He rarely if ever goes into detailed specifics as to why this product was successful and what makes it so great. Rather, Ballmer focuses more on the expansion of the company, it’s profitability, and stomping the competition. It just always seems like he talks more about how Microsoft is going to be doing this and that to get an upper-hand on the competition and much less about how great certain products really are. Maybe that’s just the kind of guy Ballmer is. Maybe he just doesn’t really care as long as Microsoft is profitable and is able to expand into different markets. Maybe he’s just a bottom-line kind of guy. Personally I think that sort of leadership isn’t doing the customer any good.

Jobs’ email about MobileMe, as Gruber mentioned, is very focused. He always focuses his attention on the product itself, what makes it good and what makes it bad. In the case of MobileMe, he focuses on the bad but ends on a note that implies a hopeful future for MobileMe, as if to say that he’s not giving up on it just yet. In the past, Jobs has talked about the bottom-line but usually when he does he attributes it to a specific product line. If Apple has a good third quarter he might say that it was because of the successful launch of the iPhone 3G and that customers were excited about getting their hands on them. Jobs tends to focus more on the user experience than just numbers. In his mind, if the quality of your products and the customer experience is good then the numbers will reflect that. Jobs is very much focusing his attention on the customer to create a unique user experience and I think the success that Apple is having reflects that.

One thing you’ll rarely ever see is a customer who switches from an Apple product to a Microsoft product due to some dissatisfaction. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone use a Mac running OS X Leopard for a good length of time who wanted to switch to a computer running Windows Vista. That’s the user experience for you and it’s something that I don’t think Ballmer will ever get.

As the Presidential election continues, I’ve been thinking a lot about the two candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. I’ve thought about the philosophies and points of view that are so different between them. Being that I’ve been an IT professional for over six years and a web developer for almost as long, it’s only fitting that I draw a comparison with the current Presidential election to the two operating systems I’ve used intimately for the past ten years or so: Apple’s Mac OS and Microsoft’s Windows.

If you’ve never used a Mac then you might not have a clue what I’m talking about in this post. And when I say used I mean more than just a few hours. Anyone who has spent more than a month using a Mac will know exactly where I’m coming from and why I draw the kind of comparison I’m talking about to the current Presidential election. Comparing Windows users to Mac users is very much like comparing devoted Republicans to Democrats.

I recently read a three-part series of articles entitled From Win32 to Cocoa: a Windows user’s conversion to Mac OS X (part 1, part 2, part 3). This series of articles does a great job of reinforcing my views and illustrates my own experiences that made me switch from Windows to Mac.

I’ve used Windows since Windows 95 and was a staunch supporter of Microsoft, defending them even when criticism was at an all time high during the late 90’s and into the turn of the century. But after spending three years as an IT Supervisor for a small architectural firm, dealing with day to day issues with the administration of Microsoft software, and beta testing Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows Vista, my philosophy started to change.

The first change came when I got sick of dealing with Microsoft’s .NET platform for doing web development. I felt that there had to be something easier and just as powerful to use. So I ended up switching to the use of Apache web servers, PHP, MySQL, and Linux/Unix-based servers as my platforms of choice for web development.

The final change came when I went out and bought a Mac Mini out of frustration. The tools I was using for web development just weren’t working right on my Windows-based PC and I really wanted a change. I was already highly familiar with Linux and Unix-based operating systems so a Mac wasn’t that much of a jump for me. Once I got up and running I haven’t looked back ever since. I even formatted my old PC and turned it into a Linux server.

So how does this translate to the current election?

When I was beta testing Vista, it became clear to me that Microsoft was giving me more of the same. They were more or less trying to candy coat everything in a slick package and attempting to solve all of the users problems with band-aids. What they ended up with was a bloated mess of an operating system that required twice the horse power that Windows XP required. As such, anyone who wanted to use Windows Vista would have to buy all new hardware….including businesses, who are Microsoft’s biggest customers. What’s worse is that there are so many similarities to Mac OS X. They practically ripped off ideas from Apple. Yep, there’s lots of pork in Vista.

From a developers point of view, writing applications for Windows is a trying experience. I certainly remember my time trying to get a .NET web application working. I felt like I spent more time dicking around with the configuration than I did actually writing code. As Peter Bright points out:

Windows is dying, Windows applications suck, and Microsoft is too blinkered to fix any of it–that’s the argument. The truth is that Windows is hampered by 25-year old design decisions. These decisions mean that it’s clunky to use and absolutely horrible to write applications for. The applications that people do write are almost universally terrible. They’re ugly, they’re inconsistent, they’re disorganized; there’s no finesse, no care lavished on them. Microsoft–surely the company with the greatest interest in making Windows and Windows applications exude quality–is, in fact, one of the worst perpetrators.

Microsoft has always been a company that would have you believe that Windows and other products like Microsoft Office are the only solutions to consider for your business and personal life. They pretty much invented the use of FUD: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Anytime a competitor has threatened their core business, they do what they can to either stomp it out or entice their users to keep using Windows with a little FUD (”Are you sure that’s wise?”).

The thing is that Microsoft doesn’t care about the conscientious developer or the home user. They only care about making their primary core customers happy: corporate enterprise customers. As such, Microsoft doesn’t really have to re-invent themselves if their corporate customers are happy. Corporate users are happy with “good enough”, which is exactly what Microsoft gives them.

Candy coating, band-aids, bloat, pork, inconsistent, disorganized, poorly managed, corporate loving, FUD, disillusioned user base, copycat design, more of the same, good enough. Gee…is this starting to sound like the Republican Presidential campaign?

Apple, on the other hand, is a company that is about forward, outside-of-the-box thinking. Their products speak for themselves. All you have to do is pick up an iPhone and realize just how much time and attention went into it. Apple is a company that attempts to solve problems by creating computers and gadgets that are well designed and highly usable. Much of their success has a lot to do with their leadership:

Apple is Apple. Apple, as a company, prides itself on being a leader, not a follower. As Steve Jobs famously quoted Wayne Gretzky, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been”. So the charismatic (some might say dictatorial) Apple leadership wants the company to be seen as one that looks forward, not backward.

Apple practices good, solid user-centric design in every product they create. I’ve read many books about application and product design for my web development practices and Apple is always used as an example of good design. Good design is about communication. A well thought-out, well designed product communicates to you by showing you how it will solve your problem. In times like this, the product speaks for itself. What makes Apple’s products so good is that they accomplish something that many other companies fail to do: to make a product that is easy and fun to use and addresses the needs of what most people need.

Apple’s products are honest and direct. For Apple, less is more. You don’t need every bell and whistle. You don’t need a bunch of useless features that you’ll never use. So they get rid of the fluff and bloat and leave behind only what is necessary to get the job done. What you’re left with is a clean, usable product that is a joy to use.

Granted, Apple isn’t perfect. They do make mistakes and they are flawed in areas, and Steve Jobs would be the first to admit it. Most users don’t really know what they want till they see it so Apple tries to anticipate what users will want to use in the future by asking questions and creating new products based on new ideas and innovation. Many times they succeed, but sometimes they fail. But they learn from their failures and move on. Part of their failures includes listening to their users and asking them why a product wasn’t good. That’s just good management and good business.

Leadership, forward, outside-of-the-box thinking, communication, well managed, honest, direct, clean, usable, fallible, innovative. I don’t expect perfection but I don’t want something that’s just “good enough”. I just want it to work and work well and solve my problems. Apple give me that. I think Barack Obama will give me that as well.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Recently, at the D6 Conference, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer unveiled some of the new features that will be going into Windows 7. A brief demo of Windows 7 showed off some features that are obviously taken from Microsoft Surface. You remember Microsoft Surface, don’t you?

It obvious that Microsoft is clearly going after Apple. This demo is clearly Microsoft’s take on the Multi-touch interface that is evident in the iPhone. Granted, part of how this is implemented is quite new and fresh…but there’s still quite a bit that feels like a rip-off of the iPhone interface.

The problem here is that it’s unclear as to how useful a Multi-touch interface like this will be in a real-world scenario. Bells, whistles, and eye-candy are all fine and dandy…but how much of this will prove to be truly useful in allowing folks to do the things they want? If something like this can boost productivity and cut the time it takes to accomplish certain tasks then, great, Microsoft might have themselves a success. If not then it’s just another good idea that was poorly implemented, which is pretty much what I’ve come to expect from Microsoft.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, he made it clear that Multi-touch was something new and exclaimed, “And, boy, have we patented it!”. What made the first iPhone demo so successful was that Jobs demonstrated how the touch interface was actually useful. In fact, Jobs was going out of his way to dissuade others into thinking they need a stylus for a touch interface saying, “We’re going to use the best pointing device in the world — our fingers.” He demonstrated an interface that was way ahead of the curve and proved that it was functional and useful in its implementation. All you have to do is pick up an iPhone and play with it and you’ll get a clear idea at just how good Multi-touch really works.

Obviously, Microsoft can’t use the same technology in Windows 7. Multi-touch is patented by Apple and it doesn’t look like Apple is too keen to license it out. Microsoft does need to be careful though. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know how much of their interface Apple patented…but there sure does seem to be quite a bit in the Windows 7 demo that might cause alarms to go off with Apple’s legal department.

So how good is Microsoft’s touch interface? No one really knows. All we’ve seen is a flashy demo…nothing else. One thing is clear though: Until Microsoft can demonstrate real-world improvements with their touch-screen interface, much like Surface, it is still just a bogus concept. And given the Microsoft’s history with Vista, it looks like it will be a bogus concept.

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.