11–20 of 25 posts
A fair criticism. There are plenty of Microsoft employees that don't use Microsoft products. I doubt the corresponding percentage is as high at Apple.
Previously, their product cycle was around 2-3 years, except for 2000->XP (1 year), and NT 4.0->2000 (4 years). They took almost 6 years to upgrade their desktop OS with Vista, and made changes almost at every level. People hate change. That includes both end-users and developers of end-user software and hardware drivers.
I don't think you can just force large-scale changes to something as fundamental as an OS, you have to spoon-feed it to the users. Breakages in the layers on top of it won't be too catastrophic, are fixed more quickly and thus pissing users off. (I didn't really follow anything Mac-related during the time of the MacOS 9->10 switchover, so I don't know how they got away with that)
Note: I primarily use Linux; I only have Windows (XP) installed for playing games and testing, and I'm putting off the Vista upgrade for later. In contrast, I usually upgrade my Linux system shortly after a new version of my distro (OpenSUSE) is out, which is typically every 6-8 months: the changes between versions aren't massive and the inconvenience caused tends to be minor.
How could MS have handled this better? Make drivers for every known product themselves? Micromanage Vista Ready certifications(that one seems plausible at least)?
So the main problem Microsoft is having is poor third party support. Peripheral makers not updating drivers, though they had an unusually long period of time to do so. OEMs mislabeling laptops as Vista ready/capable/whatever when they clearly aren't. How could MS have handled this better? Make drivers for every known product themselves? Micromanage Vista Ready certifications(that one seems plausible at least)?
Not so, according to Dell:
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_002570DE00740E18002573FE006B7...
They might have had a lot of time, but looks like the goal posts moved very late in the game.
> OEMs mislabeling laptops as Vista ready/capable/whatever when they clearly aren't.
OEMs don't set the standards, Microsoft lowered them.
See: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080305-the-vista-capa...
> Micromanage Vista Ready certifications
RTFA, Microsoft dumped "Vista Ready" and replaced it with "Vista Capable", which will just "run these core experiences at a minimum."
See: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyor...
this reminds me of what happened with the Xbox 360... if they only spent a little more time and money with quality upfront, then MS wouldn't have had to spend an estimated 1 billion dollars fixing it... a 33% failure rate in an industry where 3% is the norm is just ridiculous - especially for something that costs people 350 - 450. (quality has recently been improved so that 360s only have a 10% failure rate; it's sti…
Good software design (and most design) is extremely iterative. You stop when the product is good enough for the market to support. It seems to me that there weren't enough internal emails like this.
this reminds me of what happened with the Xbox 360... if they only spent a little more time and money with quality upfront, then MS wouldn't have had to spend an estimated 1 billion dollars fixing it... a 33% failure rate in an industry where 3% is the norm is just ridiculous - especially for something that costs people 350 - 450. (quality has recently been improved so that 360s only have a 10% failure rate; it's sti…
I don't really understand why you, as a consumer, would care about a company's hardware failure rate. Sure, that hurts their bottom line, but as long as you have a working Xbox 360, shouldn't you be happy? It's not really analogous at all to Vista, since Vista isn't "failing" so much as it's something people don't want.
this reminds me of what happened with the Xbox 360... if they only spent a little more time and money with quality upfront, then MS wouldn't have had to spend an estimated 1 billion dollars fixing it... a 33% failure rate in an industry where 3% is the norm is just ridiculous - especially for something that costs people 350 - 450. (quality has recently been improved so that 360s only have a 10% failure rate; it's sti…
I don't really understand why you, as a consumer, would care about a company's hardware failure rate. Sure, that hurts their bottom line, but as long as you have a working Xbox 360, shouldn't you be happy? It's not really analogous at all to Vista, since Vista isn't "failing" so much as it's something people don't want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really understand why you, as a consumer, would care about a company's hardware failure rate. Sure, that hurts their bottom line, but as long as you have a working Xbox 360, shouldn't you be happy? It's not really analogous at all to Vista, since Vista isn't "failing" so much as it's something people don't want.
When I mean fail, I mean not working at all until I send it to MS tech support, they fix it, and sent it back. I have to wait 4-6 weeks every time my xbox 360 breaks; that's why I care. it's happened once before... and given what I read online it'll happen another 2-3 times
Back to the real point: you want your Xbox 360, you don't want Vista.