“It certainly sounded like Microsoft leadership committed to us, our customers, our partners, and our shareholders that Vista would be out in 2006,” Mini-Microsoft, a blog from a Microsoft insider, vents. “Slip!”
“We should have asked for more details around the ‘or else’ part of that commitment,” Mini-Microsoft writes. “I was upset at missing the back-to-school market. Now we’re missing the holiday sales market. All of those laptops and PCs are going to have XP on it. What percentage will upgrade to Vista? Well, I guess that’s the little dream that I need to give up on. Vista’s deployment is going to come from people buying CPUs with the OS pre-installed, not dancing down the CompUSA aisle as they clutch that boxed version of Vista to their loving chest. So not only did we miss last year’s opportunity, we’re missing this year’s opportunity, too. With the convergence of high-tech media, this holiday season would have been an explosive nodal point to get Vista out for a compounded effect.”
Mini-Microsoft writes, “People need to be fired and moved out of Microsoft today. Where’s the freakin’ accountability?”
Some of our favorite comments to the article over on Mini-Microsoft, many of them presumably from Microsoft employees, include:
• Fer cripes sake, just get a Mac already.
• Being a 10+ year [Microsoft] vet I feel ashamed and sad. This company is a mess on so many levels.
• Here’s the way out: MS should swallow real hard, ante up half of what they blew on Longwind, and buy an OS X license from Apple. That would be about $10B up-front, and a hefty royalty. MS would have to assume the burden of making it run on all the crapbox PCs out there, which have had all the quality squeezed out of them, due to MS’s having sucked up the lion’s share of the profit from all PCs for the last 20 years or so. The benefit is that MS could finally ship a securable OS, and the users wouldn’t have to lose countless hours trying to work around the malware. Meanwhile, the only semi-competent part of the company, the Mac Business Unit, would take the lead in Apps development.
• Vista is a disaster. The “reset” you mention is nothing less than a FAILURE to SHIP. What you’re working on now isn’t Longhorn, it’s SP4. Don’t kid yourself. If you want to salvage your career, flee to Office, or better yet, get the heck out of the company before it all collapses.
• Ballmer is incompetent. The interview mentioned previously is terrible. Ballmer has presided over the fall of Microsoft. He sucks. When are internal folks going to stop falling for this mythological aristocracy? He and Bill are just weak men who aren’t in control.
• Compare this to OS X, where people fall all over themselves trying to get the newest version running on their old hardware because there’s actual value in the new features. So Vista has its guts ripped out, slips, and we wait another 5 years for a potentially insipring version of Windows, meanwhile Apple ships another 3 updates to OS X.
• God, we look like DEC more and more every day.
• I took part in a computer trade show early this month in Germany, and Microsoft was showing Vista, and the Microsoft fans were saying it looks like OS X (Apple wasn’t there). Apple is on a roll, and we’ve just given them enough time to get the next version of OS X out the door (whatever animal name it is going to be). And we can guess right now what their marketing push will be: Stop waiting for those guys who can’t even copy our old stuff in time. Get the original from us — we ship on time, we’re shipping right now.
• I wonder how many employees at PC hardware companies are wishing they had some way to call up Apple and license OS X for Intel. They could have 10.4 “Tiger” on PC hardware in a matter of weeks.
• What’s the difference between Mac OS X and Vista? Microsoft employees are excited about Mac OS X.
Full article, with many more comments, here.
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Wow. Simply……wow.
More confirmation of the Truth of Dilbert.
Amazing. Simply amazing.
MW: cause, as in “MS hubris and incompetence is the cause of their collapse.”
So true so true.
What’s the difference between Mac OS X and Vista? Microsoft employees are excited about Mac OS X.
They can be as excited as they want, because if they want a job they will be using Vista
And that’s the truth, Apple doesn’t care about enterprise, see this:
http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/applepeels/2006/03/lingering_regre.html
this comes as no surprise. it’s a wonder the hue and cry isnt louder.
MacDude:
To paraphrase the president, ” don’t you have a job to go to…”.
In other words, stop posting inane, childish comments on here and get back to work – or school.
don’t you have a job to go to…”.
Your right, I’ve been using Mac’s forever and I could have had a high paying IT job if I was trained on Windows.
Probally my own computer store…
I Build U A PC
My own corporation…
I Build U A PC, Inc.
My own website…
I Build U A PC.com
Oh but no… I’m using a platform that works so well that nobody will hire me as a serious IT tech.
So I come here on the Library Mac and annoy you, hahaha.
I sleep in the bushes when the Library closes and take a shower in the local pool too.
My life was ruined by Apple.
Ouch. That’s gotta hurt!
Take it for what it’s worth; Believe me or not:
The sentiment in that article is not all that amazing, and confirms what those of us on the “inside” have known for quite awhile now: Microsoft is an entity that has grown too big to be controlled.
Perhaps the biggest corporation in the history of human existence (depending on how you quantify the statement), and one that vies for technological leadership on a continuing basis.
And constantly fails.
And is being “run” by a salesman.
My heartfelt and long-pondered advice: Do NOT invest in this company.
Unless something major-league and systemically-altering happens here with the release of Vista, I predict it will fracture and implode over the next decade (if it takes that long) and either be split into smaller pieces or cease to exist. Or both.
There is a dark, dark, pall here. There is also very, very little open dialogue about what our “competitor” is doing or about how to “seize the day”, so to speak. Why? Because there are no true leaders here – and certainly none that can compete with the vision of someone like Jobs.
Anyone who worked here at one time and had any of those qualities is long gone. Any possible other candidates, if they still linger, are keeping quiet for fear of their jobs.
I know whereof I speak.
This merely confirms the reports of very low morale inside Microsoft and the increasing difficulty they have in attracting and retaining the best and brightest. It is patently unfair to categorize Microsoft’s engineers as “stupid”; they certainly are not, and many people who looked at the leaked Windows code had nothing but praise for their talents, particularly in finding work-arounds for the mess of spaghetti that is Windows. The often obscene comments embedded in the code were notable for the fury and frustration that the engineers felt at the entire unholy mess, and that they were being called on to polish up a big pile of excrement instead of writing something better.
Microsoft has simply been unable to capitalize on their in-house talent because of their culture. The marketers and MBA’s have greater say than the engineers. The Mac Business Unit is the proof of this. They have much greater autonomy than the other units, and only a dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft hater could claim that they don’t produce excellent software. They are only hobbled by the higher-ups who put the brakes on their work in order to maintain parity with the Windows versions of their offerings. It would be disastrous for the Windows unit if the MacBU consistently produced superior software.
MacDude,
It’s an interesting read, but it’s also what is known a anecdotal evidence. These days, you can find a blog from one person or another that has left the company and has a bad taste in their mouth for every company out there. This is one man’s opinion, not some exciting expose.
Next….
Micro$oft execs should re-read “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”. If they keep announcing all these grand ideas, then don’t deliver, soon no one’s going to pay attention to them. And certainly no one is going to run out and upgrade to Vista until at least SP1 is out. My dad-in-law is just now upgrading to XP because M$ has announced they’re discontinuing support for Win2K — and his support guru has practically moved into the house to do the upgrade. DIL is not going to be rushing out to upgrade to Vista if it means replacing his software that he had to replace to work with XP (I gave him a $250 gift certificate to Fry’s for Christmas — he was very grateful.)
The most interesting thing about the comments was how overworked the peons over at M$ feel, and how demoralized…how everything seems to be caught up in red tape, and the “L61” “L80” and all the other demarcations of rulership. Haven’t heard any leaks about that from over at Infinite Loop…wonder if Apple’s seeing an increase in resumes with Redmond and Seattle addresses?
” Take it for what it’s worth; Believe me or not:
The sentiment in that article is not all that amazing, and confirms what those of us on the “inside” have known for quite awhile now: Microsoft is an entity that has grown too big to be controlled.
Perhaps the biggest corporation in the history of human existence (depending on how you quantify the statement), and one that vies for technological leadership on a continuing basis.
And constantly fails.
And is being “run” by a salesman.
My heartfelt and long-pondered advice: Do NOT invest in this company.
Unless something major-league and systemically-altering happens here with the release of Vista, I predict it will fracture and implode over the next decade (if it takes that long) and either be split into smaller pieces or cease to exist. Or both.
There is a dark, dark, pall here. There is also very, very little open dialogue about what our “competitor” is doing or about how to “seize the day”, so to speak. Why? Because there are no true leaders here – and certainly none that can compete with the vision of someone like Jobs.
Anyone who worked here at one time and had any of those qualities is long gone. Any possible other candidates, if they still linger, are keeping quiet for fear of their jobs.
I know whereof I speak.”
Is that you Balmer?
MacDude – you, Vista, and the ex-Apple employee’s blog you reference are slipping so far into irrelevance it is not funny. Did you know that he had to shut down his comments a while back because they refuted most of his outdated assertions? Of course you didn’t. You are, as I say, irrelevant. Not to mention bandwidth you eating up.
man, what a sad sad day for microsoft. but you reap what you so. window’s is crap, and vista is more crap.
note to microsoft: either sh*t or get of the pot. ya hear me!!!1
Maybe this is a big opportunity for Apple. If they were to produce a ‘boxed’ version of OS X that current PC users could install on their current PCs, even if it were a limited “trial” version, it might convince a lot of PC users to switch before they buy a new PC with XP installed.
All Microsoft has to do is, starting with the Christmas season, ship WinTel box’s with XP installed and a certificate for a free Vista (or SP4) box when it ships. What’s the big deal?
Unless. . . . they don’t listen to me.
I love this comment:
I took part in a computer trade show early this month in Germany, and Microsoft was showing Vista, and the Microsoft fans were saying it looks like OS X (Apple wasn’t there). Apple is on a roll, and we’ve just given them enough time to get the next version of OS X out the door (whatever animal name it is going to be). And we can guess right now what their marketing push will be: Stop waiting for those guys who can’t even copy our old stuff in time. Get the original from us — we ship on time, we’re shipping right now.
Apple, are you listening? Get your advertising dollars to work and seize the moment. Now you have Microsofties telling you how to advertising your product over theirs.
Interesting Apple ad from the article: “Stop waiting for those guys who can’t even copy our old stuff in time. Get the original from us — we ship on time, we’re shipping right now.”
Apple has a perfect opportunity coming in this Holiday season. I just hope they start to ramp up production and advertise their computers. People will come running if they could see these computers in action. I can only hope Apple does not blow this opportunity.
Leopard will still be able to compete very well against Vista, but Tiger is so far ahead of XP. They just need to let people know it.
Priceless.
Sputnik . . . oh SPUTNIK!
Where ARE you, dear Sputnik? Eating some more crow, perhaps? Man, you must be getting tired of feathers and bones by now, huh?
When I first saw the Mac OS X demo at the Tokyo MacWorld Expo (forgot the year, about 7 years ago?), I stated to some Japanese guys working there to mark my words, “Windows will die within about 10 years”. That’s the first time I made that statement, and after buying and using OS X since it first became available, I have been even more convinced I was right.
Notice, I did not say MS will die (although stranger things have happened), but that Windows will die. I think the time is very short now…
MDN Magic Word: “provided”, as in MS has provided Apple a great opportunity. Who would have thought…