“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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now we know where the hackers are coming from!
Where’s Spudnik? I’m sure his spin would be of interest to all of us.
Rats leaving a sinking ship! Or just wishing to?
Isn”t it time to up the ‘Star Trek’ project to ‘Warp Factor 10’, and get it running on those ugly grey ‘Kling-ing on’ ships (PCs).
Captain Kirk wouldn’t have waited this long…
Oops! I meant Sputnik. Actually, maybe I didn’t. And jimbo’s so-called “anecdotal” evidence sure didn’t sound like “one person or another”. I don’t think he read the article in any event. It was a s**t load of seemingly current MS employees, not “one man’s opinion.”
It looks like it really is as bad as we’ve been hearing. Microsoft would have been better of if the DOJ had split them in two. At least then one half wouldn’t be saddled with Steve Ballmer as CEO.
Paul Thurrott’s sentiments come to mind “Vista has all the makings of a train wreck.” Paul could be right (for once).
Stop feeding the troll. Why don’t you guys ever learn? Ignore him.
unbelievable….. I never knew it was this bad at MS. It looks worse that what Apple went through before SJ came back… seriously, will they be able to recover?
Apple did, but that’s because of visionary leadership, a couple of timely products (imac, ipod), and some industry luck.
Will MS be able to find/create even one of these three?
Just what we have been saying for some long time now…
I love the expression: Microsofts’s “mythological aristocracy”.
To use the expression of David Cameron, Gates and Ballmer are analog men in a digital world…
Last word:- Apple needs to be wary of adopting the MS employees suggestion of licensing OSX to MS to distribute.. they might even fail at that too.
fearing the the rebirth of the clone wars….
(…and no I am not talking about Star Wars, learn your Apple history.)
Guys like Gates, et al., have for a long time conflated free enterprise with capitalism.
Capitalism’s real goal is monopolistic power and privilege. This explains why so many companies go belly-up. They are not committed to innovation, design and, above all, their public, which are vital elements of a free enterprise system.
The goal of Apple is different. Apple’s goal is to market superior hardware and software designed to meet the public’s needs–not the needs of narcissistic CEOs.
Does anyone sense a train wreck coming up ahead?
MDN word: dark
Its looking kinda dark in Redmond.
Please, forget my previous behaviour.
I heart Apple.
It’s just that I was abused as a child.
Oh, this sucks. I want a girlfriend.
My God! The disgust in those MS-employee comments outshine even most of the vitriol that can be heard in the MDN comments.
Microsoft Vista – Maybe they should rename it to… Microsoft Horizon.
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I just have one question: Why does Jim Alchin still have a job?
MD, Go drown yourself you freakin’ fat sack of lard.
You got fired from Apple ‘cuz you ate all the coffeeroom donuts.
Please stay out of Canada, ‘cuz we’ll close all the TimHorton’s, and hide all the TimBits.
[• 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.]
–
Or better still, Apple can – on there own – offer OSX 10.3 Panther for the OEM ‘PC’ makers. And two months after Leopard ships, offer 10.4 Tiger.
Everyone in ‘PC’ land would be happy. Intel, Dell, HP, PC folk.
Well, everyone except MS. Ballmer would throw himself out a ‘window’.
I felt the “rage” after spending $10K on a “useless” MCSE certification for NT and jumped to the Mac much earlier so I had some perspective on the situation. I walked away from “lucrative”, because I knew in my heart that one day I would have to answer for taking folks to the cleaners because of bad operating systems that sucked away their business profits. I found a “better way” with Macs and my mission at macCompanion is to help others also find better tools to do their jobs.
‘Bloke’
Some many moons ago, Strata sold their 3 products for shipping only (or something rediculously cheap). Afterwards, they sent out welcoome letters and offered updates to the newest version for a discount. It worked. They got me to do it. For less than $100 I had 3 very decent graphics and media programs.
Give ’em a taste, then they’ll want to drink.
Robert Pritchett
You paid for an NT4 course? Why didn’t you learn it out of a book in an afternoon like everyone else did? They had to be the easiest IT exams ever.
Typical NT4 exam question:-
A user in Accounts calls to say she can’t log onto her PC. You check her account and it is not disabled, and the WINS database shows her PC as Tombstoned. What could be the problem?
A: The DHCP scope is fully allocated
B: The Planet Mars is in the House of Saturn
C: A dog
D: Don’t use NetWare!!!
Rather expensive way to learn from a mistake. No wonder you were mad.
P.S. The answer you should have chosen was D. It was a Microsoft exam after all
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Windows is the world “standard” for PC operating systems only because Microsoft has lowered the threshold for reliability and resourcefulness. Fortunately, others would prefer to raise the criteria for excellence and commercial relevance rather than diminish performance to a bare minimum of acceptability.
If ONLY Apple would actually advertise and market OS X, dammit!
It is great to see the evil empire struggle so. Yet, does it really make any difference to us in the orchard?
If “Longwait” never did show up, wouldn’t the vast majorty of the computers continue to run Microsoft? They provide a standard opperating system and the world wants that.
As I have been led to understand, Steve wants it that way too. “Apple is not an enterprise company it is a consumer company.”
If this is the case, I feel fortunate I can buy and use Apple computers and play my music on an iPod. Too bad about most of the rest of the world. Lucky us.
I couldn’t agree more, ‘Not Bill’.
Edgeley Exile 43;
Thanks for the humor.
Dumb me. I was working on PCs and networking systems for a year and also got my MCP and Internet certs as well, supporting a family and also working on a Masters degree at the same time.
I figured MS and MCSEs were an honest bunch. I was proved wrong. I flew on planes tha thad MCSEs working in Seattle at the time billing (bilking?) customers for over $700 per hour. Back then an MCSE was worth much more than the cert is today. Perception is everything.
I am a slow learn, slow burn kind of guy and what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger and maybe wiser.