PC World magazine’s Stephen Manes offers some parting advice for Bill Gates as he “transitions” out of Microsoft:
• Quit kidding yourself. Do some soul-searching and publicly disown the longstanding public-relations fantasy that Microsoft has something to do with “innovation.” Your business has always been about taking others’ ideas and selling them with a Microsoft badge. Period. After CP/M came DOS; after Mac came Windows; after Palm came Pocket PC; after Netscape came IE. And those are just the most obvious examples.
• Insist on quality and security. Microsoft ads say “Your potential. Our passion,” but the real motto should be “Do the Minimum.” Whenever I pick up a Microsoft product, I expect stupid or dysfunctional design. You rarely disappoint me.
• Shake up the talent. Nobody in a position of authority at Microsoft ever seems to get fired. Many should be. How many times can a product jettison features and miss deadlines before its handlers get the boot? How many security flaws can pop up before their creators walk the plank?
• Stop making crap. Software has to run, not crash, before it can fly.
Full article with more here.
So true, but Microsoft has little chance of actually executing any of Manes’ suggestions.
Related articles:
The Economist: Apple’s Steve Jobs is Bill Gates’ secret ‘Chief Software Architect’ replacement wish – June 22, 2006
Requiem for Bill Gates – June 16, 2006
Bill Gates to transition out of a day-to-day role in Microsoft – June 15, 2006
the pc losers just got belted with a crowbar to the teeth.
must suck to be a pc user, esp with vista coming, thats going to be less usable and more insecure than xp.
and now you have pc journo’s telling you like it is.
suffer losers!!!
Too freakin’ funny! I bet that person had his account wiped clean by some malware that was monitoring his keystrokes and reporting that back to Russia.
JadisOne,
You Mac users with your ironclad OS are so simplistic.
We don’t just send the keystrokes back to Mother Russia, we also send backups to China simultaneously.
Luckily for us most people use Windows and not Macs or we’d have to get real jobs.
Stop selling crap? STOP SELLING CRAP?
Are you all smoking? It is our most successful product. We have been selling crap to our customers and it brings back tons of $.
Why on this world should we stop our most successful business model?
We made selling crap a gold mine in Redmond.
Sheeeeessh some people. Amazing people in PC World hadn’t get it.
We sell crap and our customers love it. We just tell them it is the best they can get in IT world and they believe it.
Uhmmmm, thinking about pee now… I am sure we will outsell champagne with our faithful customer base.
Quit kidding yourself
We are not kidding ourself. We innovated the way to innovate: buy others’ innovations than selling as Microsoft and keep doing it. In due time customers forget all about the disappeared buyout company and truly believes it is Microsoft who has introduced it. Works 100% with our customers: just ask any Windows user.
Insist on quality and security
We keep insisting saying that. Little by little people believe it: if we say it it means we must do it. Again, ask any Windows user. They even expect Vista to be the ultimate in security when it will just be XP SP3. It works, you do not need to believe me, just ask any Windows user “When Vista comes out all security problems will be solved”. The important thing is beliefs not facts.
Shake up the talent
Again, who cares? We keep selling. Why firing staff who keep selling. If we are able to sell with what we offer the way we do it means we do not need to shake up anything. We’re doing just right. Imagine any other company slipping dates and cutting features like we do on Vista. They will be out of business in no time. We still have our customers believe Vista will come and smoke competition. Again, just say it and they’ll believe it. Our staff is expert on spins. All we need to convince our customers to keep buying.
Stop making crap
Why? It sells just fine.
Steve Ballmer just said that the company’s delayed Vista operating system and Office 2007 program could be Microsoft’s ‘most exciting offerings ever’.
See, we just need to say it and our customers believe it.
Steve just said that he will be ‘the champion of innovations’. Soon our customers will repeat that “Microsoft is the champion of innovations”. When Vista will be out our customers will say “AH ha, here is where Apple got all his ideas for OS X”.
It works, it just works. You just need to have the right profile for customers: there’s a lot more of our customers than Apple’s ones. We know which human profile is most common.
Although Microsoft Executive’s statements are satirical, they do have a nugget of truth in them — Windows runs on expectations and hopes for a glorious future that never quite arrives. It reminds me most strongly of Islamic fundamentalism. Believe in the glory of the caliphate as the world collapses around you. Baghdad Bob speaks the truth — oh no, Iraq is defeated! Why doesn’t Windows work? It’s always somebody else’s fault, just like the problems of the Islamic world are always the fault of Israel or the U.S. There’s something freakish about the reality denials issued by companies and cults in decline.
Loved it.
This is why Zune will probably suck. I am guessing the design will be marginal to decent (don’t know if the images available so far are actually the final thing), but there are guaranteed to be extraneous buttons and the MS logo attached somewhere. The menus will likely be byzantine. Even without the complication of wireless downloads to the player itself, the file management is nearly guaranteed to be confusing and a bitch to some RIAA/MPAA-desired DRM scheme.
I thought their work with Xbox might give hope here, but the more I think about it, the less I think the work there is instructive. Xbox – bigger, better, faster, more. Video games need that to improve. Media players? Yeah, bigger screen, but really, no one is ever to watch too much video on a 2.5-3 inch screen. Bigger storage? Sure, I would love 100 GB, but most folks have 5-10 GB of music and with the screen size, there is not much cause to haul around video (I don’t think anyone yet has the killer external screen to pair the iPod with…lots of interesting stuff, but not yet). Even then, storage is
not a battle that can be won because MS and Apple both buy their storage, so they will end up being equal. Slimmer, maybe. Features – WiFi/wirless. Sure, but if MS can do it, Apple can. Not sure yet that there is a use that will not cost the consumer a premium (I suspect wireless DLs will cost more than online DLs). Basically, it comes down to ease of use, both in the menu system and integration. This is not a MS strong suit.
The interesting thing here is if the pissed off partners (iRiver, etc) will give a giant fuck you to MS, or suck it up and try to create a Zune ecosystem. Even if Zune itself is good, the lack of an ecosystem (if MS does stick everything plus a blender on the Zune, it will by definition not be good) will hinder it. They could enter an already crowded iPod ecosystem or go where there currently is a vacuum. Maybe MS will throw them a bone and give them a headstart.
I wouldn’t get too excited. This is nothing less than Manes’ pathetically cynical set up for Vista. When Vista is released, Manes will proclaim Microsoft has answered his plea and laud Vista as the greatest single release of commercial software ever.
“Stop making crap!”
Just to set the record straight, Microsoft isn’t MAKING crap – it’s me! Yeah, I’m making the crap! It’s right out my ass. Farmer Brown sells it to Bill – he drops by every Friday and picks it up.
The writing is on the wall for Apple. Vista will sweep all before it and Mac OS X will be relegated to the ghetto from whence it came …
Aw, who’m I kidding? There’s no way MS can catch Apple now.
Earth to Stephen Manes:
There’s a very simple way to solve all this…
STOP BUYING THEIR CRAP!
There are alternatives, (Mac or Linux), if you’re not willing to even contemplate these then stop complaining – you deserve everything you get.
Someone rewrite Stop Making Sense by David Byrne as Stop Making Crap
gagravaar,
Now, U don’t expect windows users to think for themselves!?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> They will all run out to buy Crapista the day it comes out. Later, they will cry to each other because their boxes can’t handle Aero.
ppl i´m trying to switch my intire family to mac but they can´t,that only means that they are ignorants,my father buy a vaio but don´t use it because its too complex,my mother only uses on her enterprise pcs and my sister only uses a 1gen shuffle but when it comes to macs my father comes only to my internet and he knows how it works and my sister has began how to work on itunes.I guess that this real fact only asks for the world to change for apple,and this is not world dominacion.