Describing how Microsoft has messed up (the one thing at which the Redmond monopolists seem to be really, really proficient) Word 2007, Margaret Heffernan blogs for The Huffington Post, “Microsoft has done it again: turned a perfectly decent piece of software on which a whole community depended into something that doesn’t work for anyone. It’s a classic example — if we needed more — of a company not listening to, not even thinking about, its customers. Instead of attacking competitors like Google, it might be a lot smarter if they diverted some of their brilliance to paying customers.”
Full article here.
Dan Warne, for APC Magazine, reports that Microsoft is pleading with customers not to wait for the oh-so-magical Vista SP1. “Microsoft has launched a ‘fact rich’ program to help customers understand why they should ‘proceed with confidence’ in rolling out Vista across all their PCs.”
MacDailyNews Take: Why would Microsoft launch Ballmer to help customers understand? (Scratching heads, rubbing chins, we re-read) Oh, we get it, “fact rich” – sorry, didn’t see that “c” the first time.
“Vista service pack 1 is, in the company’s own words, designed to address ‘deployment blockers and high impact issues,’ suggesting that until the release of SP1, you will have to contend with … deployment blockers and high impact issues. Hardly the basis for proceeding with confidence,” Warne reports.
Warne reports, “Microsoft’s ‘fact rich’ program announcement coincided with an embarrassing double-backflip today on its policy banning users from running home versions of Vista under virtual machines like VMware. It had planned to loosen the reigns, but pulled the announcement at the last moment.”
Full article here.
Also, in the “news” is a video produced by SarcasticGamer.com that highlights Microsoft’s vision of the future: “Surface: One Day Your Computer Will Be a Big-Ass Table.” The Sarcastic Gamer gives special thanks to their friends at Gamercast Network for “creative inspiration.”
As Andrew Fentem explained for The Register earlier this month, “Microsoft’s Surface Computing isn’t ‘a new paradigm,’ nor is it adding any innovation to an existing paradigm. Table computing isn’t a new market, either, and Microsoft’s demos are years away from being productized. In fact, according to Bill Buxton – ironically a Principal Researcher at Microsoft’s own research centre – these kinds of multi-touch interfaces have been around for over twenty years.”
Full article here.
More about Microsoft’s “Surface” (it’s smoke and mirrors – and cameras, folks) here and here.
MacDailyNews Note: The headline for this article is a parody. In regards to wakefulness, of course, not Microsoft products’ suckage, which is obvious fact to anyone who’s ever tried to use them. Unfortunately, only approximately 7.6% of home computer users have actually woken up (yet) combined with approximately 85% of digital media player users, 80% of legal online content downloaders, and another 0.00000001% who use Linux (but, as they’re way back in the server room, we’re not walking all the way back there to make sure he’s actually awake).