Interesting Article - Vista Death Watch

[Craig]

I just saw this on Digg today and even though it's from October, it's a really well written piece. They document the past history of such products as Windows ME and make assumptions about the uneasey future of MS's flagship OS, Vista.

So what went wrong with Vista in the first place? Let’s start off with the elephant in the room. The product was overpriced from the outset. Why was it so expensive? What was special about it? All the cool and promised features of the original vision of Longhorn were gutted simply because it was beyond Microsoft’s capability to implement those features.

This failure to deliver what was promised—even after several delays in the product’s release, by the way—did nothing to excite anyone. It made the company look bad. It directly resulted in a no-confidence vote that was manifested in a lackluster reception and low sales. Microsoft should have scrapped the project two years ago and instead patched XP until it could deliver something hot.

To make things worse, there are too many versions. Exactly what is the point of that? Don’t we all just want Vista Ultimate? The other versions seem like a way to maybe save money for some users who cannot afford to get the real thing. You can be certain this version glut results only in complaints about what each variation is missing.

Other than shatty gaming performance, it's really not that bad. But I agree, it's not epic by any means. But then again, I hear Leopard (for the Apple folks) was a huge 'meh' release as well. Eventually, marketing can only sell so many widgets...as Microsoft is finding out...and the hard way at that it seems.

[CoffeeShark]

i like Dvorak, cause he's a grumpy old man, and distributes his hate evenly to everyone.

1. overpriced. of course it was. of course, 90% of people won't buy Vista off the shelf, or they'll buy OEM.

2. release delay. normal crap for any software, including Leopard. you can't release it if there are major bugs (major, not billions of minor ones).

3. too many versions. absolutely. one version with everything in it would be fine. or, at most, one ultimate home and one ultimate business.

4. Scuttle Vista. ridiculous suggestion. and they have already started with a new reduced core for Windows7, so his suggestions are pretty dumb in this area.

I still only have one copy of Vista Home Premium, and I won't be buying another until/maybe Vista gets a good service pack (the first one is okay, but not enough).

Let me tell you what Microsoft SHOULD do:

1. Enable a gaming/quick mode on the OS. This has been done by 3rd party coders, so I think MS could do it. Either a one-button touch, or a boot-up option.

2. Updates. Get the team to release major updates every 30 days after release, and make it very obvious what is fixed (pop-ups, emails, messages) and how it benefits the user. Being vague doesn't help. If shit is broke and you fixed it, say it. If you improved something, say it.

3. Do away with the marketing-speak. "WOW"? idiots. Advertising is about value, not cavemen or lizards. A simple commercial showing the product and why you should upgrade. Hell, maybe if the product team STARTED with this value-based concept...

4. Embrace the community. Get developers involved with things like gadgets and lots of downloadable content. People love lots of unique things, not 10 of the same things. Developers love seeing their programs on other computers and seeing their download counter increase. They've done a little more of this with Home Server, but not enough.

5. sell a Microsoft computer package. i know this goes against their vendor agreements, but with the next OS release, sell a package of computer/laptop, printer, and other peripherals guaranteed to work, like Apple can do. Use some sweet ass hardware, and sell it for a sweet price, so the vendors can undersell it easily. You saw how little vendors cared to write drivers for Vista, which was available to them in plenty of time before its release. and yes, MS sells hardware, it's called an Xbox, so I don't want to hear that argument.

7. Hire me at $420k per year as a consultant.

[dcikra]

I agree wholeheartedly with 1 and 7

[Craig]

I agree with 7 only if the house gets a cut

[Gantua]

Sooner or later Vista will be what people want it to be, iirc XP was ass for the first 18 months after release.

[CoffeeShark]

Originally Posted by Gantua

Sooner or later Vista will be what people want it to be, iirc XP was ass for the first 18 months after release.

people never remember the bad, only the good.

[FuzzyLogik]

Yeah, people don't remember that. I remember trying XP and then going back to Win 2000 - it just ran better. Not even close to being that way now!

Vista will be the next XP - it'll just take a bit.

And as for lepoard - wtf? yeah, it might only cost just over a 100 bucks.. but... common! they added like... three different things... made the dashboard "reflective" and changed the system pref. icon to a bunch of gears instead of a light-switch? Oh, and the networking stuff - maybe its because i'm not used to it, but it seems like they convoluted networking even more than it was. serious lack of control on that stuff (imho).

Anyways... I'll be reinstalling Vista sometime soon after I get my new drive installed.

[CoffeeShark]

Originally Posted by FuzzyLogik

Yeah, people don't remember that. I remember trying XP and then going back to Win 2000 - it just ran better. Not even close to being that way now!

Vista will be the next XP - it'll just take a bit.

And as for lepoard - wtf? yeah, it might only cost just over a 100 bucks.. but... common! they added like... three different things... made the dashboard "reflective" and changed the system pref. icon to a bunch of gears instead of a light-switch? Oh, and the networking stuff - maybe its because i'm not used to it, but it seems like they convoluted networking even more than it was. serious lack of control on that stuff (imho).

Anyways... I'll be reinstalling Vista sometime soon after I get my new drive installed.

Leopard added 300 things. of course, this counts 20 language ports, lots of AppleScript stuff that the common user would never touch, microsoft drivers, things like a Boot Camp shortcut, Dashcode additions that most never use, dictionaries, folder sharing (?), 10 Font additions (hooray!), and numerous other "additions" that hardly qualify as much of anything.

Now, there are some cool features they've added, for sure. But even the Apple faithful are less than thrilled by it.

Originally Posted by apple

System Font Protection
Never worry about accidentally deleting a system font. Leopard will warn you when you’re about to perform an action that will remove a required font.

wow! I was WAITING for that FEATURE!!!

[DennyCrane]

...maybe Microsoft should start selling Apples
(I'm just sayin')

[DominiKing]

M$ better get their game on, they starting to suck. Or have they always been like that?