Tales From Behind Microsoft's Firewall 247
lizzyben writes "CIOinsight.com is hosting an interview with Robert Scoble on life after Microsoft. 'By blogging for the world's largest software company, Scoble changed the way companies communicate with the world and became an industry celebrity in the process.' He talks about MS culture, senior management and the benefits of blogging from inside the belly of the software beast." More from the article: "We used blog-search engines to find anyone who wrote the word 'Microsoft' on their blog. Even if they had no readers and were just ranting, 'I hate Microsoft,' I could see that and link to it, or I could participate in their comments, or send them an e-mail saying, 'What's going on?' And that told those people that someone was listening to their rants, that this is a different world than the one in which no one listens. It was an invaluable focus group that Microsoft didn't have to pay for."
Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:5, Insightful)
You may have responded to some rants on how Microsoft products work (or don't), and that is all fine and dandy, as it was appreciated. However, the problems are *still* there. I still get the little hardware wizard that wants to help me when I plug in a new mouse, or Windows will still notify me that there is either a new network found or that my computer is at a security risk because of virus subscription expiration in the middle of a Powerpoint presentation!
It's stuff like that (and much more) that are driving people to alternatives
Too much work (Score:2, Insightful)
Why didn't he just read Slashdot? Faster, cheaper, and probably holds the core user/developer base that would have the most to say on the subject of Microsoft software. Face it: even the most virulent criticism of MS here would contain enough useful information that if Gates & Co. actually paid attention, they'd find innumerable ideas for improving their wares. And all for free.
focus group might improve things (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I beg to differ on the characterization that the world's blog is being considered like a big focus group. When a real focus group pans a product idea, the maker doesn't try to rationalize the current design, the maker drops it or improves it and starts over. Blog writers are howling into the wind, and it doesn't matter if they are heard or not: Microsoft will just go on doing what Microsoft wants to do, because they're big enough and the market is big enough that they feel they can ignore the whiners.
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Microsoft didn't tell me my Antivirus protection had expired, just because I had a power point slide open!"
There is no way to make everyone happy, so you provide the best protection you can and try to make the least number of people pissed. To me, a better question would be "why did you let your antivirus expire?".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:focus groups and corporate bs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no.... I would not.
How unprofessional is it in the middle of a presentation to have something like that happen? In the movies, they call it interruption of suspension of disbelief. In business and science, it's called absurd.
There is no way to make everyone happy, so you provide the best protection you can and try to make the least number of people pissed. To me, a better question would be "why did you let your antivirus expire?".
That is a cop out that lazy people trot out when they do not want to do the real work required to think about how people actually interact with their computers. Actually, there *is* a better way and Apple computer has showed us.
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps because Symantic is one of the very few companies that suck worse than MS!
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Microsoft didn't tell me my Antivirus protection had expired, just because I had a power point slide open!"
There is no way to make everyone happy, so you provide the best protection you can and try to make the least number of people
pissed. To me, a better question would be "why did you let your antivirus expire?".
Exactly! People bitch if MS doesn't pop up a notification and people will bitch if MS does pop up a notification. MS tries
to make everyone happy by making everything customizable (IE: local/group policies for everything under the sun it seems).....
however, the extra code to accomodate the configurable options adds to bloat. So people will bitch about the bloat and the
higher machine requirements.
You will never be able to make everyone happy. Particularly certain linux crowds that will complain over any little thing MS
does.
It's ironic that a major source of the bloat in the MS code can be traced back to end users whining about wanting (or nor
wanting) certain options. Of course, if MS didn't listen and just said 'Tough.. your getting it the way we want you to have
it so that we can keep the code base small'... people would whine about the lack of options.
It just like politics... Dems/Reps will complain all day about 4.7% of the public being unemployeed, while ignoring the 95.3% of
the people that are employeed.
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:2, Insightful)
And they wonder how they got the title Big Brother (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too much work (Score:5, Insightful)
But quite dissimilar from the +5 moderated posts. Slashdot has this unique automoderation feature that one seems interested in copying. Flames on
Really, the signal/noise ratio is very high here compared to other forums.
I don't linke the "we are the core of the technology world" meme, though...
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mod Parent Retarded (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps these 'millions of people' don't realise they actually have a choice.
Right of reply (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hardly a surprise to learn that deliberately publicised information is being found and read - that's the whole point, surely? I remember reading a comment from the BBC News web team a while ago saying pretty much the same thing - people were saying it was scary when the Beeb team replied to them. Er...why?
Cheers,
Ian
Yeah, they listen allright (Score:2, Insightful)
More like, they search all the blogs like /. and mod down anyone who critizes Microsoft or calls their products proprietary pieces of shit.
There is nothing "unreal" about NT (Score:3, Insightful)
We can still complain about their illegal and unethical business practises, and of course specific software glitches. But today, their OSes are as real as any other provider.
Re:Mod Parent Retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps they don't want to realise they have a choice. They aren't like us, computers aren't "fun" for them, they are just a tool. What OS they use has little meaning to them, but they wouldn't want to have to learn another, even if it were better. Having to choose an OS would only confuse and anger them. Sorry, I love Linux as much as the next rabid slashdotter, but people who care about what OS they use are a tiny minority.
Nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mod Parent Retarded (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really, it isnt.
Unrequested drastic UI and focus alterations are _always_ undesired. You dont need to query anything about wether the user should be interrupted; the user should _not_ be interrupted. For anything. At any time.
Nobody _ever_ has so much spare time these days that they sit around doing nothing but wait for random suggestions, be it from telemarketers or syslogs. They're always doing something, and unless 'looking at the system messages' has reached their priority queue, whatever they're doing is always more important.
(Actually, there is one time where an interruption is appropriate; notification that they're going to be a whole lot more interrupted in a short while, such as notifying the user that a system shutdown is imminent or the battery is about to explode)
There. Now that we've concluded that interruptions with push-information are more or less always inappropriate, the question instead becomes 'how do we quickly and unobtrusively notify the user that there is information available when his attention strays'?
The answer to that, of course, is things like notification bars, system trays, tickers, etc. Unobtrusive UI features requested and placed appropriately by the user.
"It's a significant challenge."
No, really, it isnt. Anyone who's been in a classroom should be able to solve it; thirty unruly programs need to learn to raise their hand and wait to get asked, rather than blurt out whatever's on their mind.
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Three step solution to Microsoft's problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple appears to have a pretty good strategy at the moment of taking over all the fun things that talk to your computer one by one until Microsoft is completely surrounded.
Re:Spare yourself.. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's identical to XP and 2000, just with more beta testers. There's really no change at all with Vista's testing and public scrutiny. As for a vastly different OS, they made vastly different OSs with 95 and NT, so this really isn't anything new either.
Microsoft was forced to release the Xbox in a different way than they are used to. It was a completely new and different market and they were the underdog. It had nothing to do with public feedback or demands from users. They pushed into a market the only way possible. And they're still losing ($).
Microsoft has not changed at all. They've had the same business model for over 25 years. They've had only two departments (currently only 2 products) ever turn a profit. They've been eating up competitor companies for two decades. They put out more PR people to interact on forums so their customers feel better but the results are the same. Bug rates haven't drastically dropped and after their major security initiative a few years ago nothing is more secure. Read the blogs of Microsoft employees to see how management still doesn't listen. Both internally and externally nothing has significantly changed.
They listen well, but they don't act well. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is, Microsoft has always tried to appease users instead of trying to help them.
The difference is expertise. Users know what they need to do, but they're mostly not software engineers or UI designers, so they aren't able to say exactly how their needs should be met. Even if they have some idea of what they want, they're very unlikely to be informed of the implications of what they're asking for.
A good UI designer has that expertise. He knows how to meet the user's needs. He doesn't just do whatever the user wants; he examines their complaint, realizes what the real need is, and programs an intelligent, usable solution. Then that solution is rigorously tested to ensure it is actually better than the situation it was aiming to solve.
Microsoft doesn't have this expertise. For all their supposedly brilliant minds, I see no evidence of their recognizing any principles of good software design. Instead, they just appease users by doing exactly what the user tells them to do, regardless of the consequences. Even if the addition makes things worse. They don't help the user; they pander to the user.
The user says, "There are too many items in these menus." Microsoft responds with "personalized menus." They addressed the complaint but they didn't help the situation at all. The real solution would be to better organize the menus. Any programmer can look at the menus of, say, Word, and intuit a better arrangement.
The user says, "There are too many icons in my system tray." Microsoft responds with a button that collapses the tray. This is a band-aid solution, which doesn't address the real problem: too many programs staying resident for no reason. The real solution would have been implementing a software certification program (they already have one for drivers, supposedly) that frowns on or utterly fails software which employs undesirable practices like cluttering up the system tray.
The user says, "There are too many things in the Programs menu." Microsoft responds by telling vendors to install programs under submenus which bear the vendor name. It's a horrendous solution. It's the last way anyone would choose to organize anything. No one organizes their books by publisher. Hardly anyone remembers the publisher of most of their books. And indeed, few people remember the publisher of their software.
The user says, "It takes too long to log in." Microsoft responds by showing the desktop before it is "ready"; you can move the mouse, and you can bring up some menus, but they will be forcibly unposted in a few seconds, and attempts to start applications are no faster than they would be if you waited for all the startup items to finish.
The user says, "Windows isn't intuitive, I should be able to know right away how to do things." Microsoft responds with Bob.
There are dozens more examples. The point is that I see Microsoft listening to users, but it is as if Microsoft has no experience with designing usable software, even after all these years. It could well be a case of management paralysis. I don't know the cause, but the symptoms are pretty consistent.
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yet nothing is changin.... (Score:3, Insightful)