InformationWeek has some choice quotes from Microsoft executives:
“We’ve got a pretty noisy competitor out there,” Brooks said of Apple whose “I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC,” commercials criticize Windows Vista. “You know it. I know it. It’s caused some impact. We’re going to start countering it. They tell us it’s the iWay or the highway. We think that’s a sad message. Software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life.”
Considering the number of anti-trust suits Microsoft has had to file and the lawsuits regarding their blocking of compatibility with SAMBA and other network clients plus the arguments over the Office file formats, it seems ironic that Microsoft talks of compatibility.
“We broke a lot of things. We know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain. It got customers thinking, hey, is Windows Vista a generation we want to get invested in?” So Brad Brooks, Microsoft’s VP of Windows Vista consumer marketing, fessed up publicly this week.
Microsoft has a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars in order to rectify this. They’re going to spend it on marketing.
“Windows Vista is an investment in the long term,” Brooks said. “When you make the investment into Windows Vista, it’s going to pay it forward into the operating system we call Windows 7.” All the more reason, Brooks said, to upgrade to Windows Vista sooner than later.
Translation: Please buy Vista now and then Windows 7 in about two years time (assuming it ships on time).
People don’t want to make “a long term investment” in an OS, they want it to work now. Sweet christ.
Don’t even get me started on NTFS….