It's now official. The mirror mirror on the wall (err... in my head, that is) has spoken, and decreed Microsoft's marketing team to be the most craptastic of all. Maybe the Borg has eaten its own brain. Maybe they've all taken up Ballmer's meth habit. [Exhibit A:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc, or maybe try
the remix.] Either way, last night I went to the VS2008 "
InstallFest" thinking that I would get media to "
install" VS2008 Professional. That turned out to be a logical but poor assumption. Instead, I got a t-shirt (if I had a garden it would make a terrific weeding jersey) and a "trial edition" CD with a "special code" to go to
www.vs2008offer.com and order my free copy... which apparently won't arrive for
6-8 weeks! Are you guys hand-writing each address and licking the stamps? Let's just think about this. They're that ridiculous (... but as long as the stock price goes up and Windows remains ubiquitous, who cares, right?). For me, one magical day around Valentine's Day, my copy will arrive. Wow! By that time I might have completely forgotten VS2008 was even on its way. Not only that, but I drove 45 minutes to collect a CD of bits that ANYONE CAN DOWNLOAD at
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=7771657. 45 minutes each way for a t-shirt and a "special code" to boot. This is tantamount to Oscar Meyer announcing a dinner party where they'll unveil new hot dogs which they've already made available in samples at grocery stores... and then surprising all who showed up with those same bite-size samples and a "free 20 pack" coupon not to be used before February. In fairness, I haven't installed the trial edition yet, but I can imagine it's basically a beta (not the finished product, and probably buggy). Sweet! I was shocked that VS2008 was announced for release in 2007 instead of July 08, and give MSFT credit for not pulling another Vista (only 2 years late and with most of the good features dropped!) but isn't the "trial edition" bunk (that everyone knows is basically a way to find bugs before releasing the actual product) a little anti-climactic? And who came up with the SEO domain name idea? What's with
- visualstudio2008.defyallchallenges.com
- www.vs2008offer.com
- I especially enjoy http://vsdemo.defyallchallenges.com/thisisnotdefault.aspx. Maybe the whole "name a default page 'thisisnotdefault'" joke is lost on me, but that's funny like a midlife crisis and frankly looks pathetic.
Do you not still own www.microsoft.com? This leaves me no choice but to, with total sincerity, write the next few lines to the board of the Borg, from a real live stockholder of MSFT:
Dear Borg,
I understand that you want to make it seem like you have righted the ship by releasing a product ahead of schedule rather than behind schedule. The press releases might make it sound like you have redeemed yourselves, and that's very nice, but if I were you I wouldn't try to pull your face out of the mud by doing something just as mud-worthy. It seems to me that you have made yourself look silly by throwing a party for a demo. Forgive me for being naive, but next time I see a "look how great this will be... soon" marketing pitch coming, I think I'll just stay home and pay for the damn thing when it's ready to go to market. I really like c# and the .Net framework as a whole, but this is exactly why Apple is kicking your ass right now. Alienating those who encourage the sales of Windows is only going to make things worse. Please don't repeat this behavior.
-Brett
I really do think .Net is a better platform than Java, and Sun is to blame for that (well, let's give Microsoft credit here too), but seriously, everybody who wears a suit to work in One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA is a moron.
4 comments:
Okay, first I don’t work for M$, but in fairness the InstallFest was not as bunk as you make it out to be. I attended one in another city than you probably did, (I’m not in the Rocky Mountain area). As I understand it our trial edition is not the same as the one everyone can download. Ours is upgradeable to Released with a code that they will send us along with the Released disks. The trial that everyone else downloads can not be upgraded and must be uninstalled to install the Released version. Also the version we received is the RTM, (Released to Manufacturing), version which is not beta. And the reason it will take 6-8 weeks to send the released version is they do not have the released version DVD’s from the distribution center yet, (still being stamped and printed). That and we had free pizza and libations made our InstallFest a pretty good deal for the price, free.
@Anonymous -
Thanks for reading... you may be the only one! In fairness, yes, there was free beer and wine at the Denver event. That's great if the version we received was RTM, but the reason for being late still makes MSFT look bad in my opinion. If they can hand out codes ultimately redeemable for a DVD in the mail, why can't they hand out "works once" codes to use for logging into MSDN to download? I'd honestly rather not have the DVD anyways. I have plenty already, and my wireless router can handle it. It doesn't have to look pretty to install. They provide all their software to those with MSDN subscriptions (depending on the level of sub, of course), why couldn't they do the same here? They would have saved themselves the effort of getting the DVD's stamped/printed and I would have gone home feeling more confident in them... not to mention a bit of instant gratification. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but there was plenty of fluff in an event I was told would not be sales-oriented.
http://www.helpdesk-software.ws/it/29-04-2004.htm - Oh yeah, scissor!!!
Janet,
I think 9 of the 100 reasons on that list are related to open source or having source for java. The open source issue is slowly going away, and das Borg has released the source for das Framework. The probably sounds stupid, but the silliest thing I see in java is the lack of Properties. Why do I have to type record.set_Id(1) instead of record.Id = 1? It doesn't read naturally. MSFT stole Anders Hejlsberg and it's only been uphill from there. .Net is definitely ripped off, but sun and msft have done that for a while now (<% %> for example)... I think it's better the second time around (such as generics). Both will someday die, but there's a lot of momentum for both now, and hopefully we'll be gainfully employed for years. :)
Post a Comment