Microsoft’s Bad Press

Imagine a crowded bar on a hazy Saturday night. The mood inside is restless and tense. Suddenly the conversations die as the door opens to admit a mean looking customer. He was the baddest man in these parts for many a year but as of late he has gotten a little slower as old age begins to work its magic. He saunters in, looks the place over and spots the new kid in town. The one everybody’s talking about. The one who has begun to step onto his turf. The one he hates with a passion.  “Look here kid” he bellows “this town ain’t big enough for the two of us and so somebody has to go.” Then, quick as a snake he whips open his coat and draws a wicked looking pistol. He spins it around, flips it in the air, catches it again and promptly shoots himself in the foot. That was the scene recently as Microsoft tried to demo its new “Live” software.  We haven’t talked about Microsoft much lately because they haven’t really done anything news worthy in a long time. And if they hadn’t made such a fool of themselves with this latest event I probably wouldn’t have even given them a second thought. But this was just too good to pass up.  Oh, and for those of you who didn’t get the full story on their failed demo check out this story on OSViews.  While we are talking about the brooding giant in Redmond why don’t we take a look at how they have been faring these past few months. What with the tech world talking about iPods, video downloads and Sony slipping you some spyware with your new CD good old MS has been left out in the cold. So, here is what they have done that has made the news lately. And keep in mind, that whoever said “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” obviously never met the management at MS.  Failed demo ~ Taking ineptitude to the next level Ok, you are giving a demonstration of your company’s new net-centric business software when, that’s right, everything crap outs and goes dark. What moron was responsible for that? And how do get people like that working on such an important project? I think this is even worse than the blue screen of death.  The South Korea “Incident” ~ MS threatens to make S. Korea virus free So South Korea complains that MS is needlessly bundling software with Windows and asks them if they would please stop. Doesn’t this sound familiar? (European Union perhaps?) Not to be outdone MS quickly declares that maybe they don’t need to sell any more crap to S.K. anyway. Then comes the name calling, the “yo momma” jokes and eventually an appearance on court TV before everything is solved. Of course this brings up the question of how many countries will threaten legal action against MS before they stop acting illegally?  Xbox due out before PS3 ~ See, it’s not all bad news Sony’s PS3 will come out after the Xbox 360, and as a bonus, it will completely miss this year’s Christmas rush. That is the good news. In fact, that is really the only good news out of Redmond lately.  IE patent appeal lost ~ Time to get out the check book to the tune of $500 million This isn’t really news anymore because it happens so frequently but to sum this story up MS lost an appeal and now it looks like they will have to pay out half a billion dollars to some company whose code they stole for IE. Who knows, maybe they will throw in a T-Shirt and induct them into the “I sued MS for stealing my crap” club? Membership growing daily.  Patch creation process flawed leaving system still vulnerable ~ Earth still round, water still wet The more things change the more they stay the same. Quick quiz, your company produces a shoddy piece of software in which a major security flaw is found. Do you a) quickly fix just the vulnerability that people know about and then hope it goes away or b) spend some time to eliminate the flaw permanently? Since this topic is on my list you can assume that they picked “a”.  Windows Media Center upgraded ~ User interface goes from “raped in city jail” to “tortured in Vietnamese POW camp” Head over to Cool Tech Zone and you can read their review of the new version of the Windows Media Center. It should be noted that when a tech centric site reviews your software and says “It’s so confusing; it would render even the computing enthusiast frustrated.” it might be time to step back and reevaluate your software creation processes.  In USA Internet Explorer is down to 80% market share ~ Get Ballmer another chair ‘cause it’s time to panic Safari and FireFox are on the rise, IE is on the fall. This is great news to everyone except MS. Doesn’t it make you all warm inside to know that they world is a safer place when people don’t us MS’ software?  So, that’s the recap of the latest Microsoft news. Yes, I know it’s bleak but if they could just stop making such fools of themselves things would improve. We don’t expect a presentation from Gates to be anywhere in the same league as Jobs but making sure the janitor didn’t accidentally turn off the internet doesn’t seem like too much to ask does it?