Mr Balmer, are these your marbles?

Tuesday, 08 November 2005

You have to wonder what goes on inside of Microsoft’s board meetings these days. I think that everyone must stick their ideas in a tombola and the first ones out automatically get implemented. I can’t find any other way to explain the recent rumours of 7 different editions of Windows Vista.

The jewel in the crown seems to be the ‘Starter Edition’ which is targeted at ‘emerging markets’ (aka poor folk). This edition will be cheap (or maybe even free) but will only be able to run 3 applications consecutively. For me, that’s like selling corn to the poor and starving in Africa that’s been genetically modified not to seed.

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2 responses

One of the first things Jobs did when he came

Todd | Tuesday, 08 November 2005 | 5:40 pm

One of the first things Jobs did when he came back to Apple was to simplify the product offering. Microsoft always trumpets that consumers love choice, but having too many options is precisely what makes certain purchases extremely confusing. I can’t understand Microsoft’s rationale sometimes. Remember when it was everything .Net, to the point where .Net didn’t mean anything? (I still think it’s confusing.) And now there are Windows & Office Live, which enhance (but not replace) the products they are named after. It all makes my head hurt.

Oh, please don't get me started on the Office Live

Steve | Tuesday, 08 November 2005 | 6:06 pm

Oh, please don’t get me started on the Office Live debacle. Adding a prefix or suffix to all your products does not unify them or make them cool, it just confuses people. Especially when the pre/suffix doesn’t actually convey any meaning.

I blame the marketing departments. Even Macromedia aren’t immune, having dumped version numbers for some spurious letter/date combination in Studio MX 2004. At least they realise they messed up and went back to version numbers for Studio 8. But that’s a whole other can of worms!