Comments on: Mr Balmer, are these your marbles? http://dynamicflash.com/2005/11/mr-balmer-are-these-your-marbles/ Confessions of a serial code abuser Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:13:13 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7 hourly 1 By: Steve http://dynamicflash.com/2005/11/mr-balmer-are-these-your-marbles/comment-page-1/#comment-573 Steve Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:06:05 +0000 http://dynamicflash.com/?p=50#comment-573 <p>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.</p> <p>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!</p> 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!

]]> By: Todd http://dynamicflash.com/2005/11/mr-balmer-are-these-your-marbles/comment-page-1/#comment-572 Todd Tue, 08 Nov 2005 16:40:45 +0000 http://dynamicflash.com/?p=50#comment-572 <p>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.</p> 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.

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