Windows Now

Hi Robert,

Nice blog!

It seems to me that you might have learned little from past experiences!

I'm confident that the senior-level staff at Microsoft don't just make decisions without considering the pros and cons, the impact on the offering (current and future releases), the impact on the communities of users as well as the bad/good press that might come out of it.

I'm pretty sure that most of them know alot more about their business than you or I do.

I'm also pretty sure that calling them morons isn't going to give you a better WMC product.

It seems to me from reading the posts at the green button that the team is listening to all this feedback (I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't expect it already) and is considering learning from this experience.

That, to me, is a sign of respect for the community of users and a sign of corporate-maturity.

Don't get me wrong, Microsoft does deserve a little trashing in the media for doing things wrong. But extrapolating from this experience to the way Microsoft runs business it's just a bitter aftertaste of those longhorn days...

Robert:

Your two posts resonate deeply with me. I gave up on the Vista Media Center experience over 18 months ago when I realized the debacle that had been created by the CableLABS CableCARD decisions, requiring certifyied motherboards only available from large OEMs. The move of cable companies to switched digital video (incompatible with current CableCARD technology) makes this an even more crappy consumer experience.

I now focus on internet delivered media and TiVo, Apple TV, Vudu, cable company DVRs... to get the other stuff.  MCE is just getting worse and worse. Your posts reinforce the wisdom of my abandoning this flawed Microsoft technology. When I design whole home entertainment systems for my clients I do not incorporate MCE as part of the solution. I feel that I would be leading my customers down a dead end.

Thank you for posting.

Anonymous,

Thanks for the post. I think it's pretty safe to say that I am one of the more onsistent among the "Microsoft apologists" that are out there. I covered for MS through the Ultimate Extras garbage, and I've been tring to spread the "good word" about Vista for a long time.

Having said that, this post was not an apology for the previous one, I simply meant to point out the conversation that had continued over at TGB while I wasn't actively hitting the refresh key.

As I said, I respect the TEAM, it's whoever wrote the budget, and whomever made the decision to leave Ultimate customers out, that I don't respect. It's *wrong*, and maybe calling them morons doesn't make them see it any clearer, but that doesn't make the decision any less wrong either. And I wasn't referring to the devs, PMs, or beta coordinators as morons, because they rock and have already shipped an awesome product.

And I'm sorry, but if those senior managers knew their business as well as we did, then they would have looked at the Ultimate Extras debacle and made the right call the first time, before they had to be lambasted in the press about it. They would have taen care of their best customers, regardless of the expense. And they wouldn't have unnecessarily shot themselves in the foot with a press that already hates them over Vista, whether that hate is warranted or not.

But again, that's just my opinion. Anyways, thanks for the thoughtful feedback! :)

I would also disagree on the "corporate maturity" part. While they have done a good job mitigating the damage on the community, if Microsoft as a company should have learned *anything* from Vista, is that you do whatever it takes to make your most vocal customers happy. And Microsoft's most vocal customers are Enthusiasts and Media Center users.

When your options are:

- Cut back the release availability to save a few dollars and piss off our best customers who drive the most word-of-mouth traffic.

- Make sure that our Ultimate customers, who paid extra for our product and are already pissed because they haven't seen any value from it, get copies so they can say good things about Vista online, whch Google can then index and take some of the sting out of the bad press.

Then it *should* be a no-brainer. And that's why I called the people at the highest level who allowed this decision to come to pass, morons. Because only a moron would intentionally cause themselves that much avoidable grief.

Amen brother, I feel your message!