I am sick of Channel 9, Robert Scoble, and the self-congratulatory Microsoft bloggers who mask their lack of solutions with betas and “naked conversations”. Yes, I do think that Microsoft needs to connect with its customers, but vacuous conversations among the "A" listers does not yield products that have value. How hard is it to create a portal in which people can keep up with their RSS feeds? How hard is it to create a browser that has tabs, is secure, and performs well? How hard is it to create a webmail platform that connects to Outlook? Does it take a visionary like Ray Ozzie to see that the read/write web is evolving quickly before everyone”™s eyes? Why aren”™t Microsoft”™s customers even more demanding than they are? Is it because we are so satisfied with the applications that have evolved over the years that we are willing to wait for Vista and the next version of Office?
I am impatient and I want Microsoft to deliver collaborative applications that work well in the business environment that we work in today. I wish that Microsoft would not just sit on their hands, make videos and posture. Work hard and deliver better tools on our desktops and on the web. Listen and execute is all that I ask.
Ummmm... Visual Studio 2005, SQL 2005, .NET 2.0
Those are pretty big, and it was a huge benefit to play with the betas and follow the blogs before it was released. It definitely helped me hit the ground running.
Compliments for the way you drew attention, but will we still need MS in the end?
I subscribed to your blog so I can hear you say "wow" when they deliver.
In the mean time you gave them more work to do:-)
"Work hard and deliver better tools on our desktops and on the web. Listen and execute is all that I ask."
What like Google Pack which is a complete joke?
Google was rumored to be releasing something huge for CES and all we got was Google Pack (:
Pretty sorry output for the supposed king of search, they seem to be good at search but thats about it everythign else they seem to fall flat on there face.
Last time I checked almost all of Google's progams are "beta"
I was at Microsoft last week and I didn't see anyone sitting on their hands.
I did get a copy of Naked Conversations, but there aren't any pictures....
I do agree with you that customers need to demand more. I think Microsoft is tryping to do better, and be better, but I don't think it is better enough. I'm only a consumer and enthusiast, but I demand more. I want to see Microsoft services such as video.msn.com be opened to other browsers, and not just IE. I want to see an operating system that is more effcient and has a longer install life. Windows feels so nice after a fresh install, only to feel bogged down serveral months later, even if properly maintained. I am sure you all know what I am talking about, and that is sad, you shouldn't know. I demand more, but I am only one consumer, how much can that do?
I'm a MS-oftie, and a blogger. I also have to agree that we have to try harder. Many of us are.
However, on the beta-label thing, physician heal theyself! How logng has Gmail had the beta label on it?
Sometimes you do just wonder why the hell they bother with IE 7.0, it is almost identical to firefox. Why re-invent the wheel, just re-brand firefox and be done with it. Put the seventy-seven other coders who are in the IE team into something cool...
I mean, who cares if the underlying code is open or closed? I'm never going to tinker with it - are you?
Interesting post ... especially after playing with IE7 the past few days to see what it is about. Appears it works like Firefox so you need to unbreak all of your IE css for post 6 or things that you previous broke to have them work will be actually broken.
"How hard is it to create a portal in which people can keep up with their RSS feeds? How hard is it to create a browser that has tabs, is secure, and performs well?"
Well, it's not all that hard to do these things, unless you're in a company with a culture of bloat, which routinely assigns a hundred developers and five layers of managers to a task that the open-source crowd seems to be able to do with five core developers and a dozen occasional contributors.
Shoot, just look at Apache vs. IIS!
When is Microsoft going to deliver?
Well, if you listen well, read widely on the 'Net and understand where Microsoft is taking things, you will probably have a good idea of not only "When", but also "What" they are going to deliver.
I for one can't weight, cos it is going to be phuckn fantastic. It's been five long years since XP came out. It has served me very well, but now it's time for something better... a lot better. Bring on Vista and its huge array of new tech.
"I wish that Microsoft would not just sit on their hands, make videos and posture...".
LOL, this guy's ego is out of control! Down, boy, down!
Hey toast,
Microsoft has 61K employees and revenue of $39 Billion. That's revenue of $640,000 per employee!!
Granted those people are solving some pretty tough problems, but the open source model is pretty productive
with a lot less resources. With these kind of resources and a staggering R&D budget, can't we expect more.
That's why I say we should be more demanding on the delivery side. I don't need all the chatter, I'd rather
have the energy focused on blogging focused on producing great software. I can't wait either.
I don't work for MS :), but live.com can track rss feeds (so can outlook with addons). IE7 is in BETA, has tabs and is "getting there", maybe not in terms of web nirvana, but certainly usable for general public. many many microsofties are blogging about ie and vista security initiatives. Hopefully live.com will connect to outlook. new hotmail is neat but not as good as new yahoo mail, I hope they manage the hotmail spam problem. Microsoft customers are quite demanding imho, thats why we got the VS team system which is great,.net framework 2.0, compare these to similar systems.Winfx is imho quite a leap foreword in system development (compare it to its competitors, objectiveC/Cocoa thingy on mac and POSIX on linux). have you seen max yet? (http://www.microsoft.com/max/). and oh halo 2 will rock ;)