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WINDOWS VISTA

E-mails show Microsoft's internal reaction to Walt Mossberg column

By Todd Bishop on November 18, 2008 at 8:01 AM PST
Comments (15)  |  Permalink

Media | Newspapers | Windows Vista | MSFT


Walter Mossberg

The Oct. 13, 2005, installment of Walt Mossberg's Personal Technology column in the Wall Street Journal was a detailed guide for people planning to buy personal computers in advance of Windows Vista's launch. One paragraph in particular got Microsoft's attention.

"You also won’t have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer’s Macintosh computers, which don’t run Windows," Mossberg wrote. "Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and much more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista."

At 9:08 a.m. Redmond time, Microsoft's Padmanand Warrier dashed off an e-mail to colleagues at the company who had been hashing out the system requirements for various levels of Windows Vista logos.

"A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple," the message read, linking to the column, citing that paragraph and stressing the importance of addressing the issue.

The e-mail thread (PDF, 25 pages) was among the latest batch of internal Microsoft documents disclosed late Monday in the class-action lawsuit over the company's "Windows Vista Capable" logo and marketing program. Many of the key e-mails were excerpted in earlier filings in the case -- showing Microsoft relaxing the requirements for the logo to accommodate Intel, and then scrambling to deal with the resulting backlash from Hewlett-Packard and others in the industry.

Beyond that, in this era of a million bloggers, the latest e-mails show how a few words from an influential newspaper columnist can still cause a stir inside a giant company. Mossberg's column sparked this defense from Microsoft development manager Richard Russell, in an e-mail reply about 20 minutes after the first message.

"My take away from Walt's article is that we have failed to communicate Vista's value," Russell wrote. "As such, I don't understand your point. Apple doesn't differentiate between 'standard' and 'premium'. Vista does. Vista will give a very good experience and (add) lots of value even if it is not running on a premium system. Vista is designed to run a very wide ranging set of systems from the minimally capable to the incredibly capable -- Apple doesn't do that."

Of course, in looking back at these exchanges, we have the benefit of knowing how Windows Vista unfolded from there. In hindsight, who was right? Mossberg or Microsoft?


1
Glenn Fleishman said:

on November 18, 2008 at 10:42 AM

In the end, Vista turned out to be a pretty good operating system, but I love the "premium" idea. The fact that Apple's "premium" flavor is their only flavor works against Microsoft. Aero seems to be the only new thing in Vista beyond bug fixes and security model improvements. (Apple will likely adopt most of Vista's improvements in security that it hasn't yet in its Snow Leopard (10.6) release next year.)

And given that this whole lawsuit is about Vista not providing a very good experience at all on a "minimally capable" system, and doesn't offer much of a differentiation (except performance and the Aero skin) on an "incredibly capable" system, it just shows how groupthink works.
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2
jean-guy kequette said:

on November 18, 2008 at 11:53 AM

"You also won’t have to worry about Vista if you buy a computer running Linux, which don’t run Windows," Mossberg wrote. "Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Linux machine. Its operating system, is better and much more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista."

Change Apple for Linux and you can rehash the same sentence.

Got a netbook running Linux as a gift from my wife and LOVE it.
It just works too, I dont worry about virus/malware and as a dad whose kids play soccer, hockey and judo, I spend lots of time waiting in stands at practice so 299$ was a good investment to be like other soccer moms!

My point is THEY ALL work, everything else is a question of personal taste and price of course. We use Macs at work but no way could we justify the price when we can buy ANY hardware at ANY price and run Windows or Linux on it.

It is scary though that one mediocre hack can have so much pull. Yes, mediocre. He is well known becauyse he works for one of the best known papers on the planet but s far as tech goes, he's fluff.
Actually, he's fluff lite.
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3
C. Skaggs said:

on November 18, 2008 at 12:41 PM

Microsoft's biggest problem isn't that their software doesn't work well, it works very well, it's problem is perceived value.
Compare Vista Ultimate to Apple's latest product, OSX Leopard.
Is Vista Ultimate better than Leopard? No.
Is leopard better than Vista?
Yes.
Why is it better?
Perceived Value.
You get Apples flagship product in a retail box for about 115 bucks.
Vista Ultimate retails for around 300 dollars.
What's so much better about Vista vs OSX in real value? Nothing.
The problem isn't Vista capable vs non capable, the problem is that Microsoft played up Vista to be All That and A bag of Chips when it was just another OS from Microsoft.
If the complete Vista package wasn't triple the price of the competitors equal value product, the bar wouldn't have been set so high for Microsoft to reach.
Home Basic is a 29 dollar product.
Home Premium is a 59 dollar product
Business is a 79 dollar product
And Ultimate is a 109 dollar product.
Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with the pricing model, and it was all downhill from there.
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4
Pat said:

on November 18, 2008 at 1:25 PM

Atually, the root of the problem is that the people who control the creation of Microsoft operating systems are all marketing people, not tech people. It shows in everything they do. They keep talking about the Vista Experience... what the heck is that? What does it mean? It's an operating system, not an out of body experience. You use it to browse the web, open documents, store you files... The visual fluff is just that... fluff.
They keep putting emphasis on things like value added. Again, where is it?! I have to yet to see ONE single feature of their supposedly added value that didn't exist in XP, or hasn't existed for years in Unix, Linux or Mac.
Everything promised and delivered in Vista is pure marketing. There is not one single real piece of true innovation... except as far as their buzz words...they invented plenty of those...yessir...
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5
Rog said:

on November 18, 2008 at 1:35 PM

"My take away from Walt's article is that we have failed to communicate Vista's value"

There's the biggest problem with Microsoft/Windows right there... Microsoft's being in complete denial of the fact that the world has moved on from their "One OS to rule them all" fantasy.

Instead of actually responding to the market, they shove out a half-baked product, then announce they're spending $300 million on an ad campaign to change our perception of 'half-baked".

Wonder what $300 million in product development could produce...
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6
Carlos A. Flores said:

on November 18, 2008 at 2:18 PM

The problem is not which operative system to chose but the reason to chose it. Many people changed to Apple with a pretty stupid argument “I don’t want to learn a new Windows” but they changed to Apple. They have to learn a new OS, plus the cost of hardware is very high. And many make their decision because the read bad comments from other ignorant like them. Most consumers changing to other OS’s don’t even know what is Windows Vista but the lack of an own judgment make them take drastic decisions.
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7
Michael Brian Bentley said:

on November 18, 2008 at 3:18 PM

Vista marketing was at fault. Consumers didn't get a whole lot of help from Microsoft to determine what it is you need to run your machine.

Microsoft wanted to cover all possible markets with a variety of Vistas, but left the product selection marketing up to a single hard-to-find-chart on a web site for consumers to try and sort it all out. *I* got it wrong. I had NO IDEA which one I needed!

What they should have done is wrote a program that you download to your machine and have it sort things out for you. It asks questions of your machine, and from you. That's what software is for. It then tells you what you need, and offers to download it for you.

It looks like Microsoft wanted to have all these different variations for Vista so that they could charge a premium price for the high end versions, and yet have a version that would run on barely qualified hardware. They wound up totally confusing everyone. Marketing is what you do to get people to understand your products well enough to buy it without making a mistake.

Apple avoids of the relevant problems by coordinating software and hardware implementation. Apple marketing is a lot simpler.

When Microsoft finally becomes more consumer oriented as a result of this debacle, they will have figured out how to do this right, and their OS software will be more competitive, and without changing a line of code.
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8
Kenneth R. Saborio said:

on November 18, 2008 at 4:08 PM

Too bad Apple's operating system X is based on a second rate OS originally named FreeBSD plus something named in the late 80s as Mach.

I refer to FreeBSD as a second rate OS because it didn't have the capabilities of modern operating systems such as . symmetric multiprocessing, just to name one. See http://www.krsaborio.net/research/unix/related/bsd.htm and pay attention to the status of FreeBSD in 2000, 2001, 2002.

With all due respect to Walter Mossberg, did he do proper research as to the status of OS X and its origins.
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9
Kenneth R. Saborio said:

on November 18, 2008 at 4:13 PM

In summary, Apple's operating system X is FreeBSD with a bunch of patches plus cute GUI.

Thank you, I rather have an OS built by guys with strong experience such as David Cutler to runs my apps. And that's Microsoft Windows.
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10
Brad Hefta-Gaub said:

on November 18, 2008 at 7:40 PM

Sadly, I think you all are missing the point.

Real consumers, real people, don't care what OS they are using.

Every current day OS has issues, every piece of software has issues, most people just live with it, until their computer is finally "worn out" and ready to be upgraded.

And when they're ready for a new system, real consumers don't research their OS. They research the computer (maybe), but for most that research boils down to: mac or pc, and how much can I afford.

As technologists its so easy for us to fall in love with the little features of our favorite piece of technology... but real people... they don't care.

Has Vista failed? Really? Certainly any real consumer wouldn't know... or care.

If you're desperate to make them care... then well, probably the only solution is $300m in advertising.

The truth (and this might sadden those of you who work hard on making the software better) is that consumers won't notice new features.
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11
Ty said:

on November 19, 2008 at 2:06 AM

Brad's right. *sigh* most people who use windows computers do it because they go to work. They probably buy the same sort of thing that they have at work to do things that they can do on any system. They just want it to work.

Computer people care. All systems have faults and their are fans. I have windows, linux on my Mac. Windows can do some things (because it's the most eloquent solution for those tasks) and sometimes I play with linux because most of what I need as a web developer has been either ported to the mac for free or only cost a few dollars that I gladly give to the hard working developers.

I can't believe all the hate that some of you people have. That you have to share it. Not even commenting on the article.

I think people have a right to be angry that they buy a computer thinking that they get all the candy, and because their not computer people they don't realise that they don't actually get the eye candy. They get Vista without the good bits you can see.

Apple are seen as Fascists because they love to control their experience on all their products but computer people know that is going on and no computer people usually get a machine that usually just works. It's not perfect but you can do what you need to without worrying about virus. Their is, as Devo said, "Freedom from choice".

The people that are upset have bought low end machines. They aren't going to playing high end games on them. Not going to be developing serious applications on them. So it doesn't really matter what OS they use.

It's hard to tell a non-computer person about the technical details of a system but we can see that in this case it's probably more than miscommunication.
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12
Rob Nachbar said:

on November 19, 2008 at 9:15 AM

Over the past few years, I've met only a handful of people who made the switch to a Mac and went back to a PC. Ironically, the only thing on my Mac that seems to have occasional problems is Office (the single database for Entourage is eventually going to kill me). The problem with Vista and other MS products is bloat. They're fat, slow, and only 10% users use 90% of the features (and that's being generous). I agree with the posters regarding MS marketing. Most people don't want to sort through a deep matrix to figure out which OS best suits their needs. Microsoft has a tendency to make things much more complicated than they need to be. Hard to imagine them embracing simplicity -- it's just not in their DNA.
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13
Jerome said:

on November 19, 2008 at 12:19 PM

C. Skaggs is spot on. Until Microsoft breaks away from their desire to cling to unreasonable pricing, they are going to find it harder going into the future. They could do this in the past because there were no credible alternatives - now there are. The whole nonsense of OEM vs full licenses is one of the most irritating aspects of their model. It's a total nonsense that they simply don't make it affordable. The sweet spot of $70-90 is where they need to be headed.
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14
FuturePastNow said:

on November 19, 2008 at 4:29 PM

"...Apple doesn't differentiate between 'standard' and 'premium'. Vista does."

And this is one of the problems. There should only be "premium." Anything less, and some people are going to feel cheated.
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15
Douglas Goodall said:

on January 31, 2009 at 11:45 PM

I ran into this thread while researching an article in slashdot about Intel's Poulsbo driver. It reminded me that the class action suit about the Vista Capable fiasco has yet to rsult in a nice check in my mailbox to reimburse me for the four lousy computers I bought to run Vista. HP,HP,VAIO,VAIO. I don't know whether Steve Balmer had to be deposed or not, but I will not spend another penny on Microsoft, or HP, or Sony until this is resolved. I will probably die of old age before the courts get done with this issue. It is a coin flip whether Bush and Cheney will be convicted or Balmer and someone at Intel. Probably they will all laugh their way to the bank, and the people will get the short end of the stick as usual.
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Todd Bishop is co-founder and managing editor of TechFlash. He has covered Microsoft and the technology industry for more than five years, most recently as a daily newspaper reporter and blogger based in Seattle. READ FULL BIOGRAPHY
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