Obama's Mac-savvy team lands in Microsoft hell at White House |
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Obama's Mac-savvy team lands in Microsoft hell at White House
Barack Obama
Thursday's Washington Post has a fascinating story about the technological challenges faced by the Obama administration as it moved into the White House following the inauguration. Mac-loving Obama staffers were flummoxed by all the out-of-date Microsoft software left over from the Bush administration -- to the point that they couldn't complete the most basic of online tasks.
An excerpt from the story:
One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.
Maybe it's time for the White House to upgrade to Windows Vista? Well, at least Microsoft got one positive plug in the article: "It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton told the newspaper.
Related story: No, Canada? Microsoft questions Obama's choice of BlackBerry.
About Todd Bishop
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.
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