MacDailyNews - Where Mac news comes first

is it possible that i feel kind of sorry for MS?

I think they are doomed, but i feel bad for the thousands of people working there.

Obviously MS will survive in one form or another, but surely people will be let go.

Old news but still a good laugh.

3rd post.

MS employee:
'Vista - I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money. Then again what do I know, I've only been testing the dog for the last 2-3 yrs.'
LOL!!
Jake

"is it possible that i feel kind of sorry for MS?"

I don't feel sorry for people who have to lay in the bed they make, no matter how thorny it may be.

We Apple fans know what happens when you turn a tech company over to a sales and marketing guy. There's no vision or leadership, just talk.

I feel bad for Bill Gates having turned his creation over to him, Bill has to see it crumble and fall. Didn't we say this would happen as soon as the transition was announced?

I can't say Vista would have been any better under BillG's leadership, but it would have been out earlier I bet.

Maybe BillG hates Balmer and was sick of MSFT and so left with a white elephant. "Let's see you handle THAT Ballmer!"

M$ is too big!!! Same with all big software corps except for IBM because they have been BIG for a long time.

I am no Windows or Vista fan but it's pretty clear, despite the ongoing problems and delays it WILL appear, and large numbers of people will buy it, and they will have trouble, and Microsoft will go on serving their corporate masters. None of this will kill it or even slow it down that much so talk of "doom" here is unrealistic.

What is far more interesting is the way Apple is positioning itself in both the consumer/entertainment space, the education space (new emac's coming), and yes...the business space. You are very likely to see Apps like Pages, Keynote and Numbers (oops not out yet) in a new iWork suite be truly remarkable apps that gain a bigger foothold in corporate america. A LOT depends on Apple developing some kind of replacement for the Microsoft Exchange server...which is part of why business is so tied to Redmond.
When that happens (and it will)...you will see business begin to move away from Microsoft. It Apple does it right (and prices it right...critical)...they will
easily sway people since the case for TCO is so compelling now.

if its microsoft, its crap.

always has been, always will be.

theres no vision from the top, thats why.

all they do is cheap rip-offs of other companies work.

the longer balmer and co stay there, the faster they will rot.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let the imploding continue!

I thought Jim Allchin was Jay Leno's porno alias.

How ironic would it be for MS management to decide that breaking up the company is in their best financial interest? Ballmer could be an anger managment counselor.

"people will be let go"
They'll need a few programmers to create minesweeper widgets with adjustable transparency and drop shadows.

Far be it from me to give MS more credit than they deserve, but there is the possibility that all this brewhaha about this latest Vista delay is just a smokescreen. A misdirection.

Wouldn't MS smell sweet if they actually shipped Vista BEFORE their latest announced date.

What kind of press would Apple be able to get at the next MacWorld with all the buzz about Vista for several weeks?

Just a thought.

MS = The Deathstar

leodavinci -

Good thought, but MS is to large for a last HOUR change. Their channel aprtners need time to get disk images prepped and loaded - even just updating Dell's website to offer Vista.

It had high hopes, big ambition, even a looming presence - we all know how that went down . . . . . with a boom

I don't feel sorry at all - they still have MASSIVE MARKETSHARE. When Apple owns 51% marketshare, I will shed one tear for poor ol' Microsoft. Until then, Apple is STILL getting crushed, although that finally appears to be changing.

The NY Times reports that it was HP that insisted on an end-of-August RTM date due to the amount of time it takes to fill their channel through resellers. So MS, in trying to be fair to other mfrs vis-a-vis Dell for 4th qtr sales, relented since they could not make August (the original ship date).

I think the HP situation would be the same for all those that sell primarily through Best Buy, Circuit City, etc, rather than online.

The NYTs implies that HP might have had role.

In 10 years Microsoft will be reduced to a niche game console company struggling to make a buck. When you mention "Windows" or "Office", people will say, "Oh yeah, I remember those..." much in the same way people respond to mentions of Atari and Amiga.

When a company is a monopoly AND has close to 60 billion dollars cash on hand, so many problems don't mean anything to them. Either buy their way out of it, or buy the innovated competitor and shut them done.

All that cash on hand allows the Ballmer incompetency. He's gone with 8 months I predict.

Why the hell aren't MS shareholders baying for blood?

Why is every other story at MDN about or relating to Microsoft?????

Someone Else -

I think a better example would be:" I remember Windows and Office" in the same way people respond to mentions of Lotus 123 and Netscape Navigator.

How long will it be before the anal-ists figure out what this really means for Apple? Apple is like a hungry lion five feet from a crippled wildebeest. It's dinner time!

Either buy their way out of it, or buy the innovated competitor and shut them done.

--

doesn't matter.. people already HAVE windows. they won't buy a new version if they don't have to becuase MS DEPENDS on backwards compatibility. Ergo, the OS isn't going to change THAT much in that respect.

Also, they're a publicly traded company.. imagine holding stock in this piece of shit. with the xbox losses and now this?? yea right..

obviously all those top level guys have their wealth tied up in MS stock.. ouch

I wonder if Ballmer is throwing chairs over this, he should be.

I think if Ballmer does leave M$ he should go into acting.

He could've had Johnny Knoxvills role in 'The Ringer' without even trying to act...

But the first order of business is remove the trouble makers.

It would not surprise me if Who da'Punk is sought out and quickly remove from the MS payroll - way before Ballimer is shown the door.

Veleeeta: Why is every other story at MDN about or relating to Microsoft?????

Answer: Because they are the nemesis of our favorite computer manufacturer. And the one thing every good soldier knows is success comes from knowing your enemy.

MicroSloth

Who da'Punk, take the initiative, leave and look for a real job!

You are correct, leodavinci.

60% to be rewritten.

Backwards compatibility.

Dump both, problem mostly solved. This is the kind of guts it's going to take. Will they do it?

I still use POS DOS-ports at work. DOS!!

Where's my stapler?

I live in Bellevue/Redmond and the "fall" of microsoft would be a very sad day as our economy would "nearly" be destroyed (not completely, we have nintendo and boeing too).

Im 90% sure Microsoft isnt going anywhere, its doing what it has to do. Im an apple fan above all but i dont wish people to lose their jobs and have no sympathy when its obvious a problem with the higher ups..

It wasn't too long ago Apple was in same condition. May be Bill Gate will return to head the company again and save the company. Or, their only hope is to buy Next and replace Vista with NextStep and have SJ as iCEO (sorry, someone already did that).

What's the difference between Dick Cheney and Microsoft?

Dick Cheney shoots lawyers in the face, Microsoft shoots themselves in the foot.

With Who da'Punk I am sure s/he is smart enough to have used either their own home computer, maybe not as that's traceable, or made that blog from a friends computer or in an internet cafe.

Then again in any case made the blog that at the weekend and not on company M$ time or even using Microsoft provided computers as it is any employees right to do whatever they wish 'out of hours', even to make a fool of themselves if they wanted to. Also that Who da'Punk bought their own copy of Windows for their own personal use would also protect s/he more again.

That is how part of employment law stands here in the UK, the USA may differ - you guys on MDN tell me??

TRIVIA: As an employer myself I have said to an employee in the past who was getting married at the weekend and was worried about the antics that might be planned for him that in turn might reflect badly on the company, I told him what happens to you at the weekend is none of my business or the companies, as long as you are back the first Monday morning after the honeymoon to do your job the company will be fine!

why aren't ms shareholder throwing a fit?

Leodavinci is partly right there, however Vista or under its previous name Longhorn is already 3 years late as Longhorn was to have been out in 2003.

So to be a smokescreen and then release Vista before January 2007 would only be a poor attempt at face saving, too late in any case and would still have that stigma attached to it.

Also why announce a knock on effect with Office 2007 if a smokescreen as I would think that Office 07 would run on Vista & XP, with the Vista version has more features, which PC users will have to wait for, but still be able to have something new in Office running on XP.

Yes maybe SP3 or would it be 4 for XP to enable certain features meant to have been Vista only?

At least as a Mac user I can still look forward to an upgrade for Office 2004 without delays due to newer version of an OS and once again jump ahead with features that actually allow me to use them rather than having to only look at promises, broken time and again by Microsoft with Vista.

WE WOULD THROW A FIT BUT WE CAN'T TRACK OUR STOCKS BECAUSE OUR XP BOXES HAVE VIRII

With all the bitchin' on Minisofts flogspot I find it highly unlikely that someone there wouldn't have blown the whistle on the 60% code rewrite if it weren't true. 10K programmers who have an anonymous spot to vent have already spoken. Even this would have to be a major bit of disinformation. Unlikely at best. Microsoft does not revolve around Apple and to think that they would be smart enough to put this together is not underestimating them it is simply flying in the face of history.

And just for the uneducated MS will not get a black eye for bringing their date late to the party. Window's 95 (win 4.x) was supposed to be released in 1994! And every iteration since has been later than the previous to the best of my knowledge. Nope, they will only injure themselves if their product hurts their customers. There will be enough eyecandy and googads to attract the teen agers and keep it fresh with the elders. MS isn't going anywhere anytime soon unless there is a reason for their customers to go elsewhere.

Anyone remember trench warfare from WWI? Entrenchment... IT... Nothing short of a complete systems meltdown that MS gives up on would cause their demise in the very near future. If your car drives like shit but you've got $250K in improvements in it that won't fit a new car would you be enthusiastic about buying the new car even if that new car were only going to cost you a K? Not if you thought you were going to have to dump another 250K into it. When IT finally decides that fixing the beater isn't worth it anymore they will change. And that will only happen when their jobs are threatened by massive systems interruptions, outages, and unrecoverable business data (and that's what backups are for). JMTCW...

What say come Christmas Microsoft choose to rename Longwait/Blista again?

If Windows "Poodle" is announced in November to come out in March, and is superseeded by the announcement of the release of "Daschound" in July, which is the same month as "Mongrel" in announced to come out in October, then they can always claim to be on track...

The problem with all versions of Windows is Gates' paranoic insistence that they be backwards compatible with everything that preceeded them.

The ONLY cure for Vista's problems, resides with the Board of Directors at Microsoft. Only they have the power force Gates and Ballmer out. But they won't do it.

IF Microsoft were to abandon its backwards compatible strategy they may lose some customers. But doing so would allow them to cut the number of engineers, programmers and support staff by many thousands. Its products would improve exponentially, as would profits.

Unfortunately, the fear of losing even one customer is too great to contemplate such a drastic, and necewssary, action.

"The problem with all versions of Windows is Gates' paranoic insistence that they be backwards compatible with everything that preceeded them."

One problem with MS is a basic lack of balls:
Nobody has the balls to stand up to Gates or Ballmer (including shareholders!).
Nobody has the balls to give bad news to a superior until it's an absolute crisis.

Why was the latest Vista-slip announcement "hastily arranged"?
Does MS really have that poor of a grip on its own engineering?
Doesn't anyone ask MS programmers how things are really going?
Why does it take blogs to get candid, straight-from-the-gut opinions?

This'll be one hell of a future business case-study...

but there is the possibility that all this brewhaha about this latest Vista delay is just a smokescreen. A misdirection.

Unlikely. Like Apple's Bad Old Copland Days, MS can't keep anything under their hats. If Vista was ahead of schedule there'd be headlines.

Which is why I prefer Apple's Jobs-driven "Skunk Works". Sure it's frustrating sometimes, but I'd rather know about stuff I can get today, not things that hopefully might be out in a year or two. Give me the facts, not the fantasies.

SCHADENFREUDE!!!

Sing it, people.

"I wonder if Ballmer is throwing chairs over this, he should be."

I heard he threw one at himself in an attempted suicide.

I'm not convinced that the delay is a smokescreen as Leodavinci conjectured. If it were to be a ruse, it would likely backfire badly on Microsoft.

Ballmer made it quite clear that Vista would ship on time. A delay can only mean that there are some very serious issues. In the minds of IT, a launch prior to January 2007 would mean that the major schedule-slipping software bugs have not been cleaned up and therefore Vista isn't ready nor is it to be trusted.

Two months is hardly sufficient time to fix these problems, especially when you consider that the Microsoft programmers will have to work through the Christmas season. People usually go brain-dead around that time of year as far as work is concerned. They are likely thinking about other things at that time. Frankly, I don't think that IT will line up to buy Vista for at least a year after any release - especially considering this eleventh-hour schedule slip.

I think MS should ship Vista half finished like all their other products.

The windows using sheep wont know any difference.

Let them sell a crippled, buggy and inferior OS that crashes everytime you reboot.

MS don't give a damn about it's customers - the company does not recognise customers, it only recognises $.

Forget customer service, just introduce another product that no one needs and milk more $ out of the sheep.

They will pay it.