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In summer 2001 (even a few months before Windows XP was released) the public first heard about a new operating system, codenamed “Longhorn”, that’s supposed to ring in a new era of computing. Now, after five years of constant reorganizations, new ideas and countless test builds, we are sitting here in New York City and watch “Windows Vista” (as it is now called) go “live”. Interesting feeling. By Sandro Villinger
“The computer is a central part of the business world and your home”, says Steve Ballmer at the press launch on January 29th at the Cipriani’s Restaurant that hosted over 400 members of the international press including well-known Microsoft reporters such as Mary-Jo Foley (http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft) or Bob Stein (http://www.activewin.com). We also “We are probably going to sell five times more copies than we did with Windows 95”, Ballmer goes on and invites major Microsoft partners like Hector Ruiz (CEO, AMD), Todd Bradley (Executive Vice President, HP) or Kevin Rollins (CEO, Dell) to join him onstage and tell the audience about their contribution to the Vista launch lineup. However, no big news here for anyone who followed CES 2007 or the Vista RTM Lab in Vegas.
The party starts
The Cipriani hushed us out of the door to wait in line for the main launch party which was going on at the “Nokia Theatre” (renamed to “Windows Vista Theatre” for one day). Here I also met Nick White from the Vista product team who runs the official Windows Vista Blog (www.windowsvistablog.com). Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (a rare sight watching these two sharing one stage) teamed up and talked about Windows Vista with it’s new interface, multimedia capabilities and various security enhancements.
“Give Credit Where Credit is Due”
No one over at Microsoft who organized this event and managed the marketing focus has ever heard about this little phrase. This is what I’m talking about: The “Living with Vista” families. Microsoft selected 50 families from around the globe and handed them the Beta builds of Windows Vista and explicitly encouraged the people to work with an (then) unfinished operating system. The goal was to provide “real life” feedback and send this directly to the product teams responsible. Microsoft managed to not only track down a couple of hundred bugs but also made some (mostly minor) changes to the feature set and the technologies as well. I heard about this project over a year ago and since then I always thought it was a good idea to do this. And it still is a good idea! However, on the day of the Windows Vista Launch I got sick of the Living with Vista Project. And here is the reason: The entire project was bloated up to a point where it was a pure joke:
- The families got their own personal photo oppurtunity with Bill Gates (of course with the mainstream media attending) whereas the Microsoft Managers responsible for organizing the entire project where kept in the background.
- The families received special VIP seating at the Launch event.
- The famlies got (from what one US family told me) a rather high amount of “allowance” (couple of hundred dollars/day) to spend a nice time in New York. Of course, the flight and an expensive hotel at Times Square were paid as well.
- The families got their own personal tour of NY
- The families received a 3-4 minute video, were mentioned several times on-stage and even got the first copies of Vista Ultimate.
Well, I believe this must be very exciting for the families and I honestly think this must be a nice memory (they will never forget this day - that’s for sure! I’m happy for each and everyone). But the families received WAY too much credit while the Microsoft employees who worked so hard (and even neglected their own families, I am 100% sure) on Windows Vista were treated with one single slide that said “Thank you Employees”. I totally understand: The marketing message “Microsoft listens to families - Microsoft ist open - Microsoft is emotional” is so much smarter and much more appealing to the mainstream press than a message like “Microsoft thanks their own employees who envisioned, developed and tested the product - However, we’d like to give credit to the betatesters and the families also”. Doesn’t sound like this is going to be on the news! I don’t care about marketing messages. I believe the percentage of change that the familiy achieved was below 1%. But they received 90% of all the appreciation at the Windows Vista Launch! I like the event very much and it was a milestone (that’s for sure) but this just doesn’t feel right to me. This is why I am writing the following lines:
THANK YOU, MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES!
You had a great vision and you had to suffer through so much criticism and so much work over the past 5 years and look at you now: You created the best Windows operating system ever! I personally have some minor doubts about Vista but I also use it on every machine now and it improved my day-to-day work as well as my personal life with the computer immensely! Thank you! Thanks goes also to the thousands of betatesters out there who literally spend years to collect feedback and get the message to Microsoft.
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