13 December 2006
Has Microsoft Lost Sight of the Customer?
An interesting email comes back to us from the past thanks to the court case (Comes v. Microsoft).
The email is from the beginning of 2004 when the then co-president of Microsoft, Jim Allchin, wrote that he believed the company had lot sight of what the customers wanted. He further stated that the company lost sight of 'what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, [and] how important current applications are." He adds that the company doesn't understand the most important problems of the customer. On a slightly positive note he says that there are a lot of features with "great vision" but that they are random and do not create a good product. He further says that had he not been working for Microsoft he would buy a Mac.
I'm sure Apple is quite happy to hear this as an added endorsement for their products, but to be serious, I believe more people are beginning to feel this way. Microsoft products are beginning to go down in quality and the company seems to have more interest in making a profit from customers than actually providing them with useful services.
Vista may be a change in this direction, but I have my doubts. It seems more to focus on the bells and whistles than to focus on a solid stable OS. Vista also seems to be created as a panic to stop people from migrating to Linux which to give an example has had a similar type of desktop environment eye-candy for quite some time. Eye-candy is what impresses gamers and standard-users, but more power-users and companies are looking for stability, security, and performance without the cost of upgrading their computers. Most people who upgrade to Vista next year or buy a lower end computer with Vista pre-installed will not be using the more advanced eye-candy, their computers won't support it, which will leave even more dissatisfied customers. This could bring the cost of buying a Mac similar to the cost of a Windows box, which is one of the main advantages that Windows had over Mac recently.
Also coming out of this court case is the news that Microsoft requires employees to delete all their mail after 30 days. This is troubling as many emails are still relevant at that time or can be looked back on as a reference. This causes a person to think that the company has something to hide and doesn't want any evidence to exist that could be used against anyone.
The email is from the beginning of 2004 when the then co-president of Microsoft, Jim Allchin, wrote that he believed the company had lot sight of what the customers wanted. He further stated that the company lost sight of 'what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, [and] how important current applications are." He adds that the company doesn't understand the most important problems of the customer. On a slightly positive note he says that there are a lot of features with "great vision" but that they are random and do not create a good product. He further says that had he not been working for Microsoft he would buy a Mac.
I'm sure Apple is quite happy to hear this as an added endorsement for their products, but to be serious, I believe more people are beginning to feel this way. Microsoft products are beginning to go down in quality and the company seems to have more interest in making a profit from customers than actually providing them with useful services.
Vista may be a change in this direction, but I have my doubts. It seems more to focus on the bells and whistles than to focus on a solid stable OS. Vista also seems to be created as a panic to stop people from migrating to Linux which to give an example has had a similar type of desktop environment eye-candy for quite some time. Eye-candy is what impresses gamers and standard-users, but more power-users and companies are looking for stability, security, and performance without the cost of upgrading their computers. Most people who upgrade to Vista next year or buy a lower end computer with Vista pre-installed will not be using the more advanced eye-candy, their computers won't support it, which will leave even more dissatisfied customers. This could bring the cost of buying a Mac similar to the cost of a Windows box, which is one of the main advantages that Windows had over Mac recently.
Also coming out of this court case is the news that Microsoft requires employees to delete all their mail after 30 days. This is troubling as many emails are still relevant at that time or can be looked back on as a reference. This causes a person to think that the company has something to hide and doesn't want any evidence to exist that could be used against anyone.
Labels: microsoft
