Microsoft saw Apple's anti-Vista campaign coming

[AppleInsider]

Microsoft officials were concerned about the performance of Windows Vista and the way it would be compared to Mac OS X long before Apple zeroed in on the problematic software with its humorous "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" advertising campaign, internal emails show.

Computerworld notes that in October 2005, more than 15 months before Vista hit the market, a column from the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg outlining recommendations for buying a PC with the upcoming operating system in mind caught the attention of Windows software engineer Padmanand Warrier.

Troubled by a particular segment of the article, he fired off a link to the report to several of his colleagues, including then Windows group product manager Rajesh Srinivasan and development manager Richard Russell.

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

In Warrier's email, which was among hundreds made public this week as part of ongoing class-action lawsuit regarding Microsoft's distinction of a "Vista Capable" PC, the programmer pointed out that Mossberg had essentially equated the Mac to a "premium experience" in the market place and suggested the software giant should draw up a response.

Russell agreed, admitting in a reply that Microsoft had dropped the ball when it came to articulating Vista's advantages to both industry watchers and the general public.

"My takeaway from Walt's article is that we have failed to communicate Vista's value," he said, adding that the XP successor was being designed to run on a broad range of systems from budget PCs to high-end offerings which is something "Apple doesn't do."

Russell then reportedly turned his attention to Microsoft's plans to promote a number of existing PCs as "Vista Ready" under a new marketing campaign, a move that concerned him given that it could easily be misinterpreted by consumers.

"Vista Ready means that a PC will run Vista well -- it doesn't mean the users will get a 'premium' experience -- it never has meant that," he wrote. "There was some thinking and effort put into having a higher-tier Vista Ready logo, but this didn't fly with the OEMs. Also, if we spec Vista Ready too high, we will increase the already erroneous and popular perception that Vista is a pig with huge hardware requirements."

As a result, Microsoft would eventually rename the "Vista Ready" campaign "Vista Capable" in hopes of avoiding problems down the road. But when Vista launched a little more than a year later, consumers and industry watchers would nonetheless lambast the Redmond-based company for the software, which was largely regarded as a slower, more troubled version of Windows than the one it was replacing.

"I think we have made a mistake in equating 'running Vista well' with a 'premium experience," Russell told his colleagues.

It wasn't long after the early 2007 release of Vista that Apple took direct aim at the software's shortcomings. In a new series of its "Get a Mac" ads, the Mac maker drew attention to Vista's backwards compatibility woes and poked fun at Microsoft's move to market half a dozen versions of the same operating system.

In April of that year, Microsoft was hit with a class-action lawsuit from disgruntled Vista users who charged the company with marketing certain PCs as "Vista Capable" when they were only suited to run the most basic version of the operating system, which lacked support for such highly touted features as the new Aero interface.

Ongoing disclosures in the case, which is scheduled for trial next April, reveal that Microsoft tuned down the graphics requirements for Vista amid pressure from Intel.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[TBaggins]

Hmm... kinda reads like a treatise on how NOT to market an operating system.

You go, Microsoft.


...

[sandau]

I use it daily. It's not bad. Annoying at times, but very stable. Bad marketing, decent product. Of course its not as good as Leopard, but Leopard isn't perfect either, but is better and easier to use.

[hittrj01]

So there are known problems with Vista even to Microsoft, there are class-action lawsuits because Vista performs so terribly, and to remedy this, Microsoft is trying as hard as they can to rush Windows 7 to market, which is never a smart move. However, Microsoft itself is touting Windows 7 as being built upon the Vista foundation, and since everybody already hates Vista, how is Windows 7 going to change anything? This seems to be the beginning of a slow, painful end to a company that should have died long ago.

[ifiredmyboss.com]

Doesn't renaming Vista fix it?
They just need to set some real requirements.. ram.. video.. and it would be ok.
People buying these 299 and 499 computers are getting just what they paid for.

[fraklinc]

Why the hell would they stick a label that reads, (Vista Ready) if they knew all along it wasn't, only the Geniuses At M$ft would thought of that, no wonder they also claim the Zune has a 30 hour battery life when you can't even get 15 out of it

[JohnnyKrz]

Let me start by saying that I'm a huge Apple fanboy and don't consider Windows even close to being the same class of OS as OS X. At the same time, I do use multiple OSes an a regular basis. I'm a bigger overall geek than Apple fanboy, I guess. I'm also an IT administrator in a cross-platform publishing company.

That being said, it is my opinion that (given the correct hardware), Vista is a huge improvement over XP. There is a little TOO much transparency effects in the UI, but it looks very nice. It's very speedy (again, on the correct hardware) and everything has worked just as well as XP (which doesn't say much), but not in the sense that it is buggy. It is simply not as well designed and easy to use as OS X (especially on an IT admin level where Windows is not exclusive). Will I ever switch to Vista? Hell, f#@k no! Do I think it is as bad as some people (especially us mac lovers) make it out to be? Not at all. Does Microsoft have the worst marketing and (Windows) R&D per capita? Absolutely. That is what is hurting them the most. WIll I stop asking myself questions now? Okay.

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by ifiredmyboss.com

Doesn't renaming Vista fix it?
They just need to set some real requirements.. ram.. video.. and it would be ok.
People buying these 299 and 499 computers are getting just what they paid for.

Which name is that? Windows? Mojava? Windows 7? the successor of Windows XP?

As the Apple ad goes, they seem to call it everything, but Vista nowadays.

Meanwhile I laugh everytime my PC friend mentions his problems with Vista. Just the other day he was saying he's having troubles re-installing it or something.

[walshbj]

Originally Posted by ifiredmyboss.com

...People buying these 299 and 499 computers are getting just what they paid for.

That is a big bag of truth. My in-laws bought a Dell laptop, for under $600, and it came with Vista. When I have time I'll put XP on it. Aside from their confusion at all the interface changes and warnings and warnings and warnings the thing is blazingly slow.

I'm no expert on underlying OS technology, kernels, etc. But Windows has felt heavy to me on anything since NT4. You get a sense of the bloat when you do something simple, like right-click on the Desktop to make a new folder and the 'New' context menu takes forever to populate. Or Explorer won't respond because there's a CD in the drive.

True, Leopard has its own issues, but I don't get the same feel. It doesn't feel bloated to the same extent as Windows. And quitting an app on Leopard never sends me into the loop Windows loves. dialog after dialog popping up that the app is not responding. If I want to kill something on OS X I can. On Windows it's not up to me.

[pmoshay]

"XP successor was being designed to run on a broad range of systems from budget PCs to high-end offerings"

Completely DENSE, people don't care if an operating system "runs on a wide range of systems" they only want to know how it will perform on THEIR system!

Their mindset is one of marketing to themselves!

[Wiggin]

I love how their response to the article was not to discuss ways of improving Vista but to discuss was to market it better. It sounds like the Apple ad where PC is creating piles of money for advertising vs fixing Vista have pretty much hit the nail on the head.

[ThinkAdrian]

So... "to use the features which makes Vista better and newer than XP" is equaled to "a premium experience"... which not all computers can have...

[walshbj]

I love the 2 preceding comments by wiggin and thinkadrian ! MS just seems to beg for it sometimes...

[TBaggins]

Originally Posted by Wiggin

I love how their response to the article was not to discuss ways of improving Vista but to discuss was to market it better. It sounds like the Apple ad where PC is creating piles of money for advertising vs fixing Vista have pretty much hit the nail on the head.

It's all part of MS's (and MS fanbois) denial.

As in, "There's nothing fundamentally wrong with us, we just have to be thought of as COOL once again, and everything'll be just FINE! 'Cool' is the ONLY thing Apple has on us!"

Too funny, but it's honestly how they think.


...

[christopher126]

Originally Posted by ifiredmyboss.com

Doesn't renaming Vista fix it?
They just need to set some real requirements.. ram.. video.. and it would be ok.
People buying these 299 and 499 computers are getting just what they paid for.

[christopher126]

Originally Posted by JohnnyKrz

Let me start by saying that I'm a huge Apple fanboy and don't consider Windows even close to being the same class of OS as OS X. At the same time, I do use multiple OSes an a regular basis. I'm a bigger overall geek than Apple fanboy, I guess. I'm also an IT administrator in a cross-platform publishing company.

That being said, it is my opinion that (given the correct hardware), Vista is a huge improvement over XP. There is a little TOO much transparency effects in the UI, but it looks very nice. It's very speedy (again, on the correct hardware) and everything has worked just as well as XP (which doesn't say much), but not in the sense that it is buggy. It is simply not as well designed and easy to use as OS X (especially on an IT admin level where Windows is not exclusive). Will I ever switch to Vista? Hell, f#@k no! Do I think it is as bad as some people (especially us mac lovers) make it out to be? Not at all. Does Microsoft have the worst marketing and (Windows) R&D per capita? Absolutely. That is what is hurting them the most. WIll I stop asking myself questions now? Okay.

[anantksundaram]

MiSFiTs.

[Daniel0418]

Originally Posted by sandau

I use it daily. It's not bad. Annoying at times, but very stable. Bad marketing, decent product. Of course its not as good as Leopard, but Leopard isn't perfect either, but is better and easier to use.

Microsoft made some mistakes. We get it. No one is perfect. Vista is a really good operating system. Vista being slower is inaccurate. Very inaccurate. It requires more RAM. 512-1GB of ram is not enough. Atleast 2 maybe 3 to run it smoothly. RAM upgrades have solved 95% of my customers problems with vista. (I work at a PC shop) Microsoft of course is preparing for the competition this is nothing new. Every company does it.

[archer75]

On the same machine, Leopard and Vista x64, Vista is noticably more responive than Leopard. I get better framerates and more vibrant colors in WoW and extracting large files is faster in Vista. Extracting the same files in Leopard results in a slowdown of the entire system.

[Deedger]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

"You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows," Mossberg wrote in the highlighted section.

What bugs me is that no one, not even these supposed Microsoft techies, pointed out that Macs do of course run Windows, and in fact are better at it than those $499 PCs!

If Apple would highlight this one-world approach of their hardware more aggressively, they would eventually crush Microsoft. How many people -- running, say, Vista via Parallels on a fast Mac -- would choose to use any Windows environment once they experienced the two OS's side by side over a period of time? More importantly, who would buy a Dell if they understood that a "premium experience" Mac desktop could run Vista much better than the average Dell?

Apple should hammer this home with an ad that shows the Mac guy running all the PC guy's apps, while the PC chokes (literally?) on all the Mac's apps.

[walshbj]

Originally Posted by archer75

On the same machine, Leopard and Vista x64, Vista is noticably more responive than Leopard. I get better framerates and more vibrant colors in WoW and extracting large files is faster in Vista. Extracting the same files in Leopard results in a slowdown of the entire system.

That's interesting, seriously. I'd like to compare 32 and 64 bit Vista side by side on equal hardware.

I've got one thing I need Windows for these days. If I could do that one thing on OS X I'd turn off my last Windows machine and not look back. It's a gut reaction after 15 years of Windows and 4 years of Mac. My gut tells me I'm more productive with the Mac. And I don't waste hours babysitting the virus stuff.

[EyeNsteinNo]

Rename Windows 7 NOW. Try " BOB II".

Take my advice Steve, then your able to blame the whole mess on Bill.

[canucklehead]

Out of curiosity, what is this ONE thing?

Originally Posted by walshbj

That's interesting, seriously. I'd like to compare 32 and 64 bit Vista side by side on equal hardware.

I've got one thing I need Windows for these days. If I could do that one thing on OS X I'd turn off my last Windows machine and not look back. It's a gut reaction after 15 years of Windows and 4 years of Mac. My gut tells me I'm more productive with the Mac. And I don't waste hours babysitting the virus stuff.

[walshbj]

Originally Posted by canucklehead

Out of curiosity, what is this ONE thing?

Creating my screencasts about how to do stuff on OS X ! ; )

[archer75]

Originally Posted by walshbj

That's interesting, seriously. I'd like to compare 32 and 64 bit Vista side by side on equal hardware.

I've got one thing I need Windows for these days. If I could do that one thing on OS X I'd turn off my last Windows machine and not look back. It's a gut reaction after 15 years of Windows and 4 years of Mac. My gut tells me I'm more productive with the Mac. And I don't waste hours babysitting the virus stuff.

I don't have Vista 32 and 64 on the same machine, but I do use Vista 32bit on a similarly spec'd machine and x64 is noticably faster and more stable.

I also don't worry about viruses, never get them. But just for the hell of it I downloaded a file with a known virus and purposefully let it past UAC(otherwise it wouldn't infect the system) on Vista 32bit and I could never quite get rid of it. So I reformatted.

I did the same thing on Vista x64 and it wouldn't even install the virus. It just couldn't even run. Even letting it past UAC the virus would not operate.

[hillstones]

Originally Posted by Deedger

What bugs me is that no one, not even these supposed Microsoft techies, pointed out that Macs do of course run Windows, and in fact are better at it than those $499 PCs!

If Apple would highlight this one-world approach of their hardware more aggressively, they would eventually crush Microsoft. How many people -- running, say, Vista via Parallels on a fast Mac -- would choose to use any Windows environment once they experienced the two OS's side by side over a period of time? More importantly, who would buy a Dell if they understood that a "premium experience" Mac desktop could run Vista much better than the average Dell?

Apple should hammer this home with an ad that shows the Mac guy running all the PC guy's apps, while the PC chokes (literally?) on all the Mac's apps.

You missed the date reference in the article. Mossberg was commenting on pre-Intel Macs running Tiger, comparing them to the upcoming release of Vista. His statement was made in Oct 2005, before any Intel Macs were released.

[PXT]

Originally Posted by Daniel0418

Microsoft made some mistakes. We get it. No one is perfect. Vista is a really good operating system. Vista being slower is inaccurate. Very inaccurate. It requires more RAM. 512-1GB of ram is not enough. Atleast 2 maybe 3 to run it smoothly. RAM upgrades have solved 95% of my customers problems with vista. (I work at a PC shop) Microsoft of course is preparing for the competition this is nothing new. Every company does it.

When a Windows operating system in 2008 still needs anti-virus, then it is a complete disgrace.

The idea that users have to buy a separate product to partially complete the basic security functions just amazes me.

If I bought a ticket on a budget airline's website at a really low price, then saw an option to add a parachute, there's no way I would fly !

[archer75]

Originally Posted by PXT

When a Windows operating system in 2008 still needs anti-virus, then it is a complete disgrace.

The idea that users have to buy a separate product to partially complete the basic security functions just amazes me.

If I bought a ticket on a budget airline's website at a really low price, then saw an option to add a parachute, there's no way I would fly !

You don't need one. I have NEVER been infected in my life. And with UAC on I don't believe it's possible for any virus to actually install and run.
However there are keyloggers and trojans for OSX. In the laptop challenge it was OSX that was hacked a full day before Vista and Ubuntu.

[elroth]

Originally Posted by fraklinc

Why the hell would they stick a label that reads, (Vista Ready) if they knew all along it wasn't, only the Geniuses At M$ft would thought of that, no wonder they also claim the Zune has a 30 hour battery life when you can't even get 15 out of it

How would you know how much battery life you can get from a Zune? How would anyone know? Nobody's tried to use a Zune for 15 hours...

[robb01]

Originally Posted by elroth

How would you know how much battery life you can get from a Zune? How would anyone know? Nobody's tried to use a Zune for 15 hours...

Noone would know

____________

[TBaggins]

Originally Posted by walshbj

Creating my screencasts about how to do stuff on OS X ! ; )

Sigh. If only Adobe would pull its head out of its arse and release Captivate for OS X.

Camtasia for Mac anytime soon?


...

[TBaggins]

Originally Posted by archer75

You don't need one. I have NEVER been infected in my life.

If only my Windows-using friends were as lucky. One of them got hosed quite badly just last year. He was pretty pissed about it too.

I think games are the only thing keeping him on Windows. Guess I should get around to telling him that he can run Windows on Apple hardware. I haven't bothered so far 'cuz he used to be quite the Microsoft fanboi, and I guess I want him to learn his lesson a bit more first.


...

[cameronj]

Originally Posted by Daniel0418

Microsoft made some mistakes. We get it. No one is perfect. Vista is a really good operating system. Vista being slower is inaccurate. Very inaccurate. It requires more RAM. 512-1GB of ram is not enough. Atleast 2 maybe 3 to run it smoothly. RAM upgrades have solved 95% of my customers problems with vista. (I work at a PC shop) Microsoft of course is preparing for the competition this is nothing new. Every company does it.

Um yeah, that's what makes Vista slower... Slower on the same computer, that's the only reasonable way to call something slower or faster.

I can also say that setting up a new computer for a customer seems to take me twice as long as it does with XP... so in one sense I don't complain because I get paid twice as much, but it's a pain in the butt.

[cameronj]

Originally Posted by archer75

I don't have Vista 32 and 64 on the same machine, but I do use Vista 32bit on a similarly spec'd machine and x64 is noticably faster and more stable.

I also don't worry about viruses, never get them. But just for the hell of it I downloaded a file with a known virus and purposefully let it past UAC(otherwise it wouldn't infect the system) on Vista 32bit and I could never quite get rid of it. So I reformatted.

I did the same thing on Vista x64 and it wouldn't even install the virus. It just couldn't even run. Even letting it past UAC the virus would not operate.

Gee I wonder why that is? It MAY have something to do with the virus being a 32 bit program?

[cameronj]

Originally Posted by archer75

You don't need one. I have NEVER been infected in my life. And with UAC on I don't believe it's possible for any virus to actually install and run.

I'm assuming you don't run a virus scanner?

If so, then how do you know that you've never had one? Just because it's never poked its head up and done anything you could see?

[archer75]

Originally Posted by cameronj

Gee I wonder why that is? It MAY have something to do with the virus being a 32 bit program?

32bit programs can run just fine in a 64bit OS.

Originally Posted by cameronj

I'm assuming you don't run a virus scanner?

If so, then how do you know that you've never had one? Just because it's never poked its head up and done anything you could see?

Trendmicro housecall can be run from the web. Occasionally I can also install one and check. Right now I do have Kaspersky installed and since there is no performance hit I just leave it on there. I also have AVG on my HTPC as again, there is no performance hit so why not.

[digitalclips]

Originally Posted by JohnnyKrz

Let me start by saying that I'm a huge Apple fanboy and don't consider Windows even close to being the same class of OS as OS X. At the same time, I do use multiple OSes an a regular basis. I'm a bigger overall geek than Apple fanboy, I guess. I'm also an IT administrator in a cross-platform publishing company.

That being said, it is my opinion that (given the correct hardware), Vista is a huge improvement over XP. There is a little TOO much transparency effects in the UI, but it looks very nice. It's very speedy (again, on the correct hardware) and everything has worked just as well as XP (which doesn't say much), but not in the sense that it is buggy. It is simply not as well designed and easy to use as OS X (especially on an IT admin level where Windows is not exclusive). Will I ever switch to Vista? Hell, f#@k no! Do I think it is as bad as some people (especially us mac lovers) make it out to be? Not at all. Does Microsoft have the worst marketing and (Windows) R&D per capita? Absolutely. That is what is hurting them the most. WIll I stop asking myself questions now? Okay.

I pretty much agree and I use both too and yes Vista runs fine for me but .... I would say that after all these years it amazes me how many totally dumb things are still there, really simple UI stuff such as an important dialog box hiding behind another or constant fights over who wins the warning wars between Vista and the Kaspersky or what ever system one has to use. Or how about that stupid "Have you seen the Yellow Bar?" in IE when Active X needs to run. It is such a mess compared to OS X. The best thing is the ability to run Vista in VMWare or Parallels, it makes it so much easier to deal with not to mention way faster to install. I use Bonjour for Windows (so much easier to deal with networked printers), QuickTime for Windows, Safari ... you get the picture, Apple make it far better.

[meelash]

You know, interestingly, Apple also sells multiple copies of Mac OS, although in this case it is to a MUCH lesser degree and distributed in a MUCH more sensible fashion. Very telling, since essentially both companies have the same problem and their solutions say a lot about them. Consider these two examples:

On my 12" PB G4 with 32MB Nvidia Graphics card, the menu bar is the non-transparent one (the other option is not available) and when I add widgets to Dashboard, I don't get the ripple effect. This is similar to the difference in aero graphics between Vista basic and professional.

Macbooks and computers with the new touchpads run different versions that have multitouch capabilities built-in.

Again, look at the difference in how the companies have burdened the consumer with choosing between these things.

[NasserAE]

Originally Posted by archer75

You don't need one. I have NEVER been infected in my life. And with UAC on I don't believe it's possible for any virus to actually install and run.
However there are keyloggers and trojans for OSX. In the laptop challenge it was OSX that was hacked a full day before Vista and Ubuntu.

Most infected people don't know that they were infected.

My brother has one of those free AV programs installed. After installing Mcafee and performed a scan we found more than 15 trojans and viruses.

The point is that not everyone is a computer expert and most people don't know what a virus is or what it can do. Many think that viruses break your computer or erase your HD and as long as your computer is running you are fine.

[archer75]

Originally Posted by NasserAE

Most infected people don't know that they were infected.

My brother has one of those free AV programs installed. After installing Mcafee and performed a scan we found more than 15 trojans and viruses.

The point is that not everyone is a computer expert and most people don't know what a virus is or what it can do. Many think that viruses break your computer or erase your HD and as long as your computer is running you are fine.

True, but smarter computing habits apply whether you run Windows or OSX. Both can get keyloggers and trojans and people can fall for phishing scams.

Vista x64 with UAC turned on is pretty damn secure. I have yet to hear of a single virus that has infected this type of system. Unless the user allowed it to happen.

Don't get me wrong, I LIKE OSX. There are things about it that I wish were in windows and vice versa. What i'm saying is that people are buying into the marketing or they heard from a cousins friend, blah blah, none of which is true. Windows is not full of viruses and the moment you go to look at the news you get infected. Nor is Vista slow and buggy. Like I said in a previous post it's faster and more stable than leopard on the same machine. But apple has acknowledged there are issues with leopard and are addressing performance and stability with snow leopard.
Both companies have their faults.