Microsoft should rethink its business plan instead of sticking its nose in every tech field (web search, web apps, gaming console,... etc) just for the sake of competition. They should wake up and remember that they are a software company and they should focus on OS and business software. I always though it was best for MS if it was broken to several companies by the courts back in the 90s. Maybe if that happened we would have seen better OS by now.
Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on an ad campaign, MS should have spent it on developing better and faster OS.
Microsoft would be better off to spend the money on windows 7 rather than try and boost up vista. No amount of money will undue the damage vista has already sustained. It is just pouring good money after bad.
Having lost its patience with Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign attacking Windows Vista's public perception, Microsoft will spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prop up the standing of its operating system.
The company's VP of Vista marketing, Brad Brooks, told attendees at a Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference on Tuesday that the next few months will see a major advertising push that promises to "free the people" through what Vista has to offer and that Microsoft wouldn't take Apple's repeated attacks on Vista reliability without a fight.
"You thought the sleeping giant was still sleeping, well we woke it up and it's time to take our message forward," Brooks warns Apple. "There's a conversation going on in the marketplace today and it's just plain awful. We've got to get back on the front foot."
He acknowledges, however, that Vista's rough launch has cost the company significant ground and that the ads will as much be about damage control as touting the brand. In a rare glimpse into Microsoft's own view of the launch, Brooks recognizes that Vista "broke a lot of things" and triggered "a lot of pain" in partners trying to support the newer Windows edition.
According to the executive, difficulties with new operating system launches are common and a similar pattern emerged with Windows XP in 2001, which eventually smoothed out as patches and gradual acceptance made it the dominant operating system. Recent updates to Vista have ironed out similar wrinkles, he argues.
By contrast, Apple is said to be "noisy" in controlling the message on Vista. The Mac maker has regularly pointed out flaws and stressed that many users are looking to downgrade to XP after sour experiences with Vista. To Brooks, though, Apple is pitching an all-or-nothing message for its products that Microsoft can counter with perceived choice.
"They tell us it's the iWay or the highway. We think that's a sad message," he says. "Software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life."
Whether or not Microsoft will succeed in its mission, however, is less than clear. Businesses have commented that they consider it impractical to upgrade to Vista due to compatibility problems and may wait until Windows 7 to update past Windows XP, a move that would delay any purchases until at least 2010.
Also, in the prelude to Microsoft's ad campaign, Apple is still believed to be stealing away those Microsoft hopes to win over: a Bank of Montreal estimate has as many as 2.5 million Macs shipped in the current quarter based partly on users opting for Apple's platform rather than face the concerns raised by Vista.
I think its sad people seem to have a personal vendetta against a company. Competition in the marketplace helps everyone,
Competition, sure. If Microsoft engaged in more genuine competition by providing a quality product with value, like they did with both versions of XBox, that would be great.
It's just that the way they compete is, more often than not, reinventing a worse wheel for no other reason than screwing with their competition or hanging onto a monopoly lockin. For concrete examples, you can look at pretty much any programming language, scripting language and file format Microsoft has ever developed or extended.
Microsoft, as an organization, has a systemic attitude and process problem about the way it does product design and development. It has had this problem for a long time. Ex-MS employees paint a very accurate picture of this.
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and even though I have had problems with OS X and Vista, I still feel both are great OS's, just both require some fixes. Both companies seem dedicated to these fixes (Microsoft with their recent SP1 release, Apple with their "We're fixing it in 10.6" dedication.)
OS X could do with improvements. Vista needs a demolition crew in comparison. Unlike many other posters, I have little hate for Microsoft or, indeed, their OS. I have used every major MS OS version starting from DOS 5.0, IIRC. They have some good infrastructure in their later operating systems, from NT onwards. But it's also a fact that their codebase and interfaces are a mess, they are way behind on usability, standards and interoperation on multiple fronts, and these things are critical for productivity.
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I feel both companies set too ambituious of targets with their latest OS and are feeling the need to step back before getting back into things with their newest actual release in a few years.
Some new functionality on Leopard is not great, but if you ignore it and just use the rest, it's still clearly better than Tiger. Especially factoring in the stuff behind the scenes, resulting in performance improvements and a flow of better apps in the long term, what makes it too ambitious?
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And throwing more money into isn't going to help. Its Microsoft, I can assure you they are already putting large resources into fixing the issues.
What they need is risk-taking ability, and confidence in being able to compete on raw quality. They need to do, more or less, what Apple did when they originally came out with OS X. To have the nerve to throw a lot of crud away.
On what kind of computer, how long does it take to load for you, and how many pictures do you have?
I think part of what takes it "so long" is to load all the image previews, but once loaded, the program's pretty zippy. I have 16,000 pictures and it takes my Mac Pro about five seconds to load iPhoto..
Macbook, 8000 pictures, maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Not only is there a multi-color spinning beachball, there is that little spinning circle too. Twice as nice I guess.
Macbook, 8000 pictures, maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Not only is there a multi-color spinning beachball, there is that little spinning circle too. Twice as nice I guess.
Might want more RAM. My MacBook Air (HD model) with ~1500 photos launched iPhoto in about 1 second. I'm sure 8000 would be slower, but RAM does help beachballs.
I LOVE the new iPhoto.
Also, it only takes about 1% of my CPU power to leave it running hidden--might be an option for you if you need it often and don't like the startup delay you've seen.
In any case, we Mac users have it good when what WE have to complain about is how slow 8000 photos load off a laptop drive
Macbook, 8000 pictures, maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Not only is there a multi-color spinning beachball, there is that little spinning circle too. Twice as nice I guess.
Might want more RAM. My MacBook Air (HD model) with ~1500 photos launched iPhoto in about 1 second. I'm sure 8000 would be slower, but RAM does help beachballs.
I LOVE the new iPhoto.
Also, it only takes about 1% of my CPU power to leave it running hidden--might be an option for you if you need it often and don't like the startup delay you've seen.
In any case, we Mac users have it good when what WE have to complain about is how slow 8000 photos load off a laptop drive
Just over 19,000 photo's in my library shot with a 7+ MP camera (I shoot with a SD900 and 40D Canon). 15 seconds to use iPhoto from launch.
I run a 2.8 GHz C2D with 4 Gb ram in my 24" 1Tb iMac. It's iPhoto and having lots of photo's that is the problem.
"I am personally not very happy with OSX Leopard or OSX Leopard Server nor their recent bug-ridden updates, nor the fact that their next major bug release is 11 months from now."
What makes you think 10.5.5 won't be released for 11 months?
We can't do it right but it's OK because gradual acceptance of crappy software makes people forget that it is crappy.
I am not one to quote the bible much, but I do remember one little thing from the forced childhood indoctrination...er Sunday school......something about not pointing out the twig in your brothers eye when there is a plank in yours...
10.5 was SO perfect, why did apple bother with .1, .2, and .3, not to mebtion all of the QT and Safari updates since GM..
I......something about not pointing out the twig in your brothers eye when there is a plank in yours...
I've got a better platitude: SPEAK TRUTH. If there's a twig in the other guy's eye, SAY IT. If there's also a log in your own, say that as well. Say BOTH. Say it ALL.
(And if the twig's in MS's eye... well, grab it firmly, say "hey, what's this twig?", and give it some good sharp wiggles. : )
10.5 was SO perfect, why did apple bother with .1, .2, and .3, not to mebtion all of the QT and Safari updates since GM..
No software is EVER perfect. Leopard IS however, FAR better than Vista, and that is indeed THE best reason to buy a Mac. It's a no-brainer for Apple to use ads that spin that along the lines of what people are already grumbling. Ads are ads--we don't have to like them, but we DO have to realize they don't tell the whole story and never will.
As a Windows Sys admin, and a vista user at work, In a dev shop, I find that the negitive attitudes about vista are from people who fall into one of three camps
1 (most common) haven't touched vista and dont plan to because it is "cool" to hate it, hel, the idiot box...er...TV tells them to... or they read some negitive blog posts from Jan 2007
2: (less common) played with Vista for about 10 minutes and gave up..mostly because of crapware that was preloaded that wasnt even VISTA CAPABLE AND CRASHED ON LAUNCH (see some gayway laptops)
3: (rare) bad driver or conflict..these have been resolved in many cases.
I think Vista with SP1 is a really solid choice, security wise it is leaps and bounds bove XP...and for Christ sake, XP is 8 years old! could you imagine a clammoring for NT4 two years after XP shipped?
The problem is that microsoft let XP get too damned entrenched. and now we are stuck supporting this archaic OS, just bolting on moddern technologies as we go in a cludgy way...
Raise your hand if you had these in 2000, when XP RCs went feature complete
Digial camera RAW
an MP3 player
web based email services, and cloud services in general like Googledocs or dotmac
a smartphone capable of syncing with your desktop PIM
online media sales...back then we all used Napster
Now, look at Apple circa 2000, OSX Public Preview, they evolved it, and built osx up to what it is slowly over time...Windowswent from a 2001 model to a 2007 model with no middle ground...
and truth be told, UAC isnt annoying when configured properly, and it has saved my arse once or twice...
Vista isnt bad, it is just the inertia of negativism.
I speak from experiance. I would put money on the table that i have used Vista more than all other posters to this thread combined.
All that said, you can pry my leopard based macbook from my cold dead hands.
Comments
Well see the following from Steve Ballmer on the importance of Advertising to MS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTkA9...eature=related
It seems Advertising is the new policy, it seems to be more important than all matters of substance. Do we all think this is going to drive success?
And for a further treat, why not check out his super motivational antics on stage...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsbo...eature=related
Now why can't we all have a CEO like that?!
What I always loved about video #2 is how he hurts himself and starts to skip at about 21 seconds in.
That's irony.
but I thought this was worth a read
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/f...11-13Zune.mspx
Mr. Gates felt this would carry them forward for years, so thank goodness for that - something to help fund the Vista tragedy
Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on an ad campaign, MS should have spent it on developing better and faster OS.
And for a further treat, why not check out his super motivational antics on stage...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsbo...eature=related
Now why can't we all have a CEO like that?!
Better yet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6rqXHX3O48
You can't polish a turd.
Well, actually, you can... you just get shiny shit...
Having lost its patience with Apple's "Get a Mac" advertising campaign attacking Windows Vista's public perception, Microsoft will spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to prop up the standing of its operating system.
The company's VP of Vista marketing, Brad Brooks, told attendees at a Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference on Tuesday that the next few months will see a major advertising push that promises to "free the people" through what Vista has to offer and that Microsoft wouldn't take Apple's repeated attacks on Vista reliability without a fight.
"You thought the sleeping giant was still sleeping, well we woke it up and it's time to take our message forward," Brooks warns Apple. "There's a conversation going on in the marketplace today and it's just plain awful. We've got to get back on the front foot."
He acknowledges, however, that Vista's rough launch has cost the company significant ground and that the ads will as much be about damage control as touting the brand. In a rare glimpse into Microsoft's own view of the launch, Brooks recognizes that Vista "broke a lot of things" and triggered "a lot of pain" in partners trying to support the newer Windows edition.
According to the executive, difficulties with new operating system launches are common and a similar pattern emerged with Windows XP in 2001, which eventually smoothed out as patches and gradual acceptance made it the dominant operating system. Recent updates to Vista have ironed out similar wrinkles, he argues.
By contrast, Apple is said to be "noisy" in controlling the message on Vista. The Mac maker has regularly pointed out flaws and stressed that many users are looking to downgrade to XP after sour experiences with Vista. To Brooks, though, Apple is pitching an all-or-nothing message for its products that Microsoft can counter with perceived choice.
"They tell us it's the iWay or the highway. We think that's a sad message," he says. "Software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life."
Whether or not Microsoft will succeed in its mission, however, is less than clear. Businesses have commented that they consider it impractical to upgrade to Vista due to compatibility problems and may wait until Windows 7 to update past Windows XP, a move that would delay any purchases until at least 2010.
Also, in the prelude to Microsoft's ad campaign, Apple is still believed to be stealing away those Microsoft hopes to win over: a Bank of Montreal estimate has as many as 2.5 million Macs shipped in the current quarter based partly on users opting for Apple's platform rather than face the concerns raised by Vista.
[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
A little bit too late Mr Brad Brook.. the damage has been done
I think its sad people seem to have a personal vendetta against a company. Competition in the marketplace helps everyone,
Competition, sure. If Microsoft engaged in more genuine competition by providing a quality product with value, like they did with both versions of XBox, that would be great.
It's just that the way they compete is, more often than not, reinventing a worse wheel for no other reason than screwing with their competition or hanging onto a monopoly lockin. For concrete examples, you can look at pretty much any programming language, scripting language and file format Microsoft has ever developed or extended.
Microsoft, as an organization, has a systemic attitude and process problem about the way it does product design and development. It has had this problem for a long time. Ex-MS employees paint a very accurate picture of this.
and even though I have had problems with OS X and Vista, I still feel both are great OS's, just both require some fixes. Both companies seem dedicated to these fixes (Microsoft with their recent SP1 release, Apple with their "We're fixing it in 10.6" dedication.)
OS X could do with improvements. Vista needs a demolition crew in comparison. Unlike many other posters, I have little hate for Microsoft or, indeed, their OS. I have used every major MS OS version starting from DOS 5.0, IIRC. They have some good infrastructure in their later operating systems, from NT onwards. But it's also a fact that their codebase and interfaces are a mess, they are way behind on usability, standards and interoperation on multiple fronts, and these things are critical for productivity.
I feel both companies set too ambituious of targets with their latest OS and are feeling the need to step back before getting back into things with their newest actual release in a few years.
Some new functionality on Leopard is not great, but if you ignore it and just use the rest, it's still clearly better than Tiger. Especially factoring in the stuff behind the scenes, resulting in performance improvements and a flow of better apps in the long term, what makes it too ambitious?
And throwing more money into isn't going to help. Its Microsoft, I can assure you they are already putting large resources into fixing the issues.
What they need is risk-taking ability, and confidence in being able to compete on raw quality. They need to do, more or less, what Apple did when they originally came out with OS X. To have the nerve to throw a lot of crud away.
On what kind of computer, how long does it take to load for you, and how many pictures do you have?
I think part of what takes it "so long" is to load all the image previews, but once loaded, the program's pretty zippy. I have 16,000 pictures and it takes my Mac Pro about five seconds to load iPhoto..
Macbook, 8000 pictures, maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Not only is there a multi-color spinning beachball, there is that little spinning circle too. Twice as nice I guess.
Yeah, that spinning beachball looks really good when launching iPhoto.
That's the truth! iPhoto sucks these days.
Macbook, 8000 pictures, maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Not only is there a multi-color spinning beachball, there is that little spinning circle too. Twice as nice I guess.
Might want more RAM. My MacBook Air (HD model) with ~1500 photos launched iPhoto in about 1 second. I'm sure 8000 would be slower, but RAM does help beachballs.
I LOVE the new iPhoto.
Also, it only takes about 1% of my CPU power to leave it running hidden--might be an option for you if you need it often and don't like the startup delay you've seen.
In any case, we Mac users have it good when what WE have to complain about is how slow 8000 photos load off a laptop drive
Macbook, 8000 pictures, maybe 10 or 15 seconds. Not only is there a multi-color spinning beachball, there is that little spinning circle too. Twice as nice I guess.
iPhoto sucks. Use Graphic Converter.
Might want more RAM. My MacBook Air (HD model) with ~1500 photos launched iPhoto in about 1 second. I'm sure 8000 would be slower, but RAM does help beachballs.
I LOVE the new iPhoto.
Also, it only takes about 1% of my CPU power to leave it running hidden--might be an option for you if you need it often and don't like the startup delay you've seen.
In any case, we Mac users have it good when what WE have to complain about is how slow 8000 photos load off a laptop drive
Just over 19,000 photo's in my library shot with a 7+ MP camera (I shoot with a SD900 and 40D Canon). 15 seconds to use iPhoto from launch.
I run a 2.8 GHz C2D with 4 Gb ram in my 24" 1Tb iMac. It's iPhoto and having lots of photo's that is the problem.
What makes you think 10.5.5 won't be released for 11 months?
Well, he sure got that right. There's a loud conversation about Vista, and it's beyond awful. It sounds something like this: Anything but Speechless: 100 Things People Are Really Saying About Windows Vista
I fully agree with others' key point here: What's needed is for MS to fix the product, not spin the message!
I am not one to quote the bible much, but I do remember one little thing from the forced childhood indoctrination...er Sunday school......something about not pointing out the twig in your brothers eye when there is a plank in yours...
10.5 was SO perfect, why did apple bother with .1, .2, and .3, not to mebtion all of the QT and Safari updates since GM..
I......something about not pointing out the twig in your brothers eye when there is a plank in yours...
I've got a better platitude: SPEAK TRUTH. If there's a twig in the other guy's eye, SAY IT. If there's also a log in your own, say that as well. Say BOTH. Say it ALL.
(And if the twig's in MS's eye... well, grab it firmly, say "hey, what's this twig?", and give it some good sharp wiggles. : )
10.5 was SO perfect, why did apple bother with .1, .2, and .3, not to mebtion all of the QT and Safari updates since GM..
No software is EVER perfect. Leopard IS however, FAR better than Vista, and that is indeed THE best reason to buy a Mac. It's a no-brainer for Apple to use ads that spin that along the lines of what people are already grumbling. Ads are ads--we don't have to like them, but we DO have to realize they don't tell the whole story and never will.
1 (most common) haven't touched vista and dont plan to because it is "cool" to hate it, hel, the idiot box...er...TV tells them to... or they read some negitive blog posts from Jan 2007
2: (less common) played with Vista for about 10 minutes and gave up..mostly because of crapware that was preloaded that wasnt even VISTA CAPABLE AND CRASHED ON LAUNCH (see some gayway laptops)
3: (rare) bad driver or conflict..these have been resolved in many cases.
I think Vista with SP1 is a really solid choice, security wise it is leaps and bounds bove XP...and for Christ sake, XP is 8 years old! could you imagine a clammoring for NT4 two years after XP shipped?
The problem is that microsoft let XP get too damned entrenched. and now we are stuck supporting this archaic OS, just bolting on moddern technologies as we go in a cludgy way...
Raise your hand if you had these in 2000, when XP RCs went feature complete
Digial camera RAW
an MP3 player
web based email services, and cloud services in general like Googledocs or dotmac
a smartphone capable of syncing with your desktop PIM
online media sales...back then we all used Napster
Now, look at Apple circa 2000, OSX Public Preview, they evolved it, and built osx up to what it is slowly over time...Windowswent from a 2001 model to a 2007 model with no middle ground...
and truth be told, UAC isnt annoying when configured properly, and it has saved my arse once or twice...
Vista isnt bad, it is just the inertia of negativism.
I speak from experiance. I would put money on the table that i have used Vista more than all other posters to this thread combined.
All that said, you can pry my leopard based macbook from my cold dead hands.