
First hints of Microsoft's $300 mill “fight back” ads appear - nickb
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=499
======
tx
What has changed? I just bought a new laptop with Vista on it. The poor puppy
was spending about 10 minutes to boot up and cool down: HDD activity upon
startup was so insane that it was better to let it sit for 10 minutes before
you could actually do anything. After that it could barely breathe on its own
1GB of RAM, _without any applications running._ I went through the list of
running services but couldn't clean up much: there was nothing excessive. Even
usual anti-virus junksoft was absent. The damn thing needs 1GB of RAM only to
stay barely alive on its own.

How is that usable? These days we're accustomed to running 2-3 copies of
virtualized OSes. An operating system in 2008 mustn't assume more than 128MB
of RAM available for just sitting and doing nothing, let alone demand 4 times
as much.

XP was released when 128MB of RAM was more or less the norm. If you had 512MB,
XP was screaming. With Vista, these two numbers (for "barely works" and
"screaming") are 1GB and 3GB, i.e. Vista effectively increased its
predecessor's hardware requirements by more than 400%

That's just insane.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_These days we're accustomed to running 2-3 copies of virtualized OSes._

Well, not Vista, right? I thought you had to own Windows Vista Incredible to
have permission to run virtualized copies. Or was it Windows Vista Ultimate
Smackdown? I can never remember.

Of course, we in the Mac world have a much easier time remembering which
versions of the Mac OS can be easily and legally run in virtual machines: None
of them.

~~~
nickb
_Of course, we in the Mac world have a much easier time remembering which
versions of the Mac OS can be easily and legally run in virtual machines: None
of them._

Not true. You can run Leopard server virtualized. I haven't tried it but I
know people who offer VPS's with it. And yes, it's completely legal. Both
Parallels and VMWare support it.

<http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2008/01/virtual-leopa-1.html>

~~~
notauser
Leopard server can legally only run in a VM on Apple hardware though AFAIK.

I can legally run (some versions of) Windows on any of our Linux machines,
loading it over the network, provided we don't exceed the license limit. This
is _exceptionally_ useful as it allows access to (office|windows only apps)
for the 1% of the time it is useful, without paying for the 99% of the time it
isn't.

To do the same for Macs would require us to buy an entire set of Apple
hardware. Rather pointless in a shop where most people use Linux out of
choice, and most work is done inside a web browser or Eclipse.

~~~
nickb
OK... there's a bit of comparing apples and oranges here. Macintosh is a
proprietary _hardware_ platform and MacOS X requires it to run. You can run
Windows and Linux on the same hardware because both of them support it and VM
software easily uses hardware facilities through virtualization. VMWare and
Parallels do not emulate everything.

So it makes sense that you can't run MacOS X on non-Apple hardware since it
was never meant to do that. On the other hand, Apple supports Windows XP and
Vista on its hardware and have written a ton of drivers to do just that. Linux
folks have done the same and they have written drivers for Mac hardware. Sure,
there are such things as Hackintoshes but they have a ton of issues (sometimes
fans don't work. graphics doesn't work, drivers missing etc).

For Apple to do what you want, they'd have to license VMWare and other VM
vendors internal Mac specs so that VMWare can emulate those on a machine that
doesn't have them. And this is not beneficial to Apple at all.

~~~
notauser
The fact that they have valid business reasons not to support my use case
doesn't magically make my need go away.

It's perfectly reasonable for them not to want some people as customers, but
virtualisation on Apple only hardware covers nothing like as many people's
needs as virtualisation on any hardware and any underlying OS.

------
henning
It looks like the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing: the site has
a conflicting message. One part they have their hat in their hands and they're
all humble about the fact that Vista's launch was lousy. Browse around a
little bit and you get to [http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-
vista/discover/100-...](http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-
vista/discover/100-reasons.aspx), which says:

"Seeing Windows Vista for the first time may leave you searching for words.
Many people just say "Wow." Here are 100 reasons why. 1. Windows Vista makes
using your PC a breeze..."

Am I supposed to actually read through that bullshit?

~~~
mechanical_fish
The problem is that, while apologizing is the right tactical move in the face
of angry customers, it's a tactic, not a strategy.

A person who apologizes is gracious. A person who does _nothing_ but apologize
is gracious but impotent: One may accept them as a friend, but one doesn't
hire them.

The correct strategic move is to _fix the problem_ , or refund the money, or
throw up your hands and declare, believeably, that the problem is unsolveable
by anyone.

Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to fix the fact that Vista has no compelling
features (they're too busy supporting all the non-compelling features that
_are_ in Vista... as someone wise wrote here the other week, once you
introduce a feature you're stuck supporting it for life). They certainly don't
want to offer refunds. And attempts to pretend that it's impossible to build a
better OS than Vista break down as soon as the customer walks past an Apple
Store -- or, even worse, as soon as she reboots back into XP.

So, in the absence of a new strategic direction, most of the marketing machine
is still coasting along the path of the old one. They're applying lipstick to
the pig. Again.

~~~
aneesh
> Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to fix the fact that Vista has no
> compelling features

Without getting into specifics, Vista is a much more secure operating system
than XP. It also has much better support for detecting and resolving errors. I
run Vista (with 2 GB of RAM), and it runs great.

I guess in the eyes of most users, security isn't a "compelling feature"
because it's not very visible -- but it's a big improvement over XP. Most
people who use Vista with capable hardware (yes, I admit this is a weakness of
Vista) are happy with it. When it was released, there were lots of
compatibilty issues. But today, it's a much better OS than its reputation
might suggest.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I guess in the eyes of most users, security isn't a "compelling feature"
because it's not very visible_

You got it.

And there are two other big problems with marketing Vista strictly on security
grounds. One is that Microsoft has very little credibility on security. I seem
to recall a long, long era when security was an afterthought at Microsoft, and
when security issues were downplayed. That, plus the energetic PR efforts of
thousands of malware authors around the world, has pretty much tarnished the
brand as far as security is concerned. The company does not start from a
position of strength.

The other is that Microsoft's market probably doesn't contain a lot of
security-sensitive customers anymore. Those that haven't been driven to the
Mac or Unix have evolved defenses: They're acclimated to running tons of
antivirus software and periodically reinstalling their systems, or they've
firewalled and proxied the living death out of everything. Or, you know, their
machines have been 0wned and they're living in blissful ignorance.

At this point, trying to convince long-time Microsoft customers that the new
OS is safe and secure is like trying to talk grizzled survivalists out of
their shelters in the mountains. ("We have no weapons! You can put down the
rootkit scanner! You don't need to fear anymore! It's the 21st century out
here and we've got a utopia!")

------
ks
The ironic part of that ad is that Microsoft needs to correct their own
"facts"

Essentially no one during the the time of Columbus (and even centuries before)
believed the world was flat. That's just a myth that people like to believe.

~~~
lbrandy
I think you are being a bit pedantic. First, the statement is true. At one
time people did believe the Earth was flat. And it could be argued that the
roundness of the earth wasn't conclusively proven until Magellan
circumnavigated it.

~~~
imp
I don't think so. You have to go back a really long time to find when people
thought the earth was flat. In the time of the ancient greeks they estimated
the circumference of the earth. And even in the heliocentric theory of
astronomy they at least assumed the earth was a sphere.

~~~
mattmaroon
You have to go back a really long time to find when everyone thought the earth
was flat, but even though it was no longer consensus, flat earth was still a
well-represented belief in the middle ages.

~~~
boredguy8
I'm interested in knowing those sources to which you refer and also interested
in what constitutes "well-represented". The largest and best representation of
generally accepted cosmology of the middle ages, Dante's Comedy, _requires_
the earth be round (an 'echo' of the heavenly spheres). And he's basically
synthesizing all available knowledge (theological, philosophical, political,
and scientific) in his text, so where the text is silent to a conflict (that
is, where it's making an _assumption_ as opposed to an _argument_), it ought
be trusted as generally accepted.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth_mythology> has more on the myth.

And assuming the truth of the citation in the wiki article, having Gould say,
"all major medieval scholars accepted the earth’s roundness as an established
fact of cosmology" is, I think, fairly damaging to your position. When one of
the biggest critics of religious interactions with science says 'hey, they got
it right here', they probably got it right.

~~~
mattmaroon
I meant well-represented in the same way that creationism is today. Not as in
believed to be true by most scientists.

------
rit
Tie this however with the ads I saw in the NY Subway yesterday, advertising
features of Vista and taglined with:

"Microsoft Vista - Now with Service Pack 1!"

Unfortunately, here's how I see it:

\- People who are smart enough to know WTF a Service Pack is already are sold
one way or another on Vista. Throwing it out there as a selling point is not
likely to sway them either way.

\- Most people have no idea what it is.

Microsoft has a huge marketing nightmare on their hands - and now they're
backed into a corner because they've forcibly killed off the highly successful
XP. It makes me wonder if they shouldn't throw a few more patches in and
relaunch the product quietly under a new brand. It's a lot more likely to work
than the "Now with Service Pack!" crap.

~~~
kirubakaran
Yes, relaunching XP as 'Windows Minimal' would be great move. Right now, they
are their own enemy.

~~~
rit
I actually meant relaunching Vista with a new brand (I mean, in many cases
each release of OS X - esp the last ~2 releases is essentially aservice pack -
updated kernel, some UI tweaks and some extra hangon apps and it works great
giving it a new name even though it's officially a minor patch level).

But, come to think of it - XP would work as well. MS is currently rebranding
XP as a 'portable' OS ; they're supplying it to companies making mini laptops
like OLPC, Asus [eeepc] and Cloudbooks. I think thats as far as they want to
go because they're aware they're cannibalizing Vista business by leaving XP in
the market. For me, it just means when I install VMWare on my Macs and Linux
boxes that that cracked copy of XP is getting a few more years of use ;)

------
noonespecial
FTA:

 _“Vista is now actually better than its reputation. That’s a marketing
issue.”_

Hilarious, sad, and true, all at the same time. Classic.

------
bprater
Nobody is talking about the campaign...

I have a hard time believing they are going to gain ground by trying to
"logic" their way into position. Nobody cares about logic, they work off
emotion.

I can tell you all night long that the software I just wrote is super-
compliant with the OZBOG standard and uses 18.3 jigahertz to mitigate the
resonance specification, but you just won't care.

But if you see John Mayer and Britney Spears and Steven Spielberg all use
Vista and they "love it to bits and pieces" and because you want to be just
like them, now I have a tiny wedge I can pound on.

------
nir
First the Yahoo deal, now this - seems like Microsoft is just running out of
ideas.

Macs aren't selling because of Apple's cute ads or clever slogans. They are
selling because Windows' much larger desktop software range doesn't make as
much difference now that users do most of their stuff online - so customers
pick the OS which they judge as easier to use and more stable.

On the corporate market, I doubt all the IT managers who refuse to upgrade
their company to Vista will change their mind once they see a picture of a
ship.

------
petercooper
I didn't even _get_ what that ad was supposed to mean until I read the
interpretation of it. I'm not sure the general public are really going to hook
on to it. Ads have to be catchy and understandable or at least witty.. this
has none of those characteristics. It's just confusing.

------
invisible
I know Windows is their flagship product, but they need to restructure
themselves for the future: the Web.

Vista has some neat little visual items that XP didn't, but beyond the visual
there's not a whole lot of benefit to upgrading. I mean, most of the boasted
visual items can be pulled off inside a browser.

From all my experience with Vista, they somehow messed up badly on the
networking layers: everything is bogged down under traffic.

