[LINK] How can Microsoft stop us hating them?

[Stilgherrian]

Folks, I just posted the following on my personal website, seeking comments
before I have dinner with a relevant, senior Microsoft chap tomorrow night.

Any comments that aren't just slagging-off platform-wars childishness or
boring technical rants much appreciated! ;)

Stil


How can Microsoft stop us hating them?
http://stilgherrian.com/internet/hating_microsoft/

So what do you think of Microsoft, eh? No, really. I want to know.

I have to admit I¹m not exactly a fan. I¹ll explain why momentarily. But
Microsoft is changing, or at least wants to change, and I¹m finding it hard
to shed old impressions.

The Blue Monster cartoon
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/003388.html is part of this
changing Microsoft. Its creator, Hugh MacLeod http://www.gapingvoid.com/,
intended it as a conversation-starter ‹ what he calls a "social object"
http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004265.html. Steve Clayton
from Microsoft UK says they use it to help Microsoft start talking about its
own process of re-birth. http://youtube.com/watch?v=-kZZX8Pl5Lk

I¹m cynical when software companies claim grand goals like ³changing the
world².. That over-the-top rhetoric was central to the first dot-com bubble.
Usually, the bigger the rhetoric the crappier the product. Still, I¹m
willing to listen.

Another sign of a changing Microsoft is my friend Nick Hodge
http://www.nickhodge.com/ who sold me my first Mac back in 1985. Nick now
works for the Blue Monster as an ³enthusiast evangelist², and represents how
Microsoft is embracing blogging and a new culture of openness ‹ and actually
having conversations with people instead of talking at them.

But can Microsoft really change and, more importantly, convince us to
believe them?

Openness and transparency are important to me. As an old-school geek, I
absorbed the principles of openness that built the early Internet. Bill
Gates¹ infamous 1976 letter to computer hobbyists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists  expressed a
commercial attitude that was at odds with that openness.

It irked me that Gates went on to become the richest man in the world by
selling what I considered to be second-rate software using questionable
business tactics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Criticism

I reckon the best, truly innovative software is created by
awesomely-intelligent individuals or small, focussed teams like 37signals.
Microsoft¹s industrial-scale development process, with armies of cubicle
droids, seems incapable of producing anything other than bloated,
overly-complicated and buggy software.

Certainly my business clients running Windows generate far more support
calls than those using Macs. Now that Apple has added what for me was the
one missing feature, I intend returning to Apple¹s productivity software
rather than using Microsoft Office for Mac.

But, as I say, these are existing or old impressions. A young Microsoft
employee told Hugh MacLeod that a lot of the culture shift inside Microsoft
is generational. 

    http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004337.html

    The old guard is highly competitive, the new guard is more
    collaborative. The old guard sees Open Source as a threat,
    the new guard sees Open Source as an opportunity. He was
    confident the new guard will prevail because, of course,
    being young, they¹ll be around for much longer. He reckoned
    it¹ll be at least another decade before the outside world
    starts recognizing the change that¹s currently happening
    internally.

Now I¹m writing about this today for a reason.

Nick Hodge has invited me and a few other geeks to dinner tomorrow with Joe
Wilson, Worldwide Director of Microsoft¹s Academic and Enthusiast
Evangelists (of which he is one). So, I know what I feel about Microsoft,
and I¹m interested to hear what he¹s got to say ‹ over a nice wine or two at
Macchiavelli.

What do you think about Microsoft, and how would you like to see them
change? Can you think they can do it?


-- 
Stilgherrian http://stilgherrian.com/
Internet, IT and Media Consulting, Sydney, Australia
mobile +61 407 623 600
fax +61 2 9516 5630
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