🚀 go-pugleaf

Moved from:  "Ant's new super delux suite"
Xposted to a.a.misc, followup set to c.s.a.m.

In article <ant201146e61YH%4@cumbrian.demon.co.uk>, Chris Hughes
<chris@cumbrian.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Off topic I know, but Bill Gates has decided, since Windows 95 was
> officially a flop with the business world in a big way it seems, the 
> next version will be for the consumer market only and business will 
> be encouraged to upgrade to NT only from win3.1.
>
> The reason Bill Gates spokesperson says this is because the consumer 
> market, ie you and me, are mugs who will not complain and cannot 
> afford to take them to Court!?! Talk about bully boys tactics!!!!!

There was a revealing article in "The Independent" of 22 Jul. I'm a 
little surprised that it was not posted here. So here goes:

The Independent - Network+

It's time Microsoft took all of us - individual software consumers
and corporate IT buyers - seriously.

By Eva Pascoe.

Yes the Dark Force is back in town, to bring a new level of atrocity
to the browser wars. Darth Vader (Bill Gates to you and me) wheeled
out the heavy intergalactic artillery for last week's launch of 
Internet Explorer 4.0 beta.
  As usual, Microsoft is using muscles instead of brains by leveraging
its near monopoly in the computer industry to its own advantage in the
Internet market. How? Well, by blending the Internet browser and the 
Windows operatingsystem together. That, for practical purposes, means
that IE4.0 will be the default browser for a Windows 95 user, even if 
your heart lies with Netscape.
  As if that were not enough, Microsoft has rounded up 250 media 
companies, including Disney, Discovery and the /Wall Street Journal/ 
tp provide content for IE4.0's "channels". We know a bit about their
"signing up" procedure on this side of the pond. It involves, if not
direct payment, substantial contributions to "promotional alliances"
and to marketing budgets of content partners in excahange for - yes,
you gueseed it - a commitment to using the proprietary solutions of
Microsoft technology.
  One example is Tesco and its use of ActiveX on its electronic 
commerce site. I nearly fell off my ergonomically designed chair when,
upon entering the shopping area on Tesco's site. I was welcomed with:
"We have detected that the browser you are using does not support 
either ActiveX controls or VBScript. Both these technologies are 
required to use the Internet Superstore." So much for customer service.
  I have personnaly fired Webmasters who designed sites that were 
invisible to just 10 percent of users, as they required too high a 
version of a browser. A rejection of the whole Netscape population
should earn a lifetime ban from the Webmaster profession.
  Why Tesco chose to lose more than half of its online audience by
forcing use of a single browser is a mystery to me, but I guess it may 
have been related to the fact that the company which created the site 
had an extremely close relationship with Microsoft. The bullying of 
Web developers to use Microsoft solutions by promising marketing
relationships destabilises the market.
  It also confuses corporate buyers by pushing immature technology 
on unsuspecting IT managers. That has been the case with Windows NT,
which is still a baby compared with Unix and should be safely locked 
away in the labs for a few more years for testing. Instead, marketed
by the oversized school bully Microsoft, it found its way to the 
corporate environment that now has to cope with a dubious honour of 
being a guinea-pig for the product, after having had to spend money on
it. When I was a researcher we paid our experimental subjects money, 
not the other way around, but I guess I am old fashioned.

    Note: there was a photograph with the article of a young lady in 
    her twenties, I guess.

  It does little for my IT buyer comfort zone that Microsoft has just
announced the creation of 800 more sales and marketing jobs, to push
more products down our collective throats. Why do they need more people?
Presumably, the customers need more persuasion, as the products are 
being released earlier and earlier in their life cycle.
  I often feel that Office 97 is like the alpha version of my juvenile 
dabbling with code at university - making a mockery of backwards
compatibility and ruining the lives of a numerous people on the project
I'm working on at the moment, owing to all sorts of problems with 
document sharing.
  Another example is the sharing of OS information with Microsoft 
partners, but not with competitors such as Netscape. This means that
competitors' products will work less efficiently with Windows. This 
policy contrasts sadly with, for example, Jave specification, which is 
well documented and owned by no company.
  However, do not despair; today is also the day that Apple launches 
its new Mac OS in the States, with some extremely cute features in tow. 
Perhaps all of us Microsoft victims should organise ourselves in an 
Intenationally Exploited For Zero Value movement, chuck away our PCs
and move to Apple. At least Steve Jobs so far hasn't made us pay for 
software that is not ready to use, or abused or leveraged his monopoly
position by forcing an "innovative" business model that is based on 
the corporate client-base funding the testing and debugging stage of 
the products, as they have no other choice. Then we can wait patiently 
until Java makes the waves.
  All in all, it's time Microsoft took all of us - individual software 
consumers and corporate IT buyers - seriously, respected our time and 
money and made some more hires in the testing department instead of in 
sales and marketing. However, greed and monopoly go together. It will be
hard to wean a company of this size off that particular power cocktail.
  Meanwhile, please send your comments on IE4.0 or other Microsoft 
disaster stories to:  eva@never.com
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Your feedback will be posted at:
                      http://www.never.com/eva
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
* Beware of geeks bearing GIFs.
-- 
Reg Hems ZFC LXVI \_
BBC microcomputer!! \_
420/1-IDE-RO3.11-4 Mb \_
Atomwide Serial 2-Ports \_
USR Sportster 28.8-57600b \_
      reghems@argonet.co.uk |

Uploaded to fleece.argonet.co.uk on Sun,27 Jul 1997.01:35:52