But what I wanted to rant about is what pisses me off about the Windows Live "wave" of products. By the way, doesn't it feel strange to refer to software as a "product"? There's no box or disks or manuals, just downloaded bits. Oh well. So, back to my rant...
Two things jump out that bother me:
1. Windows Live Movie Makeris 10 STEPS BACK from Movie Maker that shipped with Windows Vista. It's a complete joke. Actually, it's not even funny. What the hell happened? Did Microsoft just decide to pull the plug and concede to Apple's iMovie? It seems that way. Vista's Movie Maker was a pretty decent product (there goes that word again), for being "free" (sort of).
2. Windows Live Writer doesn't have much to offer. It's Spartan with a lower-case "s". No search/replace features at all. The font controls are as basic as WordPad. There are no tag management tools in the "Edit" (GUI) mode. So entering PRE tags requires rolling up your sleeves and going into "Source" mode. That's just crappy.My take on this is that Microsoft must have laid off the folks that were putting this box of bolts together. It seems that everything is being put into IE8, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (don't get me started), which brings me to a third thing that bothers me...3. "R2" Product Names. What the hell is that about? It's 2009 and here we get a batch of "System Center 2007 R2" products? Huh? Windows Server 2008 R2??? WTF?! What's wrong with "2009"? Does it really do anyone any good to keep using expired years for new product names?And while I'm at it, I have to disagree with Paul Thurrott on one seemingly trivial issue:4. The use of version "6.1" for Windows 7. Yes, it's trivial. But it's just DUMB. DUMB as hell. Why do that? Why give Apple and others just ONE MORE thing to poke fun at? Are they masochists? Do they hate their own marketing department that much?I like Paul and enjoy reading his reviews, blog posts and listening to Windows Weekly on TWiT. So I hope nobody construes this as taking a swipe at him. His view of the version issue is understandable in the sense that he's looking at it from a pragmatic point of view. I'm looking at it from a layman's point of view. Which is what the Microsoft Marketing folks are supposed to be worried about most. After all, you KEEP marketshare by selling to your constituents, but you GROW marketshare by selling to those outside of your sphere of influence. Then again, what the heck do I know? I'm nobody. Just another blog poster from the backwoods of Virginia.
2 comments:
The new Movie Maker as it is should not have been included. It needs so much more work. I first thought the installation had failed. It could have been made available as a separate alpha version or so.
http://blog.jtbworld.com/2008/09/first-post-using-another-windows-live.htmlAs to 6.1 I read some explanation about it. It was something for the compatibility. Stupid programmers like us that hardcode major version 6 in our products, I mean software. :)
I read that also. But it's 2009. How long are we to continue babysitting idiot coders? Didn't we learn anything from Y2K? Do app devs NOT want to have a reason for customers to buy upgrades? Like, "Hey, Mr. Customer, if you're planning to upgrade to Windows 7, you'll need to buy an upgrade to my product as well" Make it cheap so the customers will squeeze it into their budget plans. I don't know. I'm talking out of my butt again.
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