Marketing Dept at MS can still drive core functionality, but Marketing
Dept needs to be put in their place at Microsoft. They've been steering
the ship for way too long now.
Hi,
I don't know if that's how marketing works at MS, but I do know that it's
a convenient excuse for putting all blames to marketing and sales and
anyone else but R&D.
In my limited experience, the root cause could be totally different, and
in many cases, the design flaws were made by R&D who insisted that they
knew everything in the world and knew how a user would use the product.
You don't have to look far, and in this and similar newsgroups, you could
find more than enough examples for such a mindset. In reality, R&D
usually is disconnected to the real world, and they don't have time,
skills, and training to know how the market and consumers would think and
work.
And even it's marketing's fault for incorrect functionalities, who are
going to be responsible for the implementation errors, such as why copying
and pasting files will be so slow for some but not all?
So instead of pointing fingers to each other, let's just hope the company
will fix whatever problems they have. When a product has problems, the
problems are for ALL in the company to solve.
My two cents.
CMoya said:
It's not so much "who" or "what team"... it's that Microsoft has for
several years now been in dire need of a single person or team with a
philosophy *directing* their projects' user interface and fit and finish.
A "guru"... with veto power now only enjoyed by Marketing. A Steve Jobs
of sorts (I don't care to get into a debate about the shortcomings of
MacOS... but no one can argue that a great design philosophy drives their
products). Marketing Dept at MS can still drive core functionality, but
Marketing Dept needs to be put in their place at Microsoft. They've been
steering the ship for way too long now.
I've been a huge MS fan for years. But their attention to detail has
suffered big time recently. The rise of inexperienced project managers
repeating the same mistakes of the past I think is to blame for this.
Having said that... Vista is pretty good. And performance-wise (on my 2gb
machine) it outperforms WinXP by a lot (meaning its noticeably much much
faster than WinXP was on my machine). Explorer has never been all that
fantastic... so I guess I didn't expect anything awesome this time
around. But, as a whole, Vista IMHO does rock.
Dr. Strangelove said:
Ok, we can certainly debate whether or not the Office group should have
the
desktop explorer.
But, for the explorer to get as bad is it did, and to be RTM'd as it
was, is
about as bad as it gets. With all of the claims of software engineering
models and MSF, and all of the claimed checkpoints by all of the members
of
the development team, for a welcome mat to the flagship product, the
desktop
explorer, with as many complaints and [valid] problems that it has, is
pretty
pathetic.
If not the Office group, then who should be doing the desktop explorer?
I
maintain a collection of catalogs, with thousands of images. When the
desktop explorer ignores my deliberate setting of a folder picture (to
identify the catalog), and it takes me 50 minutes to reset/re-establish
the
pictures, it is very inconvenient.
I try to stay with a MS solution where possible, but the desktop
explorer is
causing me to consider other alternatives.
So, who should do the explorer?
Doc
:
I don't know about that. Despite all their polished finish, Office is
by no
stretch an example of good interface. In fact, almost nobody uses any
of it
to its potential because its interface is often so badly designed. How
many
times have you seen documents filled with empty paragraphs and a bunch
of
TABS (thus breaking widow/orphan control) because Word's unweildy
interface
for using Paragraph Styles is unusable so most people don't use
"Styles."
They break it even more in Word 2007 (which adds a whole new confusing
kludge for working with Styles). How about Excel's confusing Windows
3.1
rooted MDI (Multiple Document Interface) where most people don't "get"
how
they can place two workbooks next to each other like they can so easily
do
with Word. Outlook's non-standard icon in the system tray that behaves
completely different than EVERY program/application that puts an icon
there.
How many times do people throughout the day close Outlook by
accident...
thinking that little icon will stay there and they'll get their
appointment
reminders and e-mail alerts? Plus, nobody uses Outlook to its full
potential. Nowadays it is *JUST* an e-mail client when once upon a time
it
was suppossed to be so much more (Universal Inbox? not to mention
Collaboration?).
I agree that Vista's file Explorer isn't all that great (as it could
have
been). But, please, keep the Office team far far away from the Windows
Shell. The Office teams excel's at SUPERFICAL polish... and that's all.
message
Still, a good story, eh?
Seriously, the desktop explorer is hopeless. If the Office group
were to
take control of it, things could only get better.
For the years of waiting for Vista (now believed to be the functional
equal
of Windows ME), to have the desktop explorer become as bad as it is,
is
pretty disappointing. Regardless of all of the features of Vista,
ones
first
experience is via the desktop explorer. A very bad welcome mat,
indeed.
Doc
:
Outlook didn't spring forth as a new program by the Office team. It
*IS*
the
old MS Exchange Client (which was in turn based on the old Win95
"Inbox"
program). All of its core dll's and programming model are rooted
directly
and built upon the old MS Exchange Client. It's one of the reasons
you
can't, for instance, have two Microsoft Exchange accounts in it, and
all
the
"MAPI" shortcomings (Contacts vs AddressBook vs Recipients anyone?)
are
still in it today.
Something similar just happened with FrontPage becoming "Expression
Web."
One look at its dialog boxes and quirks clues you in that's it just
a
revamped (albeit well done) updated FrontPage.
message
What is the point of choosing a file for a folder picture, which
is
recorded
in desktop.ini in said folder, only to have the desktop explorer
repeatedly
forget it?
Once upon a time, there was the Exchange group at Microsoft. They
created
a
very nice email/messaging server. Unfortunately, they also
thought
they
could create a client (the Exchange Client) for accessing email.
The
Exchange client was pretty bad.
Then, the Office group said "We can create a better client for
email".
Thus, the Outlook client was born, and the Exchange client died a
quiet
death. The Exchange group did not like this, but they accepted
the
fact
that
their skills were best applied to the back end.
Office group, if you are listening, please create a competing
desktop
explorer, that will remember folder settings. The OS Group will
take
issue
with this, but, eventually, they will accept the fact that they do
not
have a
clue as to how to write a decent shell. Hell, you can even attach
a
price
to
it. If it is better, people will purchase it.
Doc
