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I don’t hate Microsoft. I, honestly, don’t hate Windows. I don’t use it, but when I do use it I can see the sense in it. While I may rail on that Apple has a clearer idea of what people want out of computers, I won’t sit here and say that Microsoft is clueless. In fact, I’ll say that there are a lot of really smart people at Microsoft that are being hampered by process and egos. The same is true for a lot of companies, Apple included, but it’s rare for it to go unchecked so long as to make it a public fiasco and bring very bright lights to it.

This happened this past week to Microsoft. Years of project managers trying to one-up each other, adding and canceling features and projects, and putting out insane deadlines and requirements finally caught up with the company as they announced, again, that the next version of Windows would be delayed. Ouch.

This wouldn’t be a problem, in itself, if there wasn’t so much back-story to it. The short of it is that there was a version of Windows that ran on DOS and a version of Windows that ran on its own kernel (95 and NT, respectively). Then there was eventually one true unified Windows kernel (XP). When things got to that point, they realized that there were some problems with how they’d handled the transition and that they needed to stop, take a look at the product and the disaster it had become from a feature, interface, and manageability standpoint and re-write the system.

The initial attempt at this was Longhorn, and it was much like Apple’s Copland attempt in that it was to be a rewrite and modernization of the OS. From what I understand of this about halfway into the project it was scrapped because some key folks decided that it wasn’t solving the problems they needed solved. They chunked the code, drafted a new plan, and started work on Vista. It wasn’t just a new name, but a new project. Estimates are that it’s a re-write of 60% of the OS code (and will, IMO, wind up being 80% the way programs go and bugs cascade). Outside of the kernel and scheduler, not much was kept. It would have been the rewrite that Windows has needed for a very long time.

Unfortunately, several things are conspiring against this for Microsoft. The first is that XP is about four years old now. Windows Server 2003 is about three years old. For an operating system, that’s quite a long time to remain stagnant, considering that hardware is advancing at staggering paces these days. Sure, things are updated enough to keep it working, but it’s starting to show its age.

The second comes from the first. The OS is so old at this point that people are looking at Microsoft, now on its second rewrite of the OS, and are asking a very honest question: “What the hell are you doing?” The outside view is that Microsoft’s processes are so broken that they can’t manage to get a single project done. Given four years and a task of rewriting the core of Windows, with the resources Microsoft has and the number of very smart people it has, it should be done by now. Why isn’t it? Why not, indeed.

What’s the difference between OS X and Vista?
Microsoft employees are excited about OS X…

A comment at MiniMSFT

The answer comes from a likely source, considering the situation. Microsoft employees, unable to take it much more, let it rip on a blog last week. In the comments that followed a frustrated post came every last complaint, story, tidbit, call for change, and frustration that could be voiced by people trapped in the code can that Microsoft has become. The company has become a Dilbertian dreamland of bad management, egos, self-serving middlemen, and broken processes that come together and bring a lack of direction to the product as a whole.

For all the problems with Mac OS X, there is one man that gets his fingers dirty by sticking them into everything so that this doesn’t happen to Apple. Microsoft has no such person. Instead, Microsoft is managed by professional managers doing the professional manager thing: trying to get ahead. This does not serve the product. This does not serve the consumer. This, in fact, breaks the company into a house of infighting that will never accomplish anything.

So, now we have the problem. What next? Some are calling for a mass-firing. Quite honestly, this will do nothing to further any project, unless it’s done in a very precise and calculated strike. Essentially, managerial layoffs. They simply have too many egos to feed and not enough food. Get the engineers together, unmanage them as much as possible, and say “fix it” and stand back. You’d be amazed at what comes out of the room when you do that, especially when they hate their own creation as much as they do now.

People look at Windows and ask, “Someone thought this was good?“ Have you ever stopped to think that the answer might be no? That, at the base level, the coders writing the code they’ve been told to write really didn’t think it was a good idea? It’s all about management and marketing decisions. If you have bad managers or bad marketing leading the way, then the product will be crap. If you put in light direction and let the engineers just do their jobs, you’ll get a good product.

At this point there’s an OS war brewing. Every coffee shop I go into is 50/50 Mac/PC. Every college bookstore and cafeteria, every hangout, everywhere I look it’s becoming a 50/50 mix on the consumer side, and I live in Dell City. The game is slowly turning Apple’s way and it’s not completely due to the strengths of Apple. A good deal of it really comes from the lack of direction and focus that Microsoft has for their flagship products. They’re becoming so bloated with crap that no one uses that the whole mess is scaring people. People want the simplicity that is Macintosh because Microsoft is lost, and no one believes that they will find their way again. Instead, the understanding is that Microsoft will keep down this road until, one day, they simply can’t ship the product any more. After Vista, and its ten service packs, Microsoft will simply not be able to ship another copy of Windows due to the infighting, mismanagement, and general Dilbertianism.

Unless things change.

Microsoft needs to become a lean, mean, coding machine. The ego war must be quelled. The company must return to the company that wrote Word 5 for Mac, that made the very first Excel. They must go back to a company that made tools that people wanted to use, loved to use. If MS made a Word 5 for Mac OS X, I would buy it and trash Pages in a second. If. If Microsoft returned to that consumer-centric company that made it what it is today, and not the king of adding in useless crap simply because it made someone, somewhere look good.

And we, as Mac users, must wish for this as well. Apple exists to challenge Microsoft. Microsoft exists to give Apple something to compete against. It’s a battle of innovation vs. marketing and we’re slowly winning that battle but if there’s no one left to fight then I’d give Apple ten years before it gets as bad as Microsoft is today. The two need each other more than they’ll admit, and certainly more than the most avid users of either platform will admit.

I feel for the coders trapped in that place, and I certainly hope things change, for all of our sakes.

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