Microsoft has come up with a novel new development model that saves them tons of money. Actually, not only does it save them money, they actually earn money with it.
Microsoft has successfully convinced consumers to pay to beta test their products. In traditional software development the developer normally hires people to test their software to find bugs and other inconsistencies that might affect the performance of the software. Many software companies have been 'allowing' individuals to test their software for free over the last few years. Microsoft has gone one step further.
Microsoft has begun releasing beta software for individuals to test as well, but now they are charging for the 'privilege'. The trick is that they don't tell you that the software is only beta level. Microsoft puts it on the store shelves as a finished commercial product, when in reality it is early to mid beta level software. If Linux or Mac tried that, only hard core fans would ever use the OSs, but Microsoft has managed to slowly break down consumers expectations to a point where the consumers not only willingly use half finished software, but the consumers actually pay for the experience.
The U.S. needs an Underwriters Limited for software. Obviously Microsoft's quality control is unable to accurately discern the actual quality of the software. The solution is to have an independent organization analyze and test the software, like UL tests hardware. Of course, Microsoft would really hate this, since competition from Linux and Mac would squash them in the quality department and Microsoft would never have any of their products listed by the organization.
Lord Rybec
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I feel that Windows 98 was the first instance of large scale beta testing, through full retail sales, by Microsoft.
ReplyDeleteApple, which I consider the Porsche of the consumer computer world, may have sinned in this way with Leopard. My version has worked great, but I heard the first few months after initial release the OS was full of problems.
True. Windows 95 had some issues, but overall it was good, if you weren't coming from DOS(I was).
ReplyDeleteWindows 98 crashed on Bill Gates during its debut. That should have been a good enough hint. Millennium was even worse. XP was actually pretty good considering where it came from, but Vista is quite obviously only beta level software(maybe even late alpha). Microsoft is even closely following it with a more commercial ready version (or so they claim Windows 7 is). The funny thing is that throughout this all, Windows users have thrown fits repeatedly, but they are still using it!
Microsoft has gotten their users to a point where the users actually blame themselves for crashes. I frequently hear people saying things like, "Opps, I should have known that would happen when I did that." These people are blaming themselves for Microsoft's poor products. Of course they should have known that it would crash. They chose to use Windows. It is their fault!
I am not trying to sell Apple, they have their own issues, but at least they are not as disruptive to normal, everyday users.
Two other ways to look at this: Vista was a scam to charge people to test the ALPHA version of Windows 7; or this is Microsoft's version of the Open Source "release early, release often" principle :-)
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, Microsoft has already paid the price for this testing in a sense with all the damage caused by Vista. People are paying for Windows 7 beta because Vista sucks so bad. If Vista didn't suck so bad, fewer people would pay for Windows 7 beta, but the Windows product line would be generating more money.
Imagine if Microsoft had looked in their crystal ball and said "netbooks are coming, people want to stick with XP, let's keep charging as much as we can for that and release Vista as an experimental side project like we did with NT"