This is my wishlist from Microsoft for 2008. Apart from #1, they are in no particular order.
1. Tell your own story! For the past several years, probably since the advent of the spate of antitrust lawsuits against it, Microsoft has let others tell spin The Microsoft Story.
As a result, the public gets information filtered through the biases of the storytellers, usually wrong, and almost always pushing some agenda.
The perception of failure those erroneous tales dump on successful products, and the dreadful stigma of that stench of failure rankles. For goodness sakes, every 0.01% market share gain by Firefox is greeted by shouts of joy, while the news a few days ago that Internet Explorer 7, or IE7, had become the dominant browser was hidden several levels deep!
What I want to see in 2008 is Microsoft being proactive with telling its story, become more aggressive in debunking stupid myths and downright untrue stories, and attempting to get back to loving the consumer side of its businesses.
I would also like to see the company re-engage Microsoft and Windows evangelism with renewed vigor and fervor, empowering committed evangelists and enthusiasts with the tools needed to battle the lies.
2. Participate in the 700 MHz auction. Either overtly, or through surrogates. In order to create new, subscription-based innovations. One can only imagine what would have happened if Microsoft had owned a national swathe of spectrum when it introduced the SPOT watches? Furthermore, securing this also flanks Google.
3. Simplify the EULA. The EULA continues to be a source of pain and confusion for end users. As a document written by well-heeled lawyers for other presumably well-heeled lawyers, it leaved end users out in the cold with legalistic verbiage. Simplify, and win back Joe 12-pack.
4. Reduce CALs fees. A personal peeve, one that always crops up during competitive bargaining sessions with L-heads.
5. Sunset Windows XP and lower with the next release of Windows. While painful, the down level floor set with Windows Vista (Windows XP) was the right thing to do. Microsoft should do the same and more for the next version of Windows.
6. Definitely make a HUGE consumer marketing push. While marketing to enterprises seems to be going about as good as can be, I will say that Microsoft has failed definitely when it comes to consumers, who seem to have been forgotten.
EDITED “Why don’t you expand on this”, asks Ash Nallawalla, (Net Magellan, ZuneUserGroup) FC member. Prior to the release of Windows Vista™, Microsoft inundated the airwaves with all things Vista. You had to be on the far side of the moon not to have heard about Windows Vista. Coupled with that was the incredible VanishingPoint game (I’m still looking for Loki’s phone number), which galvanized enthusiasts two ways: the promise of orbital travel, and the mental titillation provided by the clues to the game.
After that, nothing! Nothing at all from a consumer standpoint. It was as if it was left to the Team Blog, enthusiasts, and word-of-mouth marketing to carry the load.
Contrast that with the pervasiveness of ads and resources for IT professionals. Or, taking it to the extreme, the myriad number of ads for Apple’s music player.
Don’t get me wrong, from a business standpoint, the marketing to IT pros made my job easier. However, I want all the world blanketed with this OS, which I think is the best out there for consumers.
At this point, I see Microsoft running the risk of becoming IBM in their abandonment of the consumer.