on 4 January 2008This month we heard how a Microsoft executive went into court to explain why nobody could possibly misunderstand the meaning of a ‘Vista capable’ sticker, only to demonstrate that he himself had misunderstood the meaning of a ‘Vista capable’ sticker. Fortunately, marketing director Mark Croft (you should never let a marketing director out of the building) quickly recognised his own mistake and was able to clear up any possible confusion.
‘Oh the error – when I was explaining – we were talking about ready and capable,’ he clarified, returning from a ten-minute chat with Microsoft lawyers and not sweating at all, ‘and I made a statement that capable – we ended up with capable with the intention that – I made the statement that we ended up with capable would be able to run any version of Windows Vista.’
I like to think he may have paused to chuckle nonchalantly at this point.
‘Whereas, in reality, our intent, with capable was that the system would be able to run a version of Windows Vista.’ Summarising his exegesis, Mr Croft concluded: ‘So quite an important difference in the two – two terms, there.’
Indeed.
Microsoft is being sued for plastering much of the PC hardware sold in the last few years with ‘Vista capable’ stickers, encouraging buyers to believe the new operating system would run on pretty much anything from a Cray XT4 supercomputer to a Speak & Spell. The intention, presumably, was to counter any possible suspicion that a new version of Windows might be bulkier, less efficient and more wasteful of hardware resources. Puh. As if.
Turns out what they really meant, as Mr Croft so lucidly articulated, was that the stickered systems would run Vista Home Basic. Vista Home Basic is to Windows Vista as Dannii Minogue is to Kylie Minogue. If Windows Vista is one of those leviathan cruise liners which, when not endangering the Antarctic’s few remaining icebergs, sweeps majestically between the world’s cheesier five-star resorts like a posh Midlands village on wheels, Vista Home Basic is a blow-up dinghy purchased from a campsite in Northern Turkey.
In the scene, commonly featured in Hollywood coming-of-age movies, where the adolescent protagonist is escorted by his father through a car lot’s rows of gleaming convertibles before being handed, with an indulgent slap on the shoulderblade, the keys to a timber-panelled junker with a sag in the rear suspension and a one-eyed plastic hula girl on the dashboard, the emotion conveyed is precisely that of the customer who starts up a ‘Windows Vista’ PC and is presented with the non-translucent, unanimated, non-DVD-burning, Media Center-free Vista Home Basic.
To be fair, Microsoft marketing people aren’t the only ones who’ve been caught out by misunderstandings. Sky has been in trouble over ads claiming that its broadband customers enjoyed faster download speeds than Virgin’s. Now, Sky’s broadband is bog-standard ADSL, operating over the same BT wires as everyone else’s and capable of speeds up to 8Mbit/sec on a clear day with a wind behind it in the house next door to the telephone exchange when nobody else in the street is online, while Virgin Media operates its own cable network offering consistent data rates up to 20Mbit/sec. But surely a company like Rupert Murdoch’s Sky would never be economical with the truth?
Of course not. Sky’s claims were based on data from the independent website Thinkbroadband.com. The figures it used to compare download speeds were the very same ones found on Thinkbroadband.com along with a note explaining that they shouldn’t be used to compare download speeds. Objections were upheld on the flimsiest of technicalities – something about the Sky customers in the survey having opted for faster and more expensive broadband tariffs than the Virgin ones. No wonder they talk about red tape strangling British business. Well, non-taxpaying British arms of multinational businesses run by Australian-born US citizens.
Yet the same meddling regulators ruled in favour of Apple when PC fans took issue with its ‘I’m a Mac’ campaign earlier in the year. Ignoring the crimes against humour committed by former comedians Mitchell and Webb, complaints focused on the suggestion that Windows computers crashed more than Macs, had more security problems and needed restarting more often. I can’t comment on these allegations myself due to a conflict of interest: I use a Mac and a PC every day, and while the Mac works seamlessly the PC often crashes, has security problems and needs restarting, so my opinion would be hopelessly biased.
Ironically, Apple’s marketing people could now put a sticker on every new Mac describing it as ‘Vista capable’, ‘Vista ready’, or just ‘Really good at running Vista, the proper versions, not the Basic crap’, with no need for any asterisks or lawsuits. But they don’t. Maybe they’re afraid of PC makers pointing out that, if you bought a Mac with Leopard and then went and installed Windows Vista, you’d be bloody mad. Quite an important difference, there.
Adam Banks is capable, but not always ready.
adambanksdotcom Apple founder @ronaldgwayne has had several careers; on this showing, tech policy punditry could be a keeper