I've worked with many OSs from MS-DOS and DR-DOS to OS/2, Mac System, various kinds of GNU/Linux distros as well as nearly all flavours of Windows from Windows 2.x onwards. While it's fashionable to ding Microsoft on lack of inovation or whatever one thing they have been consistently better than anyone else has been servicing their software.
Not only do they support their products longer than the competition in the consumer/enterprise space but they are often better at it to. Their update, upgrade, testing and deployment procedures are usually miles better and the recent standardisation of support timeline makes them, without contest IMO, the best software development house around.
That vision of what software support should be is quickly crumbling to nothingness thanks to some poor management decisions (likely driven by their sales/marketing dpt.) dodgy testing and downright shody coding. What are you talking about, I hear you ask?
EDIT: Forgot the first "incident" (there have been so many :| ). MS didn't want to release SP5 for Windows 2000. It's understandable because a SP is a major release with support implications so they instead decide to release a Roll-up Pack which means in practice all the security fixes without the support a SP receives. MS reasons this is what customers want and that a RUP will not be a disruptive or introduce problems like a SP5 would. Customers would need to install SP4 and then RUP but hey, that's what customers wanted: more work. Anyway, Oh sweet irony, days after releasing the RollUp Pack a problem is discovered and MS has to re-release it with a V2 pack. END EDIT
First of all, Microsoft has sure taken its time to release SP3 for WinXP. For those of us keeping track, it's been 3 years and 7 months since the release of SP2. Any person that tries to install Windows XP even with SP2 slipstreamed will find a huge number of updates. In fact, when I setup a new machine for my folks and installed their OEM version of XP which already comes with SP2 I found it more productive to download all the updates manually on my own system using my faster internet connection than letting Windows update itself live on their broadband (if relatively slow) connection of 256Kbit. A new SP was desperately needed a year ago, that MS has taken so long is quite surprising. But this is not it.
Microsoft also begun working on Vista's SP1 right after release. Of course, you wouldn't know that if you believed what Steve Ballmer was saying. Support needs to be predictable. Ballmer was actually spreading FUD to the detriment of his own company. ANYWAY, shortly after we learn that MS is indeed working on SP1 so we wait. Then MS's message changes again where they downplay SP1 and say Windows Updates is already delivering everything SP1 will carry.
Okay, so if SP1 is not critical why does the Vista Servicing team deem necessary to finish SP1 only to then admit the SP1 will not be available immediately? We then learn that SP1 actually has problems with certain drivers. These aren't some obscure drivers but audio drivers from SoundMax and so on. Where was MS's notoriously competent testing team?
MS says they will hide SP1 from showing up on people with these drivers but why not release the list of software affected right away? Because when they finally do it we see that list is quite a bit larger than was first implied.
That's not over. We then see that SP1 has some complex release schedule with 5 or 6 different dates depending, seemingly, on the phase of the moon. To recap, SP1 was not needed but was finished early, only to wait like 1 month to be deployed and then many systems couldn't deploy it because they had certain drivers. That's still not over.
One of the Vista promises was an even easier method of integrating updates (and service packs) into your copy of windows at installation time. It wasn't until SP1 that this promise would be unraveled with a twist: unlike previous Windows versions you can't actually slipstream SP1, let alone do it easier than XP. Turns out SP1 needs 2 or 3 pre-requisite updates before being installed and this also prevents being slipstreamed.
For MS, a service pack is something that can be installed on all versions of the software regardless of state, be it RTM, any SP level or anywhere in between. Not Vist SP1, which makes it in fact the first "service pack" that is not a true service pack. To install Vista with SP1 you either have to do a much more complex integration procedure that is not supported by MS or you download a pre-integrated ISO from MS's website. Joy. If SP1 wasn't critical as MS said couldn't they spend more time making sure the driver problems were resolved and that XP-like slipstreaming (at least) was viable?
But it seems Microsoft liked the stagerred, FUD-inducing release schedule for SP1 and are doing the same with with XP's SP3. More, it seems SP3 is also not a true service pack because MS's own guidelines say SP1 is required to deploy SP3 on a live system (and they actually recomend installing over SP2). Again, not what a SP should behave.
Slipstreaming SP3 is also FUD-inducing because the guidelines don't reference slipstreaming requirements (only live systems) but throughout the web you can see reports of people where slipstreaming SP3 on XP RTM will produce different builds than slipstreaming SP3 on XP SP2.
When I thought all the problems were over the latest in this series of mishaps happens:
Microsoft can't test every single software out there but it can and HAS to bloody test their own software.
Microsoft, shape up as there will come a time when people will simply trade your problems for some other company's.
Not only do they support their products longer than the competition in the consumer/enterprise space but they are often better at it to. Their update, upgrade, testing and deployment procedures are usually miles better and the recent standardisation of support timeline makes them, without contest IMO, the best software development house around.
That vision of what software support should be is quickly crumbling to nothingness thanks to some poor management decisions (likely driven by their sales/marketing dpt.) dodgy testing and downright shody coding. What are you talking about, I hear you ask?
EDIT: Forgot the first "incident" (there have been so many :| ). MS didn't want to release SP5 for Windows 2000. It's understandable because a SP is a major release with support implications so they instead decide to release a Roll-up Pack which means in practice all the security fixes without the support a SP receives. MS reasons this is what customers want and that a RUP will not be a disruptive or introduce problems like a SP5 would. Customers would need to install SP4 and then RUP but hey, that's what customers wanted: more work. Anyway, Oh sweet irony, days after releasing the RollUp Pack a problem is discovered and MS has to re-release it with a V2 pack. END EDIT
First of all, Microsoft has sure taken its time to release SP3 for WinXP. For those of us keeping track, it's been 3 years and 7 months since the release of SP2. Any person that tries to install Windows XP even with SP2 slipstreamed will find a huge number of updates. In fact, when I setup a new machine for my folks and installed their OEM version of XP which already comes with SP2 I found it more productive to download all the updates manually on my own system using my faster internet connection than letting Windows update itself live on their broadband (if relatively slow) connection of 256Kbit. A new SP was desperately needed a year ago, that MS has taken so long is quite surprising. But this is not it.
Microsoft also begun working on Vista's SP1 right after release. Of course, you wouldn't know that if you believed what Steve Ballmer was saying. Support needs to be predictable. Ballmer was actually spreading FUD to the detriment of his own company. ANYWAY, shortly after we learn that MS is indeed working on SP1 so we wait. Then MS's message changes again where they downplay SP1 and say Windows Updates is already delivering everything SP1 will carry.
Okay, so if SP1 is not critical why does the Vista Servicing team deem necessary to finish SP1 only to then admit the SP1 will not be available immediately? We then learn that SP1 actually has problems with certain drivers. These aren't some obscure drivers but audio drivers from SoundMax and so on. Where was MS's notoriously competent testing team?
MS says they will hide SP1 from showing up on people with these drivers but why not release the list of software affected right away? Because when they finally do it we see that list is quite a bit larger than was first implied.
That's not over. We then see that SP1 has some complex release schedule with 5 or 6 different dates depending, seemingly, on the phase of the moon. To recap, SP1 was not needed but was finished early, only to wait like 1 month to be deployed and then many systems couldn't deploy it because they had certain drivers. That's still not over.
One of the Vista promises was an even easier method of integrating updates (and service packs) into your copy of windows at installation time. It wasn't until SP1 that this promise would be unraveled with a twist: unlike previous Windows versions you can't actually slipstream SP1, let alone do it easier than XP. Turns out SP1 needs 2 or 3 pre-requisite updates before being installed and this also prevents being slipstreamed.
For MS, a service pack is something that can be installed on all versions of the software regardless of state, be it RTM, any SP level or anywhere in between. Not Vist SP1, which makes it in fact the first "service pack" that is not a true service pack. To install Vista with SP1 you either have to do a much more complex integration procedure that is not supported by MS or you download a pre-integrated ISO from MS's website. Joy. If SP1 wasn't critical as MS said couldn't they spend more time making sure the driver problems were resolved and that XP-like slipstreaming (at least) was viable?
But it seems Microsoft liked the stagerred, FUD-inducing release schedule for SP1 and are doing the same with with XP's SP3. More, it seems SP3 is also not a true service pack because MS's own guidelines say SP1 is required to deploy SP3 on a live system (and they actually recomend installing over SP2). Again, not what a SP should behave.
Slipstreaming SP3 is also FUD-inducing because the guidelines don't reference slipstreaming requirements (only live systems) but throughout the web you can see reports of people where slipstreaming SP3 on XP RTM will produce different builds than slipstreaming SP3 on XP SP2.
When I thought all the problems were over the latest in this series of mishaps happens:
Neowin said:
Microsoft can't test every single software out there but it can and HAS to bloody test their own software.
Microsoft, shape up as there will come a time when people will simply trade your problems for some other company's.
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