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Tthe rest of us are stuck trying to make up for Microsoft's astonishing arrogance.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Into the soul of a bad machine: Why Microsoft doesn't get it


June 11, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   I wasn't celebrating when Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled a few days ago that Microsoft has to be broken up for violating the law. I was too busy with my e-mail.
   I get a lot of mail from people with problems. Most of them are having problems with Judge Jackson's favorite target, Microsoft Windows. Microsoft has been a big bully for so long that it's forgotten how to do business. It's forgotten that customers count. It's forgotten that customers need help and support.
   So people like me end up doing it. Not because we want to. Because we care.
   If you think Microsoft got a raw deal in court, fine. We can disagree.
   But don't try to tell me Microsoft is some sort of big huggy-feely kind of company that cares about its customers. Everybody who is old enough to click a mouse finds out sooner or later that Microsoft is a big bully of a company with no idea how to help the people who use Windows.
   Microsoft's idea of help is TV commercials about where you might want to go today. My idea of help is something else again. It's taking some of the billions of dollars you make every year and spending it on software that doesn't crash and doesn't eat up your homework.
   My idea of help is taking some of the billions you rake in each year running a monopoly and putting it into 24-hour-a-day help centers. You'd call them with a toll-free number. You'd get somebody who knew something about Windows.
   Is that so strange?
   But what actually happens is that both Microsoft and Bill Gates get richer and people like me try hard to tell Windows users how to rescue their files. What actually happens is that the rest of us -- me, your brother-in-law, your neighbor's daughter, the guy in the next cubicle -- are stuck trying to make up for Microsoft's astonishing arrogance.
   I don't know another way to say this. It's stupidity to make dreck and try to sell it as silk. It's arrogance to pretend the dreck needs to be protected by a Supreme Court decision.
   Because that's what Microsoft wants. It wants the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling by Judge Jackson that it has to be broken up.
   Imagine this. The judge says Microsoft is a monopoly. No secret, right? The judge says Microsoft abused its monopoly power. No kidding, right?
   This is the company that doctored a video tape it tried to use as evidence in the trial. This is the company that decided the best way to handle complaints about how much Windows crashes was to make Windows boot up faster.
   That's where arrogance takes you. Problems aren't problems. They're public-relations issues. You fake a video tape to make a point. You don't make Windows stop crashing. You make it come back to life faster when it kills itself.
   Arrogance takes you somewhere else, too. I feel bad when I think about this. There is something in the soul of a good person that resists this kind of journey. I don't want to go there.
   But I must. I'm just one voice. A very small voice. But where this kind of arrogance takes me is a place I have to go.
   It leads me to wish Windows would just go away. It forces me to stop at every error message and question why millions of us refused to turn on our brains. We just accepted the way Microsoft treated us. We went along with it. We saw things that weren't right and looked the other way.
   So when the news came out about the judge and the company that has made so many of us so miserable, I had other things to do. I only wish Microsoft could realize how important those other things can be.