By Leo Notenboom
I’ve complained about this bug for years and no one has an answer. It’s horrible – forums are full of people who are experiencing this bug and no one has an answer. It’s been there for years and Microsoft continues to just ignore us. Obviously, Bill’s too busy trying to make more money by forcing us to upgrade and doesn’t have time for bugs that impact lots of people. WHY WON’T THEY FIX THIS HORRIBLE BUG?
As you can probably guess, that’s a composite question representing questions (and comments and rants) that I get a lot. Basically, someone is convinced that they’re dealing with the Most Important Bug Ever and Microsoft – no, Bill Gates himself – is ignoring them.
Typically, there’s no satisfying the folks who have landed in that extreme position. I often do suggest – and it’s an honest suggestion – that they might be better served by a Mac or Linux solution because they’re not satisfied with Microsoft and Windows.
However, for those who are interested, I’d like to go over some of the things that factor into the process and why your Most Important Bug Ever might not get fixed.
And yes, why Bill Gates is not only ignoring you, but why he probably has no idea that you or your Most Important Bug Ever even exist.
No excuses
I do want to be clear about something: this isn’t about making excuses for Microsoft. They do screw up and miss important things from time to time. More often than not, it’s a case of not clearly understanding the priorities of their users, but even that is no excuse: sometimes, they get it wrong.
This is more about explaining and trying to understand the process and the incredible complexity of the problem, and with that, gain a little bit of an understanding about why a “bug” might not get resolved in a timely fashion.
To me, part of the “no excuses for Microsoft” position of what follows is that it applies to any and all large systems vendors. Even though I’ll use “Microsoft” in the discussion below – mostly because that’s where I have experience – the discussion applies equally well if you replace Microsoft with Apple, Mozilla, Google, Intuit, or any of a hundred other software manufacturers.
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This post is excerpted with Leo’s permission from his blog.
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