Mixed Signals
Any sufficiently advanced information is indistinguishable from noise
Wednesday 27 August 2008, 10:44 PM
IE8 beta 2, feature complete. Launch event, best deleted.
Which is not to say it was pleasant, useful, informative or exciting. It was the opposite of all those things. It was being asked by Microsoft to attend a six o'clock event for an unknown reason, which finished at eight having really started at seven. The period between six and seven was filled with drinking nice-enough wine, trying to stave off hunger through the intermittent acquisition of homeopathically-sized canapes – only one each every five minutes, please – and the slow realisation that nothing was happening because nobody was allowed to talk about what was going to happen.
Why might that be? We were about to find out.
At seven, we were shown into a large screening room with cinema seating: there was to be no escape. On the large screen was a picture of the BBC home page. That stayed there for some time, during which we learned that Microsoft had done extensive usability testing, which had revealed that people used the Web for searching, buying things and talking to each other.
Things went downhill from there: a variety of features were shown off, most of which triggered a "Hold on, I've been doing that for months with Firefox" reaction (Select text on a page and right-click to search the Web?). There was a guy from Digg who gave us a short talk on what Digg was "for those of you in the audience who haven't encountered Digg". There was a guy from eBay who showed how wonderful it was to be only one click away from searching eBay – and he did, really and truly, search for Zunes.
Digg. eBay. Mmm.
We were now at around half-past seven. We were an audience of sceptical tech journalists. We had also learned that there had been briefings earlier in the day, under embargo, for other journalists – who had now presumably filed and were waiting for the 8pm embargo to be lifted so they could post. We were stuck in a room. We had been lectured on what Digg was. We were hungry and bored and, so far, had been shown our worst suspicions, and we knew that in Web news terms, we had been stitched up like kippers.
Oh, and one of the speakers showed us how easy it was to find maps of places online by picking the venue he was going to take his girlfriend to when he got home to Seattle in a couple of days' time – he was looking forward to that after this long European tour. Geez, how many people have you told already while telling us you couldn't tell us anything? Hey. we'll find out when we get home.
There were nice comedy moments, to be sure – and not just learning that you could buy a Zune on eBay for fifty quid (I must admit I'd never thought to look). There was the compulsory appearance of the warning message that "This installation of Windows has not been authorized. Do you wish to authorize it now?". There was a two-stage amusement, where Microsoft showed us that IE8 could highlight the real part of a URL to prove that it was safe, and then showed a cross-site script attack (with evil hacker in mask and trilby) going on, with the real part of the URL still highlighted, to still prove that it was safe. (The cross-site script attack protection is on by default, however: it, like most of the options, are buried in an acronynmic swamp of tick-lists deep in the bowels of the browser. Usability testing?)
There was the much-anticipated privacy enhancement, part of which showed a long list of URLs embedded in a page so that you could decide whether you could trust that page – which may be useful if you're extremely web-savvy but would confuse the bejeezus out of anyone likely to be confused anyway. We were assured that Beta 2 was 'feature complete'. We were assured that Microsoft was anxiously seeking feedback. We weren't told how much use that would be for something that wasn't going to change before release. I contemplated trying to educate my father about IE 8, and resolved never, ever.
At about the time many of the hacks were negotiating via text message about exactly when to stand up en-masse and walk out – and the journo sitting next to me had demonstrated how to write all of the major swearwords in shorthand -- it came to an end. The marketing spiel, for that it had been, finished. As we poured out of the basement in which we had been held hostage – a feeling that a number of hacks spontaneously volunteered – we were handed thick ring-bound 'reviewer's guides". "Is that available on the site?" we asked. The hander-out had to go and check – but yes, it was. Ok, well, we'll pass on the dead trees. But thanks for thinking of us Internet journalists.
Annoyed, starving, patronised, cheated of a story and two hours of our mid-week evening, we ran to the Sony Ericsson party that was going on down the road. There we were poured large gins, fed copious bowls of lovely sticky rice with Thai curry, fish, and chicken concoctions (which were devoured in seconds – as you might expect after having the appetisers an hour and a half earlier), and left alone to talk to who we liked about what we liked.
You'll have plenty of time to learn about exactly what IE 8's got. You can download it now – it was released to the world at 8pm, after all, when only the hacks at the event were unable to try it – and we'll be writing about it, testing it and generally kicking the wheels. We will give it a fair hearing, because that's what we do. We did all the swearing between 8 and 8:15 this evening.
For me and everyone else in our mob who went, it was a valuable lesson in why never, ever, to go to a Microsoft event where they won't tell you why beforehand. It was a team-building experience, much like when you're forced to ford a sewage plant using nothing but rhubarb leaves while being shouted at by steroidal gnomes with clipboards.
We came curious: we left angry.
Way to go.
PreviousComments on this post
What a bunch of mean dinasours!!
You'd think that with all that coding expierience behind them, they could have laid on some knock your socks off graphical journeys, or synthesised some sound textures that you don't hear every day.
Not even a sphere to kick around? Oh no of course not, they come with nearly a ton of hardware.
To be a little fair though, I have been running IE8 beta 1 since it s release and it's not half bad. If a page crashes, it somehow doesn't affect the rest of your tabs. The restore function works just like firefoxes, and you can set up the right click activities to post links elswhere in two clicks. Havn't bothered looking at web slices yet, but I like the idea.
Still can't get over what a bunch of meanies MS were!!
Good job sony were down the road to save the day and feed you all eh?!
Having been one of those unfortunate, unfortunate six, I can testify as to the general uselessness of Microsoft's event. Our (very uniformly shared, and not just within the ranks of ZDNet, Silicon and CNet) reaction was not so much about the tech - although it was quite obvious how many features were influenced by rival browsers, yet presented as if we'd never seen them before - but more about the general Microsoftness of the occasion.
At the end of the day, it was a probably-fairly-expensive marketing event that had been trailed to us hacks as an important announcement. It was for a beta version of a browser that shows promise in some ways (the "accelerator" in particular), and really doesn't in others (the safe-browsing stuff is going to be UAC all over again), and is clearly trailing its rivals in functionality and usability.
I somehow cannot imagine Mozilla playing it the same way.
PS - Rupert's not kidding about the canapes. In my view, giving hungry people a taster without real substance is just cruel. Symbolic, really...
Sounds very half hearted to me, do you think the equivilent event in the states would have been like this? I'm sure they'd have got baked potato burgers or something.
I'm fuming now, because I just paid a visit to microsoft update, and they offered me a dodgy realtec ac 97 audio driver for my test rig, when it uses the SIS 7010 wave, so how rude was that?
If I was an every day punter with this set up, that would have been it. No sound and no clue!
So, there's going to be a safe browsing feature with UAC type anoyance.
yipee!! I must admit that I turn this off on the vista rig, and let spybots tea timer look after me.
Oh and while i'm at it.microsoft told you that people use the web for searching, talking,and shoping?!
What about the inovation, such as below.
http://www.seb.cc/spacializer/index.html
I mean, it's not breathtaking but: you get to chase and drag coloured balls around the screen and which ever colour or mixture you are on you get a corresponding ambient drone, all with the intention to relax you, and all online. It's not perfect but you can see where it's going, And it shows up so many more uses for the web.
Great entry.
"people used the Web for searching, buying things and talking to each other."
Again another outstanding case of MS stating the obvious.
If there was any Internet journalists at the event that hadn't heard of Digg, they must have been living under a very big rock for a long time, unable to get a connection on their laptop.
It wasn't a total waste of time, as they did courteously provide you with you with ammunition for a very funny blog post ;)
As many others, I am stunned to learn that "people used the Web for searching, buying things and talking to each other". Stunning! Thank you so much, Microsoft, for determining that for us!
However, I am currently in a discussion with my brother about him switching from IE to Firefox. I have pointed out to him that one of the advantages of using Firefox is that if/when I manage to get him to switch to Linux, it's one less major difference - or, put another way, it's one major thing that will be familiar and comfortable to him. The same is true of Thunderbird, get him started with it on Windows, and the switch to Linux becomes that much easier.
The most irritating thing for me, is that my bank won't let me log on with firefox, not to mention MS update. grrrr
I'm no M$ lover. But this post is the most unworthy of reading posts I've seen about any product. I clicked on the link to find out what M$ plans to bring in the next version of the world's most used browser and all I got was a buch of self biased lunatic comments about what you guys thought of the 'event itself' and your prayers to god Mozilla. As a reader I do not give a flying fsck about what they fed you guys or where it was held and what you thought of it.As you say in the post you were called in to provide valuable 'feedback' which M$ can use to improve the product before the rest of the world get to use it. Instead you bash everything within your sight without giving us the readers any substance. A feature comparison with Mozilla, and a bit more info on the product and not what you had for dinner at the Sony Ericcson party would have been nice. You guys seems to have the 'power to influence' a product that we minions use and rely on daily. It is sad to see that you so much enjoy bashing it instead and we lose because of it......
As you'll see elsewhere on the site, we've had a look at IE8B2, we reported on its launch and we've run a photo story. Which is quite reasonable, I feel, for the second beta of the eighth version of a web browser! And you can expect more coverage as the product gets into RC and is released.
Also, I'm afraid you over-estimate 'power to influence'. We don't even have the power to see the product soon enough to write any of the above in time for its unveiling.
Personally speaking, my first review of a Microsoft product went to press in around 1988. It contained praise, caveats and specific, technical, substantive criticisms of a nature that could and should have been easily fixed. I don't think I got a response from MS then, the problems weren't subsequently fixed, and the only times I can remember getting much attention from the company since in such areas have been when we said something that went so much against the company's public line that it decided to pull out the heavy guns to re-educate us.
Which is a shame. In some other matters, MS is a reasonable organisation to deal with - but always on its own terms.
In this case, things would have been a lot better if:
* MS was less partisan in pre-launch briefings
* MS took account of the knowledge level of attendees
* MS organised an event where we could try the product
* MS told us what the event was about, so we could prepare
* MS showed some awareness of the nature of Internet news
* MS showed some awareness of human biology!
Is that unreasonable? Would this have resulted in better coverage for the readers? And if the company only responds when journalists go seriously off-message, how else can we get this feedback across?
The company managed to seriously annoy a reasonable percentage of the UK journalists who are going to write technical reports on an important product. You may think that's our fault for being so easily annoyed, but when it would have been so easy to do things so much better I think this is fair game to write about. In a personal blog like this, it's not always wrong to be human.
It may seem odd and even unlikely but personally speaking nothing gives me more pleasure than reporting on something Microsoft does well (I love Photosynth, and think World Wide Telescope is stonking). The company has a huge influence on IT, and IT has a huge influence on the economy and - increasingly - on people's everyday lives. MS has the resources to do truly great things, and the responsibility to try.
I wish it would demonstrate either more often. As someone who spends a _lot_ of his working life actively battling MS core products (Exchange/Outlook is a quotidian misery), I'm always eager to see signs of life.
Amen, Rupert. While some of the things MS did in your list could be considered "minor transgressions", there are two major ones:
- Not telling you what the "event" was about in advance. One has to wonder why they would do that - were they afraid that considerably less people would bother to show up if they knew?
- Scheduling, no time to write before release. I think this one can more likely be attributed to inconsideration rather than malice.
But overall, the impression given by MS in this case is, as usual "We don't care. We don't have to."
In any case, I for one truly enjoyed your article, and I thought that it covered what needed to be covered - both the product and the way in which the "briefing" was conducted.
Thanks, Rupert.
jw
Thanks Rupert for a most enjoyable story. You always tell it like it is, not what it is supposed to be. Keep up the good work. MS is great at telling the public what it needs, and then imitating someone else's work and calling it innovation, or buying a company and claiming they innovated. Zdnet. uk is always my stop every morning and most of my time is spent here reading the blogs and news. You have some great writers and reviewers.
