Marketing; Microsoft; the whiff of the nearly-new

Microsoft is talking up the virtues of their forthcoming release of Windows. In the process, the esteem of Vista is downgraded. Pundits, too, seem to feel freer to hurl brickbats at Vista.

Two of the common complaints are that it's far too memory hungry, and that it asks too many (security-related) permissions of the user. I'm certainly chagrined at the frequency with which it asks my permission twice to perform a single action. Doubtless there are particular reasons for each of those asks, but from a usability perspective, it reflects noticeably poor design - and/or integration.


The broad trajectory of Windows releases reminded me of a similar phenomenon. The general narrative runs as follows. A band would release a new album and pipe up in interviews that it was their "best yet". Pundits, too, would laud it. Yet upon release of a subsequent album, the previous effort would be written off with various excuses for why it didn't pass muster - both the musicians and the reviewers would indulge in this revisionism.

Marketing explains all this. Software publishers, record companies, bands, have a particular keenness to talk up their latest product. Once it is superceded, they have little further need to push the old product.

Of course, some bands have a little more integrity than that. But it remains that they're aiming to make a living from their published output. What excuses for the pundits and reviewers? In part, they may be too hasty in forming their opinions. Yet if they're not at least in part swayed by the material sweeteners of the marketers, then they have simply sold their judgments short.