Apples and Oranges

I am really glad there is this thing called "Blog" that lets me capture my thoughts as they happen and makes it possible share it with others. The other alternative would have been to use the good old diaries which nobody would have had the opportunity to look into.

I wanted to write about why Microsoft will never become Apple ever. Quite often, I would have disagreements with the way decisions are made at my product team that runs counter to what I belive is the essence of the software. To begin with, here is a real life encounter with a developer last week about an issue:
I notice that a dialog in our product is not looking nice and there was lots of dead space here and there and so I went to the developer to discuss the issue and ask him fix it (I wish I had the time to fix everything!). He asked me 3 straight questions:

• Is the functionality broken?
• Is there some sort of data loss?
• Is it crashing under any circumstances?

The answer to all the 3 were "No" and he asked me why should he be fixing what I see? The dialog looked ugly and I thought that was more than a good reason to fix it to make the product look better and customers wouldn't mind using great products that look good as well.

Fast farward to this week: One of the internal users (and this happens in one of my machines as well) complained that the selection doesn't look good in a dialog control which any customer would see first when booting the product. What did the product team do with the bug? It just won't fixed the bug without any investigation as to what is causing this issue and if this is a regression caused by some code change. The reason for shooting down the bug is that the developer thought that it is o.k to ship like that!!!!

I wasn't surprised by these reactions or with a lot things that happen I disagree with. I wouldn't buy a car that is ugly no matter how functional it is. Software isn't for professionals only. It is designed to be used by everyone (take the case of Microsoft Money which my Mom uses). The software I use makes a fashion statement about my tastes as much as about my choice. I would want the software be designed well and looks cool just like the physical things I use everyday like the Mp3 player. There are a lot of style concious users out there like me who would appreciate and consider a product on the factors other than the functionality.

Lets be real. Microsoft isn't known for making software that looks great. Tell me one software that Microsoft shipped in the last decade that won many acclaims for UI design and for the coolness factor? Microsoft tends to focus more on functionality and addressing the customer needs and so focusses less on few things that are important as well. Here is some information that supports my arguments:

• All the UI in our product team is not designed by the so called product designers or graphic designers. They are normally done by program managers and developers who sometimes are fresh out of collage with no background on industrial design or with UI guidelines.
• There is no consistent UI guidelines across the product. When a new UI needs to be done, the PM will give the general layout and the developer will do his best to make the dialog look closer to the layout desired with no thoughts about adhering to some standard UI guidelines about spacing/margin between controls, height/width of the controls or the dialog form factor etc. The end result is a functional ugly looking dialog.
• All Microsoft prodcuts look the same with a standard menus/toolbars/context meu stuff with the bluish or the grayish look. Agreed that the users don't have to learn new user interfaces, but that shouldn't stop us from trying out new things or build interfaces that are better.
• Theming an application is unheard of in many Microsoft applications. With the exception of Media player, virtually there is no app that allows users to customize the visual themes to fit his tastes or moods! I am talking about an app that has close to 50+ million users and everyone will be running the familier and boring grayish UI.
• http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2001/december/windowsxprough will give you some ideas to where I am leading you! These things may be small but matters so much shows how much we care! Microsoft Software is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide and I expect lot more attention to detail and design given the large audience

I just hope that "Windows Vista" breaks this tradition and makes software visually compelling, consistent and easy to use. This is one place where I always think Apple wins my credits a lot.