egoCheese, brian barbutti

Apesar de desmascarado, o Fake Steve Jobs continua sendo o meu blogueiro preferido. E ele acerta no alvo falando sobre o processo de desenvolvimento do Microsoft Office 2007 (e da Microsoft em geral).

(…) here’s how things work at the Borg. They’ve got all these zillions of teams out there dreaming up wacky new features, and none of them talk to each other. And they’re all competing with each other and they’re all looking for applications to stick their features into. Doesn’t matter if anyone wants these features. They’ve been dreamed up. And raises and promotions are at stake. Productivity reviews and so on. To developers at the Borg big apps like Word are seen as big ocean-going freighters that get launched every few years and are able to carry loads of new features. If you’re inside Microsoft on a product team, the goal is to get as many of your little things onto the next big freighter before it sails. Whether you succeed is largely based on whether your boss and your boss’s boss have any influence with the powers that be. Can they trade favors? Push their weight around? Hold out one good feature unless five crappo ones go in with it? And so forth.

(…) I look at the new Microsoft Office suite and I’m almost in awe. I mean it looks like they just shipped it without anyone actually looking at the programs and without having any central authority over the project. It’s like one of those movies where you walk out going, Did a group of fully sentient adult human beings really watch that movie and say, Wow, yes, this is wonderful, we must put this into cinemas everywhere and share it with the world? Same for Office. Who gave this the green light?

Desde sempre eu odiei o Office, por dois motivos principais: (1) ele é muito confuso, tem um milhão de features e (2) ele é muito burro em suas ‘auto-correções’ e no gerenciamento de coisas simples. Quantas vezes você apaga uma linha e destrói o estilo de alguma outra? Em projetos da faculdade, às vezes formatar tudo para fazer índices e outros elementos necessários no documento demora mais do que o próprio desenvolvimento do trabalho; não porque o documento é gigante ou qualquer coisa do tipo, mas sim porque você tem que constantemente achar workarounds para comportamentos estranhos. Blah!

Estou usando iWork 08 Trial e é sensacional. Finalmente espero poder dizer “Office nunca mais!”.