Who are you and what have you done with the Windows Ultimate Extras team?

Windows Ultimate ExtrasIt only took a dozen or so blogs and high-profile websites to force the Windows Ultimate team into communicating with its customers, so you could say we were off to a bad start. The Ultimate Team finally broke their 3-month silence today to say a whole lot about nothing. There’s a great explanation and translation of what was said by the Ultimate Team by mstefan on the Channel9 forums which I’ll quote.

That’s classic “say nothing” corpspeak. A lot of words which convey very little information.

“We would like to announce that we are announcing the announcement of these features that we have previously announced, and are intending to deliver this announcement of these new feature announcements once the announcement meets the highest quality of the announcements that we know that you have come to require of us. We strongly believe that we should only announce those announcements of features which have been throughly tested and you can be assured that our announcements will be announced at the earliest possible date. You can expect another announcement to this effect in two months. Thank you.”

Ironically this brings back memories of a joke in Steve Jobs’ and Bill Gates’ interview at the D Conference. Steve quotes the former Apple CEO of saying something along the lines of Apple after Steve had left was a sinking ship with a hole at the bottom, and his job was to only point it in the right direction.

I can’t help imagine Ultimate Extras as that sinking ship. Communicating, like what has been done today is certainly the right direction. But are we moving anywhere? We’ve got a deadline for some existing betas to be finalized together with some really long-term goals. The vibe I’m getting is that we’re not going anywhere fast, just drifting along with the flow.

But there’s more to this announcement than meets the eye. There’s a new face in town – who is Barry Goffe? And why has the original team pictures and profiles been removed?

Barry GoffeBarry Goffe who’s now claiming the title of Director for the Windows Vista Ultimate group may have risen up through the old ranks of Product Manager, and is believed to have taken over control of the whole project. As a Microsoft veteran who’s carried numerous titles, whether or not this is a new role or purely a subset of his existing role as Director of Windows Product Management is not year clear. Barry was part of the team that defined and mapped out the SKU lineup for Windows Vista so it is not surprising he’s somehow responsible for Ultimate, one of the SKUs. Having gave numerous interviews in the past, it’s a good sign things might become more transparent with Barry than the previous leadership who failed to give any interviews as far as I can remember.

Windows Ultimate teamA few people have also noted another change to the Ultimate website – all traces of the previous leadership team has been removed. I must admit they did a pretty good job, unfortunately for them they can’t remove history. Archive.org’s history to be exact. A total of 14 posts including the profiles of most of the former team members have now been removed along with their profile pictures. Why? The only plausible explanation is that these people have been abducted by aliens and the aliens didn’t want anyone to notice so they hacked the website and removed all traces of their lives. A theory yet to be challenged.

Today something happened that should have happened a long time ago. If things continue to happen over the next few weeks or months, then they might deserve a second chance, although under even more scrutiny.

23 insightful thoughts

  1. The entire post gives the impression that there will be perhaps another 6 Ultimate Extras over the next 3 years, if we’re lucky. Even if this number doubles, it’s nowhere near the expectations people have from the original promise, which made us all think that we’d be getting at least one Ultimate Extra a month.

    I don’t normally get bitter about these things, but Ultimate Extras is obviously a joke and Microsoft seems to have no intentions of aplogising for it. I’d be even more p*ssed if my copies of Vista Ultimate hadn’t been free.

  2. As i always say send the CC yo billy, ever since he has left all are behaving badly.

  3. Yeah, microsoft NEEDS to fix this mess that they made. Gvie the people what they want! If dreamscene isn’t ready for the final. Then bring more videos for people to TEST to make sure it will WORK on the final.

    I am glad that all of our bitching finaly got ms to stop playing the childish game and listen to our feedback.

    I do though, like BenN said above have extras come out every month. – 3 or so every month would be nice.

    Reminds me of the lame launch they had. i thought it was gonna be like the 95 one, or at least a little better then the XP one. but no, they talked aout nothing, had some gay 90s group come up and a family who won a free copy….

  4. Long, can you check who this imran II is? just wanted to tell you it ain’t me.

  5. Can we guess the “team” or whatever won’t go out at night And are afraid to start their cars becaue of their mugshots? Mercifully removed, then exhumed.

    Long unnecessary backstory rant:
    Dos 4.0 was released with a few serious bugs, so 4.01 was released But Only To Purchasers Of New Computers. Upgrading your purchased copy of Dos 4 to 4.01 tended to ruin your copy.
    Dos 6 had an update you could purchase at a store for $20 or less, but then calling Microsoft to ask a question of the pimply surfer dudes got the response they didn’t support it, or words to that effect.
    Skip to today: be wary of the team covering the “vista validation” forums… they might delete a post on a whim or warn it isn’t in the right place rather than hazard a guess.
    Listening to the european guy on the team that covers shadow copies might give you hope (he’s european, he talks with an accent, he must be smart) but you’ve got to do a whole lot of home schooling to learn exactly what causes shadow copies to stop/work.
    Even a James Bond movie has a stereotypical evil-guy releasing bug filled software knowing users wil pay, then pay for support and upgrades.
    Bottom line: nothing new, Microsoft is Where you want to be Today (Incredibly Rich)

  6. BREAKING NEWS

    To increase sales of Ultimate Edition, the Vista team has announced today the immediate release of the following Ultimate Extras:

    1. Microsoft Olympic Decathlon with Apple IIe emulator
    2. Microsoft Plus! for Windows 98
    3. Microsoft Bob
    4. Microsoft Wine Guide and Microsoft Cooking with Julia Childs for Windows 95
    5. Microsoft DOS 2007
    6. Apple iPhone to Windows Mobile 6 Conversion Kit

    See, you thought there were no benefits for buying Ultimate… Silly nerds.

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