I just responded over on my blog. Slapped? No. Talked with? Yes. :-)

Not taking issue with the extenuating circumstances and ever-changing narrative per the development issues. But if people are confused, it is Microsoft's job to set the expectations and stick with them, as in the trainwreck environment that is Longhorn, things like this can take on many differing tones.

But my main issue is with the elitist tone, in that the auto press covers things detailed, when computer press covers things basic. Not true, wide variances in both, as most of the automotive press, covers things from a consumeristic view, in terms of price and performance, sure you have your gearhead magazines, but then so does the computer press. The mainstream computer press is not covering Microsoft strictly for developers, or getting needlessly specialized, they are covering things for the masses, for the CIOs, for the consumers, that just want a decent roadmap to which they can plan and budget. And discussing all the backhand developer shoptalk is not the right audience. Developers have their own specialized press outlets too.

But what is good for the goose is good for the gander, after all the Chief 'Spokesperson' for Channel 9 and all things Microsoft, is a non-developer. But I think you misread this, things like this can firestorm out-of-control unless you pour water on it quickly, the fact that a 'rapid response' team is sitting on its hands waiting to come up with an answer is the problem, over Scoble getting in too soon. And he is forever in a no-win place, half edge him on, half say pull back. Actually, I think he instead of a talking to, I think he should have gotten a gold star, as this is not a 'huge dominating' issue that spilt into the mainstream press. And that, when all is said and done, is the only issue that counts.

I couldn't agree more about your comments on the computer press in general including "computer analysts". They don't necessarily need to have a computer science degree but at least a decent amount of "technical" knowledge would be useful.

By the way I think it would also be useful for Scoble to gain more "technical" knowledge.

Christopher, it's not so much what the mainstream press writes about, it their knowledge. IMHO if you compare the writers for say "Car and Driver" to those of "PC" (I think those two magazines target similar audiences within their market), while the "C&D" writers write for a general audience, they know a lot about the internals of cars. So I'm not saying that "PC" should be full of technical articles -- you can have "Dr. Dobbs" and "C/C++ Users Journal" for that, just like you have auto tuning magazines etc. What I would like is that the "PC" writers should know more about the internals of computers. You see stuff bandied about like "Hey, Microsoft should improve Windows by replacing the NT kernel with a Linux kernel!" with little awareness of what this would entail on a technical level.

It's true Scoble is not a developer, and I think his response was somewhat misguided partly because of that. Although in his post that linked to mine here he described the situation as "there's no .NET code in Longhorn's core features" which captures it much more succinctly than Mary Jo Foley, and shows that he understands the key issue.

- adam

Adam - could you elaborate on this? What are "Longhorn's core features" from a developers perspective?

Would definitively be nice if the computer journalists were required to know at least some basics about computers(especially Operating system 101) before writing about it. So much FUD is spread around, especially about Microsoft since they are the market leaders, that it's almost not useful to read the press.

Actually it seems like the computer journalists are trying to bite over too much. With a Microsoft-perspective it is too much to cover Visual Studio, .NET Framework, Microsoft Windows and some server applications by the same journalist. It's like someone trying to cover all foreign politics at once, which soon becomes unwieldy :)

AC: I think the 3 developers that Mary Jo Foley talked to were talking about 3 different things:

- The new Longhorn features like Avalon. These were already moved out of Longhorn, so that is old news.

- Parts of the existing Windows OS that other pieces depend on. The File Open dialog, Add/Remove programs, the HTML rendered, etc. This I think is what Joel Spolsky was talking about.

- The "core" of the OS, the part that it wouldn't run without--the kernel, the memory manager, filesystems, etc. There has not (as far as I know) been any notion of rewriting these in managed code for Longhorn.

That's MY perspective, anyway.

- adam