Author’s note: Microsoft had just been handed an anti-trust ruling and its Windows operating system and Office products bestraddled the world, but were becoming ever more complex and difficult to use. And they hadn’t even released Vista, yet…
Following on from the landmark antitrust ruling against Microsoft which backed away from splitting the company up and instead issued a stern rebuke exhorting the company to “Play nice and stop bullying everyone”, Microsoft has announced its plans to push ahead with the development and launch of its new Windows operating system.
The announcement was made by Bill Gates from the front of his enormous home “Geekland” where every function is controlled by Microsoft software. After coats were handed out to waiting reporters to combat the freezing temperatures produced by air-conditoners which were “awaiting a software patch” Mr Gates began. “We guarantee that the next release of the Microsoft Windows and Office suite will be so packed with features that no one will ever use more than 10% of them,” he boomed out as the PA system automatically turned the volume to 12,000 decibels to compensate for a Jumbo Jet that had passed overhead three days ago. “We have also ensured that the bits people do use will be stuffed full of irritating features, non-intuitive questions and functional dead-ends. As the dominant software company in the world, owning 99% of the desktop software market, this asserts our right to do whatever we damn well like. It says to the public ‘Stuff the lot of you. Frankly, we don’t give a damn.'”
The new system, code-named “DirtyWindows”, will boast a “dramatically improved ergonomically designed user interface.” The software shall “enhance the richness of the user experience” by ensuring that everyone has to spend several days searching for previous beloved functions or shortcuts that have now been renamed or completely deleted. Microsoft claims to have carried out the world’s largest ever customer survey to gather peoples opinions on their software and promises to “study the result very carefully before we completely ignore them.” Vice President of Customer Delight, Brad Buckenheim, presented Microsoft’s analysis of the results commenting “Fuck me, you people sure do moan a lot, don’t you? We give you all of these features and functionality and all you do is whine on about a fucking talking paper-clip. Christ, don’t you know you can easily change it to a cute puppy or kitten. We even gave you an hilarious mad professor. Sometimes I think you people don’t want help. Well in DirtyWindows we guarantee you won’t get any. We have decided to completely remove all help facilities from you, you whining, miserable tossers. Instead, you’ll get a premium rate helpline that links you to our state of the art call center in Uzbekistan where even now we are teaching our staff the how to say the phrase “Yes that is a known feature which will fixed in the next release” in rudimentary English.
As Mr. Buckenheim then fell into a large trapdoor that opened unexpectedly beneath his feet by the house control system which had detected a “large delivery of coal”, a demonstration of a beta-release of the new Microsoft Office suite was provided. New functions include the spell double-checker, which continually queries whether the user is sure that a word is spelt correctly, finishing with the message “Hey! I was talking to you! Are you sure this is right? Don’t you dare shut me down” on closing a document. Other are the Microsoft “Cliff-hanger” function which automatically deletes the last paragraph of any document to create a mood of mystery and suspense and the Excel random number inserter which automatically changes a single number in a spreadsheet once it reaches a pre-defined level of complexity.
At the end of the demonstration, Karen M Hart, chairperson of the Microsoft User Group expressed her groups view that “this seemed the logical extension of Microsoft’s previous release strategy.”
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