Man, you know things are bad when even this fuckhead turns on you. Dvorak says Win7 is just a “Vista martini.” But you’ll never guess what’s really got him soiling his Depends.
It’s that the Borg flacks don’t call and fawn all over him anymore. Wah! I’m not making this up. Dvorak says the key to Win7′s success has nothing to do with the software itself and rather has to do with how it is perceived:
Such perception is a function of Microsoft’s marketing machine and PR, both of which are either AWOL or non-existent, seeming to have gone into a slumber the day Bill Gates left the company. I haven’t received a single personal note from a Microsoft PR person for roughly four years. … Somewhere along the line, Microsoft apparently decided that it only wants to deal with those amenable suckers who will give it a pass on everything — or perhaps the company has just given up any hopes of getting favorable press.
Oh dear. Where to begin? Do we even dare to wonder if Dvorak has received phone calls and personal emails, and simply doesn’t remember them? And does it not bother him at all that he’s basically saying the way to get a good review (from him anyway) is to fly him someplace nice, stuff him with booze and shrimp cocktail, and tell him how smart and funny he is?
Okay. Maybe the Borg really hasn’t contacted Dvorak directly in four years. In that case maybe someone should tell this senile imbecile that this is not because the Borg flacks don’t care about the media anymore — it’s because they don’t care about him. And, if this is the case, they’re not ignoring him because he’s such a rough-and-tumble truth-teller, but because he’s become totally fucking irrelevant.
See, children, there was a time, not so very long ago, when being a columnist at PC Mag meant you had some influence. If you had such a job, you were, in the world of tech, a big swinging dick. Dvorak, in his day, swung his dick the way a drunken lumberjack swings an axe. There were not many of us in the business who didn’t get slapped in the face with that dick on a few occasions.
The sad thing is that Dvorak, in his foggy, drug-addled brain, still thinks it’s 1990, and that he’s the king of the world. Oh. My. God.
Dvorak, trust me on this. Brian Lam and the boys at Gizmodo get plenty of tender loving care from the Borg’s PR minions. Same for the Engadget guys. And Wired, and the Register, and TechCrunch, and AllThingsD. Everybody who matters gets loads of personal contact. Sadly, that list no longer includes you. I know you’re on Leo Laporte’s podcast, and you have some kind of Internet TV show, and you go on there and reminisce about the time at Comdex when Ken Olsen and Rod Canion got prank-called by Philippe Kahn, and Jim Manzi had to step in and stop the fight, and when he ducked Mitch Kapor got socked in the nose! Or that time Jim Seymour had a tray of appetizers delivered to his hot tub at the Alexis Park, and Bob Metcalfe was like, Dude, you need to cut back on the snacks! Hoo boy!
Friends, this whole thing is just so sad.
That said, the old hemorrhoid does manage to get in a few good shots.
On Windows 7:
For all of the fanfare surrounding the new OS, Win 7 is really just a Vista martini. The operating system may have two olives instead of one this time out, but it’s still made with the same cheap Microsoft vodka.
On the Borg itself:
I’ve long asserted that Steve Jobs was right about Microsoft years ago when he accused the company of collectively having no taste. But now I’m not so sure. There are flashes of brilliance and good taste all over the company, but Microsoft is just lazy, careless, and not at all detail-oriented anymore.
Gee Dvorak — someone was just saying the same thing about you the other day.
