Windows Sans Support?

I was reading the forums over at Microsoft's "Shell: Revealed" blog site, and came across a posting asking if skinning would be supported in Vista. The expected answer came, one that I've grown very familiar with. No, because for one thing, Product Support would be a nightmare.

Now I've heard this explanation a lot. There are a lot of visual things that don't happen in our modern OS that are possible (and even happen in some environments, like Linux), but don't come to fruition because of the need to support such widgets and whatnot. I'm intimately aware of this having worked in Microsoft's Product Support Services (PSS) once upon a time. And while it was very easy for me to walk a user through just about any scenario with only keyboard commands if necessary, I could certainly see how the majority of PSS personnel might not be able to deal with uncertainties.

Being savvy myself and knowing how to bend the almighty Internet to my will, I can recall every time that I've had to call Microsoft for a support issue with any of their software. Twice. And those were for issues that I already knew the answer, but wanted to find out if there was a workaround of some kind. And as someone who rarely calls Microsoft for support, I wouldn't be heartbroken or even a little inconvenienced if PSS was unavailable to me. I don't even think I could name a single other person I know that's ever called Microsoft for help, but that could be because they'd call me first, and I usually fix it. :)

That's when the idea struck me. Why doesn't Microsoft offer low(er)-cost licenses to people who waive the right to contact PSS for any issues?

I'm sure it's similar to the school vouchers issue (it's the aggregate of purchases/taxes that pay for PSS/school for everyone), or possibly just a way to keep the price inflated for everyone. Then again, most people I know are getting their versions of Windows and Office from lower-cost means to begin with. They either know someone who works at Microsoft, or they can get an educational discount, or OEM version or something. So profit protection is probably not the answer. Not to mention that the R&D involved is a sunk cost anyway, and software is a business built on the marginal. In fact, PSS is really the only on-going cost tied to an individual product after it is out the door. Why not get that extra copy or two from me through these means, rather than pushing me to these other options? Anyone out there know if this conversation has ever come up inside Microsoft, and what the answer was?

To answer the original question ... No, Microsoft will not officially support skinning the OS, in part due to the support issues, and in part to protect the UI as a branded experience. That said, an interesting solution was posed ... why not offer a key combination (CTRL+ALT+END was suggested) that reverts to a standard skin and includes some support diagnostics? Even one of the shell guys seemed intrigued by the suggestion.

Microsoft Kills "Max"

According to Flexbeta, Microsoft has killed the "Max" skunkworks project. The Max photo organizer program was a project of Hillel Cooperman, one of the Vista UI guys, and was designed to show off the capabilities of the Windows Presentation Foundation (aka Avalon). If you're not familiar with the term "skunkworks", it denotes a project done for purely research purposes. It's not unusual for a skunkworks project to turn into an actual shipping product (a lot of Google's skunkworks project end up in the wild, thanks to their 20% policy), but what's unusual about this one is that Max was looking very good. It's telling that a version for Vista never reached beta, since WPF was a key feature of Vista. The excuses for why this never happened were pretty flimsy ... could it be that Max has actually become part of Windows Vista?

Probably not. Max was very ... VERY pretty, and would have made the rest of the OS look amateurish by comparison. Not that Vista doesn't look good, but Max was incredibly gorgeous, and was pretty much the only realization of the early demos Microsoft showed off of what the then "Longhorn" would be capable of. If all of Vista's micro-apps looked as good as Max, Vista could give the Mac purists something to consider. Anyway, all we know at this point is the cryptic message left behind by the Max team ... to keep checking ideas.live.com.