In a non-narcissistic comment at Ask MetaFilter, we are informed that “Microsoft has a very-well-funded effort underway that co-opts… UX gurus previously skeptical of their product quality, aiming at securing their personal endorsement of Expression.”
Really.
Perhaps this explains why Jerome (presumably actually Jérôme) Carron of Microsoft Canada pigeonholed me in Vancouver. He suavely turned the conversation around to an offer he thought I couldn’t refuse: We’re having these roundtables in Redmond, he said, where we get really interesting people together to talk about our products.
I told him the same thing I tell a Microsoft PR executive whenever I am informed that they’re fresh out of review copies of software: You have $50 billion in the bank. I also told him they were trying to get something for nothing and that I’d have to charge – and that I’m expensive. Poof! There went my offer of a free steerage-class plane ride to Seattle and all the midrange hotel soap I could stuff into my purse. Because I’m such a nice guy, I steered him over to somebody else, somebody whom I really should stop helping.
(Incidentally, I’m not anti-Microsoft. Really, I’m not. I have Microsoft Office here and use it – largely out of necessity, though the spellchecker is great. I’ve done indirect paid work for Microsoft Typography. What I hate is Windows, and I often view Windows users as a lower form of life. And did you know the Expression evangelista also pigeonholed me in Vancouver and pretty much begged me to teach her how to be a good presenter? What I didn’t say was “Listen, the guys in your audience are probably just gonna be looking at your tits.”)
En tout cas, two weeks later, who takes Microsoft up on their offer but local <airquotes>luminaries</airquotes> David Crow and Jay Goldman? (And Bryce, but he works for a Microsoft VAR, so that actually makes sense.) I hear they’re grooming David, who I know can program but whose other skills have never been clear to me, to be some kind of evangelist for Microsoft Expression.
Both those fellas are Macintosh supremacists. And Canadians. It’s rather infeasible to imagine one of them defecting to Redmond to push a product that stands no chance at all of adoption by elite designers for three obvious reasons – it isn’t by Adobe, it is by Microsoft, and it runs on Windows.
You guys! You’re the cheapest fucking dates I’ve ever seen! You kill me!
Oh, and Jerome, please tell your PR agency to stop dicking me around with review software. It actually is for review and doesn’t buy you anything else.