Vista Startup Sound – Blind Ignorance

(Updated)
Vista beta testers mad about forced startup sound – reported Robert Scoble yesterday.  What several testers observed was that the Windows startup sign can not be turned off.   Naive me, this is how I tried to calm down the “mad users” in a comment:

“Oh, for God’s sake it can’t possibly be by design… It’s a beta, and with Microsoft’s so-called stable products being so buggy, what do you expect? Just be happy it doesn’t force an automatic reboot every 30 minutes “

Yeah, right. Today the story continues, as Robert interviewed  “Steve Ball, group program manager for the Windows Audio Video Excellence team (basically, the team that builds the stuff that plays audio and video in Windows).”   Wow, thank God they have an entire team for that!  But it gets better: they hired famous guitarist Robert Fripp for the job.  Geez, just give me a machine that boots fast and doesn’t crash, I’ll get my music on my own!

And here’s the best part from Steve Ball:

“This will be a non-customizable sound, and that’s been part of the plan for Windows Vista for many months, he said.
However, the plan might change and Steve Ball is reading all the feedback, both on blogs, and in the newsgroups for beta testers, and his team is considering all of this stuff and still has not made final decisions (although they’ve spent a lot of time already arguing this stuff out and are heading down a path of making this a non-customizable sound that can’t be turned off, just like the Xbox has today).

“Why the hell would you want to do this in the first place?” he told me is a common question.”

Wow. If he really can’t think of a reason, how about  this:  has it ever occurred to anyone that some of us Microsoft-slaves might just wake up in the wee hours and want to work (i.e. turn on the computer) without waking up the family?

I am fuming… this is yet another case of product-focused thinking ignoring users.

Update (8/24):  Here’s another scenario, from a comment to Scoble’s blog:

“I really hope this isn’t true. If it is, we’ll never deploy Windows Vista in a clinical environment or care setting. We currently have Windows 2000 PCs running in very sensitive care environments that need constant reboots — if the system is forcing the startup sound to play, regardless of other settings, that could be very disruptive to a care environment without us have to take unnecessary steps to mitigate the noise. Microsoft, _think_ about your users not yourselves!”

Another commenter sums it up perfectly:

“Microsoft is still doing what Microsoft does best, telling their customers that Microsoft owns their computer and not them.”

Better yet, just watch this video.

Also read Silence is Golden by Michael Parekh.

Update (9/23): Microsoft listens, after all, says Scoble.  They are making the sound optional.

Tags: Windows, Windows+Vista, Vista+Beta, Windows+Sound, Vista+Sound, Vista+Startup, Microsoft