The lesson of The Octopus
Reading the ever-fascinating Grant McCracken recently, I discovered the following about Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen:
"Paul Allen, the Microsoft cofounder, has a yacht that is 416 feet
long. It cost something like a quarter of a billion dollars. It
carries two helicopters. It's so large it cannot dock anywhere on the
French Riviera. (That's why it needs those helicopters. They are the
only way to get to port.)"
As I commented to Grant, think for a moment about what this means for Microsoft. Even in his leisure time, the company's co-founder has chosen to over-engineer something so cumbersome that it is incompatible with any existing user interface and requires a hugely expensive work-around to be of any use at all. Microsoft's problems are truly in the DNA.
I remember his previous boat. It had a recording studio on it. A bit of trivial is that Eidos tried to record a Lara Croft look alike on it going down the amazon. The studio on the boat was completely useless at sea. But everybody at Eidos had a great time.
Posted by: James | May 14, 2008 at 08:28 PM