Fuck XBOX (MS)
I can’t imaging why I expected anything else from Microsoft. They are, after all, the reason I took a huge pay cut and ditched a very high paying “career” to start at ground zero with Ruby and open source. Dealing with MS had become so miserable that I was seriously considering dish washer jobs instead.
It’s been a while. I’ve been developing on Macs for years now. In the same way you forgot how much that hike sucked that made you puke and left you with a 3rd degree sunburn, I’d forgotten just how much MS sucks.
The guys I work with all have XBOX’s and (sad or not) it’s what they generally do after work “together”. I figured I’d finally get one… besides – Red Dead Redemption looked pretty juvenile. How could I resist?
XBOX 360’s are not cheap. Being MS they, of course, have to come in 3+ confusing varieties. All of which are not really explained anywhere. On top of these “choices” there are different online plans to chose from, again, you have to Google this (as if anyone uses Bing) – they couldn’t be bothered to explain it to you.
So – this is how my XBOX experience went today:
- go to store
- buy xbox
- go back to office
- try to hook up xbox. they don’t include a hdmi cable.
- go to friend’s house to get cable
- try to hook up xbox
- no sound
- spend almost an hour in “setup” – connecting this thing to the internet without the $99 wifi adapter requires serious google skills and fairly low level knowledge of your network.
- still no sound – games aren’t playable without sound
- back to store
- get $60 headphones that supposedly solve this problem because MS is SO behind the times that they assume everyone has 1) a hard line internet connection and 2) a fairly modern TV. That describes almost no one I know.
- still no sound
- i supposedly need a xbox hd av cable now
I mean, seriously. A bunch of above average smart people came up with this bullshit? If you’re going to nickel-and-dime someone at least make it obvious. What, they think the attention deficit diorder generation is going to enjoy this?
Well – anyway – I’ve now remembered why I won’t touch anything tied to MS with a 10′ pole. It’s not money – it’s user experience. They consistently offer up the worst user experience on earth. I’d rather go back to a rotary phone and dish washing.
