Microsoft makes “third-rate products” — a negative assessment made by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs about the Seattle-based software giant in 1995 went viral Friday as the company grapples with a major Windows problem that has affected millions of users, including commercial services such as airlines.
Microsoft Inc said the error was caused by a recent CrowdStrike update, and that it is working to fix all affected services. In a detailed post on X, the company said it is also working on “redirecting affected traffic to alternate systems to mitigate the impact more quickly”.
Meanwhile, while the company is trying to sort out the issue, an interview given by Steve Jobs almost three decades ago has resurfaced online and has been widely shared.
Jobs told technology journalist Bob Cringely, “The only problem with Microsoft is they have no taste… they have no taste at all. I don’t mean on a small scale… I mean on a large scale. They don’t think of original ideas and they don’t bring much culture to their products.”
Steve Jobs said about Microsoft – They make third class products. Many people may be feeling the same today.#microsoft #blue screen #windows
– Ashutosh Mishra (@caashutos22) July 19, 2024
“… You say, ‘Well, why is that important?’ Well, proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books. That’s where the idea comes from (and) if it wasn’t for the Mac, they would never have been able to do that in their products,” he explained.
“And so, I guess I’m upset… not with Microsoft’s success. I have no problem with their success. They’ve earned their success… for the most part.”
“What troubles me is that they actually make third-rate products.”
Microsoft Cloud Outage Explained
According to Microsoft’s service health status update, the preliminary root cause is “a configuration change to a portion of our Azure backend workloads (which) caused interruptions between storage and compute resources, and resulted in connectivity failures…”
NDTV explains | What causes the dreaded Windows ‘Blue Screen of Death’?
These failures affected “downstream (and dependent) Microsoft 365 services”.
CrowdStrike Engineering — a cybersecurity services firm that works with Microsoft — has identified a content deployment related to this issue and has rolled back those changes, and posted steps for a workaround for affected Windows users.
Read | ‘Blue Screen of Death’ errors occurring when Windows system restarts
Vital services such as police and government have been affected across the world.
Microsoft services affected in India
In India, SpiceJet has said it is facing “technical challenges”, affecting online ticket booking and check-in as well as other functionalities.
“We request passengers planning upcoming travel to reach the airport earlier than usual to complete check-in at our counters,” the airline said on X.
Read | Microsoft’s ‘Blue Screen of Death’: Full list of affected services in India
New airline Akasa Air and industry giant IndiGo have also issued similar messages. Sources told NDTV that flight services at Chennai and Mumbai airports have also started getting affected.