Skype Down

Isn't that nice? Now you can print out a whole slew of phone numbers on your business card to impress the impressionable...

I never noticed that before. Mine is showing just over 1 million online.

No, I have just never gotten over leaving Microsoft, so they're still "us" and "we" and everything is still in the present tense.

Actually, the problem is a little different than that.

Over here you have a device. Let's call it Sliced Bread Mobile, or SBM. It's the greatest mobile device EVAR.

And over here, you have an application. Let's say it's an email application. It's called Sliced Bread Email, or SBE. It's pretty good.

Now, because SBM is a mobile device and people want to get their email on it, the people working on SBM at Sliced Bread Incorporated build in all this special technical stuff so anyone and everyone who wants to put their email program on SBM can do it easily.

And then, they say "we need someone to put their email program on SBM to make sure it really is easy and simple and anyone can do it." So they say "hmm, which email program development team can we talk to without revealing confidential information about our new device to a competitor?"

Duh. Sliced Bread Email! So off they go to the SBE team, and they say "hey, use our simple and easy API to make SBE work on SBM, so we know it's the simplest and easiest thing EVAR."

And the SBE team does. They start integrating, and sending the SBM team feedback, and asking for the features they want, and the SBM team puts them in and makes this just the most awesome way to integrate ANY email program with SBM.

And then, just to be 100% certain it really does work THAT WELL, they walk away and write a tiny little simple email program which they turn around and integrate into SBM with four lines of code. It takes less than ninety seconds. They actually time it and get it on video.

Now they run off to Awesome Software Company (ASC). The SBM guys say "look at this video - you can add support for SBM to your mobile email program in less than ninety seconds!"

And ASC says "so what?"

And after a long, uncomfortable silence, the ASC guy continues.

"Look, I'm sure your new device is great, okay? But I honestly do not give a damn about it. My software is already on fifty million phones, and I don't have to spend ninety seconds adding support for yours.

"Because once I do, then your phone has to go in my test lab, and then it's not just about your support code that we wrote in ninety seconds. No, now we have to test each and every feature on your phone, in addition to the other eight models we already have in our test labs.

"So what you think is ninety seconds of developer time is really a 12.5% increase in our test budget every release cycle, which - if you had bothered to ask, or even really cared - you would know is already over a hundred and fifty million dollars annually.

"So what you are really coming over here saying is not 'give us ninety seconds of developer time,' but 'spend another twenty million dollars a year,' and to be perfectly honest you can piss off."