Shame on you, Creative!

Just came across this on the Creative forums (via Digg).. And my respect for Creative as a brand has just dropped like 95%..

Apparently, Creative has been releasing a whole bunch of audio cards whose drivers did not work properly in Vista, even though the boxes claimed that these were “VISTA READY”. Creative tells everyone that they’re working on building updated drivers, but they don’t seem to release these for ages. So a guy called Daniel comes along and builds a set of drivers himself and distributes these to desperate users on the Creative forum!

Now any sane person would expect Creative to be thankful to this individual and maybe even give him a job (Hell, he was able to do what the Creative software engineers couldn’t for so long!). Instead, the ‘VP of Corp Comms’, Phil O’Shaughnessy coolly comes along and posts this on the forums. He basically accuses Daniel of ’stealing’ their intellectual property and order him to remove all links to the drivers! He seems to think that the Creative IP is far more important than millions of users who are stuck with cards that basically don’t work. Dumbass. And now that Daniel has removed all his links, we have a whole bunch of audio card buyers whose cards are nothing but hardware junk

Obviously the customers are mad – The news is spreading like wildfire and whole communities of gamers have sworn never to buy Creative products again! And our friend Phil seems to be missing (he hasn’t replied to any of the angry Creative buyers after his ‘brilliant’ post).

Now, seriously, what sort of a dumbass actually does something like this?! He’s the VP of Corp Communications for crying out loud.. Will someone from Creative please fire this moron before he ruins your company?

Why ’stink-less durians’ may not be a good idea

Seth Godin has an interesting take on stinky and stink-less durians and why the latter may not be such a good idea…

He suggests that the reason why non-durian eaters avoid durians may not be the stink at all.. And so, solving the stink problem may not result in a new breed of durian eaters… He goes on to explain by saying that non-customers are not the right people to get feedback from. This is because, in most cases, they are telling you why they don’t buy something as opposed to what will make them buy that thing.

Interesting point and it kinda makes sense… Check out the post here.

Prashant.

Photo courtesy: Peter Emmett