"We admit this feature began with a kerfuffle we caused in the summer of 2021. When confronted with being told our rendering pipeline had terrible performance, we turned inward. We relied on our existing experiences and we leaned heavily on our partner teams’ work to conclude the DirectWrite general purpose renderer was the best fit for our product. We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes. Thank you for sticking with us. We strive to make this an experience we can all learn from to not only improve ourselves, but to improve our product and delight you all."
You have to scroll down a bit. Whether that's an apology or just "please accept our apology that isn't actually here," is debatable. An actual "We were wrong, we're sorry" would have been clearer.
I have no skin in the game, but I don't think the paragraph above meets the specification claimed by the GP: "we apologized[1] pretty frankly to Casey and everyone else involved in this discussion."
This does seem more like they're apologizing for being wrong and not apologizing for how they treated him. Like, if they were right, it would have been fine in their eyes to use that tone.
Maybe it's a non-native speaker thing, but "I hope you'll accept my apology." makes me think "Maybe I will, maybe I won't, depends on what apology you are going to make ... So where is it?"
It's halfway. In my book, MS did a half-assed, semi-asshole-style token apology. It was indirect enough that you need to know English quite well to see the actual apology.
> We were wrong. As such, we dedicate this experimental renderer to the community as an olive branch. We know we have so much more to learn, but we hope that you will accept our apology and understand we’re humans behind this product with a capability and willingness to learn from our past mistakes.
What more really needs to be said? Feels like one of those times where if everyone just sat around at a pub with a beer, everything would be resolved. Instead it's just little snide remarks back and forth. It's a shame, I really like Casey, and he was definitely right, but it's probably time to move on.
An actual apology. Jesus Christ, has no one at Microsoft ever apologized to a human being? I mean apologized, not passive-aggressively, condescendingly issued a generic apology line in the P.S. to an email on a completely different topic? It goes like this: heeeey, Casey, we're really sorry about <whatever we did> and we would like to apologize. We understand we were wrong to do it because <reasons>. This is not how we want to treat people and the fact that we let it happen was a mistake. I'm sorry we went through this but <here's what we plan to do so that we don't make the same mistake again with someone else>.
That is an apology. Once you say that, you're entitled to asking the community at large to accept it. But you can't say "please accept our apology" without issuing a damn apology. That's like saying "please accept our complimentary cake" without sending any cake!
I realize basic human decency may be a faux pas in large corporate settings but doesn't Microsoft employ at least one PR person who understands PR 101?
The quoted text is vague and non-directional, whereas the biting response to the GitHub issue screenshot posted in TFA are incredibly directed. I'm new to all of this, and so I dunno if the author was being catty and insulting when making their suggestions, but the responses posted certainly are.
I tell my kids this all the time. An apology has several parts:
1. In clear terms, admit fault. "I responded to a comment with some vitriol, and at the time that seemed okay but looking back that was insulting and rude, and not how I want to address our community members. This is true in any case, but doubly so when the original commenter turns out to have provided good advice that I was ignoring."
2. Express remorse. "I'm sorry. I regret letting my passions get the better of me and hope I didn't damage any relationships."
3. Offer to remediate. "As you can see, we're embarking on doing exactly the work that $AUTHOR suggested, and I'd like make sure they receive appropriate credit. If it helps, I'll link to the original thread and this apology."
3. Do better.
The quotes above are just examples off the top, I have no horse in this particular race, but I do have a lot of experience eating crow and having to apologize for being an ass to someone who later turned out to be right.
