Back when I had the misfortune to have to use Microsoft software, pretty much the first thing I learned to do on any fresh revision was how to nuke those damned tools with extreme prejudice.
The most gratuitously annoying aspect of the cartoons? The little dance they did when you told them to go to fucking hell and never come back. One more half second just to rub it all in.
Not that one though. They were all just so gratuitously annoying.
Actually, now that I think about it, Microsoft's tone-deafness on just how much people hated Clippy reminds me of Google's attitudes on G+, Real Names, and the Anschluss of all Google services.
Note that ZDNet (hardly a harsh Microsoft critic) noted when Clippy was finally killed (in 2001):
Software giant Microsoft is laying off one of its most controversial employees: Clippy.
The software help system, a long-despised feature of Microsoft's popular Office suite of business software, is the star of a new Web marketing campaign launched on Wednesday. The campaign and a companion Web site trumpet Microsoft's forthcoming Office XP software as so easy to use that Clippy is out of a job.
Back when I had the misfortune to have to use Microsoft software, pretty much the first thing I learned to do on any fresh revision was how to nuke those damned tools with extreme prejudice.
The most gratuitously annoying aspect of the cartoons? The little dance they did when you told them to go to fucking hell and never come back. One more half second just to rub it all in.