[sirbranedamuj]

try looking for the word "apology"

edit:

> 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.

If someone said that to me, I would say "oh ok, no problem dude" and move on with my life. Not even defending the microsoft guy, I have zero skin in the game and couldn't care less. but people being weirdly pedantic about which words do and do not constitute an apology just because the source is Evil Microsoft Guy.

[Longhanks]

Sticking the word "apology" on a letter does not make it an apology.

[arcticfox]

"we turned inwards, we were wrong. We hope you will accept this ... as an olive branch and accept our apology."

That is 100% an apology

[ineedasername]

Syntactically it's a reference to an apology. Semantically it sort of is, but the phraseology of indirect an apologies are common when the speaker wants to distance themselves from the wrongdoing. This tends to happen either from embarrassment or lack of sincerity.

In this case, the comment from an MS employee in this thread indicates a potential lack of sincerity. If not for that I'd probably give more benefit of the doubt.

[lkxijlewlf]

But not to Casey. You dotted out who they apologized to and it was not the person they insulted, but to the "community".

> 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.

Seems rather childish.

[jonny_eh]

Saying “accept our apology” does make it an apology.

[NikolaNovak]

But sticking "Sorry" does? Your whole post was Ctrl-F for a keyword, while refusing a synonym.

[ddalex]

But there is no "We apologize" either.

There is a "we hope you (the community) accept the apology" - which apology ?! there wasn't one to begin with, because there is no "I/We apologize/are sorry" in the first place.

And the apology should go to the individual harmed, not to the "community"

[NikolaNovak]

I find the format of "I've done wrong; please accept my apology" to be common and sufficient; clearly we have different expectations though -- or they are getting unanticipated amount of pedantic and semantic scrutiny (which in turn will eliminate posts like this, we'll get more corpo-santized-PR, but somehow I don't think that'll make people happy either :).

[brothir]

But there's a big difference between saying that directly to a person and not. Addressing many people, or rather trying to and failing, without getting specific severely reduces the sincerity and effectiveness of the apology.

The apology focuses more on what they did wrong internally, without getting into enough specifics of how it affected the external parties. And, some very serious issues weren't even mentioned.

[ddalex]

But this is not direct speech that they use - they use indirect speech referring to "the community" and "our" apology, trying to avoid associating personally with either the problem or the apology.

Then they come out and blame Casey for "not accepting the apology".

So in fact if they can't own the mistake, issue a direct apology, and act like adults, perhaps it's better to let the corpo PR speak in bland tones.

EDIT: the GP of this thread edited their post:

> Casey, I'm sorry. We made a mistake. I made a mistake!

Now, this is an apology.

[ghusbands]

Except "but we hope you will accept our apology" is not an apology. If they'd written "but we hope you will accept our apologies", it would have been an overly formal apology. In the informal tone they are otherwise using, saying "sorry" would have been most appropriate.