5 ms·

Benefit of the doubt is nice, but delivery has been poor to nonexistent. Microsoft is barely taking back its own declining market of non-phones -- while making

Benefit of the doubt is nice, but delivery has been poor to nonexistent. Microsoft is barely taking back its own declining market of non-phones -- while making a wild bet on augmented reality. I feel like the media wants to paint a comeback story a la Apple a lot more than one actually exists.

melted 11y ago
My observation as well. Bought a Surface Book earlier this year and it was crashy as hell. Took it back to the store. Good luck competing with Apple in the premium segment with this level of QA.
- flyingbuttress 11y ago
  Same here with a Surface Pro 4. Lots of little bugs that I'd never expect in an Apple device. Weird keyboard issues, random screen shutoff, DPI issues, etc. Luckily, Windows Updates have been fixing the issues a handful at a time, but this means that initial impressions will suffer. Hopefully they get their QA issues sorted out.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Hopefully not.
    - melted 11y ago
      Why not? A strong premium hardware manufacturer is needed pretty badly right now in the PC industry. The last one standing is Lenovo, and most of its product line is shameful garbage. When manufacturers compete on merit, everyone wins.
      - baghira 11y ago
        That may be true, but there is clearly an argument against that premium manifacturer being the already giant corporation that licenses the os run on 95% of those machines. If it were startup I'd say 'more power to them', even if they only shipped machines with windows preinstalled.
        melted 11y ago
        You've got a point there, but I don't see this as a huge deal if they don't begin to abuse their position. Which they might, but I'll reserve my judgement until there's something to judge.
        baghira 11y ago
        Fair enough, I don't judge the Surface machines as something bad per se, I simply don't pine for a world were the only decent hardware to run Windows is made by MS (which the too often abysmal quality of other OEMs may lead us to). Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, I guess. FWIW, I would argue something similar wrt the Apple tv: abusive practices or not, I would not be happy to see one of the world's wealthiest corporation become a key player in yet another market (if anything because of Apple's sketchy history wrt to open formats).
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
        Strong premium hardware makers would be nice, but not if they're Microsoft, because their hardware is necessarily tied to their crappy keylogger-infested OS. And how exactly would other manufacturers compete with MS hardware anyway, while still offering MS's software on them? They'd be doomed to failure since MS can just jack up the price of Windows for them, so you'd be stuck with a single HW/SW maker, and back to a PC monopoly or something pretty close to it (since so much business software still requires Windows). If you want healthy competition for PC hardware, it's never going to happen if MS takes over that space. Of course, it seems to be going downhill anyway, so I'm not sure what the solution is, but between the hardware makers throwing in the towel or crappifying their products, Windows becoming worse than ever with Metro and spyware and reported incompatibility with existing software, and lack of inroads for Linux into the OS space to provide some real competition (partly because of application compatibility, and partly because of too much fragmentation esp. for desktop environments; thanks a lot Gnome team), things are not looking good.
      - sporro 11y ago
        Dell has some premium, business-class laptops.
valarauca1 11y ago
>I feel like the media wants to paint a comeback story a la Apple a lot more than one actually exists. In terms of an Apple come back story that's blatantly false. Microsoft was never in dire financial straights since practically the mid-80's. The Benefit of the Doubt is more because of their attitude to the OSS community. For nearly its entire life Micro$oft has been seen as the prime enemy of the OSS community, a role which it willingly and almost happily embraced. Today Microsoft has open sources it main .NET runtime. Opening up C#/F# 2 great languages. Its opening the JS Engine in Edge. Compared to Gates/Balmer area Microsoft it very much feels like a different company.
- meagain20000 11y ago
  I would not happily return to them. In fact, I see no reason why. To me, they are still in their same embrace, extend, extinguish mode only that now their cycle is a lot longer. It could even be that nadella really thinks that he will always be in the embrace and extend phase. My gut feeling is that as soon as it becomes hugely beneficial to them somebody within the company will advocate for the extinguish phase. Don't trust Microsoft. It is in their DNA to screw you.
  - sz4kerto 11y ago
    "Don't trust Microsoft. It is in their DNA to screw you." Companies don't have a DNA. Humans do. Companies change as employees come and go, as the environment changes, etc. Don't antropomorphize them. Companies act in their financial interest. Very rarely not, but mostly yes. I don't know why is it so hard to accept that.
    - sangnoir 11y ago
      > Companies don't have a DNA What then is this "company culture" I hear about all time on HN? Also, what percentage of employees have changed at Microsoft since the "old" Microsoft - 60, 75, 90%? If companies don't have DNA/culture/behavioral momentum and can change at the drop of a pin, it implies all the work that has been done can be undone by Nadella's successor in short order.

melted 11y ago

My observation as well. Bought a Surface Book earlier this year and it was crashy as hell. Took it back to the store. Good luck competing with Apple in the premium segment with this level of QA.

flyingbuttress 11y ago
Same here with a Surface Pro 4. Lots of little bugs that I'd never expect in an Apple device. Weird keyboard issues, random screen shutoff, DPI issues, etc. Luckily, Windows Updates have been fixing the issues a handful at a time, but this means that initial impressions will suffer. Hopefully they get their QA issues sorted out.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Hopefully not.
  - melted 11y ago
    Why not? A strong premium hardware manufacturer is needed pretty badly right now in the PC industry. The last one standing is Lenovo, and most of its product line is shameful garbage. When manufacturers compete on merit, everyone wins.
    - baghira 11y ago
      That may be true, but there is clearly an argument against that premium manifacturer being the already giant corporation that licenses the os run on 95% of those machines. If it were startup I'd say 'more power to them', even if they only shipped machines with windows preinstalled.
      - melted 11y ago
        You've got a point there, but I don't see this as a huge deal if they don't begin to abuse their position. Which they might, but I'll reserve my judgement until there's something to judge.
        baghira 11y ago
        Fair enough, I don't judge the Surface machines as something bad per se, I simply don't pine for a world were the only decent hardware to run Windows is made by MS (which the too often abysmal quality of other OEMs may lead us to). Maybe I'm being a little paranoid, I guess. FWIW, I would argue something similar wrt the Apple tv: abusive practices or not, I would not be happy to see one of the world's wealthiest corporation become a key player in yet another market (if anything because of Apple's sketchy history wrt to open formats).
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      Strong premium hardware makers would be nice, but not if they're Microsoft, because their hardware is necessarily tied to their crappy keylogger-infested OS. And how exactly would other manufacturers compete with MS hardware anyway, while still offering MS's software on them? They'd be doomed to failure since MS can just jack up the price of Windows for them, so you'd be stuck with a single HW/SW maker, and back to a PC monopoly or something pretty close to it (since so much business software still requires Windows). If you want healthy competition for PC hardware, it's never going to happen if MS takes over that space. Of course, it seems to be going downhill anyway, so I'm not sure what the solution is, but between the hardware makers throwing in the towel or crappifying their products, Windows becoming worse than ever with Metro and spyware and reported incompatibility with existing software, and lack of inroads for Linux into the OS space to provide some real competition (partly because of application compatibility, and partly because of too much fragmentation esp. for desktop environments; thanks a lot Gnome team), things are not looking good.
    - sporro 11y ago
      Dell has some premium, business-class laptops.

valarauca1 11y ago

>I feel like the media wants to paint a comeback story a la Apple a lot more than one actually exists. In terms of an Apple come back story that's blatantly false. Microsoft was never in dire financial straights since practically the mid-80's. The Benefit of the Doubt is more because of their attitude to the OSS community. For nearly its entire life Micro$oft has been seen as the prime enemy of the OSS community, a role which it willingly and almost happily embraced. Today Microsoft has open sources it main .NET runtime. Opening up C#/F# 2 great languages. Its opening the JS Engine in Edge. Compared to Gates/Balmer area Microsoft it very much feels like a different company.

meagain20000 11y ago
I would not happily return to them. In fact, I see no reason why. To me, they are still in their same embrace, extend, extinguish mode only that now their cycle is a lot longer. It could even be that nadella really thinks that he will always be in the embrace and extend phase. My gut feeling is that as soon as it becomes hugely beneficial to them somebody within the company will advocate for the extinguish phase. Don't trust Microsoft. It is in their DNA to screw you.
- sz4kerto 11y ago
  "Don't trust Microsoft. It is in their DNA to screw you." Companies don't have a DNA. Humans do. Companies change as employees come and go, as the environment changes, etc. Don't antropomorphize them. Companies act in their financial interest. Very rarely not, but mostly yes. I don't know why is it so hard to accept that.
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    > Companies don't have a DNA What then is this "company culture" I hear about all time on HN? Also, what percentage of employees have changed at Microsoft since the "old" Microsoft - 60, 75, 90%? If companies don't have DNA/culture/behavioral momentum and can change at the drop of a pin, it implies all the work that has been done can be undone by Nadella's successor in short order.