5 ms·

Microsoft wouldn't be worth discussing, if not their role on the market. I mean, they were once innovative and now they're just plain stupid. Like many companie

by maurycy 17y ago

Microsoft wouldn't be worth discussing, if not their role on the market. I mean, they were once innovative and now they're just plain stupid. Like many companies in the past, their success is slowly killing them. The real problem, though, is that Microsoft slows down the innovation. Every time I see my friends working on Windows, I see an operating system that nearly not changed since 1995. I know that there are nice fonts, widgets, and you have nice shadows here and there. All the basic concepts, though, are the same since 1995. There's basically no true innovation. See what Apple does. Ten years ago they had ugly, and basically unusable OS. Five ten years ago they were comparable. Now, they are the frontiers of the touch&the mobile revolution. Regular people still struggle with the same problems they struggled ten years ago. They still have to cope with utterly complicated filesystem, there's still too much voodoo, they still cannot find their programs easily, there's still mouse&keyboard, they still get unnecessary viruses, and the cloud integration is almost non-existing, so they have to use pendrives. Unfortunately, 90% of the new computers is sold with Windows, and it takes some unnecessary effort to find&learn better tools. We cannot expect regular people to give up their jobs in search of better IT solutions. They just want to get their job done, and it's OK. We, as a developers, like to speak how Microsoft slows down the web. I think, Microsoft slows down the whole society. The time wasted on their today's deprecated software is the whole society's loss.

halo 17y ago
I don't see how you can say with a straight face that's Windows has "nearly not changed" since 1995 while saying that Mac OS X has significantly changed since 2001.
- maurycy 17y ago
  It depends how you understand the innovation. I don't say that Mac OS X has significantly changed since 2001. Please read carefully. I mean Apple as a whole. They do a lot of innovation. iPhone literally revolutionized the way we interact with mobile phones, and iPad is going to do the same with the standard computing model. For me, innovation is all about the regular people. I don't care about the buzzwords, and the top notch innovation, which is used by 0,0069% of the population. Concepts such as cloud computing are so old, it's pathetic they are not widely used. The same goes with iPhone/iPad pair. I know that spec-wide, there's nothing new about these tools. We, hackers, are so used to some concepts, we forget about our dads, girlfriends and co-workers from different departments, which are still in 1995. By the way, I think OS X changed a lot. Not significantly, but a lot. This is not a completely different paradigm but things like MobileMe (iCal, AddressBook in the cloud), Spotlight, iTunes are big steps.
  - maurycy 17y ago
    Replying to myself, but I don't want to edit the former comment. I think that iPod is the excellent case study for what the innovation actually is. From the technical standpoint, iPod is a garbage. I mean, less space than a nomand, lame. iPod wasn't very innovative in the terms of technology. MP3 players existed for years, and I was, as a nerd, relatively happy with them. However, iPod played a significant role in bringing in the basic innovation to the masses. Downloading music with a click, instead of ripping it from CD with some weird tools, keeping your music library in a sync. It makes no difference for you or me, but it makes a big difference for your friend from different department, which is not tech savvy. That's the actual purpose of innovation. It's about a Marry from the street. People using the standard Microsoft environment, still use their computers as a bit better typewriter, faster snail mail, and an interface for finding stuff immediately, through Google. They do nearly the same stuff they were doing in 1995. Except, Internet is more popular thing. People in the standard Apple environment, share their personal data between many devices, use nice touch interface, download music and movies with a click, without need to buy/rent a DVD, put their photos on the web easily etc., etc. Soon, thanks to iPad, they're going to enjoy the touch screen on daily basis, and forget about the standard folders-based filesystem, Desktop and other concepts that, actually, might be unnecessary for them.
    - halo 17y ago
      So you're comparing Windows since 1995 with everything Apple have made? No wonder Microsoft appear to have badly stagnated. Microsoft have changed a lot since 1995. They moved into the mobile space with Windows CE and Windows Mobile. They moved onto the web starting with software like Internet Explorer, Outlook, IIS, Windows Live Messenger and moved onto websites such as MSN, Hotmail, Multimap, and, more recently, Bing. They moved into hardware and released the Xbox, Zune, Zune HD, Xbox and Xbox 360. They moved into online gaming with Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live, which have evolved into social networks and marketplaces for both these products. That's ignoring all the different major changes to Windows-related technologies, whether .NET, DirectX, Exchange, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, Windows Firewall, or Microsoft Security Essentials, which have all changed beyond recognition or outright didn't exist back in 1995. Hell, Microsoft have even made a standardised video codec called VC-1. There's probably others, but that's much more than "nice fonts, widgets, and ... nice shadows here and there". Were these products innovative? Some definitely were (Xbox Live stands out), some weren't especially innovative but had advantages that caused them to compare favourably to their competitors to gain significant marketshare (Xbox, Internet Explorer, DirectX, .NET, Windows CE, Exchange, IIS), some weren't and have largely languished (GfwL, Windows Media Player, Bing). Besides, Microsoft's victories have traditionally not been through direct innovation as much as incremental product iteration which they generally do well. Apple have grown at an unprecedented rate, and any company compared to them doesn't compare favourably, but that hardly means Microsoft have just sat there doing nothing. Trying to this into a "Apple environment vs. Microsoft environment" battle which is completely artificial when neither company exists in a vaccuum as they create platforms for other companies to build on.
- cpr 17y ago
  Mac OS has jumped from Classic (in the 2000 time frame) to X, which is a quantum leap. I don't think Windows has made any such leaps since 1995. Mild improvements, but also a lot of backsliding (Vista).
  - ajross 17y ago
    That's an aliasing bug in the data, though. The 2001 date was cherry picked to show the release of OS X, but not the switch from the Win9x codebase to XP. You could play a similar game with the summer of 1995, where windows was "innovating" rapidly with the sudden switch to a 32 bit operating system while Apple was mired in tiny feature additions to system 8/9. The truth is that neither the XP/Vista/7 codebase nor OS X have changed much over the last decade. Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on.
    - varaon 17y ago
      > Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on. I agree that we're just going to see incremental improvement with the current UI paradigms. Maybe this is just a sci-fi reverie, but I'd hope that at a certain point, we see a new generation of desktop UIs. (Centered around what, I don't know. Maybe 3D layout + 3D gesture recognition. Pan, tilt, zoom.)
  - lssndrdn 17y ago
    There is a vast difference between Windows 95 and Windows 7.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      I am not sure how vast it is the difference between NT4 and Windows 7 though
      - blub 17y ago
        Having some knowledge of the internals would help you.
mckilljoy 17y ago
Technologically, a lot has been done under the hood since 1995 just to allow modern hardware to work. USB devices, wireless NICs, and multicore CPUs didn't even exist when Windows95 was released. Much of the "innovation" is unseen. While I also wish they had innovated the UI more over the past decade, we are probably in the (admittedly growing) minority. You shouldn't switch the gas and break pedals in a car just to be "innovative", and I think for Microsoft the risk of alienating old users outweighs the risk of losing new users. Apple of course has been more free to make sweeping changes to their OS over the past decade because, frankly, they haven't had much to lose. It will be interesting to see how dramatically they change OSX now that they have found something that sells.
- carbon8 17y ago
  "It will be interesting to see how dramatically they change OSX now that they have found something that sells." You don't have to wait; they've already done it with the iPhone/iPad OS. Apple is clearly still willing to make hard and dramatic decisions when it comes to its operating systems.
  - mckilljoy 17y ago
    Don't get be wrong, I completely agree with you that Apple has made some bold decisions, and I respect them for that. However, I'm not sure it is fair to contrast Apple's innovation in new products to Microsoft's (lack of) innovation in established products. To use your example of the iPhone: As innovative as the iPhone was when it was released, Apple really hasn't messed with it in almost three years. Doing so would risk alienating the 50+ million people using iPhone OS devices every day. When the time comes in the next few years, will Apple make the hard decision to redesign their iPhone OS, possibly driving away some of their current users in the process? I would say they are more likely to than Microsoft. However, until they have passed that test, we shouldn't be so quick to judge.
dan_the_welder 17y ago
Microsoft makes productivity software, games, embedded OSes, hardware, business software, commercial suites.....etc etc etc. They can't focus with so many irons in the fire. Apple makes well designed prosumer products....and thats it. They are focused on shiny, evolved high end consumer goods. Apple will refine and refine and refine, while MS will dump things unless it's a huge money maker or they have an axe to grind. Not an Apple fanboy BTW, I personally don't like anything Apple, and would be 100% Linux if not for legacy software that I need Windows for. I am personally quite happy with the Windows 95 look and feel and set up all my machines, Linux or Windows, with plain vanilla UIs and remove anything extraneous. As far as the tablet thing goes, most Windows tablets were well over 2000 dollars, so I really blame the hardware manufacturers for that one.

by maurycy 17y ago

halo 17y ago

I don't see how you can say with a straight face that's Windows has "nearly not changed" since 1995 while saying that Mac OS X has significantly changed since 2001.

maurycy 17y ago
It depends how you understand the innovation. I don't say that Mac OS X has significantly changed since 2001. Please read carefully. I mean Apple as a whole. They do a lot of innovation. iPhone literally revolutionized the way we interact with mobile phones, and iPad is going to do the same with the standard computing model. For me, innovation is all about the regular people. I don't care about the buzzwords, and the top notch innovation, which is used by 0,0069% of the population. Concepts such as cloud computing are so old, it's pathetic they are not widely used. The same goes with iPhone/iPad pair. I know that spec-wide, there's nothing new about these tools. We, hackers, are so used to some concepts, we forget about our dads, girlfriends and co-workers from different departments, which are still in 1995. By the way, I think OS X changed a lot. Not significantly, but a lot. This is not a completely different paradigm but things like MobileMe (iCal, AddressBook in the cloud), Spotlight, iTunes are big steps.
- maurycy 17y ago
  Replying to myself, but I don't want to edit the former comment. I think that iPod is the excellent case study for what the innovation actually is. From the technical standpoint, iPod is a garbage. I mean, less space than a nomand, lame. iPod wasn't very innovative in the terms of technology. MP3 players existed for years, and I was, as a nerd, relatively happy with them. However, iPod played a significant role in bringing in the basic innovation to the masses. Downloading music with a click, instead of ripping it from CD with some weird tools, keeping your music library in a sync. It makes no difference for you or me, but it makes a big difference for your friend from different department, which is not tech savvy. That's the actual purpose of innovation. It's about a Marry from the street. People using the standard Microsoft environment, still use their computers as a bit better typewriter, faster snail mail, and an interface for finding stuff immediately, through Google. They do nearly the same stuff they were doing in 1995. Except, Internet is more popular thing. People in the standard Apple environment, share their personal data between many devices, use nice touch interface, download music and movies with a click, without need to buy/rent a DVD, put their photos on the web easily etc., etc. Soon, thanks to iPad, they're going to enjoy the touch screen on daily basis, and forget about the standard folders-based filesystem, Desktop and other concepts that, actually, might be unnecessary for them.
  - halo 17y ago
    So you're comparing Windows since 1995 with everything Apple have made? No wonder Microsoft appear to have badly stagnated. Microsoft have changed a lot since 1995. They moved into the mobile space with Windows CE and Windows Mobile. They moved onto the web starting with software like Internet Explorer, Outlook, IIS, Windows Live Messenger and moved onto websites such as MSN, Hotmail, Multimap, and, more recently, Bing. They moved into hardware and released the Xbox, Zune, Zune HD, Xbox and Xbox 360. They moved into online gaming with Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live, which have evolved into social networks and marketplaces for both these products. That's ignoring all the different major changes to Windows-related technologies, whether .NET, DirectX, Exchange, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, Windows Search, Windows Firewall, or Microsoft Security Essentials, which have all changed beyond recognition or outright didn't exist back in 1995. Hell, Microsoft have even made a standardised video codec called VC-1. There's probably others, but that's much more than "nice fonts, widgets, and ... nice shadows here and there". Were these products innovative? Some definitely were (Xbox Live stands out), some weren't especially innovative but had advantages that caused them to compare favourably to their competitors to gain significant marketshare (Xbox, Internet Explorer, DirectX, .NET, Windows CE, Exchange, IIS), some weren't and have largely languished (GfwL, Windows Media Player, Bing). Besides, Microsoft's victories have traditionally not been through direct innovation as much as incremental product iteration which they generally do well. Apple have grown at an unprecedented rate, and any company compared to them doesn't compare favourably, but that hardly means Microsoft have just sat there doing nothing. Trying to this into a "Apple environment vs. Microsoft environment" battle which is completely artificial when neither company exists in a vaccuum as they create platforms for other companies to build on.
cpr 17y ago
Mac OS has jumped from Classic (in the 2000 time frame) to X, which is a quantum leap. I don't think Windows has made any such leaps since 1995. Mild improvements, but also a lot of backsliding (Vista).
- ajross 17y ago
  That's an aliasing bug in the data, though. The 2001 date was cherry picked to show the release of OS X, but not the switch from the Win9x codebase to XP. You could play a similar game with the summer of 1995, where windows was "innovating" rapidly with the sudden switch to a 32 bit operating system while Apple was mired in tiny feature additions to system 8/9. The truth is that neither the XP/Vista/7 codebase nor OS X have changed much over the last decade. Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on.
  - varaon 17y ago
    > Desktop computing is pretty much a solved problem. Incremental improvement is all we're going to see from here on. I agree that we're just going to see incremental improvement with the current UI paradigms. Maybe this is just a sci-fi reverie, but I'd hope that at a certain point, we see a new generation of desktop UIs. (Centered around what, I don't know. Maybe 3D layout + 3D gesture recognition. Pan, tilt, zoom.)
- lssndrdn 17y ago
  There is a vast difference between Windows 95 and Windows 7.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    I am not sure how vast it is the difference between NT4 and Windows 7 though
    - blub 17y ago
      Having some knowledge of the internals would help you.

mckilljoy 17y ago

Technologically, a lot has been done under the hood since 1995 just to allow modern hardware to work. USB devices, wireless NICs, and multicore CPUs didn't even exist when Windows95 was released. Much of the "innovation" is unseen. While I also wish they had innovated the UI more over the past decade, we are probably in the (admittedly growing) minority. You shouldn't switch the gas and break pedals in a car just to be "innovative", and I think for Microsoft the risk of alienating old users outweighs the risk of losing new users. Apple of course has been more free to make sweeping changes to their OS over the past decade because, frankly, they haven't had much to lose. It will be interesting to see how dramatically they change OSX now that they have found something that sells.

carbon8 17y ago
"It will be interesting to see how dramatically they change OSX now that they have found something that sells." You don't have to wait; they've already done it with the iPhone/iPad OS. Apple is clearly still willing to make hard and dramatic decisions when it comes to its operating systems.
- mckilljoy 17y ago
  Don't get be wrong, I completely agree with you that Apple has made some bold decisions, and I respect them for that. However, I'm not sure it is fair to contrast Apple's innovation in new products to Microsoft's (lack of) innovation in established products. To use your example of the iPhone: As innovative as the iPhone was when it was released, Apple really hasn't messed with it in almost three years. Doing so would risk alienating the 50+ million people using iPhone OS devices every day. When the time comes in the next few years, will Apple make the hard decision to redesign their iPhone OS, possibly driving away some of their current users in the process? I would say they are more likely to than Microsoft. However, until they have passed that test, we shouldn't be so quick to judge.

dan_the_welder 17y ago

Microsoft makes productivity software, games, embedded OSes, hardware, business software, commercial suites.....etc etc etc. They can't focus with so many irons in the fire. Apple makes well designed prosumer products....and thats it. They are focused on shiny, evolved high end consumer goods. Apple will refine and refine and refine, while MS will dump things unless it's a huge money maker or they have an axe to grind. Not an Apple fanboy BTW, I personally don't like anything Apple, and would be 100% Linux if not for legacy software that I need Windows for. I am personally quite happy with the Windows 95 look and feel and set up all my machines, Linux or Windows, with plain vanilla UIs and remove anything extraneous. As far as the tablet thing goes, most Windows tablets were well over 2000 dollars, so I really blame the hardware manufacturers for that one.