7 ms·

There's no real underdog now. Microsoft has a pretty consistent track record of looking at other companies making money, and making a microsoft version of that.

by jfoutz 10y ago

There's no real underdog now. Microsoft has a pretty consistent track record of looking at other companies making money, and making a microsoft version of that. Bing, xbox, azure, and zune are pretty obvious examples. Surface doesn't seem to fit that mold at all. They're giving every indication of doing something new. I can't think of a real underdog right now. Apple had this sort of desperation to do something good, right now, or die. Microsoft can throw a lot of money at something and still be ok. The surface looks very good, and it's a unique vision. I wish someone would found the equivalent of BeOS, and sell BeBoxes for it. A linux laptop with flawless hardware support. A slot for a stepper driver card would be pretty cool. Maybe a geek port, or maybe a clever way to integrate a breadboard or FPGA, or both. Things feel really stable right now. Google will keep selling ads, Apple will keep cranking out consumer electronics, Microsoft will keep selling its windows/office pair to the universe, Amazon will keep getting better at logistics, and Facebook will keep growing the social graph. None of them are going to bet the farm on anything. And, really, they're all big clunky slow organizations they rebelled against. I hope there will be a big wave of innovation, I don't think it's going to come from the big 5. But i'd agree, yes microsoft is some percentage more innovative than apple. Big, radical, disruptive, change the world ideas? No, none of the big 5 are capable anymore.

Philipp__ 10y ago
Oh... BeOS. Too bad I was born in mid 90s so I didn't get the chance to play with those systems properly. I read about them, a lot, and it seems amazing what does guys achieved with their system. They were really ahead of the curve in some aspects, but in the others... Oh well, it was OS for nerds and enthusiasts mostly.
- okonomiyaki3000 10y ago
  Here you go, nerd. https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/
  - Philipp__ 10y ago
    I know about this, tried it few years ago, will do it again when I find enough free time to play with it in VM.
SamUK96 10y ago
>No, none of the big 5 are capable anymore. I mostly agree, but seen some of Google's acquisitions and what they're doing now? Boston Dynamics are making some huge strides in robotic motion.
- jackvalentine 10y ago
  Google are selling Boston Dynamics.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  There is no question that every one of the big five will advance the state of the art. IMHO, google will create amazing technology around self driving cars, and likely a bunch of other stuff. They don't have the need, the urgency, or the hunger that Tesla has. Ask a google engineer. they'll tell you Tesla is screwing up the market. Tesla is risking the existence of self driving cars ever happening. One big failure means massive lawsuits and regulation. That may be true. But it's clear, Google does not need the win. Google is unwilling to take the risks to make it happen. They're going the Xerox route. And that's completely fine. Google has a lot to lose. They could easily be put in a situation where they have to pay billions, for years. They will get there eventually, they might even win. They're just structurally incapable of risking what Tesla can risk.
  - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    Google's entire talent pool for self-driving cars has left. They had basically the original CMU group from the DARPA challenges, but they've since gone.
    - walterbell 10y ago
      Where/why did they go?
      - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
        Sebastian Thrun went to Udacity, where he's started development on an open source self-driving car project (unlike Google's proprietary system), and Chris Urmson seems to have not announced any new projects at this point. I haven't followed details on some of the lesser known entities, but I wouldn't be shocked if they eventually gravitated towards Thrun's project.
notalaser 10y ago
I've been reading all these Mac-related posts lately because I'm very seriously considering getting one. Why, you ask? Precisely because this: > A linux laptop with flawless hardware support. is hardly cutting it for me anymore, and I've used Linux for a very long time (basically, since Be Inc. was still around and BeOS was still being sold, since we're dabbling in nostalgia). You can get a Linux laptop with flawless hardware support right now, really. In fact, I haven't looked over HCLs when buying a Linux laptop for more than five years now. Hardware support is realistically not a problem with Linux anymore. What is a problem is the fact that, once again, we're going through one of those Let's Rewrite Everything phases and nothing works, for any serious, productive, professional definition of "works", not in Gnome land, not in KDE land, and thanks to the ever-encroaching XDG & friends land, not in fuck-it-i've-done-this-throughout-my-teenage-years-so-blackbox-and-a-bunch-of-xterms-it-is land. It's great, it's the system that gives you the most control over your system, it's the one that doesn't spy on you and doesn't force you to buy overpriced hardware (look, I'm all for good design and thinness and whatnot but Powerbook G4s were a good bang for the buck, despite the funky hinges, not today's MacBook Pros), and I've grown so accustomed to it and so fond of it on a personal level that the thought of leaving it behind is unpleasant, and compensated only by the fact that I'll still be using it at work. But I'm sick of nursing my system back to health after every other dnf update. Gnome 3 looks good and it's great to use, but it's a maintenance nightmare, since virtually everything breaks from one minor version to another. Plasma 5 is a step forward from KDE 4 but it still crashes and Kmail2 is still a nightmare. Mind-boggling bugs pop into existence with each new release. Whenever I show the latest and greatest to someone (this week it was my screen going blank when switching virtual consoles, and if your next question is "why would you switch virtual consoles in 2016", the reason is that gdm was freezing and I wanted to restart it), they shrug and swear they've never seen it before on their system. Unfortunately, this type of thinking is so ingrained in our community (by "our community" I mean "Linux programmers") that I doubt we'll ever devise anything that will stay usable for more than six months. This was all very fun many, many years ago, when I was in high school and I had a lot of free evenings and when, if something suddenly stopped working after an update or crashed or whatnot, my reaction was "whoa, cool, what's causing this" rather than "well, I'll think about how to fix this while I'm making dinner so that I can still have an hour of two to hack on something". This is not only no longer fun, it's not understandable. Fifteen years is a long time. I've been messing around with Windows on an old laptop I have around. Windows 10 is pretty slick (maybe it doesn't seem so impressive to you, but please realize that the last time I used Windows routinely, it was Windows 2000) but the *nix-style usage is too ingrained in my brain by now. However, I'm not really looking forward to having to wrestle with my OS for privacy, nor do I trust Microsoft with my computer-related well-being on a ten-year period -- and, being a programmer, I guess it's understandable that "computer-related well-being" is a pretty big deal to me.
mhomde 10y ago
Microsoft is an underdog in mobile devices. Google is an underdog in tablets/desktop devices. Apple is an underdog when it comes to services. It's like rock/paper/scissors :)
- humanrebar 10y ago
  I don't know where Chromebooks fit in that list, but they're very popular.
  - greedo 10y ago
    Ask a kid who's been issued a Chromebook for school. Everyone I've talked to complains about it being heaving, having a short battery life compared to their other electronics, and being very limited. I know "Chromebook" encompasses a wide array of devices, some with better and worse performance, but they're not a panacea for computing. Most are low performance devices.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      There are good ones and crappy ones, yeah. But they sell very well, especially because they're so affordable, so saying Apple owns mobile and Microsoft owns desktops isn't a complete picture.
- jfoutz 10y ago
  It's really not. Google has 7 billion in cash. Every one of the big 5 could spend a couple billion to win a market. They can't. They are incapable of risking losing billions on an idea. They're not startups anymore. I made a peer comment about google vs Tesla self driving cars that captures the essence. The point is, Google won't sacrifice ad sales to win at tablets. Apple won't sacrifice consumer electronics to win services. None of them are in a do or die situation that startups are in. The big five might see the problem, but they can't make the move. They're structurally incapable of taking the risk.
  - blackoil 10y ago
mtw 10y ago
imho there's stagnation in hardware computing as well as mobile phones. It seems the fastest innovation is either in electric cars (both USA/China) or in machine learning.
illumin8 10y ago
I don't think big, radical, change the world tech ideas are going to come from the same type of technology startups they have come from in the past. It seems like the next generation of big ideas will come from infrastructure-heavy startups like Space X, Tesla/SolarCity, and Bezos' Blue Origin. There will probably be some potential Hyperloop opportunities as well. All of these are huge, expensive undertakings. Making humanity distributed will be expensive and costly, but also transformative. Solving global environmental sustainability with solar power and energy storage, and revolutionizing planetary transport with hyperloop technology will also be hugely transformative. I don't see that happening without spending tons of money on infrastructure.
Unkechaug 10y ago
I would agree with that. A lot of these big companies have been around for a while and rose to power as PCs became prevalent in the average household, or when internet access proliferated and became part of everyday life. The idea that small startups will usurp large companies in nature industries is folly. Examples like Uber aren't valid because fundamentally it's a different kind of company based on technology. A better comparison would be what are the chances that a small startup, competing in the same market as Uber, will take over that industry or change the landscape dramatically? For PCs what we have is what we see right now in terms of companies and choices.

by jfoutz 10y ago

Philipp__ 10y ago

Oh... BeOS. Too bad I was born in mid 90s so I didn't get the chance to play with those systems properly. I read about them, a lot, and it seems amazing what does guys achieved with their system. They were really ahead of the curve in some aspects, but in the others... Oh well, it was OS for nerds and enthusiasts mostly.

okonomiyaki3000 10y ago
Here you go, nerd. https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/
- Philipp__ 10y ago
  I know about this, tried it few years ago, will do it again when I find enough free time to play with it in VM.

SamUK96 10y ago

>No, none of the big 5 are capable anymore. I mostly agree, but seen some of Google's acquisitions and what they're doing now? Boston Dynamics are making some huge strides in robotic motion.

jackvalentine 10y ago
Google are selling Boston Dynamics.
jfoutz 10y ago
There is no question that every one of the big five will advance the state of the art. IMHO, google will create amazing technology around self driving cars, and likely a bunch of other stuff. They don't have the need, the urgency, or the hunger that Tesla has. Ask a google engineer. they'll tell you Tesla is screwing up the market. Tesla is risking the existence of self driving cars ever happening. One big failure means massive lawsuits and regulation. That may be true. But it's clear, Google does not need the win. Google is unwilling to take the risks to make it happen. They're going the Xerox route. And that's completely fine. Google has a lot to lose. They could easily be put in a situation where they have to pay billions, for years. They will get there eventually, they might even win. They're just structurally incapable of risking what Tesla can risk.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Google's entire talent pool for self-driving cars has left. They had basically the original CMU group from the DARPA challenges, but they've since gone.
  - walterbell 10y ago
    Where/why did they go?
    - ocdtrekkie 10y ago
      Sebastian Thrun went to Udacity, where he's started development on an open source self-driving car project (unlike Google's proprietary system), and Chris Urmson seems to have not announced any new projects at this point. I haven't followed details on some of the lesser known entities, but I wouldn't be shocked if they eventually gravitated towards Thrun's project.

notalaser 10y ago

I've been reading all these Mac-related posts lately because I'm very seriously considering getting one. Why, you ask? Precisely because this: > A linux laptop with flawless hardware support. is hardly cutting it for me anymore, and I've used Linux for a very long time (basically, since Be Inc. was still around and BeOS was still being sold, since we're dabbling in nostalgia). You can get a Linux laptop with flawless hardware support right now, really. In fact, I haven't looked over HCLs when buying a Linux laptop for more than five years now. Hardware support is realistically not a problem with Linux anymore. What is a problem is the fact that, once again, we're going through one of those Let's Rewrite Everything phases and nothing works, for any serious, productive, professional definition of "works", not in Gnome land, not in KDE land, and thanks to the ever-encroaching XDG & friends land, not in fuck-it-i've-done-this-throughout-my-teenage-years-so-blackbox-and-a-bunch-of-xterms-it-is land. It's great, it's the system that gives you the most control over your system, it's the one that doesn't spy on you and doesn't force you to buy overpriced hardware (look, I'm all for good design and thinness and whatnot but Powerbook G4s were a good bang for the buck, despite the funky hinges, not today's MacBook Pros), and I've grown so accustomed to it and so fond of it on a personal level that the thought of leaving it behind is unpleasant, and compensated only by the fact that I'll still be using it at work. But I'm sick of nursing my system back to health after every other dnf update. Gnome 3 looks good and it's great to use, but it's a maintenance nightmare, since virtually everything breaks from one minor version to another. Plasma 5 is a step forward from KDE 4 but it still crashes and Kmail2 is still a nightmare. Mind-boggling bugs pop into existence with each new release. Whenever I show the latest and greatest to someone (this week it was my screen going blank when switching virtual consoles, and if your next question is "why would you switch virtual consoles in 2016", the reason is that gdm was freezing and I wanted to restart it), they shrug and swear they've never seen it before on their system. Unfortunately, this type of thinking is so ingrained in our community (by "our community" I mean "Linux programmers") that I doubt we'll ever devise anything that will stay usable for more than six months. This was all very fun many, many years ago, when I was in high school and I had a lot of free evenings and when, if something suddenly stopped working after an update or crashed or whatnot, my reaction was "whoa, cool, what's causing this" rather than "well, I'll think about how to fix this while I'm making dinner so that I can still have an hour of two to hack on something". This is not only no longer fun, it's not understandable. Fifteen years is a long time. I've been messing around with Windows on an old laptop I have around. Windows 10 is pretty slick (maybe it doesn't seem so impressive to you, but please realize that the last time I used Windows routinely, it was Windows 2000) but the *nix-style usage is too ingrained in my brain by now. However, I'm not really looking forward to having to wrestle with my OS for privacy, nor do I trust Microsoft with my computer-related well-being on a ten-year period -- and, being a programmer, I guess it's understandable that "computer-related well-being" is a pretty big deal to me.

mhomde 10y ago

Microsoft is an underdog in mobile devices. Google is an underdog in tablets/desktop devices. Apple is an underdog when it comes to services. It's like rock/paper/scissors :)

humanrebar 10y ago
I don't know where Chromebooks fit in that list, but they're very popular.
- greedo 10y ago
  Ask a kid who's been issued a Chromebook for school. Everyone I've talked to complains about it being heaving, having a short battery life compared to their other electronics, and being very limited. I know "Chromebook" encompasses a wide array of devices, some with better and worse performance, but they're not a panacea for computing. Most are low performance devices.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    There are good ones and crappy ones, yeah. But they sell very well, especially because they're so affordable, so saying Apple owns mobile and Microsoft owns desktops isn't a complete picture.
jfoutz 10y ago
It's really not. Google has 7 billion in cash. Every one of the big 5 could spend a couple billion to win a market. They can't. They are incapable of risking losing billions on an idea. They're not startups anymore. I made a peer comment about google vs Tesla self driving cars that captures the essence. The point is, Google won't sacrifice ad sales to win at tablets. Apple won't sacrifice consumer electronics to win services. None of them are in a do or die situation that startups are in. The big five might see the problem, but they can't make the move. They're structurally incapable of taking the risk.
- blackoil 10y ago

mtw 10y ago

imho there's stagnation in hardware computing as well as mobile phones. It seems the fastest innovation is either in electric cars (both USA/China) or in machine learning.

illumin8 10y ago

I don't think big, radical, change the world tech ideas are going to come from the same type of technology startups they have come from in the past. It seems like the next generation of big ideas will come from infrastructure-heavy startups like Space X, Tesla/SolarCity, and Bezos' Blue Origin. There will probably be some potential Hyperloop opportunities as well. All of these are huge, expensive undertakings. Making humanity distributed will be expensive and costly, but also transformative. Solving global environmental sustainability with solar power and energy storage, and revolutionizing planetary transport with hyperloop technology will also be hugely transformative. I don't see that happening without spending tons of money on infrastructure.

Unkechaug 10y ago

I would agree with that. A lot of these big companies have been around for a while and rose to power as PCs became prevalent in the average household, or when internet access proliferated and became part of everyday life. The idea that small startups will usurp large companies in nature industries is folly. Examples like Uber aren't valid because fundamentally it's a different kind of company based on technology. A better comparison would be what are the chances that a small startup, competing in the same market as Uber, will take over that industry or change the landscape dramatically? For PCs what we have is what we see right now in terms of companies and choices.