4 ms·

Microsoft has a vision, it just had problems executing on it. Those who paid attention knew of what was coming these years because of their infamous 10 year vis

Microsoft has a vision, it just had problems executing on it. Those who paid attention knew of what was coming these years because of their infamous 10 year vision and interim video releases they had. Terrible at execution and I hope this guy can help that.

samfisher83 10y ago
I think Bill Gates achieved his vision which was put a computer on every persons desk running his OS. Its still a highly profitable company with pretty much a monopoly on desktops.
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  While that's nice, that's not saying Microsoft succeeded since the early 90s.
Arizhel 10y ago
I don't, I hope they fall flat on their face. Microsoft's visions are always horrible dystopian nightmares.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I would have played along if you had said "Microsoft's visions are always disappointingly clunky and 3 years too late". What is the horrible dystopian nightmare?
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    Well basically everything running MS-ware. Sounds like a nightmare scenario to me, much like GM's vision of the future where everyone is driving a GM car, or Comcast's vision where everyone uses Comcast service and cord-cutters don't exist. Throw the Windows 10 UI on top of that, add in Windows phones and tablets, and it's a really bad nightmare.
    - alex_anglin 10y ago
      ...and yet Office runs just fine on my mac, iOS and Android devices. SQL Server is getting a lot of press for their Linux support - and so on. Ultimately, they seem to be much more pragmatic under Satyas leadership and that seems to be reflecting on them well. They are a fierce competitor in a variety of domains and are ultimately accountable to the market.I say all of this as someone who has distinctly not been a MS fan over the past two decades.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        Agreed, I've been really happy (Win10 privacy issues aside) with the direction under Sataya than Balmer/Gates... DevDiv is a shining example of cooperative open-source in a lot of ways today. And beyond that, Azure services have been pretty nice to use (if a bit on the pricey side). I'm actually looking at C# via .Net Core again, something I'd been moving away from for about 6 years now. Although that transition has been pretty confusing in a lot of ways. Looks like .Net core 2.x will be pretty ready when it ships, and 1.x is at least usable. Still leaps and bounds better than Java imho. The services surrounding Office 365 have been pretty compelling, and well priced around their competition, it will be interesting to say the least.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      a dystopian nightmare is having a dominant vendor in the personal computer ecosystem?
      - Arizhel 10y ago
        When their products are utter crap, and there's much better freely-available solutions available, yes. How exactly is it good to have a rent-seeking corporation in control of everyone's computing infrastructure?
DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
Microsoft's vision since attaining Bill Gates' "A computer on every desk..." has been this vague pen-computing drive that just won't seem to die. The latest iteration on his is the much-hyped and never-used ink notes feature in Edge Browser (deemed more important than Chrome-compatible extensions) and the otherwise outstanding Surface Studio desktop computer. If I was a C-level at MS I'd push for "A computer in every palm, running Microsoft software" - they failed with Windows Phone but succeeded with Office 365 apps for iOS and Android. I would swallow MS' pride and release a custom Android-based OS and encourage OEMs to adopt it with favourable terms compared to Google Play's. I think that would sustain the company until the next big thing. Oh, and research in self-driving cars. Everyone else is doing it ffs! (And "Make the Windows Desktop Developer Experience Great Again(tm)!")
- supernovae 10y ago
  The "Ink" stuff in Windows 10 is part of the next update inked (har har har) "Creators Update" - its meant for enhancing the digital creator, publisher, writer and digital note taker with tools that make it stupid easy to use a pen to draw, note, clip, cut, trace, diagram.. It's been growing into edge - and I use it ALL the time to grab snippets from books on safarbooksonline and with ePubs coming to Edge and an ebook store, my use case gets even better. My wife uses pen for photoshop and adult coloring.. so different strokes for different folks. As for chrome extensions.. MS makes it absurdly easy to port them: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/documentation/extensions/guides/porting-chrome-extensions/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor... Regarding mobile devices, WIndows 10 is "Universal".. I don't know what the big delay is as a fan of the products - seems mostly developers obsessed with Apple really than MS not having a product and the last thing that MS needs to do is spread itself into ANOTHER OS - they already provide a robust "launcher" for android to bring in MS ecosystem. It's google that is generally playing hardball here and the world would be a better place if GOOGLE worked with MS and brought its ecosystem on par. I mean, it really sucks to enjoy to use edge and have google telling you on every one of their websites to switch to chrome with popups, sliders, notifications, alerts, text boxes and all sorts of crap making the experience suck.. as for self driving cars? its just an extension of the ecosystem.. i'm curious why you want MS in your pocket but not in your car and lastly for Dev stuff.. MS owns that shit. The Windows Developer experience is a superb story and now with all their cross platform stuff you may just not be paying much attention.. MS development tools do Linux, Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, ARM & more.. also, edge extensions are generally chrome compatible.. (why doesn't google make their shit work with edge? or even win10?? eh eh? :) https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/documentation/extensions/guides/porting-chrome-extensions/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor... BTW, I think the compute in every palm is already saturated to a degree and MS is doing long tail here but who knows.

samfisher83 10y ago

I think Bill Gates achieved his vision which was put a computer on every persons desk running his OS. Its still a highly profitable company with pretty much a monopoly on desktops.

throwaway91111 10y ago
While that's nice, that's not saying Microsoft succeeded since the early 90s.

Arizhel 10y ago

I don't, I hope they fall flat on their face. Microsoft's visions are always horrible dystopian nightmares.

metaphorm 10y ago
I would have played along if you had said "Microsoft's visions are always disappointingly clunky and 3 years too late". What is the horrible dystopian nightmare?
- Arizhel 10y ago
  Well basically everything running MS-ware. Sounds like a nightmare scenario to me, much like GM's vision of the future where everyone is driving a GM car, or Comcast's vision where everyone uses Comcast service and cord-cutters don't exist. Throw the Windows 10 UI on top of that, add in Windows phones and tablets, and it's a really bad nightmare.
  - alex_anglin 10y ago
    ...and yet Office runs just fine on my mac, iOS and Android devices. SQL Server is getting a lot of press for their Linux support - and so on. Ultimately, they seem to be much more pragmatic under Satyas leadership and that seems to be reflecting on them well. They are a fierce competitor in a variety of domains and are ultimately accountable to the market.I say all of this as someone who has distinctly not been a MS fan over the past two decades.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Agreed, I've been really happy (Win10 privacy issues aside) with the direction under Sataya than Balmer/Gates... DevDiv is a shining example of cooperative open-source in a lot of ways today. And beyond that, Azure services have been pretty nice to use (if a bit on the pricey side). I'm actually looking at C# via .Net Core again, something I'd been moving away from for about 6 years now. Although that transition has been pretty confusing in a lot of ways. Looks like .Net core 2.x will be pretty ready when it ships, and 1.x is at least usable. Still leaps and bounds better than Java imho. The services surrounding Office 365 have been pretty compelling, and well priced around their competition, it will be interesting to say the least.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    a dystopian nightmare is having a dominant vendor in the personal computer ecosystem?
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      When their products are utter crap, and there's much better freely-available solutions available, yes. How exactly is it good to have a rent-seeking corporation in control of everyone's computing infrastructure?

DaiPlusPlus 10y ago

Microsoft's vision since attaining Bill Gates' "A computer on every desk..." has been this vague pen-computing drive that just won't seem to die. The latest iteration on his is the much-hyped and never-used ink notes feature in Edge Browser (deemed more important than Chrome-compatible extensions) and the otherwise outstanding Surface Studio desktop computer. If I was a C-level at MS I'd push for "A computer in every palm, running Microsoft software" - they failed with Windows Phone but succeeded with Office 365 apps for iOS and Android. I would swallow MS' pride and release a custom Android-based OS and encourage OEMs to adopt it with favourable terms compared to Google Play's. I think that would sustain the company until the next big thing. Oh, and research in self-driving cars. Everyone else is doing it ffs! (And "Make the Windows Desktop Developer Experience Great Again(tm)!")

supernovae 10y ago
The "Ink" stuff in Windows 10 is part of the next update inked (har har har) "Creators Update" - its meant for enhancing the digital creator, publisher, writer and digital note taker with tools that make it stupid easy to use a pen to draw, note, clip, cut, trace, diagram.. It's been growing into edge - and I use it ALL the time to grab snippets from books on safarbooksonline and with ePubs coming to Edge and an ebook store, my use case gets even better. My wife uses pen for photoshop and adult coloring.. so different strokes for different folks. As for chrome extensions.. MS makes it absurdly easy to port them: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/documentation/extensions/guides/porting-chrome-extensions/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor... Regarding mobile devices, WIndows 10 is "Universal".. I don't know what the big delay is as a fan of the products - seems mostly developers obsessed with Apple really than MS not having a product and the last thing that MS needs to do is spread itself into ANOTHER OS - they already provide a robust "launcher" for android to bring in MS ecosystem. It's google that is generally playing hardball here and the world would be a better place if GOOGLE worked with MS and brought its ecosystem on par. I mean, it really sucks to enjoy to use edge and have google telling you on every one of their websites to switch to chrome with popups, sliders, notifications, alerts, text boxes and all sorts of crap making the experience suck.. as for self driving cars? its just an extension of the ecosystem.. i'm curious why you want MS in your pocket but not in your car and lastly for Dev stuff.. MS owns that shit. The Windows Developer experience is a superb story and now with all their cross platform stuff you may just not be paying much attention.. MS development tools do Linux, Windows, OSX, Android, iOS, ARM & more.. also, edge extensions are generally chrome compatible.. (why doesn't google make their shit work with edge? or even win10?? eh eh? :) https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/documentation/extensions/guides/porting-chrome-extensions/ https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platfor... BTW, I think the compute in every palm is already saturated to a degree and MS is doing long tail here but who knows.