10 ms·

Microsoft’s Monopoly Hangover

149 points by darwhy 9y ago

mark_l_watson 9y ago
I am a big fan of Office 365. We currently have no Windows machines in our home but for macOS and Linux, Office 365 provides great value also. Microsoft 365 is probably a good idea, but Microsoft is missing one consumer product: a great cellphone running Windows and seamlessly working with other Windows devices. Having phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops all seamlessly working together is something that I now insist on. For now, this makes me an Apple customer because iPhone/iPad/MacBook devices work really well together. If Microsoft had a fantastic phone with handoff, they could compete better. (BTW, I briefly owned a Windows 10 laptop a few years ago - bought it just to play with Windows 10. I thought Windows 10 was quite good.)
- bhauer 9y ago
  I would buy a Surface Phone with a fully-realized version of Continuum (ARM + x86 emulation) in a heartbeat.
  - wang_li 9y ago
    I'd love a phone on which the "phone" UI was simply on choice of app but could be docked to an HDMI & USB device, then boot up windows and run windows desktop apps. I'm not too fussed if it is a little slow. Heck, you could even just use the phone's display as a keyboard / touchpad for the windows OS while displaying a desktop on the monitor.
    - xenadu02 9y ago
      You might. Take you, everyone else who might over the next 10 years, then increase by two orders of magnitude and you are still a tiny drop in the bucket that can't possibly compete. Network effects mean there probably won't be another mobile OS any more than there will be another desktop OS to gain traction. There are the two leaders and everyone else is permanently relegated to <1%. BTW: I keep seeing people talk about this hybrid concept but I have yet to see a UI toolkit that trivially scales up and down between phone/desktop. It mostly seems to involve a lot of compromises and a lot of extra work.
      - pmontra 9y ago
        I would be happy to run two different OSes (and maybe 2 different CPUs), the mobile one getting access to the phone screen and the desktop one with access to the monitor, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (or the phone as touchpad). One or more shared directores for file sync (pictures, videos, downloads, etc) The problem is that there is no phone with an i7, 32 GB RAM and 1TB SSD now. That's my laptop. My phone is a sub 5" Xperia X Compact. 3GB, 32 GB storage, a Snapdragon 600 something. Fast but not suited for the job I'm doing on the laptop. Then the battery. It would drain as fast as the one of those old laptops that need to have theirs replaced. We're still not there and I not sure there is a market for that. Maybe we'll get there by inertia once batteries and cycles per Watt will allow it. The direction we are headed now for this use case is the phone CPU driving a smart terminal to a powerful remote computer, with attached monitor and input peripheral. An alternative to docking station: these AR screens and keyboards from the Dennou Coil scifi anime https://mengle.wordpress.com/tag/dennou-coil/ https://mengle.wordpress.com/tag/dennou-coil/ Kind of Google Glasses required.
      - imtringued 9y ago
        >BTW: I keep seeing people talk about this hybrid concept but I have yet to see a UI toolkit that trivially scales up and down between phone/desktop. It mostly seems to involve a lot of compromises and a lot of extra work. Except I don't care about desktopified android/iOS/windows phone apps. All I want is to run my already existing open source desktop linux applications. Chroot on android doesn't have hardware acceleration and you have to use VNC for anything graphical.
    - bhauer 9y ago
      That's precisely what a fully-realized Continuum experience would be. Using the latest Windows on ARM with x86 emulation and the Composable Shell (CShell) [1] would give you a great experience. Note that the Lumia 950 with the current production of Continuum is effectively a technology demo of that model since it doesn't have x86 emulation [2] and therefore can't run the full breadth of Windows applications. That said, Continuum already does use the Phone's display as a keyboard, mouse, or just a second display according to your preference. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNxtMtlrm6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNxtMtlrm6U [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2y1cKh-KXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2y1cKh-KXs
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > a great cellphone running Windows and seamlessly working with other Windows devices. They tried and failed, very little chance they will try another shot at this, their brand is not associated with quality phones and it will be extremely hard to get developers to work on apps because they will believe the platform will be abandoned.
  - mark_l_watson 9y ago
    I think you are right - they would have to fund the development of popular apps themselves, at least for a while. That said, I use few third party apps on my iPhone and iPad (preferring a web browser and mobile apps when possible). But yes, it would be expensive to seed their app store with enough apps for people to get their work done.
    - scopecreep 9y ago
      They have been trying for years. I still have several emails from before I retired offering $250 MS point gift cards or Xbox One consoles just for submitting an app for approval. Still couldn't be bothered.
  - tw04 9y ago
    Once they get the x86 emulation on arm working, the problem goes away. They can start running apps from the windows store. I highly doubt they're done unless Intel follows through on a lawsuit and wins.
    - s73ver 9y ago
      Not really. Mainly because apps designed for desktop suck to use on touchscreens.
      - macintux 9y ago
        Especially 5" (or smaller) touch screens, good grief what a hassle that would be.
  - deleted 9y ago
- mcaravey 9y ago
  I'm still getting insider OS updates on my Lumia phone. Their Build conference this year also had the Windows Phone on a bunch of banners hanging all over the conference, even though no one talked about it. Seems like something is brewing...
- swiley 9y ago
  The office 365 that works on Linux lacks equation typesetting. It's no better than markdown with pandoc (worse in fact, at least with pandoc you can use "$" and have latex do it.)
- benaadams 9y ago
  They are doing it for Android and iPhone > With Build 16251, we are introducing the first set of features that enable “linking” your phone to your PC. This build’s scenario is focused on cross-device web-browsing. Today, we’re asking for you Windows Insiders to help us test this experience out using your Android phones. Support for iPhone is coming very soon, stay tuned. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/26/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-16251-pc-build-15235-mobile/#RZ4kWkWSJYiOKQAH.97 https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/26/annou... Also still updating and advancing Win10 Mobile; though obviously not making any devices.
  - grrowl 9y ago
    I hope they open up all their APIs, then lean on the phone duopoly (iOS and Android) to do the same, enabling cross-OS handoff. Maybe even throw in some accusations of monopoly/duopoly abuse to ironically expedite the features along.
- rb808 9y ago
  > Office 365 provides great value also. I think the cheapest version is $70 a year. I'm still using office 2007 which cost about the same but has lasted 10 years. I dont think this software rental trend is anything about great value.
  - caseysoftware 9y ago
    I think it's different based on the use case. For a document editor or spreadsheet, continuous or even regular updates aren't important as long as it has the base features you need. When you have a CRM that integrates with other systems, an accounting package that has to stay up to date with policies and laws, or even an IDE that can support numerous languages, regular updates are more valuable and in some cases necessary. I used Office 2000 until I decommissioned my last Windows machine (dual boot even then) in 2010/11.
    - hedora 9y ago
      For me, Office and Windows upgrades are just a useless time waster. I'd be happy with Office 2000 if it weren't for the fact that the only thing I use it for is collaboration. As a solution, I just set up a copy of Server 2016 Essentials, set the telemetry mode to "security" (which is easier said than done -- you have to go through an active directory server!) and installed Office 2016 Home + Student on it. The lowest price for that Office SKU is $75 on Amazon at the moment, but normal retail is about twice that. It looks like they support current office releases for about 4 years, so I figure $40/year if I stay on the upgrade train and pay full price. Server 2016 security updates end in 2026, and it retails for $400, so another $40/yr. This all goes in a VM running on a low wattage (already always on) box, so it will hopefully update + reboot itself when I'm not around. Time will tell. Electricity for my physical desktops running windows was $10's per month (windows refused to stay suspended...), and my incremental hardware costs are $0, so this is a lot less expensive than it looks. Plus, this gets rid of the vast majority of the Win 10 spyware in a supported way, and future proofs against most hardware compatibility problems.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    That $70 is effectively a bundle with OneDrive, getting you 1 Tb of cloud storage. If you only need Office, and upgrade rarely, it doesn't make much sense. But seeing how many people pay similar money for Dropbox alone, for example, it can definitely be a great value proposition.
- remir 9y ago
  Microsoft strategy with Windows 10 was to encourage developers to write UWP apps so they could eliminate the app gap in Windows 10 Mobile. Good strategy in theory, but looking at the Windows Store today, it seems like developers are not that interested in UWP and frankly, who can blame them? If you want to write a tablet app, you target the iPad because it's the best product in that category. If you want to write a phone app, you target Android and iOS because that's where the money is today. Is there good money to be made writing UWP at the moment? In my opinion, UWP apps on desktop are inferior to "classic" Windows apps. Windows 10 Mobile is pretty much dead at this point, so what's the point of UWP, what's the true benefit?
  - ralphie02 9y ago
    This is probably where Windows 10S (pushed in education) comes into play. It's a version that offers "secure & superior" performance over normal Win10. Since 10S can only install from the Store app, devs are `forced` to port their app. Only time will tell how effective this strategy is. I for one would love for this to succeed if it means better security for users (especially on older, technologically challenged folks)
    - remir 9y ago
      Well, I don't see how Windows 10S helps push adoption of UWP since you can already distribute Windows Forms, WPF, or Win32 desktop apps on the Store today. At that point, why bother making a UWP app? Also, Edge only have a handful of extensions. If they want to compete against Chrome, they have to do something about that, otherwise people will just use Chromebooks.
      - int_19h 9y ago
        UWP will handle touch-enabled Win10 devices better. And while it's not a segment anywhere near the size of iPad, it's still there, so if you can reach it, why not? The problem is that right now, doing UWP means no Win7 support, and that's a far larger segment - there are twice as many Win7 installs as there are all Win10 installs, and Win10 tablets would be positively minuscule in comparison. So this will change if and when Win10 becomes the dominant Windows desktop OS.
- majormajor 9y ago
  It's hard for me to personally see what I'd gain from Microsoft ecosystem + Microsoft phone over Microsoft ecosystem + iOS/Android apps, since their suite of apps for those platforms are quite good. I have no interest in dockable phones or app handoff or any of that; never saw the point of it when using iOS + OS X, don't miss it now that I'm on Windows/Linux/Android.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    My wife had a Windows phone and reported that the Onedrive/Office support for Android was actually better than on Windows phone. shrug. (Currently dealing with Onedrive sync having self-destructed on her laptop, she is now much less of a Microsoft fan)
- ck425 9y ago
  Personally I'm fan of Google's Office Suite because it works so nicely via web browser, regardless of device type. It makes the device and OS irrelevant.
- snarfy 9y ago
  That kind of misses the point of the article though. > Having phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops all seamlessly working together is something that I now insist on. Yes, this is the problem Microsoft needs to focus on. 'A great cell phone running Windows' solves a problem for Microsoft. It's a self-centric view. Microsoft could make everything run seamlessly if they focused on that, instead of Windows on everything and walled gardens.
urs2102 9y ago
Post monopoly business model reminds me of RIM holding back BBM from iOS and Android devices before Whatsapp and other inter-operating system messaging platforms ate their lunch. Would be interested in seeing companies that similar to IBM as Ben mentions, kept similar assets, but built new business models around them to accommodate a changing marketplace.
- tracker1 9y ago
  Which is a shame really... Blackberry could have been much larger if they'd released a paid app tethered to their services on the backend for Android and iOS, provided the app was at least as good as the BBM experience to their users.
Analemma_ 9y ago
I knew Gerstner pulled off a minor miracle at IBM, but I had no idea that he also basically described AWS years before AWS (see the footnote at the end of the "IBM's cloud miss" section). That's another corporate what-if for the ages; IBM must still be kicking themselves for letting him go.
- foobarian 9y ago
  Occasionally I like to reread the introduction in the Corbato, Vyssotsky Multics paper from 1965. It's amazing how long these kinds of ideas were around. "Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) is a comprehensive, general-purpose programming system which is being developed as a research project. The initial Multics system will be implemented on the GE 645 computer. One of the overall design goals is to create a computing system which is capable of meeting almost all of the present and near-future requirements of a large computer utility. Such systems must run continuously and reliably 7 days a week, 24 hours a day in a way similar to telephone or power systems, and must be capable of meeting wide service demands: from multiple man-machine interaction to the sequential processing of absentee-user jobs; from the use of the system with dedicated languages and subsystems to the programming of the system itself; and from centralized bulk card, tape, and printer facilities to remotely located terminals. Such information processing and communication systems are believed to be essential for the future growth of computer use in business, in industry, in government and in scientific laboratories as well as stimulating applications which would be otherwise undone."
  - macintux 9y ago
    There are some amazing ideas from that era. In 1985 Jim Gray described how to create hardware and software with a MTBF of decades, yet other than the few people using Erlang those ideas have been ignored ever since. http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf
    - hedora 9y ago
      I gotta point out that Jim was roughly one era after Multics. His career ramped up during the mass replacement of navigational databases with relational solutions. Industry and academia were pretty terrible about giving the navigational people credit, or even citing/preserving their work (try getting a copy of a paper from the CODASYL proceedings to see what I mean). Gray strongly disapproved of all that, so I doubt he would want credit for the previous generation's contributions. Anyway, the old hierarchical/navigational/codasyl stuff was mostly forgotten, then reinvented (poorly, at first) as key value stores turned into document databases, etc. Something similar happened with containers, etc. I think the end product of the current generation will surpass the old stuff in most ways, but it is painful to know the history and watch train wrecks of obvious implementation mistakes.
ksk 9y ago
With so many major vendors of professional software switching to the software rental model, I'm hoping for an open source renaissance from the bottom-up.
- edwinnathaniel 9y ago
  I very much doubt it. This is akin to "hoping" that there would be renaissance of of VPS/Dedicated hosting. Open Source typically requires people to manage everything themselves, including update. For those who see IT as cost-center/necessary evil, they want to have as less investment and as short-term as possible.
  - ghthor 9y ago
    OSS lags behind in the UX category because we frankly just don't have UX designers in abundance. Then tend to follow the other UI/US designers.
    - flukus 9y ago
      That may be true in many cases, but I find ubuntu/gnome is way out in front of windows 10 when it comes to UX. Windows 10 is all over the place, every app looks different, some are full screen others aren't. Half the OS is touch friendly but the other half isn't. All sorts of functionality is hidden in slide out menus. If this is the product of UX designers then I'm glad the OSS world doesn't have any.
    - bloaf 9y ago
      I'd say that the OSS UX will always lag in terms of overall polish. But in terms of pushing ideas, they can be ahead of the curve. E.g. gnome 3 (April 2011) did a full screen "start menu" before windows 8 (Aug 2012)
    - cjsuk 9y ago
      I'm not sure this is a major issue. End users are mainly concerned that when they wake up in the morning, lots of stuff hasn't moved. What it looks like and where it is to start with doesn't seem to matter as long as the UI is discoverable to some extent.
shmerl 9y ago
MS culture changed in some ways for the better (their support for Alliance for Open Media is one such example), but in others it remained as bad as it was before (DirectX lock-in, Windows tax and etc.).
duncan_bayne 9y ago
This is exactly why I think monopolies are awful, but at the same time not a concern for legislation. Monopolies only persist in the long term - i.e. exist as _true_ monopolies - when enforced with the force of law.
- ghshephard 9y ago
  ...Excepting of course, Natural Monopolies - which are probably rarer than you might think For example - "Gas" delivery might be considered a natural monopoly - but I know people (in fact, pretty much everyone I know) doesn't care about having a Gas Hookup - they just have someone carry large containers of gas into their kitchen. The things last forever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
  - duncan_bayne 9y ago
    I'm not even sure most of those count. Look at energy distribution as an example - I grew up in New Zealand, the country cited. If the monopolist drives prices too high, that'll just encourage people to abandon the grid for alternatives like microgrids.
    - ghshephard 9y ago
      Right - like I said, even "Natural Monopoly" is less frequent that you might think. Though, in a dense urban area - you don't have a lot of choice over who delivers your power, water, and removes your sewage. Very difficult for competitors to come in and add new distribution lines for each of those in heavily built urban areas (unlike Comms, where lots of ability to add new fiber, new RF, etc...)
DonHopkins 9y ago
Micropoly! https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.micropoly.com:80/micropoly-board-med.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.microp...
- toyg 9y ago
  Wow I'd never seen this. They should have gone a little bit further though (who builds "houses" in IT? Just turn them into "apps", with hotels turning into "servers" maybe).

149 points by darwhy 9y ago

I am a big fan of Office 365. We currently have no Windows machines in our home but for macOS and Linux, Office 365 provides great value also. Microsoft 365 is probably a good idea, but Microsoft is missing one consumer product: a great cellphone running Windows and seamlessly working with other Windows devices. Having phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops all seamlessly working together is something that I now insist on. For now, this makes me an Apple customer because iPhone/iPad/MacBook devices work really well together. If Microsoft had a fantastic phone with handoff, they could compete better. (BTW, I briefly owned a Windows 10 laptop a few years ago - bought it just to play with Windows 10. I thought Windows 10 was quite good.)

bhauer 9y ago
I would buy a Surface Phone with a fully-realized version of Continuum (ARM + x86 emulation) in a heartbeat.
- wang_li 9y ago
  I'd love a phone on which the "phone" UI was simply on choice of app but could be docked to an HDMI & USB device, then boot up windows and run windows desktop apps. I'm not too fussed if it is a little slow. Heck, you could even just use the phone's display as a keyboard / touchpad for the windows OS while displaying a desktop on the monitor.
  - xenadu02 9y ago
    You might. Take you, everyone else who might over the next 10 years, then increase by two orders of magnitude and you are still a tiny drop in the bucket that can't possibly compete. Network effects mean there probably won't be another mobile OS any more than there will be another desktop OS to gain traction. There are the two leaders and everyone else is permanently relegated to <1%. BTW: I keep seeing people talk about this hybrid concept but I have yet to see a UI toolkit that trivially scales up and down between phone/desktop. It mostly seems to involve a lot of compromises and a lot of extra work.
    - pmontra 9y ago
      I would be happy to run two different OSes (and maybe 2 different CPUs), the mobile one getting access to the phone screen and the desktop one with access to the monitor, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse (or the phone as touchpad). One or more shared directores for file sync (pictures, videos, downloads, etc) The problem is that there is no phone with an i7, 32 GB RAM and 1TB SSD now. That's my laptop. My phone is a sub 5" Xperia X Compact. 3GB, 32 GB storage, a Snapdragon 600 something. Fast but not suited for the job I'm doing on the laptop. Then the battery. It would drain as fast as the one of those old laptops that need to have theirs replaced. We're still not there and I not sure there is a market for that. Maybe we'll get there by inertia once batteries and cycles per Watt will allow it. The direction we are headed now for this use case is the phone CPU driving a smart terminal to a powerful remote computer, with attached monitor and input peripheral. An alternative to docking station: these AR screens and keyboards from the Dennou Coil scifi anime https://mengle.wordpress.com/tag/dennou-coil/ https://mengle.wordpress.com/tag/dennou-coil/ Kind of Google Glasses required.
    - imtringued 9y ago
      >BTW: I keep seeing people talk about this hybrid concept but I have yet to see a UI toolkit that trivially scales up and down between phone/desktop. It mostly seems to involve a lot of compromises and a lot of extra work. Except I don't care about desktopified android/iOS/windows phone apps. All I want is to run my already existing open source desktop linux applications. Chroot on android doesn't have hardware acceleration and you have to use VNC for anything graphical.
  - bhauer 9y ago
    That's precisely what a fully-realized Continuum experience would be. Using the latest Windows on ARM with x86 emulation and the Composable Shell (CShell) [1] would give you a great experience. Note that the Lumia 950 with the current production of Continuum is effectively a technology demo of that model since it doesn't have x86 emulation [2] and therefore can't run the full breadth of Windows applications. That said, Continuum already does use the Phone's display as a keyboard, mouse, or just a second display according to your preference. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNxtMtlrm6U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNxtMtlrm6U [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2y1cKh-KXs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2y1cKh-KXs
jacquesm 9y ago
> a great cellphone running Windows and seamlessly working with other Windows devices. They tried and failed, very little chance they will try another shot at this, their brand is not associated with quality phones and it will be extremely hard to get developers to work on apps because they will believe the platform will be abandoned.
- mark_l_watson 9y ago
  I think you are right - they would have to fund the development of popular apps themselves, at least for a while. That said, I use few third party apps on my iPhone and iPad (preferring a web browser and mobile apps when possible). But yes, it would be expensive to seed their app store with enough apps for people to get their work done.
  - scopecreep 9y ago
    They have been trying for years. I still have several emails from before I retired offering $250 MS point gift cards or Xbox One consoles just for submitting an app for approval. Still couldn't be bothered.
- tw04 9y ago
  Once they get the x86 emulation on arm working, the problem goes away. They can start running apps from the windows store. I highly doubt they're done unless Intel follows through on a lawsuit and wins.
  - s73ver 9y ago
    Not really. Mainly because apps designed for desktop suck to use on touchscreens.
    - macintux 9y ago
      Especially 5" (or smaller) touch screens, good grief what a hassle that would be.
- deleted 9y ago
mcaravey 9y ago
I'm still getting insider OS updates on my Lumia phone. Their Build conference this year also had the Windows Phone on a bunch of banners hanging all over the conference, even though no one talked about it. Seems like something is brewing...
swiley 9y ago
The office 365 that works on Linux lacks equation typesetting. It's no better than markdown with pandoc (worse in fact, at least with pandoc you can use "$" and have latex do it.)
benaadams 9y ago
They are doing it for Android and iPhone > With Build 16251, we are introducing the first set of features that enable “linking” your phone to your PC. This build’s scenario is focused on cross-device web-browsing. Today, we’re asking for you Windows Insiders to help us test this experience out using your Android phones. Support for iPhone is coming very soon, stay tuned. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/26/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-16251-pc-build-15235-mobile/#RZ4kWkWSJYiOKQAH.97 https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/26/annou... Also still updating and advancing Win10 Mobile; though obviously not making any devices.
- grrowl 9y ago
  I hope they open up all their APIs, then lean on the phone duopoly (iOS and Android) to do the same, enabling cross-OS handoff. Maybe even throw in some accusations of monopoly/duopoly abuse to ironically expedite the features along.
rb808 9y ago
> Office 365 provides great value also. I think the cheapest version is $70 a year. I'm still using office 2007 which cost about the same but has lasted 10 years. I dont think this software rental trend is anything about great value.
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  I think it's different based on the use case. For a document editor or spreadsheet, continuous or even regular updates aren't important as long as it has the base features you need. When you have a CRM that integrates with other systems, an accounting package that has to stay up to date with policies and laws, or even an IDE that can support numerous languages, regular updates are more valuable and in some cases necessary. I used Office 2000 until I decommissioned my last Windows machine (dual boot even then) in 2010/11.
  - hedora 9y ago
    For me, Office and Windows upgrades are just a useless time waster. I'd be happy with Office 2000 if it weren't for the fact that the only thing I use it for is collaboration. As a solution, I just set up a copy of Server 2016 Essentials, set the telemetry mode to "security" (which is easier said than done -- you have to go through an active directory server!) and installed Office 2016 Home + Student on it. The lowest price for that Office SKU is $75 on Amazon at the moment, but normal retail is about twice that. It looks like they support current office releases for about 4 years, so I figure $40/year if I stay on the upgrade train and pay full price. Server 2016 security updates end in 2026, and it retails for $400, so another $40/yr. This all goes in a VM running on a low wattage (already always on) box, so it will hopefully update + reboot itself when I'm not around. Time will tell. Electricity for my physical desktops running windows was $10's per month (windows refused to stay suspended...), and my incremental hardware costs are $0, so this is a lot less expensive than it looks. Plus, this gets rid of the vast majority of the Win 10 spyware in a supported way, and future proofs against most hardware compatibility problems.
- int_19h 9y ago
  That $70 is effectively a bundle with OneDrive, getting you 1 Tb of cloud storage. If you only need Office, and upgrade rarely, it doesn't make much sense. But seeing how many people pay similar money for Dropbox alone, for example, it can definitely be a great value proposition.
remir 9y ago
Microsoft strategy with Windows 10 was to encourage developers to write UWP apps so they could eliminate the app gap in Windows 10 Mobile. Good strategy in theory, but looking at the Windows Store today, it seems like developers are not that interested in UWP and frankly, who can blame them? If you want to write a tablet app, you target the iPad because it's the best product in that category. If you want to write a phone app, you target Android and iOS because that's where the money is today. Is there good money to be made writing UWP at the moment? In my opinion, UWP apps on desktop are inferior to "classic" Windows apps. Windows 10 Mobile is pretty much dead at this point, so what's the point of UWP, what's the true benefit?
- ralphie02 9y ago
  This is probably where Windows 10S (pushed in education) comes into play. It's a version that offers "secure & superior" performance over normal Win10. Since 10S can only install from the Store app, devs are `forced` to port their app. Only time will tell how effective this strategy is. I for one would love for this to succeed if it means better security for users (especially on older, technologically challenged folks)
  - remir 9y ago
    Well, I don't see how Windows 10S helps push adoption of UWP since you can already distribute Windows Forms, WPF, or Win32 desktop apps on the Store today. At that point, why bother making a UWP app? Also, Edge only have a handful of extensions. If they want to compete against Chrome, they have to do something about that, otherwise people will just use Chromebooks.
    - int_19h 9y ago
      UWP will handle touch-enabled Win10 devices better. And while it's not a segment anywhere near the size of iPad, it's still there, so if you can reach it, why not? The problem is that right now, doing UWP means no Win7 support, and that's a far larger segment - there are twice as many Win7 installs as there are all Win10 installs, and Win10 tablets would be positively minuscule in comparison. So this will change if and when Win10 becomes the dominant Windows desktop OS.
majormajor 9y ago
It's hard for me to personally see what I'd gain from Microsoft ecosystem + Microsoft phone over Microsoft ecosystem + iOS/Android apps, since their suite of apps for those platforms are quite good. I have no interest in dockable phones or app handoff or any of that; never saw the point of it when using iOS + OS X, don't miss it now that I'm on Windows/Linux/Android.
- pjc50 9y ago
  My wife had a Windows phone and reported that the Onedrive/Office support for Android was actually better than on Windows phone. shrug. (Currently dealing with Onedrive sync having self-destructed on her laptop, she is now much less of a Microsoft fan)
ck425 9y ago
Personally I'm fan of Google's Office Suite because it works so nicely via web browser, regardless of device type. It makes the device and OS irrelevant.
snarfy 9y ago
That kind of misses the point of the article though. > Having phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops all seamlessly working together is something that I now insist on. Yes, this is the problem Microsoft needs to focus on. 'A great cell phone running Windows' solves a problem for Microsoft. It's a self-centric view. Microsoft could make everything run seamlessly if they focused on that, instead of Windows on everything and walled gardens.

urs2102 9y ago

Post monopoly business model reminds me of RIM holding back BBM from iOS and Android devices before Whatsapp and other inter-operating system messaging platforms ate their lunch. Would be interested in seeing companies that similar to IBM as Ben mentions, kept similar assets, but built new business models around them to accommodate a changing marketplace.

tracker1 9y ago
Which is a shame really... Blackberry could have been much larger if they'd released a paid app tethered to their services on the backend for Android and iOS, provided the app was at least as good as the BBM experience to their users.

Analemma_ 9y ago

I knew Gerstner pulled off a minor miracle at IBM, but I had no idea that he also basically described AWS years before AWS (see the footnote at the end of the "IBM's cloud miss" section). That's another corporate what-if for the ages; IBM must still be kicking themselves for letting him go.

foobarian 9y ago
Occasionally I like to reread the introduction in the Corbato, Vyssotsky Multics paper from 1965. It's amazing how long these kinds of ideas were around. "Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) is a comprehensive, general-purpose programming system which is being developed as a research project. The initial Multics system will be implemented on the GE 645 computer. One of the overall design goals is to create a computing system which is capable of meeting almost all of the present and near-future requirements of a large computer utility. Such systems must run continuously and reliably 7 days a week, 24 hours a day in a way similar to telephone or power systems, and must be capable of meeting wide service demands: from multiple man-machine interaction to the sequential processing of absentee-user jobs; from the use of the system with dedicated languages and subsystems to the programming of the system itself; and from centralized bulk card, tape, and printer facilities to remotely located terminals. Such information processing and communication systems are believed to be essential for the future growth of computer use in business, in industry, in government and in scientific laboratories as well as stimulating applications which would be otherwise undone."
- macintux 9y ago
  There are some amazing ideas from that era. In 1985 Jim Gray described how to create hardware and software with a MTBF of decades, yet other than the few people using Erlang those ideas have been ignored ever since. http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf
  - hedora 9y ago
    I gotta point out that Jim was roughly one era after Multics. His career ramped up during the mass replacement of navigational databases with relational solutions. Industry and academia were pretty terrible about giving the navigational people credit, or even citing/preserving their work (try getting a copy of a paper from the CODASYL proceedings to see what I mean). Gray strongly disapproved of all that, so I doubt he would want credit for the previous generation's contributions. Anyway, the old hierarchical/navigational/codasyl stuff was mostly forgotten, then reinvented (poorly, at first) as key value stores turned into document databases, etc. Something similar happened with containers, etc. I think the end product of the current generation will surpass the old stuff in most ways, but it is painful to know the history and watch train wrecks of obvious implementation mistakes.

ksk 9y ago

With so many major vendors of professional software switching to the software rental model, I'm hoping for an open source renaissance from the bottom-up.

edwinnathaniel 9y ago
I very much doubt it. This is akin to "hoping" that there would be renaissance of of VPS/Dedicated hosting. Open Source typically requires people to manage everything themselves, including update. For those who see IT as cost-center/necessary evil, they want to have as less investment and as short-term as possible.
- ghthor 9y ago
  OSS lags behind in the UX category because we frankly just don't have UX designers in abundance. Then tend to follow the other UI/US designers.
  - flukus 9y ago
    That may be true in many cases, but I find ubuntu/gnome is way out in front of windows 10 when it comes to UX. Windows 10 is all over the place, every app looks different, some are full screen others aren't. Half the OS is touch friendly but the other half isn't. All sorts of functionality is hidden in slide out menus. If this is the product of UX designers then I'm glad the OSS world doesn't have any.
  - bloaf 9y ago
    I'd say that the OSS UX will always lag in terms of overall polish. But in terms of pushing ideas, they can be ahead of the curve. E.g. gnome 3 (April 2011) did a full screen "start menu" before windows 8 (Aug 2012)
  - cjsuk 9y ago
    I'm not sure this is a major issue. End users are mainly concerned that when they wake up in the morning, lots of stuff hasn't moved. What it looks like and where it is to start with doesn't seem to matter as long as the UI is discoverable to some extent.

shmerl 9y ago

MS culture changed in some ways for the better (their support for Alliance for Open Media is one such example), but in others it remained as bad as it was before (DirectX lock-in, Windows tax and etc.).

duncan_bayne 9y ago

This is exactly why I think monopolies are awful, but at the same time not a concern for legislation. Monopolies only persist in the long term - i.e. exist as _true_ monopolies - when enforced with the force of law.

ghshephard 9y ago
...Excepting of course, Natural Monopolies - which are probably rarer than you might think For example - "Gas" delivery might be considered a natural monopoly - but I know people (in fact, pretty much everyone I know) doesn't care about having a Gas Hookup - they just have someone carry large containers of gas into their kitchen. The things last forever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  I'm not even sure most of those count. Look at energy distribution as an example - I grew up in New Zealand, the country cited. If the monopolist drives prices too high, that'll just encourage people to abandon the grid for alternatives like microgrids.
  - ghshephard 9y ago
    Right - like I said, even "Natural Monopoly" is less frequent that you might think. Though, in a dense urban area - you don't have a lot of choice over who delivers your power, water, and removes your sewage. Very difficult for competitors to come in and add new distribution lines for each of those in heavily built urban areas (unlike Comms, where lots of ability to add new fiber, new RF, etc...)

DonHopkins 9y ago

Micropoly! https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.micropoly.com:80/micropoly-board-med.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.microp...

toyg 9y ago
Wow I'd never seen this. They should have gone a little bit further though (who builds "houses" in IT? Just turn them into "apps", with hotels turning into "servers" maybe).