4 ms·
> The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done. The last time they did so was when Allen and Gates decided there must be a m
by wazoox 16y ago
> The best thing Microsoft could do is to innovate and do something no one's done.
The last time they did so was when Allen and Gates decided there must be a market for BASIC on Altair and microcomputers in general. Maybe Traf-o-matic was an innovation, too. However none of their significant products afterwards was anything new :
* common programming languages for different systems
* MS-DOS, built from a borrowed clone of CP/M
* Xenix, an AT&T licensed Unix
* Windows, a pale copy of existing GUIs of the time
* Word, a Wordstar rip-off
* Multiplan, a VisiCalc rip-off
* Excel, a Lotus 1-2-3 rip-off
<snip some years>
* C# and .Net, an enhanced java
The list goes on and on. I really can't see any innovating product ever coming from Microsoft (there are excellent products, but these are incremental enhancements). Apple, on the contrary, has a long history of earth-shaking innovations (brought to the masses the personal computer, the GUI, the graphic printer, the IDE, the mp3 player, the touchscreen devices...) . It's simply not comparable.
- GiraffeNecktie 16y agoActually they have done one excellent innovative product. It's called OneNote and it's the only reason I keep a Windows partition on my laptop. I take lots of meeting minutes and the ability to record audio that is in sync with my typing is a killer feature. Damn, I wish someone would do that in Linux (this feature doesn't work in Wine).
- wazoox 16y agoInteresting. Any pointer about this, a demonstration perhaps? Would it work as a web app?
- arethuza 16y agoOnly if you can work out a really slick way to take screenshots from a web application.
- epochwolf 16y agoActiveX! (If it can hijack a computer, it can surely take a screenshot)
- sp332 16y agoHere's a screencast demo http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote-help/demo-what-is-onenote-HA010168634.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote-help/demo-what-is-... and a downloadable demo http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/try-office-2010-FX101868838.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/try/try-office-2010-FX1018... ETA the downloadable demo is really cool. You can run the demo before it's done installing and it will download the rest of the program in the background, prioritizing features you're trying to use. Sweet!
- wazoox 16y agoWell last time I ran windows it was win98SE, you know :) I'll go with the screencast instead.
- Elepsis 16y agoMicrosoft recently did release a OneNote Web App: http://office.live.com http://office.live.com (full disclosure: I work on some of this.)
- MaysonL 16y agoGet a livescribe pen http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ and get rid of that Windows partition. :)
- GiraffeNecktie 16y agoLooks like an interesting gadget but I'm not sure that it really works for me. My handwriting is shite and my typing, while not always accurate, is pretty fast. I like the relative portability though.
- joezydeco 16y agoComic Chat. We wouldn't have Jerkcity without it. (Tangentially, we also got the Comic Sans font about the same time, so I guess that cancels out the good stuff.)
- geon 16y agoThe GUI was created by Xerox. The first commercial portable mp3 player I saw was a Rio, 3 years before the iPod.