12 ms·

Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone, Android

40 points by abrudtkuhl 16y ago

rbanffy 16y ago
This is denial. Next step is anger, then bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. It seems the mobile division is a couple years behind the server software division.
- joshu 16y ago
  Microsoft in second place might actually be a motivated competitor. Could be good...
  - arethuza 16y ago
    I'd have said Microsoft in third place would be quite an achievement.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      I think, considering recent events, such accomplishment would have more to do with the legal department than with the mobile product division and their own accomplishments. In fact, I would consider it a miracle.
      - mahmud 16y ago
        Come on man, it's not like the mobile division has the power to unilaterally chart the course for Microsoft's mobile strategy; with MS, every division is subservient to the rest and they're co-shackled, usually in support of Microsoft's core money makers (Windows and Office.) The mobile division is not just coding for the present and the future, but also the past. If they manage to get half the developer attention that the iPhone gets, I am certain MS will demolish both iPhone and Android because they have a vast developer base to tap into. If they manage to get the distribution right, control handset variety (or at least require minimum specs; a la PC architecture), tame the carriers and open up to developers just a tad, you will see millions of corporate developers installing the mobile plugins for Visual Studio and cranking out apps. But I am afraid it's not in MS' nature to motivate developers, but have always relied on market demand and other people's $$$ to make their shenanigans palatable to developers. If I was in charge, I would assemble a team of 8 - 12 and write a nice .NET/C# cross-compiler/wrapper given to any registered Windows Mobile developer; even remote, hosted cross compiler. Make people write with your tools first, for your primary platform, with the option to target other platforms from the same source. Apple was afraid of this with the 3.3.1 policy: iOS getting wrapped with Win32 API or Android SDK would have been a nightmare for quality on the iOS. The first tool developer to successfully target top N platforms (for N>2) is gonna rake in cash, 3.3.1 permitting.
- nkassis 16y ago
  Would the lawsuit against Motorola be the anger stage?
napierzaza 16y ago
Sounds accurate. They are only hoping now, not longer confident it will happen. They can still dream.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > They can still dream. Shouldn't they ground their goals in reality? I too want a warp-drive and teletransporters, but I am not willing to bet my bonuses on impossible things.
startupcto 16y ago
I don't understand why Microsoft keeps having the mentality of killing their competitors, burying their competitors. It has become a "LET'S BUILD SOMETHING THAT WILL KILL THE <FILL IN THE BLANKS>" instead of "LET"S BUILD SOMETHING THEY WANT". And that's why Google and Apple are innovating and Microsoft is just playing catching up.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  > that's why Google and Apple are innovating and Microsoft is just playing catching up. Has it ever been different? Not Google and Apple, but Microsoft. Has it ever invented something? Even Microsoft's first successful product was a version of a language someone else developed many years before they existed.
  - statictype 16y ago
    Google's first product was a version of a search engine, something that many people had developed multiple versions of years before it existed. Google's second most successful product was a web-based mail service, something that existed about 10 years before their version. Apple's most successful product existed a few decades before they entered the market.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      Google can have credit for building the first search engine and the first webmail that were done right. Their real innovation is not in the end-user side, but under the hood. Just making it work required a couple leaps in understanding how thousands of servers have to be managed. And Apple pretty much invented the personal computer as we know it. Unless Woz is wrong, the Apple I had a very innovative feature: a keyboard.
      - ugh 16y ago
        The innovation game is a very boring game. People always redefine what exactly they mean by “innovate” just so they can blame some company for not innovating. It always works.
ptn 16y ago
Keyword: "hopes"
- rbanffy 16y ago
  They really should go back to their medication...
nixy 16y ago
Off topic: Why do headlines from some sources omit the "and" from sentences? Shouldn't it say "Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone and Android"? It's not like I can say "honey, can you buy some apples, pears, oranges at the store?". I might be wrong, but this is something rather new, right? If so, when and why did it come about?
- DanielN 16y ago
  It's standard form for writing news headlines, by-lines.
  - gmac 16y ago
    ...in the US, but generally not the UK.
- eli 16y ago
  It's just to be concise. I'm pretty sure it's standard AP style.
  - codyrobbins 16y ago
    Specifically, it’s called telegraphese. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphese My guess is that laying a newspaper out on paper is essentially a 2D packing problem—which is an NP-hard optimization problem. I assume removing unnecessary words from headlines when helpful is a good way to give yourself some wiggle room in terms of what goes where.
jfb 16y ago
jfb hopes for a Porsche 918, more than two weeks of sun in San Francisco.
- Eliezer 16y ago
  Microsoft hopes for iPhone and Android burial, pony
  - mahmud 16y ago
    They could bury both with an Android/iOS plugin for Visual Studio. Make WinMo8 SDK a meta-API for mobile development. Wrap the fuck out of Android/iOS and bundle top-notch, win32-only emulators. They have an opportunity to be a wise-elder to the industry, if only they woke up and realized they're no longer the prizefighter, but an elder. With a move like that they can become a reference platform for mobile adoption; first in big business and government, then academia, and once the quality of their Qt-like API improves the game developers will start using it to push the envelope (remember when DirectX was laughed as full-screen GDI, and game developers still used their own hardware abstraction layers, by-passing Win16/32 for the tried and true power of DOS underneath?) [Edit: I must add that they might want to naturalize Symbian refugees. Grab the top 10 ten Symbian app vendors and offer them a migration route to WinMo, next comes J2ME which is effectively dead, thanks to Oracle's unapparent interest in mobile. Backward compatibility is something MS knows best. Take the refugees before they commit mass seppuku and offer them a new home. Take over StackOverflow or launch your own mobile Q&A site to centralize mobile development knowledge and keep it under your watch.]
gamble 16y ago
I'm sure it won't hurt their chances to have burned Verizon on the Kin and sued their key smartphone provider. WP7 is obviously going to be so good that it won't matter that they'll launch as second banana on the two largest networks in the US.
- steverb 16y ago
  I've heard from reliable sources that Verizon will have a W7 phone, but it won't be until early next year. Supposedly has more to do with Verizon's phone system than anything else though.
jfb 16y ago
In all seriousness, if Microsoft can keep their phone software from getting captured the carriers, that would be a good thing in my mind. IMO, it is impossible to overstate the horror of a world run by the wireless carriers, and I'm afraid that Android is merely serving to empower them at the expense of the consumer.
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  True, Microsoft is trying to combine the advantages of iPhone (OS updates straight from OS writer) with the advantages of Android (multiple hardware choices from various companies, carriers). It's just unbelievable that Sony is launching phones running Android 1.6 now which can't be updated by Google directly like it can the Nexus One.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    >It's just unbelievable that Sony is launching phones running Android 1.6 now which can't be updated by Google directly like it can the Nexus One. Did you buy one of those Sony phones? Probably not. In fact that major disadvantage of Sony's entrants is incredibly well known, and has heavily worked against them. Which is exactly how the market is supposed to work. Having said that, it's humorous that Microsoft is now looked to as a good example. For anyone who owned a Windows Mobile device before, there is a long history of Microsoft grunting out a version onto the market, and then abandoning. The amount of support for that Moto Q after it was released was exactly 0, and that wasn't Motorola's fault. Microsoft gets bored quickly.
    - jfb 16y ago
      Obviously, it's too soon to tell which direction WP7 is going to go. Microsoft certainly have form in totally screwing their partners and customers, so skepticism is warranted. And it's not like there aren't sufficient internal problems with the company to scuttle even an excellent product. But more competitors focussed on the customer and not the carrier is a plus in my book. I'm an iOS fan, but I don't want to live in an Apple monoculture.
- 16y ago
steverb 16y ago
I got hands on with a pre-release WP7 phone earlier this week. I think all the "kill Apple" stuff is kind of stupid, but the WP7 phone was really really nice. There were lots of nice features and flourishes, and I can honestly say I liked it a lot better than my wife's iPhone. MS has obviously put a lot of thought and a lot of work in WP7 and it shows. Whether it will survive in the marketplace is a different matter.
dstein 16y ago
Microsoft's mentality reminds me of a recent TedTalk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4 The researcher concludes that when you tell others what you are going to do, that your mind tricks itself into believing that the task has already been achieved, and reduces the incentive to do the hard work to actually achieve it. Thus, when Steve Balmer gushes to the press and says that iPhone is going to get obliterated, it probably reduces the chances of that actually happening.
- chris_l 16y ago
  Interesting. Maybe thats another reason why garage-style startups trump their glamorous colleagues with all the press coverage?
- volida 16y ago
  well, Steve Balmber isn't the one who will actually build the competitive device, and judging from demo videos I'd say Windows Phone 7 as an OS, looks liike a serious competitor for people to build applications for.
- yason 16y ago
  This is so true, works on personal level also. How many of you has boasted to your friends "I'm working on this cool new software, I'll have a beta in few months to show you", and this was already five years ago and you never did release anything? I have. The best itches are kept closed until you have something to release. Then you can maybe tap into that other drive, where having users testing and depending on your software keeps you going.
MaysonL 16y ago
John Gruber (noted Apple fan) recently had an opportunity to play with a prototype Windows Phone 7 phone for 5 minutes. He felt that in many respects the UI/UX was as good as an iPhone, substantially better than Android. Listen at: http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10 http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10 starting about 55:00 7 may be their magic number.
- steverb 16y ago
  Interesting listen, and closely mirrors my own experience. * The UI is very responsive on pre-release hardware. I've been told that the released version will be faster. * The keyboard is very nice. One feature that I noticed is that if you hold down the letter key, you get accented versions of that same key. Makes it much easier to type résumé instead of resume. I can't compare it in over-all usability to other smart phones as I haven't lived day in day out with a smart phone. * The way applications are organized is interesting. Instead of merely having a mongo huge list of apps, apps can also register themselves in app hubs. So applications that manipulate photos will show up under your photos, applications that deal with music show up there, etc. I'm not totally sold on this, but it seems like a good idea. * Development for WP7 in silverlight is shockingly easy. And silverlight on WP7 runs super fast. Actually runs faster on the device than on my beefy desktop in emulator. * There isn't yet an easy way to handle deploying WP7 phones in an enterprise, but I was told that this will be addressed later. There was only so much they could do before this launch though. I'm in the market for a smart phone, and after handling the WP7 phones I am sold. It is better than Android, and in my opinion at least as good as the iPhone.
  - steverb 16y ago
    Just looked at my co-worker's Android phone and its keyboard does the same thing. If you hold down a letter on the screen it will pop up the alternatives.
Mongoose 16y ago
Microsoft: the Nikita Khrushchev of the software industry.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  at least the shoe still worked afterwards
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    What shoe?
    - listic 16y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident
SwaroopH 16y ago
Epic picture. Ballmer doesn't seem his usual comical self. I would say, he's lost hopes of progress, let alone a burial.
jdoliner 16y ago
I wish I could ask Steve Ballmer the following: You just said you missed a generation in the phone market. You also missed a generation in the browser, web services, MP3 player and operating system* markets. How does this keep happening to you guys? I find it impossible to believe that with so many talented engineers no one wants to push the envelope; engineers live to push the envelope. So what exactly is the hangup? Am I wrong that your engineers are hungry? Is your management so unwieldy that no one can get anything done? Did you make innovative things that just didn't catch on? When asked what your plan was for the tablet market (which you haven't missed a generation on yet, but the clock is ticking) you responded simply: "It's called Windows" and laughed. What exactly is the joke here? The absurdity of the idea that Windows could ever fail to dominate a market? Wake the fuck up. Recently you had a QA on reddit regarding your new browser. Your response to almost every question of the form "Why didn't you include feature X?" was "Our market research shows people don't want feature X, we make what people want." Again you're only lying to yourselves and insulting us along the way. We are your users (at least we could be) and we're telling you what we want. What those answers mean to us is that your product is just never going to do what we want it to. Why do the QA with these people when all you're going to do is marginalize the concerns they express. I think I know why you keep slipping up here Steve. You're somehow under the mass delusion that things are still going well. This one less so than the others Vista wasn't a missed generation so much as just not up to snuff. *To be fair this this QA was done in 2 parts first with marketing people then with programmers the prior having much more of this type of response than the latter.
- Lewisham 16y ago
  Everything I've ever read about Microsoft's problems always point the finger at crippling management problems. Each department is out for themselves, not for the good of the company as a whole (see the Kin/WP7 debacle), and yet many departments have says and vetos on those of another (there's a good piece about the Windows Start Menu shutdown behavior somewhere... it indicated all sorts of problems with the kernel team telling the UI team what to do). As soon as the inmates aren't running the asylum, Microsoft does much better. The Entertainment and Devices division and MS has pretty much full autonomy, and they come up with a very popular console line and a unique motion gesture system within two generations, they take a chance on the Zune (particularly the second generation UI... although the Zune didn't sell in the end, they put up a good effort). Microsoft Research does great stuff, and is also completely autonomous. Ray Ozzie was supposed to move Microsoft away from monolithic development, but it requires a full rebuild of Microsoft's structure, which I can only assume Ballmer is stalling.
listic 16y ago
Microsoft's last chance? No way! Microsoft isn't going to run out of money anytime soon; it can buy itself quite a lot of time, enough for several chances. Paul Graham also declared Microsoft dead (http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html) 3.5 years ago. With all reservations made to the meaning of the word "dead" in this fine essay, I can't find the way around some ways in which this is simply wrong. For example, if I want to play a computer game nowadays, I'd better have Windows. The vast majority of games, from indie and experimental through proud little independent companies all the way to established companies - are made for Windows. It's like the only game in town. There's no sign of changing this in sight. Granted, PC game market is a fraction of that of consoles, but in consoles Microsoft established a good foothold too and not giving it up anytime soon. I'm afraid that many technology observers drink too much of some fashionable kool-aid and over-dramatize things. Wherever some company or technology appears that has non-zero chance to potentially displace established company or technology X, they declare it "X killer" or proclaim X dead. I'm afraid I can't fully trust the expertise and reasoning of said people after that. Maybe Microsoft's hopes to bury iPhone and Android are just that, hopes. But declaring it Microsoft's "last chance", even in mobile segment, is no less wishful thinking.
- xiaoma 16y ago
  >For example, if I want to play a computer game nowadays, I'd better have Windows. Try this site: http://www.kongregate.com/ http://www.kongregate.com/
  - listic 16y ago
    Try playing games from this http://www.ludumdare.com/ http://www.ludumdare.com/, http://www.tale-of-tales.com/ http://www.tale-of-tales.com/, this http://www.impulsedriven.com/ http://www.impulsedriven.com/ or this site: http://store.steampowered.com/ http://store.steampowered.com/. That's what I mean. Or, to go with the Kongregate example look at what's hot there: http://www.kongregate.com/games/kupo707/epic-battle-fantasy-3 http://www.kongregate.com/games/kupo707/epic-battle-fantasy-... Humour is fine, but this variety gets old after 5 minutes. And this kind of thing is no substitute of the games it is trying to mock, only supplement. It's not that you cannot play any games on Linux or web. After all, there are fine games like Tux Racer and Quake III and there are really lists like "25 Linux games". But it's like the selection you have is like the menu in prison canteen vs all the world's restraints. Chefs don't come there. All the new and exciting stuff is happening elsewhere.
Yaa101 16y ago
What I find pity-full is that they are trying to bury their competition with litigation instead of a good product, like many other companies out there they are just a law-firm that pretends to sell products.

40 points by abrudtkuhl 16y ago

This is denial. Next step is anger, then bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. It seems the mobile division is a couple years behind the server software division.

joshu 16y ago
Microsoft in second place might actually be a motivated competitor. Could be good...
- arethuza 16y ago
  I'd have said Microsoft in third place would be quite an achievement.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I think, considering recent events, such accomplishment would have more to do with the legal department than with the mobile product division and their own accomplishments. In fact, I would consider it a miracle.
    - mahmud 16y ago
      Come on man, it's not like the mobile division has the power to unilaterally chart the course for Microsoft's mobile strategy; with MS, every division is subservient to the rest and they're co-shackled, usually in support of Microsoft's core money makers (Windows and Office.) The mobile division is not just coding for the present and the future, but also the past. If they manage to get half the developer attention that the iPhone gets, I am certain MS will demolish both iPhone and Android because they have a vast developer base to tap into. If they manage to get the distribution right, control handset variety (or at least require minimum specs; a la PC architecture), tame the carriers and open up to developers just a tad, you will see millions of corporate developers installing the mobile plugins for Visual Studio and cranking out apps. But I am afraid it's not in MS' nature to motivate developers, but have always relied on market demand and other people's $$$ to make their shenanigans palatable to developers. If I was in charge, I would assemble a team of 8 - 12 and write a nice .NET/C# cross-compiler/wrapper given to any registered Windows Mobile developer; even remote, hosted cross compiler. Make people write with your tools first, for your primary platform, with the option to target other platforms from the same source. Apple was afraid of this with the 3.3.1 policy: iOS getting wrapped with Win32 API or Android SDK would have been a nightmare for quality on the iOS. The first tool developer to successfully target top N platforms (for N>2) is gonna rake in cash, 3.3.1 permitting.
nkassis 16y ago
Would the lawsuit against Motorola be the anger stage?

napierzaza 16y ago

Sounds accurate. They are only hoping now, not longer confident it will happen. They can still dream.

rbanffy 16y ago
> They can still dream. Shouldn't they ground their goals in reality? I too want a warp-drive and teletransporters, but I am not willing to bet my bonuses on impossible things.

startupcto 16y ago

I don't understand why Microsoft keeps having the mentality of killing their competitors, burying their competitors. It has become a "LET'S BUILD SOMETHING THAT WILL KILL THE <FILL IN THE BLANKS>" instead of "LET"S BUILD SOMETHING THEY WANT". And that's why Google and Apple are innovating and Microsoft is just playing catching up.

rbanffy 16y ago
> that's why Google and Apple are innovating and Microsoft is just playing catching up. Has it ever been different? Not Google and Apple, but Microsoft. Has it ever invented something? Even Microsoft's first successful product was a version of a language someone else developed many years before they existed.
- statictype 16y ago
  Google's first product was a version of a search engine, something that many people had developed multiple versions of years before it existed. Google's second most successful product was a web-based mail service, something that existed about 10 years before their version. Apple's most successful product existed a few decades before they entered the market.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Google can have credit for building the first search engine and the first webmail that were done right. Their real innovation is not in the end-user side, but under the hood. Just making it work required a couple leaps in understanding how thousands of servers have to be managed. And Apple pretty much invented the personal computer as we know it. Unless Woz is wrong, the Apple I had a very innovative feature: a keyboard.
    - ugh 16y ago
      The innovation game is a very boring game. People always redefine what exactly they mean by “innovate” just so they can blame some company for not innovating. It always works.

ptn 16y ago

Keyword: "hopes"

rbanffy 16y ago
They really should go back to their medication...

nixy 16y ago

Off topic: Why do headlines from some sources omit the "and" from sentences? Shouldn't it say "Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone and Android"? It's not like I can say "honey, can you buy some apples, pears, oranges at the store?". I might be wrong, but this is something rather new, right? If so, when and why did it come about?

DanielN 16y ago
It's standard form for writing news headlines, by-lines.
- gmac 16y ago
  ...in the US, but generally not the UK.
eli 16y ago
It's just to be concise. I'm pretty sure it's standard AP style.
- codyrobbins 16y ago
  Specifically, it’s called telegraphese. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphese http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraphese My guess is that laying a newspaper out on paper is essentially a 2D packing problem—which is an NP-hard optimization problem. I assume removing unnecessary words from headlines when helpful is a good way to give yourself some wiggle room in terms of what goes where.

jfb 16y ago

jfb hopes for a Porsche 918, more than two weeks of sun in San Francisco.

Eliezer 16y ago
Microsoft hopes for iPhone and Android burial, pony
- mahmud 16y ago
  They could bury both with an Android/iOS plugin for Visual Studio. Make WinMo8 SDK a meta-API for mobile development. Wrap the fuck out of Android/iOS and bundle top-notch, win32-only emulators. They have an opportunity to be a wise-elder to the industry, if only they woke up and realized they're no longer the prizefighter, but an elder. With a move like that they can become a reference platform for mobile adoption; first in big business and government, then academia, and once the quality of their Qt-like API improves the game developers will start using it to push the envelope (remember when DirectX was laughed as full-screen GDI, and game developers still used their own hardware abstraction layers, by-passing Win16/32 for the tried and true power of DOS underneath?) [Edit: I must add that they might want to naturalize Symbian refugees. Grab the top 10 ten Symbian app vendors and offer them a migration route to WinMo, next comes J2ME which is effectively dead, thanks to Oracle's unapparent interest in mobile. Backward compatibility is something MS knows best. Take the refugees before they commit mass seppuku and offer them a new home. Take over StackOverflow or launch your own mobile Q&A site to centralize mobile development knowledge and keep it under your watch.]

gamble 16y ago

I'm sure it won't hurt their chances to have burned Verizon on the Kin and sued their key smartphone provider. WP7 is obviously going to be so good that it won't matter that they'll launch as second banana on the two largest networks in the US.

steverb 16y ago
I've heard from reliable sources that Verizon will have a W7 phone, but it won't be until early next year. Supposedly has more to do with Verizon's phone system than anything else though.

jfb 16y ago

In all seriousness, if Microsoft can keep their phone software from getting captured the carriers, that would be a good thing in my mind. IMO, it is impossible to overstate the horror of a world run by the wireless carriers, and I'm afraid that Android is merely serving to empower them at the expense of the consumer.

recoiledsnake 16y ago
True, Microsoft is trying to combine the advantages of iPhone (OS updates straight from OS writer) with the advantages of Android (multiple hardware choices from various companies, carriers). It's just unbelievable that Sony is launching phones running Android 1.6 now which can't be updated by Google directly like it can the Nexus One.
- ergo98 16y ago
  >It's just unbelievable that Sony is launching phones running Android 1.6 now which can't be updated by Google directly like it can the Nexus One. Did you buy one of those Sony phones? Probably not. In fact that major disadvantage of Sony's entrants is incredibly well known, and has heavily worked against them. Which is exactly how the market is supposed to work. Having said that, it's humorous that Microsoft is now looked to as a good example. For anyone who owned a Windows Mobile device before, there is a long history of Microsoft grunting out a version onto the market, and then abandoning. The amount of support for that Moto Q after it was released was exactly 0, and that wasn't Motorola's fault. Microsoft gets bored quickly.
  - jfb 16y ago
    Obviously, it's too soon to tell which direction WP7 is going to go. Microsoft certainly have form in totally screwing their partners and customers, so skepticism is warranted. And it's not like there aren't sufficient internal problems with the company to scuttle even an excellent product. But more competitors focussed on the customer and not the carrier is a plus in my book. I'm an iOS fan, but I don't want to live in an Apple monoculture.
16y ago

steverb 16y ago

I got hands on with a pre-release WP7 phone earlier this week. I think all the "kill Apple" stuff is kind of stupid, but the WP7 phone was really really nice. There were lots of nice features and flourishes, and I can honestly say I liked it a lot better than my wife's iPhone. MS has obviously put a lot of thought and a lot of work in WP7 and it shows. Whether it will survive in the marketplace is a different matter.

dstein 16y ago

Microsoft's mentality reminds me of a recent TedTalk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4 The researcher concludes that when you tell others what you are going to do, that your mind tricks itself into believing that the task has already been achieved, and reduces the incentive to do the hard work to actually achieve it. Thus, when Steve Balmer gushes to the press and says that iPhone is going to get obliterated, it probably reduces the chances of that actually happening.

chris_l 16y ago
Interesting. Maybe thats another reason why garage-style startups trump their glamorous colleagues with all the press coverage?
volida 16y ago
well, Steve Balmber isn't the one who will actually build the competitive device, and judging from demo videos I'd say Windows Phone 7 as an OS, looks liike a serious competitor for people to build applications for.
yason 16y ago
This is so true, works on personal level also. How many of you has boasted to your friends "I'm working on this cool new software, I'll have a beta in few months to show you", and this was already five years ago and you never did release anything? I have. The best itches are kept closed until you have something to release. Then you can maybe tap into that other drive, where having users testing and depending on your software keeps you going.

MaysonL 16y ago

John Gruber (noted Apple fan) recently had an opportunity to play with a prototype Windows Phone 7 phone for 5 minutes. He felt that in many respects the UI/UX was as good as an iPhone, substantially better than Android. Listen at: http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10 http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10 starting about 55:00 7 may be their magic number.

steverb 16y ago
Interesting listen, and closely mirrors my own experience. * The UI is very responsive on pre-release hardware. I've been told that the released version will be faster. * The keyboard is very nice. One feature that I noticed is that if you hold down the letter key, you get accented versions of that same key. Makes it much easier to type résumé instead of resume. I can't compare it in over-all usability to other smart phones as I haven't lived day in day out with a smart phone. * The way applications are organized is interesting. Instead of merely having a mongo huge list of apps, apps can also register themselves in app hubs. So applications that manipulate photos will show up under your photos, applications that deal with music show up there, etc. I'm not totally sold on this, but it seems like a good idea. * Development for WP7 in silverlight is shockingly easy. And silverlight on WP7 runs super fast. Actually runs faster on the device than on my beefy desktop in emulator. * There isn't yet an easy way to handle deploying WP7 phones in an enterprise, but I was told that this will be addressed later. There was only so much they could do before this launch though. I'm in the market for a smart phone, and after handling the WP7 phones I am sold. It is better than Android, and in my opinion at least as good as the iPhone.
- steverb 16y ago
  Just looked at my co-worker's Android phone and its keyboard does the same thing. If you hold down a letter on the screen it will pop up the alternatives.

Mongoose 16y ago

Microsoft: the Nikita Khrushchev of the software industry.

stretchwithme 16y ago
at least the shoe still worked afterwards
- tomjen3 16y ago
  What shoe?
  - listic 16y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident

SwaroopH 16y ago

Epic picture. Ballmer doesn't seem his usual comical self. I would say, he's lost hopes of progress, let alone a burial.

jdoliner 16y ago

I wish I could ask Steve Ballmer the following: You just said you missed a generation in the phone market. You also missed a generation in the browser, web services, MP3 player and operating system* markets. How does this keep happening to you guys? I find it impossible to believe that with so many talented engineers no one wants to push the envelope; engineers live to push the envelope. So what exactly is the hangup? Am I wrong that your engineers are hungry? Is your management so unwieldy that no one can get anything done? Did you make innovative things that just didn't catch on? When asked what your plan was for the tablet market (which you haven't missed a generation on yet, but the clock is ticking) you responded simply: "It's called Windows" and laughed. What exactly is the joke here? The absurdity of the idea that Windows could ever fail to dominate a market? Wake the fuck up. Recently you had a QA on reddit regarding your new browser. Your response to almost every question of the form "Why didn't you include feature X?" was "Our market research shows people don't want feature X, we make what people want." Again you're only lying to yourselves and insulting us along the way. We are your users (at least we could be) and we're telling you what we want. What those answers mean to us is that your product is just never going to do what we want it to. Why do the QA with these people when all you're going to do is marginalize the concerns they express. I think I know why you keep slipping up here Steve. You're somehow under the mass delusion that things are still going well. This one less so than the others Vista wasn't a missed generation so much as just not up to snuff. *To be fair this this QA was done in 2 parts first with marketing people then with programmers the prior having much more of this type of response than the latter.

Lewisham 16y ago
Everything I've ever read about Microsoft's problems always point the finger at crippling management problems. Each department is out for themselves, not for the good of the company as a whole (see the Kin/WP7 debacle), and yet many departments have says and vetos on those of another (there's a good piece about the Windows Start Menu shutdown behavior somewhere... it indicated all sorts of problems with the kernel team telling the UI team what to do). As soon as the inmates aren't running the asylum, Microsoft does much better. The Entertainment and Devices division and MS has pretty much full autonomy, and they come up with a very popular console line and a unique motion gesture system within two generations, they take a chance on the Zune (particularly the second generation UI... although the Zune didn't sell in the end, they put up a good effort). Microsoft Research does great stuff, and is also completely autonomous. Ray Ozzie was supposed to move Microsoft away from monolithic development, but it requires a full rebuild of Microsoft's structure, which I can only assume Ballmer is stalling.

listic 16y ago

Microsoft's last chance? No way! Microsoft isn't going to run out of money anytime soon; it can buy itself quite a lot of time, enough for several chances. Paul Graham also declared Microsoft dead (http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html) 3.5 years ago. With all reservations made to the meaning of the word "dead" in this fine essay, I can't find the way around some ways in which this is simply wrong. For example, if I want to play a computer game nowadays, I'd better have Windows. The vast majority of games, from indie and experimental through proud little independent companies all the way to established companies - are made for Windows. It's like the only game in town. There's no sign of changing this in sight. Granted, PC game market is a fraction of that of consoles, but in consoles Microsoft established a good foothold too and not giving it up anytime soon. I'm afraid that many technology observers drink too much of some fashionable kool-aid and over-dramatize things. Wherever some company or technology appears that has non-zero chance to potentially displace established company or technology X, they declare it "X killer" or proclaim X dead. I'm afraid I can't fully trust the expertise and reasoning of said people after that. Maybe Microsoft's hopes to bury iPhone and Android are just that, hopes. But declaring it Microsoft's "last chance", even in mobile segment, is no less wishful thinking.

xiaoma 16y ago
>For example, if I want to play a computer game nowadays, I'd better have Windows. Try this site: http://www.kongregate.com/ http://www.kongregate.com/
- listic 16y ago
  Try playing games from this http://www.ludumdare.com/ http://www.ludumdare.com/, http://www.tale-of-tales.com/ http://www.tale-of-tales.com/, this http://www.impulsedriven.com/ http://www.impulsedriven.com/ or this site: http://store.steampowered.com/ http://store.steampowered.com/. That's what I mean. Or, to go with the Kongregate example look at what's hot there: http://www.kongregate.com/games/kupo707/epic-battle-fantasy-3 http://www.kongregate.com/games/kupo707/epic-battle-fantasy-... Humour is fine, but this variety gets old after 5 minutes. And this kind of thing is no substitute of the games it is trying to mock, only supplement. It's not that you cannot play any games on Linux or web. After all, there are fine games like Tux Racer and Quake III and there are really lists like "25 Linux games". But it's like the selection you have is like the menu in prison canteen vs all the world's restraints. Chefs don't come there. All the new and exciting stuff is happening elsewhere.

Yaa101 16y ago

What I find pity-full is that they are trying to bury their competition with litigation instead of a good product, like many other companies out there they are just a law-firm that pretends to sell products.