10 ms·

I firmly believe that most of Microsoft's failings in the consumer market come from their fear of the World Wide Web. Microsoft does everything they can to hide

by cryptoz 16y ago

I firmly believe that most of Microsoft's failings in the consumer market come from their fear of the World Wide Web. Microsoft does everything they can to hide their users from the real power of the web, since everyone - including Microsoft - knows that a ubiquitous Web means fewer sales of Windows and Office. Their logic in locking users to Windows-based experiences is old, tired, and not going to work anymore. People like the Web. And right now, you can't have a modern Web experience using only Microsoft products: no HTML5, slow JavaScript and a terrible, terrible browser experience. If Microsoft wants to become relevant again, they must give their users the best experience on the Web they can. Also, note that Windows Phone 7 ships with a modified IE7: what garbage is this? The phone will fail because it will suck at the Web.

contentvoid 16y ago
I'm more inclined to think the phone will fail for the same reasons the Zune did, too little too late. But then the media player market was much broader and more saturated in 2006 than the smartphone market is now so maybe it won't play out in the same way...
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  The worst mistake they could make is to kill it the way they killed the Zune. They're never going to launch a day one, version one product which will displace the iPhone or Android, it's going to take time and investment. The real target should be that they've got 25%+ market share in three years time. That should be what they're aiming for rather than a success this year. People replace phones every 12 - 24 months and that's rapid even in tech (most people don't replace laptops that often). Every expired contract is a new potential customer for Microsoft and that churn means that no-one can take their position for granted so it's realistic for MS to make solid inroads over time.
  - contextfree 16y ago
    They didn't kill the Zune. WP7 is basically a superset of Zune - same service for music/video, same client software, (evolution/derivative of the) same UI. There're rumored to be phoneless WP7s in the works too.
    - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
      Fair enough, kill was probably the wrong word but they seemed to lose interest in the Zune as it's own entity. But it was actually a pretty good and if they'd stuck at it I get the impression it could have done better than it did. Perhaps it will revive with WP7 (though I see the software is still under development which is good).
  - contentvoid 16y ago
    As pointed out the Zune lives on but I think it'd be difficult to argue it really made a substantive splash in the market despite arguably being a superior device as well as having the (imho) very strong Zune Pass subscription service. We're four years in and I can count on one hand how many people I've known that owned a Zune. There are parallels with WP7 launch but the stakes are much higher this time around because the relevance of the desktop is waning for general consumer use and Microsoft needs something to replace it. WP7 is an inflection point, if it fails I think you'll see Microsoft go roughly down the same path IBM has as far as consumer relevance (unless perhaps they turn Xbox Live into a OnLive-esque games as service thing, which they are in a better position than Sony or Nintendo to do).
points 16y ago
Agree. The fact the xBox gaming console has the power of a supercomputer, as evident from its fans and overheating problems, but doesn't even have a simple webbrowser is all the evidence we need. MS has never understood or indeed wanted the www to happen. They were able to hold back www development for 5 years+ with their IE6 shenanigans, but the cats out of the bag now.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
  Really? The XBox uses the web in the best way possible for a games console - on-line gaming. Maybe it's just me but I find a console a rubbish browsing platform - I've got browsers on my PS3, PSP and Wii and never use them. It is possible that Microsoft just don't have a browser in the 360 because it's not a great place to put a browser. Microsoft own Hotmail, they've ported Office on-line, XBox supports on-line gaming, they make what is still the most popular single browser (which is under very active development), they produce web servers and a massive range of developer tools for the web from Visual Studio to Silverlight, they're working their arse off to get back into the mobile web market. If they're not into the web they're doing their best to hide it with their actions and investments. They were, by their own admission, slow to get to it but I don't think that's a valid criticism now. Now they're just all over the place but that's different to being anti.
  - Xuzz 16y ago
    The Internet is not the web. Native games with Internet multiplayer aren't the web, they are the Internet. I don't know a single person using the online Office versions, because, well, they don't compare to the desktop ones. Yesterday, I saw a graph showing Hotmail losing about 10% market share, mostly to Gmail. Their new Xbox website broke every existing link on the domain. Mocrosoft does not get the web, even if they might get the internet.
    - Timmy_C 16y ago
      The sites built for marketing Microsoft products are often outsourced. So the fact that the new Xbox website was broken in any regard is the fault of a poor marketing manager and not a poor Microsoft developer.
alanthonyc 16y ago
They're also scared of phones. Check out their Phone 7 commercials. They appear to be catering to people who think people with phones are douchebags who walk around staring at their screen all day. I'm not sure how well this marketing strategy will work, because I am one of those douchebags, but it doesn't make me want to get one.
- recoiledsnake 16y ago
  The message I got from the ad is that Windows Phone 7 would allow you to see if you had any updates on the homescreen itself, obviating the need for fiddling with the phone for a long time to access the same information.
  - aboodman 16y ago
    That is the fundamental and sad misunderstanding of this ad. People don't fiddle with their phones while walking because the phones are hard to use. They fiddle because the phone is fun and addicting. There's no desire for a phone that lets you get in and out quickly. On the contrary. If they could come up with a phone that lets you be online all the time without walking into things, they'd have a huge winner.
    - tpz 16y ago
      For some reason I find myself reminded of the whole RIM Playbook "coping with family" faux pas. It is almost as if WP7 were being promoted on the basis of selecting a phone based on wanting to avoid something: in the WP7 case, avoiding using the phone, in the Playbook case, avoiding your family. Both show a disconnect with reality and neither bode particularly well for the companies involved.
  - jk8 16y ago
    Disclaimer: I am saying this without holding the actual device and without seeing a video. Everyone, seems to think that we will be able to see updates on the home screen itself, which I don't think will work. For example email: What will I see on the homescreen? who sent the email, when it was sent? will I see a brief message on the screen? How much information will I see in a tiny box/slice/tile. I don't think I will be able to see a lot of it. Twitter: I think, I will be able to see the last tweet. A little helpful. Facebook updates: I think it would work same as twitter. The user has to launch an app to get the complete information. I think its bad if MS tries to make the phone into a taskbar notification system.
sprout 16y ago
I stopped reading the article after they wrote that the browser is almost more important than the OS, and then in the next paragraph said that Windows Phone 7 shows promise.
- DavidBishop 16y ago
  The browser IS deeply important. When people think about what devices they get, how they browse is one of the most critical things they decide on. Remember, we aren't talking just computers: we are talking about smart phones and tablets too. And as to Windows Phone 7, although a recent ChangeWave survey of potential smartphone buyers pegged interest in a Microsoft phone at 1%, the reviews have been pretty positive: ars technica: "Microsoft doesn't often get version one releases right, but this time, it has got the release very right indeed. Windows Phone 7 looks great, works well, and is a treat to use." Engadget: "With terrific Zune and Xbox Live integration, a fast and smart method of getting around the OS, great Office and email experiences, and a genuinely beautiful and useful user interface, Microsoft has definitely laid the foundation for the next several years of its mobile play. Now it's time to get the upper floors finished." Unfortunately for Microsoft, though, the data shows that they are going to have a major uphill battle with the Windows Phone 7, a battle which they have dedicated half a billion dollars in marketing toward.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  I access twitter through a browser on my netbook that runs Linux, on my wife's notebook that runs MacOS or on a PC running Windows (unlikely - I'd never type my password on one). The OS is a "computer driver". The browser is the API.
trustfundbaby 16y ago
This is an excellent point and to add to it I want to point out that Microsoft exacerbates this problem by not hiring the best web people to build their products. They believe that they can put a bunch of smart people in a room and they'll come up with stuff people want to use, and this has largely been self fulfilling because of the dominance of Microsoft in the computing space. Now that dominance is fading away, you are seeing the problem with the strategy. When Microsoft wanted to come up with a web Development framework for Web Developers they came up with .NET (built by a bunch of smart people for web developers), but it was a top notch web developer ... DHH who came up with Ruby on Rails. I remember using Rails for the first time and going "wow ... this just solves all the problems I have as a web developer" ... .NET never gave me that feeling, but to be fair ... it was a nice change from ASP spaghetti code days. Why isn't Microsoft hiring the best Javascripters, CSS, html5, and backend web developers it can get its hands on? This is something that Google did like crazy when it started growing, and it has allowed them build badass web products like Google Maps, Google Calendar, Gmail etc ... while Microsoft is stuck playing catch up. Even in releasing new versions of IE you can see this problem rear its head. Instead of listening to Web developers who actually determine the direction the web moves in, the IE team tries to come up with new bullshit web standards and with no buy in from digerati, it fails. Microsoft is no longer calling the shots, and by the time they realize this, it might be too late ... which is a shame, when you think of all the good that would come from Google having some serious competition.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  This I think is a delusional myth. I fully expect MS has some of the best web devs out there. But even if MS has 100 of the top 500 web devs, there are still 400 web devs thta don't work at MS. And there are a million+ web devs after that. While you might argue that more innovation per capita, comes from the top web devs, it's still likely that the next innovation will come from someone you've never heard of. This is why most people in the tech field at the top of the game aren't afraid of their past-rivals, but more afraid of the guy in the garage they've never heard of. Odds are more likely that this is where the big innovation is going to come from.
- rbanffy 16y ago
lkrubner 16y ago
"since everyone - including Microsoft - knows that a ubiquitous Web means fewer sales of Windows and Office" I would think that the real problem is Microsoft's unwillingness to become something completely new, something other than Windows and Office. Apple was a computer company, then it became a cell phone company, a music company, a lot of other things. Microsoft now sort of reminds me of Sun circa 1999: yes, they would sort of like to innovate and do something new, and they make the occasional try at it, but right now they have an insanely profitable product, so the easiest thing to do is to just keep milking it.
- brentb 16y ago
  "I would think that the real problem is Microsoft's unwillingness to become something completely new, something other than Windows and Office." Inability, perhaps. Unwillingness? You're out of your mind. Microsoft has had their fingers in smartphones, music players, search engines, touch computing, web mail, [you name it] for YEARS. And they are not just dabbling... they have poured billions into these areas, trying to come up with something that gains traction. Microsoft doesn't make "the occasional try" at innovation, they are a veritable firehose of attempts to innovate. Microsoft Research is HUGE (and well respected within the research/academic community) and as I mentioned above they spend billions every year trying to develop new products and break into new markets. The fact that Microsoft's efforts in this area have been largely unsuccessful over the past decade doesn't mean they aren't trying or aren't willing.
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    I'm all for trying a lot of different things, but there's a point where a company needs to step back and look at why all their tries fail.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Xbox was their last big success in entering a new market. That's just under a decade ago. The problem is that they have a sucky innovation model. They find something that's already successful, throw money at making a slightly better version (or whatever they can convince themselves is a slightly better version). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It worked when they copied the Macintosh to make Windows. It worked when they copied Netscape to make IE. It worked when they copied Playstation to make Xbox. It stopped working when they copied iPod to make Zune, and continued to not work when they copied Google to make Bing. Why it's stopped working? Either (a) a run of bad luck or (b) folks have learned to preempt Microsoft's move or (c) the really good people don't work for Microsoft any more.
blub 16y ago
What is so great about HTML5 and JS for me, the user? That you can get my location? That you can have video (just like Flash, except slower)? Or is it that you can store stuff on my machine? HTML5 is one more step in the direction of web pages pretending to be applications. Reading about "the web" on HN is like reading the story of Icarus. HN'ers are so enchanted by web apps that they forget they can only fly on the web thanks to native software. They would like to replace everything with a browser.
- T_S_ 16y ago
  Actually all those things are great for the user. As for HN'ers it probably means they can do more things for people at lower cost, since business ideas realized as web apps are less tied to silo-like platforms.
- ceejayoz 16y ago
  If nothing else, the new semantic article/header/nav etc. tags will make it easier for search engines to deliver good results to users.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  > That you can have video (just like Flash, except slower)? Actually HTML5 is faster, and Flash is slower [for me]. So video on the web is a big deal with HTML5. > HTML5 is one more step in the direction of web pages pretending to be applications. No, it is one more step in the direction of web pages becoming applications. You can't possibly tell me that Gmail isn't a full application! It's much faster and more responsive than any desktop mail client I've ever seen: searching mail takes < 1 second vs 1-2 minutes in Outlook. It's better in every way. And it's on the web. Why are you opposed to web applications?
  - contextfree 16y ago
    Personally, I just find web applications extremely painful to develop (on all the frameworks/dev environments I've tried, not just Microsoft ones). Desktop development is a lot more fun, but web apps are where the jobs are these days, unfortunately.
hkuo 16y ago
Moreover, their version of "the cloud" is taking multiple bad photos of your family sitting on a couch and magically turning it into a photo where everyone is smiling. Every time I see that commercial, I just have this look of utter confusion thinking about who produced that idiotic ad. I mean the tech behind it is cool, but what the hell does it mean "to the cloud!"???
m104 16y ago
What's particularly vexing to me is that Microsoft seems to have given up on giving developers the best experience, as well. Why would anyone want to develop a web app targeted for IE 7.5, especially given that the market share of this new IE version will be squat for awhile, perhaps always. Will WP8 bring about a new custom flavor of IE? Will there be an upgrade, mid-cycle? In the same vein: A lot of criticism has been leveled at the new WP7 ads, but I haven't seen much coverage from the developers' perspective. Is Microsoft implying that WP7 customers aren't going to spend much time on their phones? Again, why develop for or port to the WP7 platform if Microsoft's ad strategy is based on the idea that the customer won't actually use the device that often or for very long. Perhaps it's hubris or just ignorance on their part, but making things harder or more confusing for developers isn't going to bring in the profit for third-party developers or Microsoft.
kenjackson 16y ago
IE is actually not so bad at the web. At least not for the end user (argument about stifling development and innovation aside). As a user of IE, I actually have a better experience with IE than I do with Chrome w/ the sole exception being performance. I'm sure there are sites that don't work on IE, but honestly the only ones I've ever seen are those posted here on HN :-) With that said, everything I've heard from people in MS (and some who work on IE) is that this is the first time in MS's history where their goal is to actually make IE the best web browsers against the standards. They are targeting to be able to legitimately say that the best platform for HTML5 apps is IE. Only time will tell on that. But I do think it is naive to think a phone will fail because it is based on the worlds most popular web browsing engine. Any more than a phone might fail because it has no physical keyboard, no 3G support, no Flash, and no native apps.
- simonw 16y ago
  Any chance you could expand on what makes you prefer the experience of using IE over Chrome?
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    With Chrome I occassionally run into problems. For example, there was a time when I couldn't get my Amazon cart to work with Chrome. I popped open IE and it just worked. My bank used to not work with Chrome, but now does. I recently had a site where the links in the sidebar weren't clickable, but I know I had clicked them before. Went to IE and it worked. Printing is also really hit or miss. Weird font sizes, or sometimes blank areas. Not browsing proper, but still worth mentioning. Admittedly this doesn't happen often, but enough for me to notice.
    - face 16y ago
      I've never had those problems that you mention with Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand, I've had a lot of fun cleaning up Vundo and other malware due to the use of IE.
- Yaggo 16y ago
gaius 16y ago
you can't have a modern Web experience using only Microsoft products How soon we forget! There would be no AJAX today had Microsoft not introduced XMLHttpRequest to make Outlook Web Access work...
- cryptoz 16y ago
  Yeah, that was ~ 1 decade ago. I'm fully aware that you could have a modern web experience with Microsoft way back 10 years ago. But 10 years ago isn't today. Today is today, and Microsoft no longer provides a modern web experience. AJAX isn't modern anymore. Don't you see that the AJAX innovation was a game changer, but that the game has moved on since then?
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  And where would we be if AOL hadn't given us all unlimited dial-up access for a low monthly price?
- dstein 16y ago
  Yes there would. You could do "ajax" style communication using <layer> tags in Netscape 4 even before IE4 came out.
  - gaius 16y ago
    But no-one was.
- WildUtah 16y ago
  <i>There would be no AJAX today had Microsoft</i> I was loading AJAX data into hidden <frame>s in Navigator 4 using a JSON-like hack in 1998. It worked just fine.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

by cryptoz 16y ago

contentvoid 16y ago

I'm more inclined to think the phone will fail for the same reasons the Zune did, too little too late. But then the media player market was much broader and more saturated in 2006 than the smartphone market is now so maybe it won't play out in the same way...

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
The worst mistake they could make is to kill it the way they killed the Zune. They're never going to launch a day one, version one product which will displace the iPhone or Android, it's going to take time and investment. The real target should be that they've got 25%+ market share in three years time. That should be what they're aiming for rather than a success this year. People replace phones every 12 - 24 months and that's rapid even in tech (most people don't replace laptops that often). Every expired contract is a new potential customer for Microsoft and that churn means that no-one can take their position for granted so it's realistic for MS to make solid inroads over time.
- contextfree 16y ago
  They didn't kill the Zune. WP7 is basically a superset of Zune - same service for music/video, same client software, (evolution/derivative of the) same UI. There're rumored to be phoneless WP7s in the works too.
  - Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
    Fair enough, kill was probably the wrong word but they seemed to lose interest in the Zune as it's own entity. But it was actually a pretty good and if they'd stuck at it I get the impression it could have done better than it did. Perhaps it will revive with WP7 (though I see the software is still under development which is good).
- contentvoid 16y ago
  As pointed out the Zune lives on but I think it'd be difficult to argue it really made a substantive splash in the market despite arguably being a superior device as well as having the (imho) very strong Zune Pass subscription service. We're four years in and I can count on one hand how many people I've known that owned a Zune. There are parallels with WP7 launch but the stakes are much higher this time around because the relevance of the desktop is waning for general consumer use and Microsoft needs something to replace it. WP7 is an inflection point, if it fails I think you'll see Microsoft go roughly down the same path IBM has as far as consumer relevance (unless perhaps they turn Xbox Live into a OnLive-esque games as service thing, which they are in a better position than Sony or Nintendo to do).

points 16y ago

Agree. The fact the xBox gaming console has the power of a supercomputer, as evident from its fans and overheating problems, but doesn't even have a simple webbrowser is all the evidence we need. MS has never understood or indeed wanted the www to happen. They were able to hold back www development for 5 years+ with their IE6 shenanigans, but the cats out of the bag now.

Tyrannosaurs 16y ago
Really? The XBox uses the web in the best way possible for a games console - on-line gaming. Maybe it's just me but I find a console a rubbish browsing platform - I've got browsers on my PS3, PSP and Wii and never use them. It is possible that Microsoft just don't have a browser in the 360 because it's not a great place to put a browser. Microsoft own Hotmail, they've ported Office on-line, XBox supports on-line gaming, they make what is still the most popular single browser (which is under very active development), they produce web servers and a massive range of developer tools for the web from Visual Studio to Silverlight, they're working their arse off to get back into the mobile web market. If they're not into the web they're doing their best to hide it with their actions and investments. They were, by their own admission, slow to get to it but I don't think that's a valid criticism now. Now they're just all over the place but that's different to being anti.
- Xuzz 16y ago
  The Internet is not the web. Native games with Internet multiplayer aren't the web, they are the Internet. I don't know a single person using the online Office versions, because, well, they don't compare to the desktop ones. Yesterday, I saw a graph showing Hotmail losing about 10% market share, mostly to Gmail. Their new Xbox website broke every existing link on the domain. Mocrosoft does not get the web, even if they might get the internet.
  - Timmy_C 16y ago
    The sites built for marketing Microsoft products are often outsourced. So the fact that the new Xbox website was broken in any regard is the fault of a poor marketing manager and not a poor Microsoft developer.

alanthonyc 16y ago

They're also scared of phones. Check out their Phone 7 commercials. They appear to be catering to people who think people with phones are douchebags who walk around staring at their screen all day. I'm not sure how well this marketing strategy will work, because I am one of those douchebags, but it doesn't make me want to get one.

recoiledsnake 16y ago
The message I got from the ad is that Windows Phone 7 would allow you to see if you had any updates on the homescreen itself, obviating the need for fiddling with the phone for a long time to access the same information.
- aboodman 16y ago
  That is the fundamental and sad misunderstanding of this ad. People don't fiddle with their phones while walking because the phones are hard to use. They fiddle because the phone is fun and addicting. There's no desire for a phone that lets you get in and out quickly. On the contrary. If they could come up with a phone that lets you be online all the time without walking into things, they'd have a huge winner.
  - tpz 16y ago
    For some reason I find myself reminded of the whole RIM Playbook "coping with family" faux pas. It is almost as if WP7 were being promoted on the basis of selecting a phone based on wanting to avoid something: in the WP7 case, avoiding using the phone, in the Playbook case, avoiding your family. Both show a disconnect with reality and neither bode particularly well for the companies involved.
- jk8 16y ago
  Disclaimer: I am saying this without holding the actual device and without seeing a video. Everyone, seems to think that we will be able to see updates on the home screen itself, which I don't think will work. For example email: What will I see on the homescreen? who sent the email, when it was sent? will I see a brief message on the screen? How much information will I see in a tiny box/slice/tile. I don't think I will be able to see a lot of it. Twitter: I think, I will be able to see the last tweet. A little helpful. Facebook updates: I think it would work same as twitter. The user has to launch an app to get the complete information. I think its bad if MS tries to make the phone into a taskbar notification system.

sprout 16y ago

I stopped reading the article after they wrote that the browser is almost more important than the OS, and then in the next paragraph said that Windows Phone 7 shows promise.

DavidBishop 16y ago
The browser IS deeply important. When people think about what devices they get, how they browse is one of the most critical things they decide on. Remember, we aren't talking just computers: we are talking about smart phones and tablets too. And as to Windows Phone 7, although a recent ChangeWave survey of potential smartphone buyers pegged interest in a Microsoft phone at 1%, the reviews have been pretty positive: ars technica: "Microsoft doesn't often get version one releases right, but this time, it has got the release very right indeed. Windows Phone 7 looks great, works well, and is a treat to use." Engadget: "With terrific Zune and Xbox Live integration, a fast and smart method of getting around the OS, great Office and email experiences, and a genuinely beautiful and useful user interface, Microsoft has definitely laid the foundation for the next several years of its mobile play. Now it's time to get the upper floors finished." Unfortunately for Microsoft, though, the data shows that they are going to have a major uphill battle with the Windows Phone 7, a battle which they have dedicated half a billion dollars in marketing toward.
rbanffy 16y ago
I access twitter through a browser on my netbook that runs Linux, on my wife's notebook that runs MacOS or on a PC running Windows (unlikely - I'd never type my password on one). The OS is a "computer driver". The browser is the API.

trustfundbaby 16y ago

This is an excellent point and to add to it I want to point out that Microsoft exacerbates this problem by not hiring the best web people to build their products. They believe that they can put a bunch of smart people in a room and they'll come up with stuff people want to use, and this has largely been self fulfilling because of the dominance of Microsoft in the computing space. Now that dominance is fading away, you are seeing the problem with the strategy. When Microsoft wanted to come up with a web Development framework for Web Developers they came up with .NET (built by a bunch of smart people for web developers), but it was a top notch web developer ... DHH who came up with Ruby on Rails. I remember using Rails for the first time and going "wow ... this just solves all the problems I have as a web developer" ... .NET never gave me that feeling, but to be fair ... it was a nice change from ASP spaghetti code days. Why isn't Microsoft hiring the best Javascripters, CSS, html5, and backend web developers it can get its hands on? This is something that Google did like crazy when it started growing, and it has allowed them build badass web products like Google Maps, Google Calendar, Gmail etc ... while Microsoft is stuck playing catch up. Even in releasing new versions of IE you can see this problem rear its head. Instead of listening to Web developers who actually determine the direction the web moves in, the IE team tries to come up with new bullshit web standards and with no buy in from digerati, it fails. Microsoft is no longer calling the shots, and by the time they realize this, it might be too late ... which is a shame, when you think of all the good that would come from Google having some serious competition.

kenjackson 16y ago
This I think is a delusional myth. I fully expect MS has some of the best web devs out there. But even if MS has 100 of the top 500 web devs, there are still 400 web devs thta don't work at MS. And there are a million+ web devs after that. While you might argue that more innovation per capita, comes from the top web devs, it's still likely that the next innovation will come from someone you've never heard of. This is why most people in the tech field at the top of the game aren't afraid of their past-rivals, but more afraid of the guy in the garage they've never heard of. Odds are more likely that this is where the big innovation is going to come from.
rbanffy 16y ago

lkrubner 16y ago

"since everyone - including Microsoft - knows that a ubiquitous Web means fewer sales of Windows and Office" I would think that the real problem is Microsoft's unwillingness to become something completely new, something other than Windows and Office. Apple was a computer company, then it became a cell phone company, a music company, a lot of other things. Microsoft now sort of reminds me of Sun circa 1999: yes, they would sort of like to innovate and do something new, and they make the occasional try at it, but right now they have an insanely profitable product, so the easiest thing to do is to just keep milking it.

brentb 16y ago
"I would think that the real problem is Microsoft's unwillingness to become something completely new, something other than Windows and Office." Inability, perhaps. Unwillingness? You're out of your mind. Microsoft has had their fingers in smartphones, music players, search engines, touch computing, web mail, [you name it] for YEARS. And they are not just dabbling... they have poured billions into these areas, trying to come up with something that gains traction. Microsoft doesn't make "the occasional try" at innovation, they are a veritable firehose of attempts to innovate. Microsoft Research is HUGE (and well respected within the research/academic community) and as I mentioned above they spend billions every year trying to develop new products and break into new markets. The fact that Microsoft's efforts in this area have been largely unsuccessful over the past decade doesn't mean they aren't trying or aren't willing.
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  I'm all for trying a lot of different things, but there's a point where a company needs to step back and look at why all their tries fail.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Xbox was their last big success in entering a new market. That's just under a decade ago. The problem is that they have a sucky innovation model. They find something that's already successful, throw money at making a slightly better version (or whatever they can convince themselves is a slightly better version). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It worked when they copied the Macintosh to make Windows. It worked when they copied Netscape to make IE. It worked when they copied Playstation to make Xbox. It stopped working when they copied iPod to make Zune, and continued to not work when they copied Google to make Bing. Why it's stopped working? Either (a) a run of bad luck or (b) folks have learned to preempt Microsoft's move or (c) the really good people don't work for Microsoft any more.

blub 16y ago

What is so great about HTML5 and JS for me, the user? That you can get my location? That you can have video (just like Flash, except slower)? Or is it that you can store stuff on my machine? HTML5 is one more step in the direction of web pages pretending to be applications. Reading about "the web" on HN is like reading the story of Icarus. HN'ers are so enchanted by web apps that they forget they can only fly on the web thanks to native software. They would like to replace everything with a browser.

T_S_ 16y ago
Actually all those things are great for the user. As for HN'ers it probably means they can do more things for people at lower cost, since business ideas realized as web apps are less tied to silo-like platforms.
ceejayoz 16y ago
If nothing else, the new semantic article/header/nav etc. tags will make it easier for search engines to deliver good results to users.
cryptoz 16y ago
> That you can have video (just like Flash, except slower)? Actually HTML5 is faster, and Flash is slower [for me]. So video on the web is a big deal with HTML5. > HTML5 is one more step in the direction of web pages pretending to be applications. No, it is one more step in the direction of web pages becoming applications. You can't possibly tell me that Gmail isn't a full application! It's much faster and more responsive than any desktop mail client I've ever seen: searching mail takes < 1 second vs 1-2 minutes in Outlook. It's better in every way. And it's on the web. Why are you opposed to web applications?
- contextfree 16y ago
  Personally, I just find web applications extremely painful to develop (on all the frameworks/dev environments I've tried, not just Microsoft ones). Desktop development is a lot more fun, but web apps are where the jobs are these days, unfortunately.

hkuo 16y ago

Moreover, their version of "the cloud" is taking multiple bad photos of your family sitting on a couch and magically turning it into a photo where everyone is smiling. Every time I see that commercial, I just have this look of utter confusion thinking about who produced that idiotic ad. I mean the tech behind it is cool, but what the hell does it mean "to the cloud!"???

m104 16y ago

What's particularly vexing to me is that Microsoft seems to have given up on giving developers the best experience, as well. Why would anyone want to develop a web app targeted for IE 7.5, especially given that the market share of this new IE version will be squat for awhile, perhaps always. Will WP8 bring about a new custom flavor of IE? Will there be an upgrade, mid-cycle? In the same vein: A lot of criticism has been leveled at the new WP7 ads, but I haven't seen much coverage from the developers' perspective. Is Microsoft implying that WP7 customers aren't going to spend much time on their phones? Again, why develop for or port to the WP7 platform if Microsoft's ad strategy is based on the idea that the customer won't actually use the device that often or for very long. Perhaps it's hubris or just ignorance on their part, but making things harder or more confusing for developers isn't going to bring in the profit for third-party developers or Microsoft.

kenjackson 16y ago

IE is actually not so bad at the web. At least not for the end user (argument about stifling development and innovation aside). As a user of IE, I actually have a better experience with IE than I do with Chrome w/ the sole exception being performance. I'm sure there are sites that don't work on IE, but honestly the only ones I've ever seen are those posted here on HN :-) With that said, everything I've heard from people in MS (and some who work on IE) is that this is the first time in MS's history where their goal is to actually make IE the best web browsers against the standards. They are targeting to be able to legitimately say that the best platform for HTML5 apps is IE. Only time will tell on that. But I do think it is naive to think a phone will fail because it is based on the worlds most popular web browsing engine. Any more than a phone might fail because it has no physical keyboard, no 3G support, no Flash, and no native apps.

simonw 16y ago
Any chance you could expand on what makes you prefer the experience of using IE over Chrome?
- kenjackson 16y ago
  With Chrome I occassionally run into problems. For example, there was a time when I couldn't get my Amazon cart to work with Chrome. I popped open IE and it just worked. My bank used to not work with Chrome, but now does. I recently had a site where the links in the sidebar weren't clickable, but I know I had clicked them before. Went to IE and it worked. Printing is also really hit or miss. Weird font sizes, or sometimes blank areas. Not browsing proper, but still worth mentioning. Admittedly this doesn't happen often, but enough for me to notice.
  - face 16y ago
    I've never had those problems that you mention with Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand, I've had a lot of fun cleaning up Vundo and other malware due to the use of IE.
Yaggo 16y ago

gaius 16y ago

you can't have a modern Web experience using only Microsoft products How soon we forget! There would be no AJAX today had Microsoft not introduced XMLHttpRequest to make Outlook Web Access work...

cryptoz 16y ago
Yeah, that was ~ 1 decade ago. I'm fully aware that you could have a modern web experience with Microsoft way back 10 years ago. But 10 years ago isn't today. Today is today, and Microsoft no longer provides a modern web experience. AJAX isn't modern anymore. Don't you see that the AJAX innovation was a game changer, but that the game has moved on since then?
mkr-hn 16y ago
And where would we be if AOL hadn't given us all unlimited dial-up access for a low monthly price?
dstein 16y ago
Yes there would. You could do "ajax" style communication using <layer> tags in Netscape 4 even before IE4 came out.
- gaius 16y ago
  But no-one was.
WildUtah 16y ago
<i>There would be no AJAX today had Microsoft</i> I was loading AJAX data into hidden <frame>s in Navigator 4 using a JSON-like hack in 1998. It worked just fine.

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