4 ms·

Is Microsoft Suddenly Cool?

3 points by Garbage 16y ago

SwellJoe 16y ago
No. This is an idiotic puff piece, I assume triggered by a nice phone call from someone at Microsoft to someone at Forbes.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  Agreed, Microsoft will be 'cool' when it loses 90% of its users, actually becomes a leader in developing new innovative products and gains a resurgence through that. Cool generally requires standing apart from the norm. When you're the biggest company in your market by a huge margin, you're the norm.
  - nailer 16y ago
    And those markets (desktop OSs and desktop Office software) aren't growth areas anymore.
    - InclinedPlane 16y ago
      I disagree with this. In the next perhaps 20 years or so it's likely that more people will join the developed world than live in it today as countries like China, India, Chile, Indonesia, Poland, etc. become more developed (much like South Korea and Taiwan have done within the past 20-30 years). Developed economies create lots of office jobs, and office jobs use windows computers running office as a rule. There's a huge growing market for MS still. That's not to say that I am 100% confident that MS will gain all this as a matter of course, or that competition won't arise (I suspect we're on the cusp of a general purpose OS paradigm shift that may disadvantage MS), but the growth potential is very substantial and very real.
      - nailer 16y ago
        > Developed economies create lots of office jobs, and office jobs use windows computers running office as a rule. Sure, but even some traditional companies now have more web apps than desktop apps.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      They aren't huge growth areas in the anglosphere anymore, Ed: although smartphones and tablets may change this, they're still growing in the west somewhat, but are exploding colossally in the developing areas of the world like India and China. These places still have huge piracy 'problems', but these will likely be resolved in the coming decade as these countries develop stronger intellectual property enforcement and will force all corporations to purchase legitimate licenses.
      - nailer 16y ago
        > They aren't huge growth areas in the anglosphere anymore, Ed: although smartphones and tablets may change this, These don't run desktop OSs.
        electromagnetic 16y ago
        Yet. Given that smartphones and tablets are now being produced with more powerful CPU's than netbooks, it's really only a matter of time.
        nailer 16y ago
        If the desktop kernels still remain (which they may not due to realtime needs) the userspaces still need to change for touch UI. So if it happens, I don't expect the current desktop champions to suddenly get good at mobile.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
verysimple 16y ago
It depends of your definition of cool. Microsoft still host some very cool projects and I think many programmers would be very happy to work on stuff such as Kinect, Bing and Seadragon to only name those. However, if you're talking about general perception toward the company, then the answer is a big fat NO. I think too many people have been burnt with their tactics over the years and those stigmas take time to heal. For all things that microsoft has contributed to the advancement of computing and its vulgarization, they are also responsible for stalling in many areas where they couldn't catchup fast enough, using their influence in oft-questionable ways. Lots of bad karma there and very uncool. They managed to mess up the single most important application, the browser, and did nothing to fix it for years, just because they could. Web developers are only now coming out of this nightmare. Today, I'm very reluctant to even use something like Bing, that admittedly works quite well, just because the thought of what microsoft could pull, once it gets back into a position of power in the search market, makes me shudder. I know most people have a notorious short memory span when it comes to such things, but count on people like me, with the ability to hold a grudge, to remind them what hell felt like. Microsoft isn't cool and it won't be for a while.

3 points by Garbage 16y ago

No. This is an idiotic puff piece, I assume triggered by a nice phone call from someone at Microsoft to someone at Forbes.

electromagnetic 16y ago
Agreed, Microsoft will be 'cool' when it loses 90% of its users, actually becomes a leader in developing new innovative products and gains a resurgence through that. Cool generally requires standing apart from the norm. When you're the biggest company in your market by a huge margin, you're the norm.
- nailer 16y ago
  And those markets (desktop OSs and desktop Office software) aren't growth areas anymore.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    I disagree with this. In the next perhaps 20 years or so it's likely that more people will join the developed world than live in it today as countries like China, India, Chile, Indonesia, Poland, etc. become more developed (much like South Korea and Taiwan have done within the past 20-30 years). Developed economies create lots of office jobs, and office jobs use windows computers running office as a rule. There's a huge growing market for MS still. That's not to say that I am 100% confident that MS will gain all this as a matter of course, or that competition won't arise (I suspect we're on the cusp of a general purpose OS paradigm shift that may disadvantage MS), but the growth potential is very substantial and very real.
    - nailer 16y ago
      > Developed economies create lots of office jobs, and office jobs use windows computers running office as a rule. Sure, but even some traditional companies now have more web apps than desktop apps.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    They aren't huge growth areas in the anglosphere anymore, Ed: although smartphones and tablets may change this, they're still growing in the west somewhat, but are exploding colossally in the developing areas of the world like India and China. These places still have huge piracy 'problems', but these will likely be resolved in the coming decade as these countries develop stronger intellectual property enforcement and will force all corporations to purchase legitimate licenses.
    - nailer 16y ago
      > They aren't huge growth areas in the anglosphere anymore, Ed: although smartphones and tablets may change this, These don't run desktop OSs.
      - electromagnetic 16y ago
        Yet. Given that smartphones and tablets are now being produced with more powerful CPU's than netbooks, it's really only a matter of time.
        nailer 16y ago
        If the desktop kernels still remain (which they may not due to realtime needs) the userspaces still need to change for touch UI. So if it happens, I don't expect the current desktop champions to suddenly get good at mobile.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

verysimple 16y ago

It depends of your definition of cool. Microsoft still host some very cool projects and I think many programmers would be very happy to work on stuff such as Kinect, Bing and Seadragon to only name those. However, if you're talking about general perception toward the company, then the answer is a big fat NO. I think too many people have been burnt with their tactics over the years and those stigmas take time to heal. For all things that microsoft has contributed to the advancement of computing and its vulgarization, they are also responsible for stalling in many areas where they couldn't catchup fast enough, using their influence in oft-questionable ways. Lots of bad karma there and very uncool. They managed to mess up the single most important application, the browser, and did nothing to fix it for years, just because they could. Web developers are only now coming out of this nightmare. Today, I'm very reluctant to even use something like Bing, that admittedly works quite well, just because the thought of what microsoft could pull, once it gets back into a position of power in the search market, makes me shudder. I know most people have a notorious short memory span when it comes to such things, but count on people like me, with the ability to hold a grudge, to remind them what hell felt like. Microsoft isn't cool and it won't be for a while.