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Great article. Choosing a place where people appreciate honest criticism works for friendships as well. My biggest criteria for friends is that the person is c
by gfunk911 16y ago
Great article.
Choosing a place where people appreciate honest criticism works for friendships as well. My biggest criteria for friends is that the person is cool with honesty, including telling them when they're wrong.
Interesting point about how if you never fail, you're too conservative. The same idea applies to poker. Microsoft fails constantly and people accept it, yet every Google failure means they've lost their mojo. No Wave and no Buzz means no GMail.
- sriramk 16y agoMicrosoft fails constantly and people accept it? :) I would argue the exact opposite - Microsoft succeeds consistently in a lot of very measurable ways but isn't given enough credit for it (that a Google/Apple would get for doing the very same thing).
- fjarlq 16y agoCare to list some examples? (Not that I disagree)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- random42 16y ago1. Project Natal/Kinect 2. Surface Table Both are good innovations, on which media would go over gaga, had they come from Apple/Google.
- cdr 16y agoThe media did go "gaga" over those, even despite the fact that 99.99% of people will never see a Surface.
- sz 16y agoHow was Surface a success where Wave wasn't?
- gregschlom 16y agoWe can't really talk about the sucess or failure of Surface, actually. Microsoft sold a few of them at $12,000 each to hotels, luxury stores, etc... but never intended to make it a mass-consumer product.
- lancewiggs 16y agowhich was a failure - a failure to commercialize a technology that we all wanted. Apple later delivered the iPad, and the rest is history.
- sriramk 16y agoKinect was on the top of my list. When I used Kinect, it seemed quite magical (and I'm jaded enough that few pieces of tech makes me go that way). I really suspect a Kinect from Apple would have been handled differently.
- mccutchen 16y agoYou're probably right. But you've got to admit that Apple itself makes its products seem much more magical than Microsoft does. They do such a good job that it's really easy for the media to pick it up and run with it. Nearly all of Microsoft's own promotional stuff is extraordinarily bad, especially in comparison to Apple.
- rahoulb 16y agoA big problem Microsoft has is their pre-announcements. They will announce stuff before it's ready so when it does arrive there's no buzz about it. BUT it's a necessary culture for them because of the way their business interdepends upon their partners.
- intdev 16y agoI think the bigger problem that Microsoft faces is their tarnished past image. Whatever they make, no matter how innovative or well made it is, people's perception towards the product changes immediately when the word Microsoft is attached to it. This I think is the major PR and marketing challenge faced by Microsoft today. People need to move on and have a broader outlook. People will still bring up IE6 to support their anti-MS arguments.
- fuzzythinker 16y agoKinect is a game changer, but most of its credit should be given to the company MS obtained the technology from.
- zaidf 16y agoFrom an academic point of view, perhaps. Bit from a business point of view, the credit goes to Microsoft for recognizing a hot piece of technology, acquiring it and launching it as a cool product. Each one of those things are more difficult than you seem to give them credit for.
- brk 16y agoYes, but both of those are (I believe) technologies developed outside of Microsoft that were then purchased. While Google and Apple do also purchase technologies, they seem to produce more interesting in-house products than Microsoft. At least in my perception. I can't recall the last time that Microsoft actually developed internally and rolled out a significant "game changer" device or software.
- krschultz 16y agoYour perception of Microsoft may be correct, but it alsao applied to the others. Apple didn't invent multi-touch either. Google didn't do Android inhouse it was an acquisition (at least at first).
- brk 16y agoNo, but I would credit Apple with "inventing" the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air. Even though all of those products likely have core pieces that were from acquisitions, it seems like Apple executed the grand vision of bringing it together. Same thing with Google, though they appear to buy several things that they don't fully roll out (Dodgeball, etc.). Android may have originally been an acquisition, again it feels like Google made it into a finished product far beyond what they acquired. Microsoft appears to have bought the Kinect technology/product and done little more than change the logo on the device. The surface table also hasn't been productized into anything revolutionary or different.
- babeKnuth 16y agoxbox, bing
- gfunk911 16y agoI didn't mean that people ignore instances when Microsoft fails. I meant that failing is an accepted part of Microsoft's DNA. People didn't like Vista, but putting out an (arguably) busted OS didn't seem out of character for Microsoft.
- napierzaza 16y agoThat's just lowered expectations. They just don't put out quality innovation products and we're all used to that.
- endtime 16y agoYeah, WP7 and Kinect are the same old tired crap, and they're definitely not doing anything interesting with Bing...?
- mkramlich 16y agoThe general pattern I've seen with Microsoft is they mostly just copy other people's successes. Sometimes their copies do okay, or well enough. Sometimes they fail. But due to their huge install base and lock-in effects and user inertia and huge cash pile they have the ability to muddle onward. In some ways, Microsoft treats Apple as a sort of external UI R&D department, one with the wonderful quality that Microsoft doesn't have to pay the Apple folks anything, just copy whatever people seem to like. I do think they succeed enough, at the right things, that it keeps them shambling forward. But the same is true of a zombie.
- khafra 16y agoParsing note: "Microsoft doesn't have" should be repeated immediately after it appears.
- j_baker 16y agoPeople accept that Microsoft fails? Does the name "Windows Vista" mean anything to you? Of all the reactions people had to that version, "acceptance" isn't on the list.
- philwelch 16y agoTo be fair, I can't imagine Google fucking up web search or AdWords without receiving the same kind of criticism. We can shrug it off when Google fucks up Wave, or when Microsoft fucks up Kin, as long as products like AdWords and Windows keep making money.
- bad_user 16y agoVista was 5 years late, overhyped, full of bugs and incompatibilities, slow and IMHO ugly. For me it was the biggest failure I've seen since Netscape Navigator. And while Windows 7 is not that bad, IMHO that's the next worst thing customers can say about your product.