4 ms·

You may have missed GP's point. Microsoft is casts a very wide net, running on a huge array of hardware and trying to do everything from mobile to console gami

You may have missed GP's point. Microsoft is casts a very wide net, running on a huge array of hardware and trying to do everything from mobile to console gaming to datacenter servers. The dev experience is equally diverse: you don't even need a Windows box to develop for Windows. Apple jettisoned all of that diversity to refine a few precious use cases to earn that "quality" aura. I think this move to ARM is signaling a couple more use cases being tossed to the curb, like beefy workstations and PC gaming.

scarface74 6y ago
How is that “wide net” working out? - Microsoft is a non starter in mobile - trying to run Windows on low end Surfaces is painful - Windows is horrible as a touch first interface. - even with Azure there are more Linux VMs than Windows. -it takes literally years and multiple failures every time that MS tries to release a new version of Windows. - They finally through in the towel when it came to IE and was forced to use a competitors engine. MS is not exactly the shining example of how to successfully pivot as technology changes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- toyg 6y ago
  MS was on mobile before mobile was mobile (pun intended), and part of the issue was probably that they got in the game so early that, by the time tech was actually mature, they were out of gas. Ballmer thought he'd seen it all, and he had not; when he realized, they panicked and reacted like headless chickens. It's a cautionary tale for the ages, but it could have easily gone the other way around. On the other hand, they entered the game-console game very late but still had a pretty good run. They entered the cloud game similarly late but they're now killing it. They won the Browser War I and would have likely done it again in BWII, were they not forced to behave by authorities. So it's not like they cannot execute, or like they are fundamentally impeded by their fundamental structure. They can smash it with the best of them, when the lead is focused.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I agree with the thrust of your post but I want to nitpick one thing: > They won the Browser War I and would have likely done it again in BWII, were they not forced to behave by authorities. Rephrased: Microsoft won Browser War I by using illegal tactics, and lost Browser War II because authorities made them stop using illegal tactics. IE/Edge was always a bad product, and its success was due to external factors. That said, Microsoft has lots of resources and I don't doubt they could have made a good browser. By extension, I don't see Chromium Edge as a loss for Microsoft so much as an informed decision to throw in the towel. How does Microsoft benefit from spending millions of dollars on a custom rendering engine, when Google gives Chromium away for free? Microsoft can fully rebrand it, and put in their own ads, tracking, and default search engines. From my vantage point, Microsoft just saved an enormous amount of money and lost very little.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    There was nothing in the justice department ruling that forced them to stand still when it came to browser development. Apple moves faster with Safari/WebKit after they started with KHTML. Apple wasn’t exactly a large company when they introduced Safari. They also lost billions of dollars on the console market. Is it even as profitable as the AirPods now? As far as getting in mobile too early. Failing at the Newton didn’t exactly hurt Apple getting back into mobile. You do remember that Apple was almost bankrupt in the 90s? Apple was able to port OS X to the iPhone partially because it didn’t have all of the bloat of Windows. I developed on WinCE devices using both .Net CF and C++/MFC. I am very much aware of the limitations.
    - toyg 6y ago
      > There was nothing in the justice department ruling Between that and the EU ruling that forced them to implement the somewhat-silly browser-choice system, it was a "hostile environment" where the political message was fairly clear. Combined with a situation where IE was effectively dominant, it sapped any appetite to take it forward or take risks with it. > Is [the console market] even as profitable as the AirPods now? That is not the point, the point is that they pivoted just fine when they wanted to. They even had something genuinely novel with the gesture-tracking system. And how could they not? Windows and Office are a license to print money, even today. > Failing at the Newton didn’t exactly hurt Apple That was 1 device. Microsoft and their partners tried tons of different iterations of formats, some that didn't even exist at the time (kindles, book-like, palm-like - I had an HP that, without a stylus, looks now like a thick iPhone, but was produced in 2003)... but screen tech and cellular bandwidth simply were not good enough at the time. I'm not talking of exhaustion because of financial losses (Microsoft was printing money, they could have done the same 10 times over), but of a shared weariness for the effort. At one point they basically gave up. I believe the famous Ballmer snark on the iPhone announcement was sincere, in the typically-disdainous way of his: Ballmer thought he had seen it all and this was just one more, nothing to write home about. They had failed so many times in the space that they had lost faith in the possibility of success.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
like beefy workstations If that was true they wouldn't have released the Mac Pro.

scarface74 6y ago

How is that “wide net” working out? - Microsoft is a non starter in mobile - trying to run Windows on low end Surfaces is painful - Windows is horrible as a touch first interface. - even with Azure there are more Linux VMs than Windows. -it takes literally years and multiple failures every time that MS tries to release a new version of Windows. - They finally through in the towel when it came to IE and was forced to use a competitors engine. MS is not exactly the shining example of how to successfully pivot as technology changes.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
toyg 6y ago
MS was on mobile before mobile was mobile (pun intended), and part of the issue was probably that they got in the game so early that, by the time tech was actually mature, they were out of gas. Ballmer thought he'd seen it all, and he had not; when he realized, they panicked and reacted like headless chickens. It's a cautionary tale for the ages, but it could have easily gone the other way around. On the other hand, they entered the game-console game very late but still had a pretty good run. They entered the cloud game similarly late but they're now killing it. They won the Browser War I and would have likely done it again in BWII, were they not forced to behave by authorities. So it's not like they cannot execute, or like they are fundamentally impeded by their fundamental structure. They can smash it with the best of them, when the lead is focused.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  I agree with the thrust of your post but I want to nitpick one thing: > They won the Browser War I and would have likely done it again in BWII, were they not forced to behave by authorities. Rephrased: Microsoft won Browser War I by using illegal tactics, and lost Browser War II because authorities made them stop using illegal tactics. IE/Edge was always a bad product, and its success was due to external factors. That said, Microsoft has lots of resources and I don't doubt they could have made a good browser. By extension, I don't see Chromium Edge as a loss for Microsoft so much as an informed decision to throw in the towel. How does Microsoft benefit from spending millions of dollars on a custom rendering engine, when Google gives Chromium away for free? Microsoft can fully rebrand it, and put in their own ads, tracking, and default search engines. From my vantage point, Microsoft just saved an enormous amount of money and lost very little.
- scarface74 6y ago
  There was nothing in the justice department ruling that forced them to stand still when it came to browser development. Apple moves faster with Safari/WebKit after they started with KHTML. Apple wasn’t exactly a large company when they introduced Safari. They also lost billions of dollars on the console market. Is it even as profitable as the AirPods now? As far as getting in mobile too early. Failing at the Newton didn’t exactly hurt Apple getting back into mobile. You do remember that Apple was almost bankrupt in the 90s? Apple was able to port OS X to the iPhone partially because it didn’t have all of the bloat of Windows. I developed on WinCE devices using both .Net CF and C++/MFC. I am very much aware of the limitations.
  - toyg 6y ago
    > There was nothing in the justice department ruling Between that and the EU ruling that forced them to implement the somewhat-silly browser-choice system, it was a "hostile environment" where the political message was fairly clear. Combined with a situation where IE was effectively dominant, it sapped any appetite to take it forward or take risks with it. > Is [the console market] even as profitable as the AirPods now? That is not the point, the point is that they pivoted just fine when they wanted to. They even had something genuinely novel with the gesture-tracking system. And how could they not? Windows and Office are a license to print money, even today. > Failing at the Newton didn’t exactly hurt Apple That was 1 device. Microsoft and their partners tried tons of different iterations of formats, some that didn't even exist at the time (kindles, book-like, palm-like - I had an HP that, without a stylus, looks now like a thick iPhone, but was produced in 2003)... but screen tech and cellular bandwidth simply were not good enough at the time. I'm not talking of exhaustion because of financial losses (Microsoft was printing money, they could have done the same 10 times over), but of a shared weariness for the effort. At one point they basically gave up. I believe the famous Ballmer snark on the iPhone announcement was sincere, in the typically-disdainous way of his: Ballmer thought he had seen it all and this was just one more, nothing to write home about. They had failed so many times in the space that they had lost faith in the possibility of success.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

like beefy workstations If that was true they wouldn't have released the Mac Pro.