5 ms·

> There needs to be an "OS" that manages all of that, and right now the frontrunner here is Microsoft. I just don't see that. How exactly is Microsoft better p

> There needs to be an "OS" that manages all of that, and right now the frontrunner here is Microsoft. I just don't see that. How exactly is Microsoft better placed than Apple or Google?

number6 4y ago
I think the "OS" that abstracts everything away is the web. Foremost these Javascript Applications. With Microsoft 365 they took the Idea of Google Suit and integrated it in their OS. Google tried it the other way and failed. But ultimately they are talking about the Chrome Book. Well even beyond that. It shouldn't matter which hardware you use and this is brilliant; it's just not Microsofts Idea.
- user5678 4y ago
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Not only the Web, we are now doing at large scale what Xerox, Sun, Apple, IBM and Microsoft envisioned during the last century, distributed computing with RPCs. The Web is only one form of exposing those RPC endpoints.
deltree7 4y ago
Apple services are very much tied to Apple Hardware and iOS/OSX
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bee_rider 4y ago
MS is somewhat unusual in that they are, in some sense, "about" providing a platform but not really capable of consistently knocking it out of the park hardware-wise.
sreekotay 4y ago
For sake of argument, not Apple because they are too close to the HW (specifically their own), and not Google because they are too far away from the HW (completely fractured). Amazon is an interesting underdog here...
crazygringo 4y ago
Microsoft is simply making more money from more customers on it. Google Workspace is the main competitor, but they're not the front runner, they're second place. Things like Apple Pages and Keynote are only used by a small fraction of consumers. They're not taken seriously as an enterprise productivity solution by anyone.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > They're not taken seriously as an enterprise productivity solution by anyone. Because anyone who can create a great presentation would never think of things as "enterprise productivity solutions". They'd just make an awesome presentation.
  - crazygringo 4y ago
    Right, that's exactly it. You can create a great presentation... but you can't collaborate on it online integrated with your office's directory of contacts, create todo items from within it that show up on people's calendars, embed live figures from your colleague's modeling spreadsheet, get signoff on it from colleagues as part of a standardized process, and so on. If you're using Keynote to make an awesome presentation as a solo project, it's fantastic. If you're using it for enterprise productivity, it's a non-starter.
    - robertlagrant 4y ago
      You're using the phrase "enterprise productivity" to describe what I think are some of the optional features of Office, and at least some of which are probably a bad idea. Getting signoff from a standardised process aside of course; any tool can participate in that.
- abudabi123 4y ago
  Apple Pages, Notes and Keynote on iPhone could do with more user-ability testing at the back of an Uber, Didi, train, taxi or bus. Make it easy to bullet point and page separate. Sometimes you feel the iPhone apps don't get dogfooded by the Apple developers and those apps are only there to fill in a tickbox for someone souless.
neosat 4y ago
This ^ is spot on. While the general 'abstraction' argument is spot on, MS is in fact poorly placed to be the 'OS' that becomes that abstraction. In fact, arguably it doesn't even need to be an 'OS' level concept. An example is google docs or WhatsApp. I can work on documents seamlessly across different actual 'OS' because the application abstracts that away - and it is sufficient. If an OS were to abstract all of this, it would also involve numerous compromises, notably on the tightly integrated end-end experience (hardware to UX), which is Apple's entire strategy against the likes of Microsoft. So no MS is not the best situated to be that 'OS'. 1. It is unclear if such an OS (with the benefits and trade-offs) will be preferred to a world where cross-OS applications can abstract away the OS. 2. Someone like Google (minus their execution woes that seem to get worse in recent years) is better positioned to abstract away the complexities for a regular consumer.
- user5678 4y ago
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Paraphrasing Sun, the network is the computer, so it is a matter of who has more valuable distributed computing APIs and how they are exposed to the world.
soundnote 4y ago
Apple is Apple only, and is an upmarket status signal. Not a good fit as a cross-device services layer, which is what Thompson is talking about there. Google is moving in that direction (including hiring a former Office exec to run Workspace), in providing an integrated bundle. They're just behind, and have been fucking around with their chat, which is one of the cornerstones of the cloud platform. As Thompson notes, Teams was built to be the "web OS" from the get go, not a Slack clone even though most thought it was one. In Thompson's view, the best players to try to be the web OS are chat providers (due to chat network effects) and cloud storage providers. You can already see Salesforce and Dropbox making moves in that direction. To quote: > This is what Slack — and Silicon Valley, generally — failed to understand about Microsoft’s competitive advantage: the company doesn’t win just because it bundles, or because it has a superior ground game. By virtue of doing everything, even if mediocrely, the company is providing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, particularly for the non-tech workers that are in fact most of the market. Slack may have infused its chat client with love, but chatting is a means to an end, and Microsoft often seems like the only enterprise company that understands that. ... > Here’s the thing, though: Dropbox absolutely is better than OneDrive. Google Apps are better at collaboration than Microsoft’s Office apps. Asana is better than Planner. And, to be very clear, Slack is massively better than Teams at chat. Using all of them together, though, well, it sucks: the user experience that matters for me is not any one app but all of them at once, and for the way I want to work, having everything organized in one single place is simply better (and that’s even with the normal spate of maddening Microsoft UI oddities!). In this Teams is less a chat app than it is a file explorer for the cloud generally, and Stratechery LLC specifically. (me again) Google, in theory, has the pieces to do it. But they're just behind in many ways - compliance, Microsoft's MSP network and sales staff on the ground, management tools, stuff like that. And there's the other question of "do they have enough at least mediocre things integrated together well enough" to make the play. They might, but not yet.

> There needs to be an "OS" that manages all of that, and right now the frontrunner here is Microsoft. I just don't see that. How exactly is Microsoft better placed than Apple or Google?

number6 4y ago

I think the "OS" that abstracts everything away is the web. Foremost these Javascript Applications. With Microsoft 365 they took the Idea of Google Suit and integrated it in their OS. Google tried it the other way and failed. But ultimately they are talking about the Chrome Book. Well even beyond that. It shouldn't matter which hardware you use and this is brilliant; it's just not Microsofts Idea.

user5678 4y ago
pjmlp 4y ago
Not only the Web, we are now doing at large scale what Xerox, Sun, Apple, IBM and Microsoft envisioned during the last century, distributed computing with RPCs. The Web is only one form of exposing those RPC endpoints.

deltree7 4y ago

Apple services are very much tied to Apple Hardware and iOS/OSX

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bee_rider 4y ago

MS is somewhat unusual in that they are, in some sense, "about" providing a platform but not really capable of consistently knocking it out of the park hardware-wise.

sreekotay 4y ago

For sake of argument, not Apple because they are too close to the HW (specifically their own), and not Google because they are too far away from the HW (completely fractured). Amazon is an interesting underdog here...

crazygringo 4y ago

Microsoft is simply making more money from more customers on it. Google Workspace is the main competitor, but they're not the front runner, they're second place. Things like Apple Pages and Keynote are only used by a small fraction of consumers. They're not taken seriously as an enterprise productivity solution by anyone.

robertlagrant 4y ago
> They're not taken seriously as an enterprise productivity solution by anyone. Because anyone who can create a great presentation would never think of things as "enterprise productivity solutions". They'd just make an awesome presentation.
- crazygringo 4y ago
  Right, that's exactly it. You can create a great presentation... but you can't collaborate on it online integrated with your office's directory of contacts, create todo items from within it that show up on people's calendars, embed live figures from your colleague's modeling spreadsheet, get signoff on it from colleagues as part of a standardized process, and so on. If you're using Keynote to make an awesome presentation as a solo project, it's fantastic. If you're using it for enterprise productivity, it's a non-starter.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    You're using the phrase "enterprise productivity" to describe what I think are some of the optional features of Office, and at least some of which are probably a bad idea. Getting signoff from a standardised process aside of course; any tool can participate in that.
abudabi123 4y ago
Apple Pages, Notes and Keynote on iPhone could do with more user-ability testing at the back of an Uber, Didi, train, taxi or bus. Make it easy to bullet point and page separate. Sometimes you feel the iPhone apps don't get dogfooded by the Apple developers and those apps are only there to fill in a tickbox for someone souless.

neosat 4y ago

This ^ is spot on. While the general 'abstraction' argument is spot on, MS is in fact poorly placed to be the 'OS' that becomes that abstraction. In fact, arguably it doesn't even need to be an 'OS' level concept. An example is google docs or WhatsApp. I can work on documents seamlessly across different actual 'OS' because the application abstracts that away - and it is sufficient. If an OS were to abstract all of this, it would also involve numerous compromises, notably on the tightly integrated end-end experience (hardware to UX), which is Apple's entire strategy against the likes of Microsoft. So no MS is not the best situated to be that 'OS'. 1. It is unclear if such an OS (with the benefits and trade-offs) will be preferred to a world where cross-OS applications can abstract away the OS. 2. Someone like Google (minus their execution woes that seem to get worse in recent years) is better positioned to abstract away the complexities for a regular consumer.

user5678 4y ago
pjmlp 4y ago
Paraphrasing Sun, the network is the computer, so it is a matter of who has more valuable distributed computing APIs and how they are exposed to the world.

soundnote 4y ago

Apple is Apple only, and is an upmarket status signal. Not a good fit as a cross-device services layer, which is what Thompson is talking about there. Google is moving in that direction (including hiring a former Office exec to run Workspace), in providing an integrated bundle. They're just behind, and have been fucking around with their chat, which is one of the cornerstones of the cloud platform. As Thompson notes, Teams was built to be the "web OS" from the get go, not a Slack clone even though most thought it was one. In Thompson's view, the best players to try to be the web OS are chat providers (due to chat network effects) and cloud storage providers. You can already see Salesforce and Dropbox making moves in that direction. To quote: > This is what Slack — and Silicon Valley, generally — failed to understand about Microsoft’s competitive advantage: the company doesn’t win just because it bundles, or because it has a superior ground game. By virtue of doing everything, even if mediocrely, the company is providing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, particularly for the non-tech workers that are in fact most of the market. Slack may have infused its chat client with love, but chatting is a means to an end, and Microsoft often seems like the only enterprise company that understands that. ... > Here’s the thing, though: Dropbox absolutely is better than OneDrive. Google Apps are better at collaboration than Microsoft’s Office apps. Asana is better than Planner. And, to be very clear, Slack is massively better than Teams at chat. Using all of them together, though, well, it sucks: the user experience that matters for me is not any one app but all of them at once, and for the way I want to work, having everything organized in one single place is simply better (and that’s even with the normal spate of maddening Microsoft UI oddities!). In this Teams is less a chat app than it is a file explorer for the cloud generally, and Stratechery LLC specifically. (me again) Google, in theory, has the pieces to do it. But they're just behind in many ways - compliance, Microsoft's MSP network and sales staff on the ground, management tools, stuff like that. And there's the other question of "do they have enough at least mediocre things integrated together well enough" to make the play. They might, but not yet.