3 ms·

Ah, sorry man. In my defense, you went on this long exposition that assumed implicitly that everyone at Microsoft has no idea what they're doing. I can apprec

Ah, sorry man. In my defense, you went on this long exposition that assumed implicitly that everyone at Microsoft has no idea what they're doing. I can appreciate that sentiment, but I got really frustrated trying to parse your "conceptually simple" idea. Anyway, didn't mean to start a flame war, I was just hoping to make sense of what you were trying to say

robomartin 4y ago
I think the bit you missed before your reaction is that this comment was about the decisions MS made back then. Not now. Not today. In fact quite a few of the replies to my comment are from a current frame of reference. Even the link to the current Samsung/Windows integration misses the point (all you have to do is read the ridiculously complex installation and setup instructions to understand). MS, back then, missed a golden opportunity to create a truly useful differentiated product that, in my opinion, would have had a very high probability of success. The bar wasn’t as high as it is today. Slick, seamless integration between phone and desktop would have been an amazing feature. No, that did not mean running CAD on your phone. Again, the context is 2010, not today. I think that was iPhone 3 era. Something as simple as being able to seamlessly make and receive calls, send and receive SMS and do the same with email with either device, desktop or phone, would have been magical back then. Take a call in the car while you arrive at the office, once you get to your desk you put on your headset and the call continues through your computer. You can send text or links from your PC via SMS to the other person. Record the conversation if needed (with legal provisions in place). Etc. Again, don’t think 2022, think 2010. Everything is conceptually simple. It is easy to talk about ideas, quite another matter to actually implement them and do it well. Concepts are usually simple; reality is difficult. It isn’t that MS was full of unintelligent people who don’t know what they are doing. Not at all. The history of business is full of stories of intelligent and very capable people completely missing the mark or failing to recognize a shift in their industry. There’s a great book about this very subject: The Innovators Dilemma. In fact, the author makes the argument that some of these bad decisions are the result of good management. BTW, I used “seamless” to describe something that is intimately integrated to the system. No installation. Think of good USB peripherals that just work.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Everything you listed requires integration between the hardware and the software running in lockstep. By 2010, Apple had 4 years worth of experience releasing operating systems that shared features between the phone, computer and the iPad. Apple has also started designing its own processors by then for the iPad and the iPhone 4. Even the idea of taking a call from your phone and transferring to your computer using the same headset took a specialized processor and micro operating system on the headset to work on AirPods. Microsoft didn’t have tte hardware expertise then and still doesn’t. Even today in 2022, the ARM processors that MS uses in their laptops are so bad that you can run x86 Windows programs running Windows ARM in a VM on a Mac faster than a Microsoft laptop. As far as the Innovators Dilemma, the author was completely wrong about the iPhone. https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/ https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/
  - robomartin 4y ago
    Everything I listed was more than possible in 2010. I have been developing hardware/software products for 40 years. I have absolutely no doubt about that at all. The company that controlled the OS and hardware (MS) had all the freedom, smarts and capability to make that happen. All they lacked --conjecture on my part-- was the vision. > As far as the Innovators Dilemma, the author was completely wrong about the iPhone. Have you actually read the book? His iPhone predictions had nothing whatsoever to do with the core ideas, excellent historical perspective and analysis provided in Innovators Dilemma. Quoting from the very link you provided (emphasis mine): "It is Christensen’s second theory of disruption – low-end disruption – that I believe is flawed. Christensen first described this theory in Disruption, Disintegration and the dissipation of differentiability, and expanded on it in The Innovator’s Solution. It is this theory that is at the basis of Christensen’s critique of Apple quoted above."
    - scarface74 4y ago
      > Everything I listed was more than possible in 2010 Microsoft could have designed a processor like what was in the AirPods in 2010? Five years before Apple? Besides, by 2010, Apple was already the best in the business at supply chain management and was manufacturing more high end devices than anyone in the world. What high performance hardware was Microsoft shipping in 2010? The state of the art mobile hardware in 2010 was Apple’s ARM A4 - a 32 bit single core processor that ran from 800Mhz - 1Ghz. It could barely run Safari by 2011 let alone a full office suite. > Have you actually read the book? His iPhone predictions had nothing whatsoever to do with the core ideas, excellent historical perspective and analysis provided in Innovators Dilemma. He tried to apply his “low end disruption theory” from the 60s and he was completely wrong about Apple.

robomartin 4y ago

I think the bit you missed before your reaction is that this comment was about the decisions MS made back then. Not now. Not today. In fact quite a few of the replies to my comment are from a current frame of reference. Even the link to the current Samsung/Windows integration misses the point (all you have to do is read the ridiculously complex installation and setup instructions to understand). MS, back then, missed a golden opportunity to create a truly useful differentiated product that, in my opinion, would have had a very high probability of success. The bar wasn’t as high as it is today. Slick, seamless integration between phone and desktop would have been an amazing feature. No, that did not mean running CAD on your phone. Again, the context is 2010, not today. I think that was iPhone 3 era. Something as simple as being able to seamlessly make and receive calls, send and receive SMS and do the same with email with either device, desktop or phone, would have been magical back then. Take a call in the car while you arrive at the office, once you get to your desk you put on your headset and the call continues through your computer. You can send text or links from your PC via SMS to the other person. Record the conversation if needed (with legal provisions in place). Etc. Again, don’t think 2022, think 2010. Everything is conceptually simple. It is easy to talk about ideas, quite another matter to actually implement them and do it well. Concepts are usually simple; reality is difficult. It isn’t that MS was full of unintelligent people who don’t know what they are doing. Not at all. The history of business is full of stories of intelligent and very capable people completely missing the mark or failing to recognize a shift in their industry. There’s a great book about this very subject: The Innovators Dilemma. In fact, the author makes the argument that some of these bad decisions are the result of good management. BTW, I used “seamless” to describe something that is intimately integrated to the system. No installation. Think of good USB peripherals that just work.

scarface74 4y ago
Everything you listed requires integration between the hardware and the software running in lockstep. By 2010, Apple had 4 years worth of experience releasing operating systems that shared features between the phone, computer and the iPad. Apple has also started designing its own processors by then for the iPad and the iPhone 4. Even the idea of taking a call from your phone and transferring to your computer using the same headset took a specialized processor and micro operating system on the headset to work on AirPods. Microsoft didn’t have tte hardware expertise then and still doesn’t. Even today in 2022, the ARM processors that MS uses in their laptops are so bad that you can run x86 Windows programs running Windows ARM in a VM on a Mac faster than a Microsoft laptop. As far as the Innovators Dilemma, the author was completely wrong about the iPhone. https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/ https://stratechery.com/2013/clayton-christensen-got-wrong/
- robomartin 4y ago
  Everything I listed was more than possible in 2010. I have been developing hardware/software products for 40 years. I have absolutely no doubt about that at all. The company that controlled the OS and hardware (MS) had all the freedom, smarts and capability to make that happen. All they lacked --conjecture on my part-- was the vision. > As far as the Innovators Dilemma, the author was completely wrong about the iPhone. Have you actually read the book? His iPhone predictions had nothing whatsoever to do with the core ideas, excellent historical perspective and analysis provided in Innovators Dilemma. Quoting from the very link you provided (emphasis mine): "It is Christensen’s second theory of disruption – low-end disruption – that I believe is flawed. Christensen first described this theory in Disruption, Disintegration and the dissipation of differentiability, and expanded on it in The Innovator’s Solution. It is this theory that is at the basis of Christensen’s critique of Apple quoted above."
  - scarface74 4y ago
    > Everything I listed was more than possible in 2010 Microsoft could have designed a processor like what was in the AirPods in 2010? Five years before Apple? Besides, by 2010, Apple was already the best in the business at supply chain management and was manufacturing more high end devices than anyone in the world. What high performance hardware was Microsoft shipping in 2010? The state of the art mobile hardware in 2010 was Apple’s ARM A4 - a 32 bit single core processor that ran from 800Mhz - 1Ghz. It could barely run Safari by 2011 let alone a full office suite. > Have you actually read the book? His iPhone predictions had nothing whatsoever to do with the core ideas, excellent historical perspective and analysis provided in Innovators Dilemma. He tried to apply his “low end disruption theory” from the 60s and he was completely wrong about Apple.