8 ms·

Competition from Apple and Linux (but mostly Apple) is the best thing to happen to Microsoft in a long time. No, the UI isn't perfect yet, the design decisions

Competition from Apple and Linux (but mostly Apple) is the best thing to happen to Microsoft in a long time. No, the UI isn't perfect yet, the design decisions (for this beta) not always logical, but Windows is finally going somewhere amazing after many years of going no where. Because some of Microsoft's best products were great but went no where. Take the Zune and Windows Phone 7. People who own them love them, especially the Zune. My neighbor had an iPod and Zune and always stood up for his Zune despite loathing Microsoft. But everyone else refuses to touch them. Why? Because they're Microsoft products and the stigma around them is that MS products have no future and become abandoned quickly or go nowhere fast. A reputation that's going to take consumers at least a decade to forget about and move on. So hopefully MS keeps these "revolutionary redesigns" going at a constant rate and not just kill them once profit comes in and market share returns.

podperson 15y ago
I don't think the problem was the zune itself but the zune ecosystem. Apple more than any competitor understood this. If all you want is a player for your existing music library, an iPod offers little advantage over any other decent music player, and the zune UI was very polished. That said, the first thing that struck me about Windows 8 is that there's still a hard line between the 32- and 64-bit versions, which points to a fairly major underlying technical legacy in the current stack. So they need to go through another major revision (as in DOS -> NT) or hope 32-bit disappears (at least on the Intel side; it looks like they're planning on making the ARM side embedded/pre-installed only, so it won't matter so much).
- CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
  There are still plenty of people with hardware that has less than 4 GB of RAM. For those people, there's not generally an advantage in running a 64-bit OS if all their applications are available in 32-bit versions.
  - udp 15y ago
    Aren't 64-bit processors a little more efficient at running a 64-bit operating system?
    - CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
      No. And for most programs, 64-bit code is probably less efficient than 32-bit code. Pointers are twice as big and instructions are generally longer, so less stuff fits into cache.
      - stephanimal 15y ago
        This is one disadvantage, yes. However all registers are now 64 bit, and in general, there are more of them. Furthermore, the 4GB limit does not just concern physical RAM, it also applies elsewhere, like memory mapped files. In general, it is unlikely that you will see poorer performance from 64-bit code compared to its 32-bit counterpart.
        herge 15y ago
        Most of the memory used by programs are pointers, and if you double your pointer size, it has a negative impact on the efficientcy of the L1 and L2 cache.
        stephanimal 15y ago
        Yes, this is exactly what CurtHagenlocher said. >> Most of the memory used by programs are pointers This is a huge generalization, may I add. Yes, I will not argue that cache usage is less efficient, but I am sure you know that register access is faster than cache access, and we double the amount of registers in x64.
        herge 15y ago
        To quote Donald Knuth, a 64 bit program would "waste half the memory [and] effectively throw away half of the cache". You may double the number of registers, but you are still shuffling tons of data between your caches and memory, and that is going to be your constraint for most programs. Losing half of the 4mb or 12mb of your L2 or L3 cache because you use 64 bit pointers has a much bigger impact than doubling the number of registers.
- hrktb 15y ago
  >or hope 32-bit disappears sadly, this might take another 10 years or so... For the legacy problems, I found a VMWare + old OS in virtual machine solution really usable. Especially when some magic is applied to window management to have it seamlessly integrated in the host OS. It would free MS from so much pain if they'd bless this setup and get rid of the administrative hurdles (licenses, registration, genuine check etc.).
  - Splines 15y ago
    They do have a solution: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx I've never used it though, as I already have old XP media and like using Virtualbox.
untog 15y ago
Because they're Microsoft products and the stigma around them is that MS products have no future and become abandoned quickly or go nowhere fast. I really, really don't believe that. What consumer-facing product was abandoned quickly in the Zune era? The Kin was an unmitigated disaster, sure, but when people think of MS they think of Windows, Office and (perhaps) Xbox- none of which have been abandoned.
- stonemetal 15y ago
  The ZuneHD released September 2009, pronounced dead October 2011. Then there is the aforementioned Kin. WP7 devices will be shortly. No WP7 device is capable of running WP8(or at least that is the rumor.)
  - untog 15y ago
    The ZuneHD released September 2009, pronounced dead October 2011. I don't know what you mean by that exactly- have all the ZuneHD devices out there stopped working? No. Is the Zune desktop software still being updated? Yes. And 'Zune' wasn't killed, it was integrated into Windows Phone. MS are just responding to the market in that regard- no-one wants to carry around a dedicated media player any more- they use their smartphone. Kin was a giant mess, yes. But MS practically killed it before launch, and it has next to no advertising- I very much doubt it affected the average consumer's perception of Microsoft, because they probably never heard about it.
    - stonemetal 15y ago
      Is the Zune desktop software still being updated? Yes. That is rather like saying the iPod mini wasn't killed off because iTunes is still updated. You are unable to build software with the current sdk that will run on a Zune. Zune device software hasn't been updated since before it was discontinued. So no Zune devices were not integrated into windows phone, they were dropped in the dust bin.
      - freehunter 15y ago
ebbv 15y ago
Your theory is ridiculous. The Xbox 360 was a major success. The Zune failed because people didn't like it. Not because it's a Microsoft product. Same goes for Windows Phone 7, it is failing because people don't like it. Now whether it's a better product or not is a subjective debate that isn't worth having, IMHO (better for whom?) But to say that they failed because of the Microsoft stigma is absurd.
- darrenkopp 15y ago
  I love how people like to sit in a tree and talk about how other people think. Did you own a Zune and not like it? If not, then don't say "the Zune failed because people didn't like it" because as a Zune and iPod user who loves the Zune and hates the iPod, you don't know what you are talking about.
- untog 15y ago
  The Zune failed because people didn't like it. I think people actually did like it, and I think that people do like Windows Phone when they try it. Zune failed because of a lack of visibility in a crowded marketplace (well, crowded in the sense that Apple is taking up 90% of the room). Windows Phone actually has the same challenge, and MS haven't really stepped up their game with regards to promoting it. Yet?
  - ehutch79 15y ago
    also, because they were marketing the shit-brown colored zune...
  - ChrisLTD 15y ago
    I've seen a lot of Windows Phone 7 promotion, but it's not all that compelling. Their entry into the smart phone wars was so late that they needed something extraordinary to convince people to consider them seriously. Instead they made something marginally better than iOS and Android in some ways and marginally worse in others.
    - untog 15y ago
janardanyri 15y ago
Another relevant point: antitrust oversight of Microsoft started in 1998 and ended 12 May 2011, and Microsoft clearly doesn't have a monopoly in PCs anymore. Imagine a world in which Apple was taken to court for including Mobile Safari on the iPhone, with talk of huge fines and company breakups. Consider having to make strategic decisions with those threats hanging over your head. Would we get Siri? Maybe adding Reminders counts as bundling? Maybe Game Center is anticompetitive against OpenFeint? Will the Growl developers sue over Mountain Lion notifications? What do you do when every improvement could become grounds for a lawsuit? Of course, Apple doesn't have to worry about those things because they don't have any monopolies. Microsoft did. So competition from Apple may have made the difference simply in that Microsoft no longer has to worry about being a monopoly either.
- zmmmmm 15y ago
  Yes, this point is greatly underappreciated. Despite the widespread perception that the antitrust investigation was ineffective, if you trace back to the beginnings of Microsoft's stagnation, you will find it happens exactly when they started getting sued for antitrust in the US and Europe, and similarly so too did their innovation stall. They kept on producing cool stuff out of their research labs but nearly none of it ever made it out. Regulatory concerns enormously biased them towards playing it safe, just doing incremental improvements and milking their cash cow instead of risking aggressively entering new markets and getting hauled into court for it. Even the rise of OSX can be traced to it as MS has been forced to license a great deal of technology (exchange, office formats, etc) to its most hated competitors under FRAND type terms. So its kind of interesting that regulation may actually have been effective, just very slow to work, and also it is unclear whether it was in the ultimate interests of consumers or not (eg: years of stalled innovation that we are only now catching up on).
  - beagle3 15y ago
    > if you trace back to the beginnings of Microsoft's stagnation, you will find it happens exactly when they started getting sued for antitrust in the US and Europe, and similarly so too did their innovation stall. Or, when they managed to effectively kill Netscape and BeOS, having essentially zero competition. > They kept on producing cool stuff out of their research labs but nearly none of it ever made it out. The stuff out of their research labs never made it out before that either. > Regulatory concerns enormously biased them towards playing it safe, just doing incremental improvements and milking their cash cow instead of risking aggressively entering new markets and getting hauled into court for it. Huh? Was there any point in time after, say, 1987, when they did not play it safe? what does regulation have to do with it? > Even the rise of OSX can be traced to it as MS has been forced to license a great deal of technology (exchange, office formats, etc) to its most hated competitors under FRAND type terms. Samba was bundled with OS/X before MS was forced to open the protocol (which was actually extended from an older Digital protocol). The only other protocol which might have been at all relevant is ActiveSync, but it wasn't a factor in the rise of OS/X. It might have contributed to the iPhone, but I'm not sure of that either. > So its kind of interesting that regulation may actually have been effective, just very slow to work, and also it is unclear whether it was in the ultimate interests of consumers or not (eg: years of stalled innovation that we are only now catching up on). Excuse me for the question; in all seriousness - are you a Microsoft employee? Are you seriously claiming that Microsoft's failure to and delay in implement standards for web and office documents is somehow related to regulation? Because from where I'm standing, it sure looks like "it's good to be the king, we don't need to do anything" stalling.
greedo 15y ago
Of course people who bought the Zune are going to like them. They're a self-selected sampling... Even if they thought that deep down, the Zune was a POS, human nature is to defend decisions you've made, especially ones that involve money. The real question is why was the Zune a failure. It was a failure because it didn't offer what the market was buying. The fact that the few who did buy the Zune liked it in no way confers any quality upon the Zune.
- leviathant 15y ago
  I got my first iPod around the time Zune launched, and my wife ended up doing some promo jobs for the Zune - and at the end of that summer, got a Zune out of it as a bonus. To rank my experience between portable music playback devices: iPhone > Zune > iPod She swears by her Zune, and having used both it and the iPod, the Zune is far and away a better device on every front. Having said that, the iPhone's interface is just that much better - and has the benefit of in-depth integration with third party devices. When I'm listening to music on my computer though, I actually came to use the Zune desktop software. I have a rather silly process of downloading music, tagging it with MP3tag, dropping it into iTunes (to sync to the iPhone, & to organize the files into folders based on artist & album), and Zune Desktop picks up on the changes to my Music folder and catalogs them automatically. Zune Desktop blows away iTunes for music playback. iTunes is perhaps a better music/app/video store, but the interface sucks, it's laggy. It looks out of place because it's using dated Mac aesthetics in a Windows environment. For a company that prides itself on style, it sure screws that pooch in the software department.
  - Splines 15y ago
    > Desktop blows away iTunes for music playback. iTunes is perhaps a better music/app/video store, but the interface sucks, it's laggy. It looks out of place because it's using dated Mac aesthetics in a Windows environment. For a company that prides itself on style, it sure screws that pooch in the software department. I feel the same way too. It's weird that for an application that could be a gateway to Apple-dom, Apple doesn't appear to spend much effort. I see it get updated on a regular basis, but I see very little improvements, just feature adds. It's gotten to the point where I don't bother updating unless it blocks me from updated my iPhone. I suppose Apple thinks that spending those resources on other properties is a better investment, but as an end user that deals with iTunes it's a bit frustrating.
huggyface 15y ago
but Windows is finally going somewhere amazing after many years of going no where Windows 7 is an excellent operating system. It is secure. It is very robust. It is easy to use. It is feature rich. It connects to everything and uses everything. In what way is that going nowhere? Same on the server side with Windows Server 2008 R2. I think the competition provided by Apple is proving terrible for Microsoft. They are abandoning their core strengths while poorly trying to duplicate what led to Apple's recent success (which, it should be noted, is largely the same design philosophies that Apple has been using for decades, through their rout as well). It is a classic cargo-cult where Microsoft desperately tries to copy the playbook. In the end they diminish the advantages they hold, while continuing to be deficient by the Apple playbook. They are following so they can never lead. I must say again that it is telling that the people who are most impressed with Microsoft's makeover are the people who would never buy their products -- the Apple faithful. They still think that Apple is leading, which is natural when one follows the other, but they like what Microsoft is doing. That's great if second place accolades could carry a business.
- ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
  A very good counter argument. Windows 7 is awesome, but it wasn't going anywhere NEW. And that's something consumers want. A constantly moving product. Constantly evolving. Not just build it once and sit on it for a decade. But something that has life. "They are abandoning their core strengths while poorly trying to duplicate what led to Apple's recent success" But so is Ubuntu. They're just starting to realize that there's a huge demographic out there that they can make money off of and are adjusting their assets to compete for it, I think. A lot of the doom and gloom "desktops are dying" are because of mobile but also because of the stagnation and lack of 'ease of use' of desktop operating systems. Mobile's great but lets not bullshit ourselves, you can only stare at that little screen for so long before you hop on your laptop and do everything you wanted to do 10 times faster.
  - unseen 15y ago
    Eh, I think you have no clue what the actual customer wants. The problems of the average computer user are probably more of the "I don't want to get robbed from this scareware" kind. Really, get out of your tech bubble.

podperson 15y ago

I don't think the problem was the zune itself but the zune ecosystem. Apple more than any competitor understood this. If all you want is a player for your existing music library, an iPod offers little advantage over any other decent music player, and the zune UI was very polished. That said, the first thing that struck me about Windows 8 is that there's still a hard line between the 32- and 64-bit versions, which points to a fairly major underlying technical legacy in the current stack. So they need to go through another major revision (as in DOS -> NT) or hope 32-bit disappears (at least on the Intel side; it looks like they're planning on making the ARM side embedded/pre-installed only, so it won't matter so much).

CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
There are still plenty of people with hardware that has less than 4 GB of RAM. For those people, there's not generally an advantage in running a 64-bit OS if all their applications are available in 32-bit versions.
- udp 15y ago
  Aren't 64-bit processors a little more efficient at running a 64-bit operating system?
  - CurtHagenlocher 15y ago
    No. And for most programs, 64-bit code is probably less efficient than 32-bit code. Pointers are twice as big and instructions are generally longer, so less stuff fits into cache.
    - stephanimal 15y ago
      This is one disadvantage, yes. However all registers are now 64 bit, and in general, there are more of them. Furthermore, the 4GB limit does not just concern physical RAM, it also applies elsewhere, like memory mapped files. In general, it is unlikely that you will see poorer performance from 64-bit code compared to its 32-bit counterpart.
      - herge 15y ago
        Most of the memory used by programs are pointers, and if you double your pointer size, it has a negative impact on the efficientcy of the L1 and L2 cache.
        stephanimal 15y ago
        Yes, this is exactly what CurtHagenlocher said. >> Most of the memory used by programs are pointers This is a huge generalization, may I add. Yes, I will not argue that cache usage is less efficient, but I am sure you know that register access is faster than cache access, and we double the amount of registers in x64.
        herge 15y ago
        To quote Donald Knuth, a 64 bit program would "waste half the memory [and] effectively throw away half of the cache". You may double the number of registers, but you are still shuffling tons of data between your caches and memory, and that is going to be your constraint for most programs. Losing half of the 4mb or 12mb of your L2 or L3 cache because you use 64 bit pointers has a much bigger impact than doubling the number of registers.
hrktb 15y ago
>or hope 32-bit disappears sadly, this might take another 10 years or so... For the legacy problems, I found a VMWare + old OS in virtual machine solution really usable. Especially when some magic is applied to window management to have it seamlessly integrated in the host OS. It would free MS from so much pain if they'd bless this setup and get rid of the administrative hurdles (licenses, registration, genuine check etc.).
- Splines 15y ago
  They do have a solution: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/default.aspx I've never used it though, as I already have old XP media and like using Virtualbox.

untog 15y ago

Because they're Microsoft products and the stigma around them is that MS products have no future and become abandoned quickly or go nowhere fast. I really, really don't believe that. What consumer-facing product was abandoned quickly in the Zune era? The Kin was an unmitigated disaster, sure, but when people think of MS they think of Windows, Office and (perhaps) Xbox- none of which have been abandoned.

stonemetal 15y ago
The ZuneHD released September 2009, pronounced dead October 2011. Then there is the aforementioned Kin. WP7 devices will be shortly. No WP7 device is capable of running WP8(or at least that is the rumor.)
- untog 15y ago
  The ZuneHD released September 2009, pronounced dead October 2011. I don't know what you mean by that exactly- have all the ZuneHD devices out there stopped working? No. Is the Zune desktop software still being updated? Yes. And 'Zune' wasn't killed, it was integrated into Windows Phone. MS are just responding to the market in that regard- no-one wants to carry around a dedicated media player any more- they use their smartphone. Kin was a giant mess, yes. But MS practically killed it before launch, and it has next to no advertising- I very much doubt it affected the average consumer's perception of Microsoft, because they probably never heard about it.
  - stonemetal 15y ago
    Is the Zune desktop software still being updated? Yes. That is rather like saying the iPod mini wasn't killed off because iTunes is still updated. You are unable to build software with the current sdk that will run on a Zune. Zune device software hasn't been updated since before it was discontinued. So no Zune devices were not integrated into windows phone, they were dropped in the dust bin.
    - freehunter 15y ago

ebbv 15y ago

Your theory is ridiculous. The Xbox 360 was a major success. The Zune failed because people didn't like it. Not because it's a Microsoft product. Same goes for Windows Phone 7, it is failing because people don't like it. Now whether it's a better product or not is a subjective debate that isn't worth having, IMHO (better for whom?) But to say that they failed because of the Microsoft stigma is absurd.

darrenkopp 15y ago
I love how people like to sit in a tree and talk about how other people think. Did you own a Zune and not like it? If not, then don't say "the Zune failed because people didn't like it" because as a Zune and iPod user who loves the Zune and hates the iPod, you don't know what you are talking about.
untog 15y ago
The Zune failed because people didn't like it. I think people actually did like it, and I think that people do like Windows Phone when they try it. Zune failed because of a lack of visibility in a crowded marketplace (well, crowded in the sense that Apple is taking up 90% of the room). Windows Phone actually has the same challenge, and MS haven't really stepped up their game with regards to promoting it. Yet?
- ehutch79 15y ago
  also, because they were marketing the shit-brown colored zune...
- ChrisLTD 15y ago
  I've seen a lot of Windows Phone 7 promotion, but it's not all that compelling. Their entry into the smart phone wars was so late that they needed something extraordinary to convince people to consider them seriously. Instead they made something marginally better than iOS and Android in some ways and marginally worse in others.
  - untog 15y ago

janardanyri 15y ago

Another relevant point: antitrust oversight of Microsoft started in 1998 and ended 12 May 2011, and Microsoft clearly doesn't have a monopoly in PCs anymore. Imagine a world in which Apple was taken to court for including Mobile Safari on the iPhone, with talk of huge fines and company breakups. Consider having to make strategic decisions with those threats hanging over your head. Would we get Siri? Maybe adding Reminders counts as bundling? Maybe Game Center is anticompetitive against OpenFeint? Will the Growl developers sue over Mountain Lion notifications? What do you do when every improvement could become grounds for a lawsuit? Of course, Apple doesn't have to worry about those things because they don't have any monopolies. Microsoft did. So competition from Apple may have made the difference simply in that Microsoft no longer has to worry about being a monopoly either.

zmmmmm 15y ago
Yes, this point is greatly underappreciated. Despite the widespread perception that the antitrust investigation was ineffective, if you trace back to the beginnings of Microsoft's stagnation, you will find it happens exactly when they started getting sued for antitrust in the US and Europe, and similarly so too did their innovation stall. They kept on producing cool stuff out of their research labs but nearly none of it ever made it out. Regulatory concerns enormously biased them towards playing it safe, just doing incremental improvements and milking their cash cow instead of risking aggressively entering new markets and getting hauled into court for it. Even the rise of OSX can be traced to it as MS has been forced to license a great deal of technology (exchange, office formats, etc) to its most hated competitors under FRAND type terms. So its kind of interesting that regulation may actually have been effective, just very slow to work, and also it is unclear whether it was in the ultimate interests of consumers or not (eg: years of stalled innovation that we are only now catching up on).
- beagle3 15y ago
  > if you trace back to the beginnings of Microsoft's stagnation, you will find it happens exactly when they started getting sued for antitrust in the US and Europe, and similarly so too did their innovation stall. Or, when they managed to effectively kill Netscape and BeOS, having essentially zero competition. > They kept on producing cool stuff out of their research labs but nearly none of it ever made it out. The stuff out of their research labs never made it out before that either. > Regulatory concerns enormously biased them towards playing it safe, just doing incremental improvements and milking their cash cow instead of risking aggressively entering new markets and getting hauled into court for it. Huh? Was there any point in time after, say, 1987, when they did not play it safe? what does regulation have to do with it? > Even the rise of OSX can be traced to it as MS has been forced to license a great deal of technology (exchange, office formats, etc) to its most hated competitors under FRAND type terms. Samba was bundled with OS/X before MS was forced to open the protocol (which was actually extended from an older Digital protocol). The only other protocol which might have been at all relevant is ActiveSync, but it wasn't a factor in the rise of OS/X. It might have contributed to the iPhone, but I'm not sure of that either. > So its kind of interesting that regulation may actually have been effective, just very slow to work, and also it is unclear whether it was in the ultimate interests of consumers or not (eg: years of stalled innovation that we are only now catching up on). Excuse me for the question; in all seriousness - are you a Microsoft employee? Are you seriously claiming that Microsoft's failure to and delay in implement standards for web and office documents is somehow related to regulation? Because from where I'm standing, it sure looks like "it's good to be the king, we don't need to do anything" stalling.

greedo 15y ago

Of course people who bought the Zune are going to like them. They're a self-selected sampling... Even if they thought that deep down, the Zune was a POS, human nature is to defend decisions you've made, especially ones that involve money. The real question is why was the Zune a failure. It was a failure because it didn't offer what the market was buying. The fact that the few who did buy the Zune liked it in no way confers any quality upon the Zune.

leviathant 15y ago
I got my first iPod around the time Zune launched, and my wife ended up doing some promo jobs for the Zune - and at the end of that summer, got a Zune out of it as a bonus. To rank my experience between portable music playback devices: iPhone > Zune > iPod She swears by her Zune, and having used both it and the iPod, the Zune is far and away a better device on every front. Having said that, the iPhone's interface is just that much better - and has the benefit of in-depth integration with third party devices. When I'm listening to music on my computer though, I actually came to use the Zune desktop software. I have a rather silly process of downloading music, tagging it with MP3tag, dropping it into iTunes (to sync to the iPhone, & to organize the files into folders based on artist & album), and Zune Desktop picks up on the changes to my Music folder and catalogs them automatically. Zune Desktop blows away iTunes for music playback. iTunes is perhaps a better music/app/video store, but the interface sucks, it's laggy. It looks out of place because it's using dated Mac aesthetics in a Windows environment. For a company that prides itself on style, it sure screws that pooch in the software department.
- Splines 15y ago
  > Desktop blows away iTunes for music playback. iTunes is perhaps a better music/app/video store, but the interface sucks, it's laggy. It looks out of place because it's using dated Mac aesthetics in a Windows environment. For a company that prides itself on style, it sure screws that pooch in the software department. I feel the same way too. It's weird that for an application that could be a gateway to Apple-dom, Apple doesn't appear to spend much effort. I see it get updated on a regular basis, but I see very little improvements, just feature adds. It's gotten to the point where I don't bother updating unless it blocks me from updated my iPhone. I suppose Apple thinks that spending those resources on other properties is a better investment, but as an end user that deals with iTunes it's a bit frustrating.

huggyface 15y ago

but Windows is finally going somewhere amazing after many years of going no where Windows 7 is an excellent operating system. It is secure. It is very robust. It is easy to use. It is feature rich. It connects to everything and uses everything. In what way is that going nowhere? Same on the server side with Windows Server 2008 R2. I think the competition provided by Apple is proving terrible for Microsoft. They are abandoning their core strengths while poorly trying to duplicate what led to Apple's recent success (which, it should be noted, is largely the same design philosophies that Apple has been using for decades, through their rout as well). It is a classic cargo-cult where Microsoft desperately tries to copy the playbook. In the end they diminish the advantages they hold, while continuing to be deficient by the Apple playbook. They are following so they can never lead. I must say again that it is telling that the people who are most impressed with Microsoft's makeover are the people who would never buy their products -- the Apple faithful. They still think that Apple is leading, which is natural when one follows the other, but they like what Microsoft is doing. That's great if second place accolades could carry a business.

ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
A very good counter argument. Windows 7 is awesome, but it wasn't going anywhere NEW. And that's something consumers want. A constantly moving product. Constantly evolving. Not just build it once and sit on it for a decade. But something that has life. "They are abandoning their core strengths while poorly trying to duplicate what led to Apple's recent success" But so is Ubuntu. They're just starting to realize that there's a huge demographic out there that they can make money off of and are adjusting their assets to compete for it, I think. A lot of the doom and gloom "desktops are dying" are because of mobile but also because of the stagnation and lack of 'ease of use' of desktop operating systems. Mobile's great but lets not bullshit ourselves, you can only stare at that little screen for so long before you hop on your laptop and do everything you wanted to do 10 times faster.
- unseen 15y ago
  Eh, I think you have no clue what the actual customer wants. The problems of the average computer user are probably more of the "I don't want to get robbed from this scareware" kind. Really, get out of your tech bubble.