3 ms·

For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nint

For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.

podperson 14y ago
Microsoft won for one simple reason -- the licensing deal for DOS. (Not that it wasn't smart and ruthless and good at executing.) IBM made DOS the dominant desktop OS, and the licensing deal allowed Microsoft to enable clone makers to displace IBM (without displacing DOS). Microsoft's legendary persistence -- fast following rival products and iterating them until they didn't suck and eventually drove competitors out of business -- would have been fruitless without the dominant position IBM simply handed to Microsoft with the original DOS deal. And none of this stuff has taken place since Bill Gates left. Microsoft's record for the last ten years has been of failed initiatives (Zune, WinCE) and barely-successful subsidized persistence (MSN, XBox). There's one significant case where Microsoft managed to do well without directly benefiting from the original DOS deal and that's XBox. (This indirectly benefited from the DOS deal in that it leveraged Microsoft's dominance of gaming, and subsidized by profits from that dominance, but compared to everything else it qualifies as an independent success.) Of course, XBox has hardly made Microsoft any money.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  >Microsoft won for one simple reason -- the licensing deal for DOS I think bigger and gutsy move was licensing DOS/Windows to Compaq inspite of IBM not being happy with it. Microsoft could've had an Apple like vertical integration(and immense profits) by making hardware too, but never made PCs. Licensing to PC clones drove the prices of PCs down and made them affordable to a wide swath of the world and helping the Internet come about. If computers cost $3000 like back in the day, adoption would have been quite low. >Microsoft's legendary persistence -- fast following rival products and iterating them until they didn't suck and eventually drove competitors out of business -- would have been fruitless without the dominant position IBM simply handed to Microsoft with the original DOS deal. Sure, but lots of companies have a lot of money to throw around but the difference with Microsoft was they kept at it and waited for missteps from competition while continuously making improvements. Eg. Netscape with the big rewrite http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html or more recently, Sony with the PS3 security issues and Move.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  I wouldn't call the Xbox barely-successful. I'd even say it fits in perfectly with your described model of following rival products and iterating. (Xbox -> Xbox360)
  - raganwald 14y ago
    Microsoft's other successes netted it billions of dollars. XBox’s chief success from a business perspective seems to be defensive, as long as XBox maintains a significant market share, nobody will create a post-PC or post-TV world based on gaming consoles. Of course, somebody seems to be creating a post-PC world based on phones and tablets, but that doesn’t negate the fact that this could have happened earlier if someone like SOny had sewn up 99% of the gaming console market and then integrated it with the web and content.
- RandallBrown 14y ago
  I agree with what you're saying, but since this is the Internet I'm going to nitpick one little tiny point. Windows CE has done just fine. It's not as huge a profit maker as Office or Windows, but it's still used on millions of devices worldwide. It ships in millions of Ford cars, ATMs, billboards, etc.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pgisstilladick 14y ago
You are either 14 or were born retarded.
gaius 14y ago
The future will be like the past, because in the past, the future was like the past.
- DodgyEggplant 14y ago
  Clever, eh? You must be proud. Still, there is a lesson: The entrenched leaders have harder time to catch-up if they miss , and it's not only MS. These are good news. The future is not like the past because back then MS could easily lag and still take the market later. Now they can't.
  - gaius 14y ago
    The more things change, the more they stay the same.
georgemcbay 14y ago
Your conclusions are ridiculously wrong. Also you are cherry-picking results to fit them. Microsoft's "arrive late" model didn't always work in the past (see: Money vs Quicken, et al) and while Microsoft has been struggling to reach traction with totally new (to them) products lately, there is no reason to believe this is due to any sort of sea change in the importance of being a first mover, because there are still plenty of cases in which the first mover is stomped by someone else these days, the someone else just generally isn't Microsoft.
- MBCook 14y ago
  Some of their wins were competitor missteps too. Wordperfect was late to the Windows party, so users who wanted to use a GUI went to Word. That misstep may have very well given MS it's opening. The XBox did all right, but the 360 has done quite well. I loved my PS2, the XBox wasn't bad. But Sony released a year later and at an insane price point. Combined with the difficulty of developing for the cell relative (relative to 3 identical cores) and MS was able to gain a big chunk of the market. Apple never made a big mistake with the iPod. Even the 2nd or 3rd gen (which the capacitive buttons) was still a nice player. The "fat" nano was still a nice player. One of the shuffles was a bit of a dud, but that was never a big chunk of their sales anyway. Any downsides were more than made up for by the availability of accessories and the iTunes Music Store. With the iPhone, I don't think Apple has made any big mistakes either. Maybe the price on the original (which they fixed relatively quickly), and I know many people were unhappy with the AT&T choice, but it seems to have worked out fine. Apple was able to control the experience to keep it from being ruined by the carriers (mostly), and again the accessor market and the App Store have more than made up for that with most consumers. The two biggest complaints I've heard are lock-in/freedom (most people don't seem to care) and the lack of a physical keyboard (preference, and Apple clearly is willing to let keyboard enthusiasts go somewhere else). I'd say there have been Android missteps. Some carriers ruin the phones, and the updates thing is a big negative in my mind. But Android phones cater to just about everyone (touch screen only or keyboard lover), and come in at all price points. It's clearly good enough for a great many people. At this point, I don't think there is an opening in the smartphone market. If MS wants to succeed, they're going to have to make an opening... and they haven't done that yet. Combine that with the Window Phone's downsides (update questions, smaller app market due to small market share) and it's not an easy sell. I'd like to see them succeed here, if only because I like that they're pushing a totally different UI and they provide additional pressure on Apple and Google to keep improving. But the iPhone came out five years ago. Two or three years ago I think they could have had a good chance against Android. They may have waited too long.

podperson 14y ago

Microsoft won for one simple reason -- the licensing deal for DOS. (Not that it wasn't smart and ruthless and good at executing.) IBM made DOS the dominant desktop OS, and the licensing deal allowed Microsoft to enable clone makers to displace IBM (without displacing DOS). Microsoft's legendary persistence -- fast following rival products and iterating them until they didn't suck and eventually drove competitors out of business -- would have been fruitless without the dominant position IBM simply handed to Microsoft with the original DOS deal. And none of this stuff has taken place since Bill Gates left. Microsoft's record for the last ten years has been of failed initiatives (Zune, WinCE) and barely-successful subsidized persistence (MSN, XBox). There's one significant case where Microsoft managed to do well without directly benefiting from the original DOS deal and that's XBox. (This indirectly benefited from the DOS deal in that it leveraged Microsoft's dominance of gaming, and subsidized by profits from that dominance, but compared to everything else it qualifies as an independent success.) Of course, XBox has hardly made Microsoft any money.

recoiledsnake 14y ago
>Microsoft won for one simple reason -- the licensing deal for DOS I think bigger and gutsy move was licensing DOS/Windows to Compaq inspite of IBM not being happy with it. Microsoft could've had an Apple like vertical integration(and immense profits) by making hardware too, but never made PCs. Licensing to PC clones drove the prices of PCs down and made them affordable to a wide swath of the world and helping the Internet come about. If computers cost $3000 like back in the day, adoption would have been quite low. >Microsoft's legendary persistence -- fast following rival products and iterating them until they didn't suck and eventually drove competitors out of business -- would have been fruitless without the dominant position IBM simply handed to Microsoft with the original DOS deal. Sure, but lots of companies have a lot of money to throw around but the difference with Microsoft was they kept at it and waited for missteps from competition while continuously making improvements. Eg. Netscape with the big rewrite http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html or more recently, Sony with the PS3 security issues and Move.
sliverstorm 14y ago
I wouldn't call the Xbox barely-successful. I'd even say it fits in perfectly with your described model of following rival products and iterating. (Xbox -> Xbox360)
- raganwald 14y ago
  Microsoft's other successes netted it billions of dollars. XBox’s chief success from a business perspective seems to be defensive, as long as XBox maintains a significant market share, nobody will create a post-PC or post-TV world based on gaming consoles. Of course, somebody seems to be creating a post-PC world based on phones and tablets, but that doesn’t negate the fact that this could have happened earlier if someone like SOny had sewn up 99% of the gaming console market and then integrated it with the web and content.
RandallBrown 14y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but since this is the Internet I'm going to nitpick one little tiny point. Windows CE has done just fine. It's not as huge a profit maker as Office or Windows, but it's still used on millions of devices worldwide. It ships in millions of Ford cars, ATMs, billboards, etc.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

pgisstilladick 14y ago

You are either 14 or were born retarded.

gaius 14y ago

The future will be like the past, because in the past, the future was like the past.

DodgyEggplant 14y ago
Clever, eh? You must be proud. Still, there is a lesson: The entrenched leaders have harder time to catch-up if they miss , and it's not only MS. These are good news. The future is not like the past because back then MS could easily lag and still take the market later. Now they can't.
- gaius 14y ago
  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

georgemcbay 14y ago

Your conclusions are ridiculously wrong. Also you are cherry-picking results to fit them. Microsoft's "arrive late" model didn't always work in the past (see: Money vs Quicken, et al) and while Microsoft has been struggling to reach traction with totally new (to them) products lately, there is no reason to believe this is due to any sort of sea change in the importance of being a first mover, because there are still plenty of cases in which the first mover is stomped by someone else these days, the someone else just generally isn't Microsoft.

MBCook 14y ago
Some of their wins were competitor missteps too. Wordperfect was late to the Windows party, so users who wanted to use a GUI went to Word. That misstep may have very well given MS it's opening. The XBox did all right, but the 360 has done quite well. I loved my PS2, the XBox wasn't bad. But Sony released a year later and at an insane price point. Combined with the difficulty of developing for the cell relative (relative to 3 identical cores) and MS was able to gain a big chunk of the market. Apple never made a big mistake with the iPod. Even the 2nd or 3rd gen (which the capacitive buttons) was still a nice player. The "fat" nano was still a nice player. One of the shuffles was a bit of a dud, but that was never a big chunk of their sales anyway. Any downsides were more than made up for by the availability of accessories and the iTunes Music Store. With the iPhone, I don't think Apple has made any big mistakes either. Maybe the price on the original (which they fixed relatively quickly), and I know many people were unhappy with the AT&T choice, but it seems to have worked out fine. Apple was able to control the experience to keep it from being ruined by the carriers (mostly), and again the accessor market and the App Store have more than made up for that with most consumers. The two biggest complaints I've heard are lock-in/freedom (most people don't seem to care) and the lack of a physical keyboard (preference, and Apple clearly is willing to let keyboard enthusiasts go somewhere else). I'd say there have been Android missteps. Some carriers ruin the phones, and the updates thing is a big negative in my mind. But Android phones cater to just about everyone (touch screen only or keyboard lover), and come in at all price points. It's clearly good enough for a great many people. At this point, I don't think there is an opening in the smartphone market. If MS wants to succeed, they're going to have to make an opening... and they haven't done that yet. Combine that with the Window Phone's downsides (update questions, smaller app market due to small market share) and it's not an easy sell. I'd like to see them succeed here, if only because I like that they're pushing a totally different UI and they provide additional pressure on Apple and Google to keep improving. But the iPhone came out five years ago. Two or three years ago I think they could have had a good chance against Android. They may have waited too long.