3 ms·
"While Microsoft is no disruptive force in tech today, the truth is that it has never been." This is so false it is painful for me to read. I'm embarrassed for
by CubicleNinjas 14y ago
"While Microsoft is no disruptive force in tech today, the truth is that it has never been."
This is so false it is painful for me to read. I'm embarrassed for the author.
"The company's core competency is a process it uses for entering and consuming existing industries. After it enters a market, it rides off the innovations of its competitors, uses its existing brand power and sheer size to tackle a large surface area at the bottom of the market, and then, finally, it develops a valuable platform on top of the new market. As the platform grows, it slowly squeezes out the existing players."
Name one instance of this in the past 15 years. One. Oh wait, the author lists a few!
Xbox? Well, they have operated at a loss for the first seven years or so, ousted the entire create leadership team (Bach and Allard say howdy), and now are turning nice sums of coin. But this isn't truly Microsofts win, it is the entire industry's failures. Nintendo and Sony are seeing bad times. The currency difference is hurting Japanese companies, who are tired of innovating. Even many lead game designers are admitting the Japanese are years behind the US market. With Sony in turmoil and Nintendo trying to figure out how to right the ship, it is no wonder the years Xbox has seen a profit are only recently.
"Windows Mobile"
In 2010 Ballmer himself said they' lost a "whole generation of users". They dropped the ball so hard that even after the debut of the iPhone, when Google realized it was time to explore a new approach to Android, Ballmer didn't understand why it would be popular. Ballmer displayed a weak passion for mobile yes, but the crime here is that he displays no vision.
Windows 7 is years too late. Nokia will die in a vain attempt to give this OS a chance, but it will never work. The audience only sees two contenders in the ring.
"Windows"
This is the only horse worth mentioning. It, and thus Office, are the default winners. Xerox, Kleenex, and Windows. They win this category by default as 99% of users could care less about the OS they use.
But there are an insane amount of products not mentioned here! Where are the Zunes, the silverlights, the Vistas, or the Azures? There are hundreds of horrific decisions we all watch spiral out of control. Remember the Kin? How I so wanted to play with its awkwardness. Or the Courier? How I pulled at my hair when they killed not only the product, but laid off the entire team. Remember Ensemble or Bizzare Creations? They made some beautiful games. Remember Surface? Remember a decade of IE's disgraceful finger in the face of all web users?
This is a history of successes? It sounds like a meandering path of exploration, where one in one hundred connects. This is luck.
The overall premise here is that Microsoft deserves a gold star for existing. They made 6.3B profit last quarter! Give them a break.
For comparison, Apple made 11.6B profit last quarter. That was a 47% increase from the previous year, which also had a 41% increase. These products were ideas that Microsoft had left behind, too busy swerving around trying to find a mission. Apple took the best ideas and developed a valuable ecosystem to grow as a platform. Sound familiar?
- DeepDuh 14y agoCourier looked extremely promising and I'm saying that as an OSX,iPhone,iPad user. How they could kill that thing off still blows my mind. Then again we have only ever seen an interface mockup, haven't we? Maybe the software / device they had didn't work. Still no excuse to just let this idea go, I still think that a booklet style tablet with pen, capacitive touchscreen and these GUI ideas would be great for many usecases. What's MS's thought process here? "Yeah no, we don't think specialized solutions like these are great for us, let's instead keep smashing on Win32 until it fits unto smartphones and tablets and serve one huge shit sausage." I wait with pleasure for the business user reactions once Windows' most useful and perfected feature, the start menu, is gone and replaced with a touch optimized fullscreen window with gigantic whitespaces and huge mouse paths for achieving anything. It is going to be beautiful.
- CubicleNinjas 14y agoI completely agree! The rumor I'd heard was that Courier was killed because independent teams created the device components. When put together it wasn't refined enough to pass review. Plus, they didn't see tablets as a viable market...again. Fingers crossed there was a much cooler reason. I'm happy to say leaders from the Courier team left and started Paper on iOS. It is a dream to use and shows that they had the talent to make the Courier happen, if given the chance. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003812?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id5060038... Ha, ha - agreed on the start menu as well. I really do wish MS well (they can't have not tested this, right?), as their plan is pretty much a Hail Mary pass. But these sorts of decisions don't instill hope.
- tallanvor 14y agoYou're focused entirely on the consumer space, completely missing one of Dustin's big points. Where is Microsoft still doing big business? The Business Division, which is not only Office products like Word and Excel, but also SharePoint. They do huge business with SQL Server and Exchange, and products like Lync and Forefront are still growing. --Consumers could care less about those products, but obviously businesses have chosen to continue investing in them. Comparing Microsoft and Apple is silly. Microsoft is still primarily a software and services company while Apple has always been a hardware company - the only reason they're in software at all is to help sell their hardware.