4 ms·

They’re executing better. Microsoft has never made great products with some exceptions.

jiggawatts 2y ago
Microsoft makes “good enough” products that integrate smoothly. That’s what enterprises want and smaller vendors can’t provide by their very nature.
dist-epoch 2y ago
Some exceptions like Windows, Office and Xbox?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  You're listing widely used products, not great products. Fast food is not great just because it's popular.
  - Sebb767 2y ago
    > Fast food is not great just because it's popular. It's not good for you, as a consumer. As a company, it's a trillion dollar market, nurturing some of the largest companies in the world.
    - VelesDude 2y ago
      Even Bill Gates has admitted that a big part of their success was just sheer luck. There were many competitors that were pushing far better technology than they had but simply could not get a foot hold in the market. Just the other day on here I mentioned BeOS/Haiku OS, the tech vision on that thing is astounding but it simply did not pan out into any sort of market success. Same with parts of Commodore, IBM, NeXT. MS did capitalize and manipulate the market to assist themselves and keep competitors out, but just becaused they won doesn't mean they had the best technology.
      - saulpw 2y ago
        Microsoft intentionally and specifically suffocated BeOS. That was not luck.
  - ramraj07 2y ago
    Not a single person who uses Word and Excel daily would agree with you. Apple the “great product” company has been at it forever and so have many open source competitors and none come close to how good word and excel are. This seems to be the problem with engineers: “I use eMacs on Linux so that’s the greatest product for everyone.”
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Microsoft is expert at vendor lock-in. Your company got Office in the 1990s because competing office suites didn't work with Microsoft's operating system "for some reason". Now all of your accountants' macros only work in Excel and it would take thousands of hours to convert them, so no one can switch until a competitor has bug-compatibility with the highly complex and under-specified document format. But because companies can't switch, it sucks all the oxygen out of the room for competitors who are deprived of the revenue, patches and donations they would otherwise get with a larger user base. So they don't have the resources to achieve bug-compatibility and the status quo sustains, not because Excel is so great, but because Microsoft ensures that competitors don't get better. In theory Apple has the resources to do this, but "Microsoft compatibility mode" and "backwards compatible forever" are anathema to their brand, so they don't. Google, by contrast, has actually made an effort and taken a huge bite out of Office market share. You might even say the product is better. But it's still not 100% compatible, and there are companies not willing to put their most sensitive private data on somebody else's cloud, so there are still plenty of companies stuck with Microsoft -- not because it's great, but because there is no great alternative.
      - Wytwwww 2y ago
        But it's not just about compatibility, open source (or any other alternatives) are just simply worse in most ways (UX/feature parity/etc.) than Excel and Word etc.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Google Docs is not worse. LibreOffice is sometimes worse for the reason already mentioned -- companies can't switch to it when they're locked in, but user base is the source of resources for improvement via support contracts, donations and code contributions.

Microsoft makes “good enough” products that integrate smoothly. That’s what enterprises want and smaller vendors can’t provide by their very nature.

dist-epoch 2y ago

Some exceptions like Windows, Office and Xbox?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
You're listing widely used products, not great products. Fast food is not great just because it's popular.
- Sebb767 2y ago
  > Fast food is not great just because it's popular. It's not good for you, as a consumer. As a company, it's a trillion dollar market, nurturing some of the largest companies in the world.
  - VelesDude 2y ago
    Even Bill Gates has admitted that a big part of their success was just sheer luck. There were many competitors that were pushing far better technology than they had but simply could not get a foot hold in the market. Just the other day on here I mentioned BeOS/Haiku OS, the tech vision on that thing is astounding but it simply did not pan out into any sort of market success. Same with parts of Commodore, IBM, NeXT. MS did capitalize and manipulate the market to assist themselves and keep competitors out, but just becaused they won doesn't mean they had the best technology.
    - saulpw 2y ago
      Microsoft intentionally and specifically suffocated BeOS. That was not luck.
- ramraj07 2y ago
  Not a single person who uses Word and Excel daily would agree with you. Apple the “great product” company has been at it forever and so have many open source competitors and none come close to how good word and excel are. This seems to be the problem with engineers: “I use eMacs on Linux so that’s the greatest product for everyone.”
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Microsoft is expert at vendor lock-in. Your company got Office in the 1990s because competing office suites didn't work with Microsoft's operating system "for some reason". Now all of your accountants' macros only work in Excel and it would take thousands of hours to convert them, so no one can switch until a competitor has bug-compatibility with the highly complex and under-specified document format. But because companies can't switch, it sucks all the oxygen out of the room for competitors who are deprived of the revenue, patches and donations they would otherwise get with a larger user base. So they don't have the resources to achieve bug-compatibility and the status quo sustains, not because Excel is so great, but because Microsoft ensures that competitors don't get better. In theory Apple has the resources to do this, but "Microsoft compatibility mode" and "backwards compatible forever" are anathema to their brand, so they don't. Google, by contrast, has actually made an effort and taken a huge bite out of Office market share. You might even say the product is better. But it's still not 100% compatible, and there are companies not willing to put their most sensitive private data on somebody else's cloud, so there are still plenty of companies stuck with Microsoft -- not because it's great, but because there is no great alternative.
    - Wytwwww 2y ago
      But it's not just about compatibility, open source (or any other alternatives) are just simply worse in most ways (UX/feature parity/etc.) than Excel and Word etc.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        Google Docs is not worse. LibreOffice is sometimes worse for the reason already mentioned -- companies can't switch to it when they're locked in, but user base is the source of resources for improvement via support contracts, donations and code contributions.