2 ms·

Windows Phone is surely symptomatic of Balmer's milking the cow rather than innovating approach. A smart phone is not a small desktop computer - it needed a com

Windows Phone is surely symptomatic of Balmer's milking the cow rather than innovating approach. A smart phone is not a small desktop computer - it needed a complete rethink of user interface as Apple had done. It's also a bit strange that the success of Windows was based on the ubiquity of clone PCs rather than single vendor, yet Microsoft instead tried to follow Apple here and let Google become the "clone PC" (Android phone) OS supplier. I can't fault Balmer for at least trying to get a slice of the pie by belatedly putting out me-too products like Bing and Azure, but it's precisely because of Microsoft/Balmer missing the importance of the internet that it was put in position of being follower rather than leader. Microsoft is really a bit like Intel in having totally dominated a product category, but then having missed on most of the major industry trends they might have been expected to lead on (for Microsoft, internet, mobile and AI; for Intel mobile, gaming and AI). They are lucky to have had a second chance with Nadella who seems much more in tune with industry trends, willing to rapidly pivot, and who seems to have made a masterful move with their OpenAI partnership in buying time to recover from an early lack of focus on AI/ML.

lenkite 2y ago
The user interface did have a complete re-think. Windows phone popularized tiles and live tiles which was not just innovative, but an order of magnitude easier and more ergonomical compared to icons, esp for older people. The comforting common-cross-app back button, the metro UI, the smooth performance, ability to store all apps on SD card, best phone keyboard of that era, integration with windows PC - they had the bare-bones down fine. But simply gave up after a few years, instead of incrementally improving. I thought it was a bad mistake to bow, kneel and surrender the smart-phone market space. Today, I am fully convinced it was a critical, life-threatening mistake as more folks move to the Apple ecosystem - buying both iPhones, Macbooks and Apple Watches because of a fully-integrated ecosystem. The funny thing it was Microsoft who popularized Continuity, but after they gave up due to lack of willpower, it was Apple who took over, executed better and won. Really frustrating to see the state of Windows OS and device market today.
chucke1992 2y ago
> for Microsoft, internet, mobile and AI I don't think they missed AI boat. Their culture would not have allowed them to create OpenAI, but they were fast to leverage their moat and push AI into their office and windows suites and azure. Hell, they are even trying to catch up with search using AI and are trying to push Azure for various AI startups and stuff. MSFT rarely leads on anything - arguably even Windows is something they created being inspired by something else, while not going deep into hardware. Which what became the undoing of IBM. They are much better at being second. Azure - they were behind AWS, but not as late as Google. I bet with Satya, even with mobile they would have grabbed Nokia much earlier and pushed Windows Mobile before Android took off. AWS missed AI boat though.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  Amazon have a very close relationship with Anthropic, which seems like a good match (Anthropic focus on business use), and win-win. Anthropic gets access to the compute they need, and Amazon get AI to integrate into their AWS offerings. I don't know the contractual basis of the relationship, but it seems this has to be pretty long term and strategic. A significant part of the competitive advantage of one AI vendor over another comes down to inference cost, which in turm comes down to customizing the model architecture for the hardware it is running on, which in this case either is, or will be, Amazon's home grown Graviton processors.
  - chucke1992 2y ago
    The problem with Amazon is not their closeness to Anthropic, but more of the fact their moat is not big enough to integrate AI in a way MSFT can. Even their Azure services somehow feels natural with AI support. I don't know if Satya predicted it or not, but their push into open source and Github acquisition were very helpful for AI.
stackskipton 2y ago
I had a Windows Phone for a while. I still miss the tiles.

lenkite 2y ago

The user interface did have a complete re-think. Windows phone popularized tiles and live tiles which was not just innovative, but an order of magnitude easier and more ergonomical compared to icons, esp for older people. The comforting common-cross-app back button, the metro UI, the smooth performance, ability to store all apps on SD card, best phone keyboard of that era, integration with windows PC - they had the bare-bones down fine. But simply gave up after a few years, instead of incrementally improving. I thought it was a bad mistake to bow, kneel and surrender the smart-phone market space. Today, I am fully convinced it was a critical, life-threatening mistake as more folks move to the Apple ecosystem - buying both iPhones, Macbooks and Apple Watches because of a fully-integrated ecosystem. The funny thing it was Microsoft who popularized Continuity, but after they gave up due to lack of willpower, it was Apple who took over, executed better and won. Really frustrating to see the state of Windows OS and device market today.

chucke1992 2y ago

> for Microsoft, internet, mobile and AI I don't think they missed AI boat. Their culture would not have allowed them to create OpenAI, but they were fast to leverage their moat and push AI into their office and windows suites and azure. Hell, they are even trying to catch up with search using AI and are trying to push Azure for various AI startups and stuff. MSFT rarely leads on anything - arguably even Windows is something they created being inspired by something else, while not going deep into hardware. Which what became the undoing of IBM. They are much better at being second. Azure - they were behind AWS, but not as late as Google. I bet with Satya, even with mobile they would have grabbed Nokia much earlier and pushed Windows Mobile before Android took off. AWS missed AI boat though.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
Amazon have a very close relationship with Anthropic, which seems like a good match (Anthropic focus on business use), and win-win. Anthropic gets access to the compute they need, and Amazon get AI to integrate into their AWS offerings. I don't know the contractual basis of the relationship, but it seems this has to be pretty long term and strategic. A significant part of the competitive advantage of one AI vendor over another comes down to inference cost, which in turm comes down to customizing the model architecture for the hardware it is running on, which in this case either is, or will be, Amazon's home grown Graviton processors.
- chucke1992 2y ago
  The problem with Amazon is not their closeness to Anthropic, but more of the fact their moat is not big enough to integrate AI in a way MSFT can. Even their Azure services somehow feels natural with AI support. I don't know if Satya predicted it or not, but their push into open source and Github acquisition were very helpful for AI.

stackskipton 2y ago

I had a Windows Phone for a while. I still miss the tiles.