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> Microsoft needs to focus on what it is good at, and stop chasing Apple just because it wants to be good at what Apple is good at. But the author spent the fi

> Microsoft needs to focus on what it is good at, and stop chasing Apple just because it wants to be good at what Apple is good at. But the author spent the first half of the essay arguing that the market Microsoft is good at is going away. If that's correct (and it's a big if), Microsoft has no choice but to learn to be good at different things. You can criticize how effectively Microsoft has done this - and that critique consumes the latter half of the essay - but you can't simultaneously argue that Microsoft needs to change what it does and that Microsoft needs to keep doing what it's good at.

ek 14y ago
That quote in particular is a huge WTF, since it disregards how the free market model works to advance the state of the art. A similar sentence is "Google needs to focus on what it is good at, and stop chasing Apple just because it wants to be good at what Apple is good at." The Nexus 7 and other 7-inch tablets that run Android, presumably originally developed to compete with iPad, are selling so well that it has prompted Apple to launch a competitive variant of iPad (not officially, but wait 24 hours). This is competition working the way it should, to the benefit of consumers and the general state of technology. Any claim that any company should not pursue a market in which it has the potential to be competitive simply because another company is currently more successful is a lie. When such statements involve companies with a large fanboy culture, their wrongheadedness is somewhat hidden, but I for one am excited to see where Windows 8 will take us, and take the Mac.
jbooth 14y ago
The thing is, Microsoft is doing what they're good at. They're good at giving a consistent experience across whatever hardware, no matter what, and damn any technical debt or consequences they incur in doing so. I think someone posted a video of them actually running the upgrades from Windows 1.0 through to 7 on youtube somewhere. Throwing touchscreen devices into the Windows wheelhouse and trying to write one OS that runs across them and desktop machines is actually very much a bet on MS's core competency.
- Ntrails 14y ago
  "A consistent experience across whatever hardware?" I take it you never tried to use one of the thousands of Vista laptops sold with 1-1.5 gigs of RAM?
ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is what I noticed as well, I read it a couple of times. The summary seemed to be "Microsoft, you are in a dying market, stay there and die, don't even try to get into adjacent growing markets where Apple is." That Windows 8 doesn't look at all like Windows of old is a 'good' thing, that Microsoft is continuing to try to be a competitor in mobile is a good thing, and that they are taking a more leading role in defining hardware is a good thing too. One can argue that they haven't done as good a job as one might like, or that some of their efforts seem to address non-problems, but it seems silly to criticize the company for trying.

ek 14y ago

That quote in particular is a huge WTF, since it disregards how the free market model works to advance the state of the art. A similar sentence is "Google needs to focus on what it is good at, and stop chasing Apple just because it wants to be good at what Apple is good at." The Nexus 7 and other 7-inch tablets that run Android, presumably originally developed to compete with iPad, are selling so well that it has prompted Apple to launch a competitive variant of iPad (not officially, but wait 24 hours). This is competition working the way it should, to the benefit of consumers and the general state of technology. Any claim that any company should not pursue a market in which it has the potential to be competitive simply because another company is currently more successful is a lie. When such statements involve companies with a large fanboy culture, their wrongheadedness is somewhat hidden, but I for one am excited to see where Windows 8 will take us, and take the Mac.

jbooth 14y ago

The thing is, Microsoft is doing what they're good at. They're good at giving a consistent experience across whatever hardware, no matter what, and damn any technical debt or consequences they incur in doing so. I think someone posted a video of them actually running the upgrades from Windows 1.0 through to 7 on youtube somewhere. Throwing touchscreen devices into the Windows wheelhouse and trying to write one OS that runs across them and desktop machines is actually very much a bet on MS's core competency.

Ntrails 14y ago
"A consistent experience across whatever hardware?" I take it you never tried to use one of the thousands of Vista laptops sold with 1-1.5 gigs of RAM?

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This is what I noticed as well, I read it a couple of times. The summary seemed to be "Microsoft, you are in a dying market, stay there and die, don't even try to get into adjacent growing markets where Apple is." That Windows 8 doesn't look at all like Windows of old is a 'good' thing, that Microsoft is continuing to try to be a competitor in mobile is a good thing, and that they are taking a more leading role in defining hardware is a good thing too. One can argue that they haven't done as good a job as one might like, or that some of their efforts seem to address non-problems, but it seems silly to criticize the company for trying.