9 ms·

With many of their new products, Microsoft seems to finally have viable offerings. The dangerous thing for Microsoft's competition is that previous iterations

by 300bps 13y ago

With many of their new products, Microsoft seems to finally have viable offerings. The dangerous thing for Microsoft's competition is that previous iterations of Microsoft products stunk so you had to go to the competition by default. That is not the case anymore so expect to see much thinner margins for Apple, Google and others in the future. Azure including their Virtual Machines are a great competitor to Amazon AWS and EC2. I've used both. Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are a great competitor to Google Apps. I've used both. Windows Phone 8 is a great competitor to iPhone. I had iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s and now a Nokia Lumia 928. Windows Surface Pro (i.e. not RT) is a great competitor to iPad. It really is a desktop/laptop replacement unlike the iPad and again, I've owned both. Windows 8 had several issues out of the gate. I use it every day and spent the 10 minutes necessary to learn the new interface to get used to it. Many people aren't willing to do that. Vista had even more problems, and Microsoft still came roaring back with a very successful Windows 7. Microsoft is hoping Windows 8.1 does the same thing for Windows 8. In all of this, the customers win. Expect cheaper prices with increased competition - example being how Amazon just lowered their EC2 pricing by as much as 80%.

thetrb 13y ago
Well, the market and the customers don't seem to agree on all of this: The market share of Windows Phone 8 is extremely small and doesn't seem to pick up. The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that. You can point to a 10 minute learning curve and while I agree that the new Windows interface is not hard to learn I still think it's an extremely bad user experience. The standard apps are just so incredibly bad (e.g. the mail app, the photo app, the video app, even the store itself) that I'm not using them at all. I spend 99.9% of my time on the old Windows desktop. The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing. I totally agree that competition is good for the customer (and might potentially be bad for competitors), but so far that doesn't help Microsoft.
- 300bps 13y ago
  The key point I was trying to make was: With many of their new products, Microsoft seems to finally have viable offerings. Your statement of: Well, the market and the customers don't seem to agree on all of this Seems to miss that point. Just to be more clear - it was only in the last few weeks that Verizon had a flagship Windows Phone 8 device available (Nokia Lumia 928). Has the market really had time to absorb that Verizon now has a Windows Phone 8 device that can compete with the iPhone? I don't think it has. As a former iPhone user, I was personally responsible for at least a dozen people buying iPhones. Now as a Windows Phone 8 user for the past couple weeks, I am responsible for someone returning their iPhone 5 to get a Lumia 928 and there are three additional people in my office who are now going to get a Lumia instead of the iPhone 5 they were planning on when they are next eligible for an upgrade. The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that. ...and Windows ME was a failure, Windows Vista was a failure and Windows 8 is proving to be less than stellar. Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released. There are also a lot of people that bought iPads thinking it would fully replace their PC that are now sorely disappointed. The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing. Surface Pro is selling well. Don't judge it by Surface RT which was a desperate attempt at increasing market share to get more Windows 8-style applications developed.
  - testbro 13y ago
    Do you think your experiences are typical? I get that MS does have some good offerings but at the same time I think the average consumer's perception isn't as good as it could be. > Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released. I'll be interested if the consumers even notice - is the average consumer clued up enough to understand the significant of a point release or what a new processor adds? In my (somewhat pompous) view, Apple's success is its focus on selling the consumer things they can understand the need for, not numbers. I see MS is taking this approach with the new Win8 marketing but it'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off with 8.1
    - 13y ago
microcolonel 13y ago
Too bad they're selling all your data to the government, and using what they haven't yet sold to sell more crap to you.
RyanZAG 13y ago
I get that you're a Windows Dev and obviously try to put in the effort to find the good things in Microsoft's current product line - but you also need to see the reality here. Microsoft definitely does not have viable offerings. Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was. The new xbox is probably the most panned product announcement I've ever seen. Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange. Windows Phone has been a dismal failure in terms of actual customer traction - especially outside USA. Numerous product placements are making this more of a joke than anything - (everyone laughs when a hacker in Burn Notice pulls out a Windows Phone). Surface Pro is not even in the same market segment as an iPad - Surface Pro competes with laptops and the Mac Air, not with the iPad. You can't use them for the same tasks. Azure is in no way a competitor to AWS/EC2 - it's more a competitor to Digital Ocean in terms of scale, and Digital Ocean is outperforming it completely. I get that you've used the Windows stuff and the competition and find the Windows stuff better for you - that's likely because of how familiar you are with the Windows environment and Windows announcements. However, most people off the street are completely confused by it. You need to try and view the situation objectively if you want to understand why the MS share price is diving and all your customers are hopping ship.
- 300bps 13y ago
  Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was. This is revisionist thinking and shows your own bias that you accuse me of. You have a review of every single Microsoft product. I have to ask - what is your experience with Office 365, Hosted Exchange and Azure? What tasks can you do with an iPad and not with Surface and vice-versa? Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone. I've owned 3 iPhones - how many Windows Phone 8 flagship devices have you owned?
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    > What tasks can you do with an iPad and not with Surface and vice-versa? Surface RT is just the worst form factor for use in bed; the iPad is 10 times easier to hold in portrait or landscape, not to mention the high res screen looks much better than the Surface for close up in-bed viewing (RT again, I don't have a Pro). The Surface seems to be useful for Office when on a table where the keyboard can be used, but that is not part of my usage habits. I see how Surface is cool, but the iPad still provides a better experience for my personal use cases. Haven't tried the Pro, but I already carry a laptop around for coding. > Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone. My 920 lacks apps :( Even Facebook and Skype are missing from the market my phone is locked too. I keep an old iPhone 4 (bought in the same region, ironically) in my bag for apps. Otherwise, the 920 is a wonderful phone.
ivanhoe 13y ago
Your own experience (or mine) is not a good way to measure the potential of those products. It's all about the average consumers, what they like or not...
mark242 13y ago
I made a joke once to my boss that the day is coming very quickly when a kid is going to enter the workforce, and on her first day she'll ask, "why does the company that makes the Xbox also make spreadsheet software?" The reality today is that Microsoft does not have the engineering talent that they used to have, and their design talent has been completely drained. They simply are not a 21st century software company anymore. The marketplace perception of Microsoft now is that they are a dinosaur that also makes a gaming console. Period. They may very well have a functional competitor to EC2, but I cannot think of one serious company that is choosing Azure over AWS, or Rackspace, or even Digital Ocean or Heroku. The Azure Case Studies page is an absolute joke, a mockery of what you would expect from a behemoth as Microsoft. The simple fact is that Amazon completely owns the market that Microsoft is trying to break into. (This is especially funny given the years 1992-1996) They may very well have a functional competitor to Google Docs/Drive/Apps/whatever it's called now, but again, Google is totally dominating that market (crappy updates to Gmail aside). Microsoft is stuck on the outside looking in, and anyone who is starting a company, given the choice between Office 365 and Google Apps, they aren't picking Office anymore. Windows Phone is a joke and I'm not going to devote any more words to it. Windows 8 isn't even worth any discussion. The reality is, is that as kids in college today enter the workforce with their Android or iPhone, and Gmail/Gdrive, and knowledge of AWS, the need for Microsoft (which you have to admit, MS has been coasting on for probably 15-20 years now) is evaporating. If all Microsoft ever tries to do now is play catchup to Amazon, Google, and Apple, they're won't necessarily be squashed, but they'll just become irrelevant.
- disgruntledphd2 13y ago
  Office, Office, Office. While I would much, much prefer to be writing my data analytic reports in Markdown/LaTeX and formatting them beautifully, the need for people (sales people, damn you sales!) to quickly steal slides and put them in their own presentations requires me to use Powerpoint. Given that i hate Apple much more than I hate Microsoft (because seriously, Apple are much more dangerous) I'm stuck on Windows (until I write some kind of Markdown/LaTeX to power point converter (unfortunately, I also have a thesis to finish, so that's a while away yet) for work, where the first thing I install is Cygwin (and the thing I miss most is easy X-forwarding) and yet I can't switch. Additionally, Excel is a fine product for quick and dirty analysis, while being a nightmare for any kind of continued development, so I end up using that. Please don't mention Impress and Calc, I use them but Impress just doesn't interoperate well enough with powerpoint to make it useful, and Calc is good (regex search) but not as polished as Excel. Its so unbelievably depressing that I'm stuck with this on the desktop, but that's the power of network effects for you. For another example, see Facebook.
zmonkeyz 13y ago
Agreed. After 10 minutes I was fine with using Windows 8 and don't see what the big deal is among people who are technical. With someone like my mom or sister i could see it being a bit more of an issue.
rsynnott 13y ago
> Azure including their Virtual Machines are a great competitor to Amazon AWS and EC2. I've used both. They may be for running Windows servers, but they're certainly not price-competitive for running Linux servers in most cases. > Expect cheaper prices with increased competition - example being how Amazon just lowered their EC2 pricing by as much as 80%. I suspect that's more to do with Google's EC2 clone, which is actually price-competitive with AWS. Also, that reduction was just on dedicated instances, which pretty much nobody uses; they largely exist for things like PCI compliance.

by 300bps 13y ago

thetrb 13y ago

Well, the market and the customers don't seem to agree on all of this: The market share of Windows Phone 8 is extremely small and doesn't seem to pick up. The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that. You can point to a 10 minute learning curve and while I agree that the new Windows interface is not hard to learn I still think it's an extremely bad user experience. The standard apps are just so incredibly bad (e.g. the mail app, the photo app, the video app, even the store itself) that I'm not using them at all. I spend 99.9% of my time on the old Windows desktop. The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing. I totally agree that competition is good for the customer (and might potentially be bad for competitors), but so far that doesn't help Microsoft.

300bps 13y ago
The key point I was trying to make was: With many of their new products, Microsoft seems to finally have viable offerings. Your statement of: Well, the market and the customers don't seem to agree on all of this Seems to miss that point. Just to be more clear - it was only in the last few weeks that Verizon had a flagship Windows Phone 8 device available (Nokia Lumia 928). Has the market really had time to absorb that Verizon now has a Windows Phone 8 device that can compete with the iPhone? I don't think it has. As a former iPhone user, I was personally responsible for at least a dozen people buying iPhones. Now as a Windows Phone 8 user for the past couple weeks, I am responsible for someone returning their iPhone 5 to get a Lumia 928 and there are three additional people in my office who are now going to get a Lumia instead of the iPhone 5 they were planning on when they are next eligible for an upgrade. The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that. ...and Windows ME was a failure, Windows Vista was a failure and Windows 8 is proving to be less than stellar. Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released. There are also a lot of people that bought iPads thinking it would fully replace their PC that are now sorely disappointed. The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing. Surface Pro is selling well. Don't judge it by Surface RT which was a desperate attempt at increasing market share to get more Windows 8-style applications developed.
- testbro 13y ago
  Do you think your experiences are typical? I get that MS does have some good offerings but at the same time I think the average consumer's perception isn't as good as it could be. > Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released. I'll be interested if the consumers even notice - is the average consumer clued up enough to understand the significant of a point release or what a new processor adds? In my (somewhat pompous) view, Apple's success is its focus on selling the consumer things they can understand the need for, not numbers. I see MS is taking this approach with the new Win8 marketing but it'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off with 8.1
  - 13y ago

microcolonel 13y ago

Too bad they're selling all your data to the government, and using what they haven't yet sold to sell more crap to you.

RyanZAG 13y ago

I get that you're a Windows Dev and obviously try to put in the effort to find the good things in Microsoft's current product line - but you also need to see the reality here. Microsoft definitely does not have viable offerings. Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was. The new xbox is probably the most panned product announcement I've ever seen. Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange. Windows Phone has been a dismal failure in terms of actual customer traction - especially outside USA. Numerous product placements are making this more of a joke than anything - (everyone laughs when a hacker in Burn Notice pulls out a Windows Phone). Surface Pro is not even in the same market segment as an iPad - Surface Pro competes with laptops and the Mac Air, not with the iPad. You can't use them for the same tasks. Azure is in no way a competitor to AWS/EC2 - it's more a competitor to Digital Ocean in terms of scale, and Digital Ocean is outperforming it completely. I get that you've used the Windows stuff and the competition and find the Windows stuff better for you - that's likely because of how familiar you are with the Windows environment and Windows announcements. However, most people off the street are completely confused by it. You need to try and view the situation objectively if you want to understand why the MS share price is diving and all your customers are hopping ship.

300bps 13y ago
Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was. This is revisionist thinking and shows your own bias that you accuse me of. You have a review of every single Microsoft product. I have to ask - what is your experience with Office 365, Hosted Exchange and Azure? What tasks can you do with an iPad and not with Surface and vice-versa? Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone. I've owned 3 iPhones - how many Windows Phone 8 flagship devices have you owned?
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  > What tasks can you do with an iPad and not with Surface and vice-versa? Surface RT is just the worst form factor for use in bed; the iPad is 10 times easier to hold in portrait or landscape, not to mention the high res screen looks much better than the Surface for close up in-bed viewing (RT again, I don't have a Pro). The Surface seems to be useful for Office when on a table where the keyboard can be used, but that is not part of my usage habits. I see how Surface is cool, but the iPad still provides a better experience for my personal use cases. Haven't tried the Pro, but I already carry a laptop around for coding. > Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone. My 920 lacks apps :( Even Facebook and Skype are missing from the market my phone is locked too. I keep an old iPhone 4 (bought in the same region, ironically) in my bag for apps. Otherwise, the 920 is a wonderful phone.

ivanhoe 13y ago

Your own experience (or mine) is not a good way to measure the potential of those products. It's all about the average consumers, what they like or not...

mark242 13y ago

I made a joke once to my boss that the day is coming very quickly when a kid is going to enter the workforce, and on her first day she'll ask, "why does the company that makes the Xbox also make spreadsheet software?" The reality today is that Microsoft does not have the engineering talent that they used to have, and their design talent has been completely drained. They simply are not a 21st century software company anymore. The marketplace perception of Microsoft now is that they are a dinosaur that also makes a gaming console. Period. They may very well have a functional competitor to EC2, but I cannot think of one serious company that is choosing Azure over AWS, or Rackspace, or even Digital Ocean or Heroku. The Azure Case Studies page is an absolute joke, a mockery of what you would expect from a behemoth as Microsoft. The simple fact is that Amazon completely owns the market that Microsoft is trying to break into. (This is especially funny given the years 1992-1996) They may very well have a functional competitor to Google Docs/Drive/Apps/whatever it's called now, but again, Google is totally dominating that market (crappy updates to Gmail aside). Microsoft is stuck on the outside looking in, and anyone who is starting a company, given the choice between Office 365 and Google Apps, they aren't picking Office anymore. Windows Phone is a joke and I'm not going to devote any more words to it. Windows 8 isn't even worth any discussion. The reality is, is that as kids in college today enter the workforce with their Android or iPhone, and Gmail/Gdrive, and knowledge of AWS, the need for Microsoft (which you have to admit, MS has been coasting on for probably 15-20 years now) is evaporating. If all Microsoft ever tries to do now is play catchup to Amazon, Google, and Apple, they're won't necessarily be squashed, but they'll just become irrelevant.

disgruntledphd2 13y ago
Office, Office, Office. While I would much, much prefer to be writing my data analytic reports in Markdown/LaTeX and formatting them beautifully, the need for people (sales people, damn you sales!) to quickly steal slides and put them in their own presentations requires me to use Powerpoint. Given that i hate Apple much more than I hate Microsoft (because seriously, Apple are much more dangerous) I'm stuck on Windows (until I write some kind of Markdown/LaTeX to power point converter (unfortunately, I also have a thesis to finish, so that's a while away yet) for work, where the first thing I install is Cygwin (and the thing I miss most is easy X-forwarding) and yet I can't switch. Additionally, Excel is a fine product for quick and dirty analysis, while being a nightmare for any kind of continued development, so I end up using that. Please don't mention Impress and Calc, I use them but Impress just doesn't interoperate well enough with powerpoint to make it useful, and Calc is good (regex search) but not as polished as Excel. Its so unbelievably depressing that I'm stuck with this on the desktop, but that's the power of network effects for you. For another example, see Facebook.

zmonkeyz 13y ago

Agreed. After 10 minutes I was fine with using Windows 8 and don't see what the big deal is among people who are technical. With someone like my mom or sister i could see it being a bit more of an issue.

rsynnott 13y ago

> Azure including their Virtual Machines are a great competitor to Amazon AWS and EC2. I've used both. They may be for running Windows servers, but they're certainly not price-competitive for running Linux servers in most cases. > Expect cheaper prices with increased competition - example being how Amazon just lowered their EC2 pricing by as much as 80%. I suspect that's more to do with Google's EC2 clone, which is actually price-competitive with AWS. Also, that reduction was just on dedicated instances, which pretty much nobody uses; they largely exist for things like PCI compliance.