8 ms·

Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

72 points by AdamJBall 13y ago

guardian5x 13y ago
Nokia has already stated that the Nokia Android phone (Normandy) was cancelled, even before the Microsoft take over.
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices. Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.
- pantalaimon 13y ago
  Why do people repeat saying that "the personal pc landscape is […] moving toward mobile devices"? I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sure there is a decline in sales for PCs because the market is saturated and for the most people, unless they are gamers, their 5 year old computer will do just fine. Yet people keep shouting that the days of the desktop computer are over and everyone soon will write their eMails on their smartphone only.
  - thatthatis 13y ago
    Hypothetical semi personal example: I got an iPhone and suddenly about 40% of my Internet consumption went to the iPhone. Now, in that case most of the 40% was incremental, but it did supplant about 10% of my desktop browsing. I got a tablet and suddenly about 30% of my Internet consumption is on the tablet, stealing about 10% from the iPhone, 10% incremental, and 10% from desktop. I've reduced my desktop Internet use by only about 20%, but now desktop only makes up about 40% of my internet activity. What sane mega-corp would sit there and say "well, we still dominate the desktop 40% so lets not worry about the other 60% that is now consumed by related products." Computing is moving to mobile doesn't mean the mobile use has to come from cannibalization.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    > I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sounds like a highly biased sample set. I know several people who barely touch their PCs since getting a tablet, and there are an increasing number of children for whom PCs are just these weird things they see in school that, for some unfathomable reason, don't do anything when you touch the screen. There already aren't a lot of reasons left for non-techies to not stick to tablets. Those reasons will continue to recede.
  - vertex-four 13y ago
    My dad hasn't touched his laptop in well over a year, since getting his iPhone and iPad. I know several other people who use tablets and don't even own computers.
  - badman_ting 13y ago
    Do you know what a growth market is? And why that might be important to a business, particularly a gigantic one? Jeez. Sorry for the tone but the continued head-in-the-sand attitude towards MS is driving me batty.
  - FigBug 13y ago
    For Microsoft, it doesn't matter how many people are using PCs, it's how many are buying them. If usage is down, replacement time is up and OS price is down, how is that anything but bad for Microsoft? There are still a lot of XP users that have given Microsoft no money since at least 2006 and have still costed them money in support.
  - vinceguidry 13y ago
    > I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. My mom did. Switched to using her iPad last year. Occasionally tries to make her ancient PC retrofitted with Win8 work for her, then shrugs and goes back to her iPad.
  - felipeerias 13y ago
    "the “computing” market in Q3 2008 was 92 million units of which Windows[3] was 90% whereas in Q3 2013 it was 269 million units of which Windows was 32%." http://www.asymco.com/2013/10/10/the-five-year-plan/ http://www.asymco.com/2013/10/10/the-five-year-plan/
- simonh 13y ago
  I wouldn't say they are smart moves as such, bearing in mind they are reversals of direction. Yes they are the right thing to do, but only because they did the wrong thing in the first place. MS still makes plenty of money selling Windows licenses to PC manufacturers, so charging for an OS isn't going away just yet. Arguably the other dominant OS in the desktop space - OSX - isn't free either. Upgrades are now free, but you (well, certainly 'I' anyway) pay a big chunk of cash over the hardware costs when you buy a Mac, for the privilege of running OSX and the iApps. MS isn't going to make much money on the WP App store though. Even Apple barely breaks even on the iOS App Store. Digital stores are essential to maintaining a viable ecosystem, but they're not profit centers. So if you have to give away your OS, barely break even on content sales (if that) and don't sell the hardware either where do you make your money? Well, MS is trying to answer that by selling the hardware as well, but the problem is the main reason they're doing that is because otherwise nobody would be making hardware to run their mobile OS at all. That is how bad things are. Even so, what are MS#s alternatives? They simply cannot afford to remain irrelevant in mobile. IMHO their best shot now is to go all-out with mobile versions of Office on WP, WinRT, Android and iOS. If they can manage to become relevant in mobile apps, there's a reasonable chance they might be able to leverage that into relevance in other areas.
ebbv 13y ago
If Nokia's going to continue to exist they need to sell phones. Windows phones aren't selling. An Android one might. They have to take the shot. Giving away Windows Phone/RT might encourage other hardware vendors to try it. Maybe they won't. But they definitely won't if Microsoft tries to charge them for it. Again, worth the shot when they have nothing to lose. It might be crazy if Windows Phone/RT were runaway successes, but they aren't. Windows 8 is also a huge failure. Trying to go back and make it more like 7, which most people continue to prefer, is probably for the best. This article is as poor as the design of the blog it's featured on.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  > Microsoft nonetheless has to be happy that Nokia has blown past Motorola to become America’s No. 4 smartphone vendor. According to new data from Counterpoint Research, Nokia’s share of the American smartphone market has surged from a mere 1.4% in the second quarter of 2013 to 4.1% in the third quarter. http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/nokia-us-smartphone-market-share/ http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/nokia-us-smartphone-market-share/
  - ebbv 13y ago
    Going from being nearly dead to not quite dead is not the same as being healthy.
batmansbelt 13y ago
Hopefully when MS and Nokia make an Android fork they put up an Android port of Internet Explorer on Google Play. Firefox on android is a great browser (better than chrome), but it would be nice to have more choice. Since the recent death of Opera there are only two browsers on Android.
- csmuk 13y ago
  I've suffered IE10 mobile for a bit now. It's a great browser but to be honest the entire mobile web is written for WebKit. This makes it painful.
  - r00fus 13y ago
    It's not unlike the recent desktop browser days - where the web was written for IE6. However, this time, WebKit is open-source, so at least there's no excuse for other browsers to not simply support it.
tptacek 13y ago
Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that literally and clearly bets the company on it, is going to seem comical: Microsoft is a gigantic company that has no power in the mobile market. All their moves are big (because of their size) and pointless (because of their market position). Big pointless moves look crazy.
- jfoutz 13y ago
  They could make Visual studio better than XCode for iOS apps. They could make a really nice Android toolchain too. If they could grab a good fraction of mobile developers (5-10% ?) they'd be in a good position to launch some sort of device. Well, they could try.
  - jimbokun 13y ago
    "They could make Visual studio better than XCode for iOS apps. They could make a really nice Android toolchain too." Wouldn't this just lead to more and better iOS and Android apps?
    - tstrimple 13y ago
      Yes, but as we've seen with Linux VMs on Azure and Microsoft Office for other platforms, it's better to service the competition than to miss out completely on that market.
- shin_lao 13y ago
  I think you are underestimating the quality of Windows Phone devices. We'll see what I happens, but I wouldn't write Microsoft off the mobile market yet. Edit: market share is around 10% in five European countries according to this: http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/news-articles/Apple-iPhone-5S-outsells-5C-three-to-one-in-Great-Britain http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/news-articles/Ap...
gfish3000 13y ago
Not at all. Because Android achieved dominance, it's now starting to lock down how much its OS can be modified by other vendors and locking manufacturers into using either Google's services or having to make their own from scratch on top of an outdated OS shell. Microsoft is probably wondering how much appetite there is for vendors to make a break with Android and try to replicate their past successes with a new, more modern mobile OS. At the same time, it's trying to take care of its legacy users and giving them what they want and what they ask rather than simply dictating to them "here's how you will be using your computers." Also, not what you'd call nuts, just listening to consumers and learning from their experiments.
Jemaclus 13y ago
Microsoft isn't nuts, but black text on dark gray background is... yikes.
- mcormier 13y ago
  Try reloading the page. The server is taking a beating because this article has gone viral. There is a white background if the site loads properly.
  - Jemaclus 13y ago
    I tried a couple of times, so I wouldn't make a dumb comment, but it never did show up... I may stand corrected, assuming a white background ever actually loads. :)
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Readability to the rescue: http://www.readability.com http://www.readability.com Shouldn't be necessary, but sadly far too often is. I'm also known to tweak site CSS. Rather compulsively these days (Stylebot / Stylish browser plugins help for this).
gdrulia 13y ago
I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.
- LordIllidan 13y ago
  If they can be resized and used as normal windows - I'm all for it - that's how I use apps on a normal desktop operating system!
  - MLR 13y ago
    I'd assume they could scale fine but have a minimum resolution of 1024*768, I think that's what MS used as their base when designing Metro apps.
- stordoff 13y ago
  I've been using ModernMix [1] for a while to do exactly that. It's a bit janky at times, but I find it much more useful than having metro apps stuck outside of the traditional desktop. [1] https://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/ https://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/
badman_ting 13y ago
They have so much money and are well-entrenched enough in various ways that I expect they will flail around until they hit on something that can sustain their business long-term. Though I admit I have absolutely no idea what that will be. What has been frustrating for me is how this way forward was missing for years now, but criticism of MS management was always shrugged off with references to Windows and Office. Criticism of Ballmer was met with "profits are up", and a sprinkling of "MS is a huge company, you think you could do better?" Mmmm, so helpful. Then the industry they depend on as the source of those profits is registering double-digit declines YOY and all of a sudden it's a crisis. So aggravating.
winslow 13y ago
Would Microsoft benefit from Nokia building an Android phone to help their argument in the EU over the android patent? They could argue that they are indeed using the patent in their own android devices and thus have a compelling argument to keep receiving royalties from other manufactures.
steven2012 13y ago
Microsoft should split up the company into smaller ones. This is something that should have happened with the anti-trust case a decade ago, but unfortunately it didn't happen. I said to myself at the time, it would have been the best thing for the software industry if we saw Microsoft split up into an OS company and an applications company. Now, I think they should split off Windows, Applications, X-box, and Mobile. There are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft still, but they are all stymied with the culture of everything having to center around Windows. X-box was best when it didn't have Windows shoved down it's throat and the same goes for Mobile. Now, Windows is having Mobile shoved down its throat by an increasingly desperate and frenetic management that is drowning in incompetence, and they're taking everyone down around them. What they need to do is just admit that the industry is changing on too many fronts too quickly, and this idea of having horizontal integration across multiple products is unfeasible. Having integration of Internet Explorer into Windows, or the same with Office worked. But they keep going back to the same well too many times. They need to let each market grow organically, and let their good PMs and engineers make the best products they can, not the best products that will keep selling Windows.
- TylerE 13y ago
  XBox always ran Windows. Even the original XBox was running on a modified Windows 2000 base and kernel.
- tstrimple 13y ago
  I disagree completely. That's essentially the way things were a few years ago. A big part of Microsoft's problems, both internal and external, come from the fiefdoms that sprung up around the different divisions. They were effectively different companies with the same CEO. They rarely communicated well and this lead to a lot of unnecessary duplication of work. Microsoft is now on a path to unifying the ecosystem and this is fantastic from a developer perspective. I can write an app for Windows 8, and the vast majority of code for it can be reused directly on a Windows Phone or Xbox app. That is significant. As much as people complain about Windows 8, unifying the UX across the platforms is a Good Thing. Using a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet and Xbox all feel very similar. None of that happens with different companies.
rayiner 13y ago
I think this is way off the mark, in general. "But that’s not the roadmap we’re hearing from the Microsoft OS team. Instead, they’re talking about creating a single Windows code base that runs across all types of devices, something that’s technically appealing if you’re a Microsoft engineer but thoroughly uninteresting to customers." If I wanted an Android phone, I'd go buy one of the bazillions of Android phones. If you're someone who isn't just going to buy go a Samsung phone, you're probably, like me, not invested in Google's ecosystem. You don't want a phone that plugs into Google's "cloud" but rather a phone that runs Outlook and Office, and can interface with your company's Exchange Server, Windows-based CMS, etc. That has value; being yet another crappy Android vendor does not. Microsoft's strategy is just fine, it's their execution that sucks. Windows on Phones and Tablets should have featured tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem from Day 1. Instead, they botched Surface RT by releasing it with a half-baked buggy version of Office on a tablet that didn't integrate with Active Directory. Windows Phone 8 has no synergy with Windows on a tablet or a Windows PC, and oh, the roadmap to a proper touch-optimized version of Office includes the phrase "when pigs fly." Microsoft comes consistently late to the party with products that are little better than MVPs, and that's sinking them.
0_o 13y ago
With Start8 installed, the Windows 8.1 is actually the best Windows OS I have ever used. Looking forward to a native start menu!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
duwease 13y ago
Isn't this just a continuation of Microsoft's recent-years strategy of waiting until other peoples' innovations created a market, and then trying to drop their entry into it? Zune, Xbox, Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, etc.. hell, didn't Ballmer explicitly state that was his strategy?
- tstrimple 13y ago
  I don't think that's true at all. Zune, Windows Phone, Windows Tablets and Xbox are all more innovative than the competition. The phone and tablet are suffering from being so late to the game, and Xbox is "suffering" from grossly incompetent marketing and PR. All of those products get fantastic reviews from people who actually own them.
coderguy123 13y ago
I don't know guys, I just picked up dell venue 8 pro. this thing is nice. the whole Metro things works really well and it is fast and smooth. The quality of games/apps I am seeing is already better than my kid's Nexus 7 (long way from ipad tho). If they market this thing right, I can see it(windows tablets in general) gain some hold in pure tablet world.
drcode 13y ago
Luckily Windows 8.1 is just barely capable enough for me to run virtualbox with an ubuntu image. How people can get by using Windows 8.1 as their main OS (beyond using it merely as a shell to launch virtual machines) is beyond me. Microsoft deserves to lose big time in the marketplace for their half-assed attempt to glue a phone interface onto desktop PCs.
- pmelendez 13y ago
  Haters gonna hate. I installed Windows 8.1 on my laptop (2008 model so no touchscreen) and the experience has been great so far. I do spend more time on the desktop side than in Metro side but even then in overall is faster, more reliable and with nicer features (i.e win+x, universal search, etc.) than windows 7.
skywhopper 13y ago
The author says Metro is the new OS/2. I think the correct metaphor would be Microsoft Bob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
ar7hur 13y ago
Very well written. Excerpt: Microsoft could ship a hamster wrapped in duct tape, label it Windows, and a lot of OEMs would bundle it.
pmelendez 13y ago
> "I think a more interesting licensing strategy for Microsoft would be forking Android" Sure, what we really need is having another flavour of Android. That wouldn't be confusing to users at all and will make developers happy (specially because it will be ditching the easier development environment for mobiles )[/sarcasm]
mortyseinfeld 13y ago
But today, Android has huge market momentum, so a phone vendor switching off it would be abandoning most of the available customers, something they are extremely reluctant to do Wrong, consumers aren't attached to phone OS's like they are to windows on the desktop. You'll be betting wrong, if you bet that windows mobile is just "going to go away".

72 points by AdamJBall 13y ago

Nokia has already stated that the Nokia Android phone (Normandy) was cancelled, even before the Microsoft take over.

How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices. Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.

pantalaimon 13y ago
Why do people repeat saying that "the personal pc landscape is […] moving toward mobile devices"? I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sure there is a decline in sales for PCs because the market is saturated and for the most people, unless they are gamers, their 5 year old computer will do just fine. Yet people keep shouting that the days of the desktop computer are over and everyone soon will write their eMails on their smartphone only.
- thatthatis 13y ago
  Hypothetical semi personal example: I got an iPhone and suddenly about 40% of my Internet consumption went to the iPhone. Now, in that case most of the 40% was incremental, but it did supplant about 10% of my desktop browsing. I got a tablet and suddenly about 30% of my Internet consumption is on the tablet, stealing about 10% from the iPhone, 10% incremental, and 10% from desktop. I've reduced my desktop Internet use by only about 20%, but now desktop only makes up about 40% of my internet activity. What sane mega-corp would sit there and say "well, we still dominate the desktop 40% so lets not worry about the other 60% that is now consumed by related products." Computing is moving to mobile doesn't mean the mobile use has to come from cannibalization.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  > I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sounds like a highly biased sample set. I know several people who barely touch their PCs since getting a tablet, and there are an increasing number of children for whom PCs are just these weird things they see in school that, for some unfathomable reason, don't do anything when you touch the screen. There already aren't a lot of reasons left for non-techies to not stick to tablets. Those reasons will continue to recede.
- vertex-four 13y ago
  My dad hasn't touched his laptop in well over a year, since getting his iPhone and iPad. I know several other people who use tablets and don't even own computers.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  Do you know what a growth market is? And why that might be important to a business, particularly a gigantic one? Jeez. Sorry for the tone but the continued head-in-the-sand attitude towards MS is driving me batty.
- FigBug 13y ago
  For Microsoft, it doesn't matter how many people are using PCs, it's how many are buying them. If usage is down, replacement time is up and OS price is down, how is that anything but bad for Microsoft? There are still a lot of XP users that have given Microsoft no money since at least 2006 and have still costed them money in support.
- vinceguidry 13y ago
  > I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. My mom did. Switched to using her iPad last year. Occasionally tries to make her ancient PC retrofitted with Win8 work for her, then shrugs and goes back to her iPad.
- felipeerias 13y ago
  "the “computing” market in Q3 2008 was 92 million units of which Windows[3] was 90% whereas in Q3 2013 it was 269 million units of which Windows was 32%." http://www.asymco.com/2013/10/10/the-five-year-plan/ http://www.asymco.com/2013/10/10/the-five-year-plan/
simonh 13y ago
I wouldn't say they are smart moves as such, bearing in mind they are reversals of direction. Yes they are the right thing to do, but only because they did the wrong thing in the first place. MS still makes plenty of money selling Windows licenses to PC manufacturers, so charging for an OS isn't going away just yet. Arguably the other dominant OS in the desktop space - OSX - isn't free either. Upgrades are now free, but you (well, certainly 'I' anyway) pay a big chunk of cash over the hardware costs when you buy a Mac, for the privilege of running OSX and the iApps. MS isn't going to make much money on the WP App store though. Even Apple barely breaks even on the iOS App Store. Digital stores are essential to maintaining a viable ecosystem, but they're not profit centers. So if you have to give away your OS, barely break even on content sales (if that) and don't sell the hardware either where do you make your money? Well, MS is trying to answer that by selling the hardware as well, but the problem is the main reason they're doing that is because otherwise nobody would be making hardware to run their mobile OS at all. That is how bad things are. Even so, what are MS#s alternatives? They simply cannot afford to remain irrelevant in mobile. IMHO their best shot now is to go all-out with mobile versions of Office on WP, WinRT, Android and iOS. If they can manage to become relevant in mobile apps, there's a reasonable chance they might be able to leverage that into relevance in other areas.

ebbv 13y ago

If Nokia's going to continue to exist they need to sell phones. Windows phones aren't selling. An Android one might. They have to take the shot. Giving away Windows Phone/RT might encourage other hardware vendors to try it. Maybe they won't. But they definitely won't if Microsoft tries to charge them for it. Again, worth the shot when they have nothing to lose. It might be crazy if Windows Phone/RT were runaway successes, but they aren't. Windows 8 is also a huge failure. Trying to go back and make it more like 7, which most people continue to prefer, is probably for the best. This article is as poor as the design of the blog it's featured on.

dangrossman 13y ago
> Microsoft nonetheless has to be happy that Nokia has blown past Motorola to become America’s No. 4 smartphone vendor. According to new data from Counterpoint Research, Nokia’s share of the American smartphone market has surged from a mere 1.4% in the second quarter of 2013 to 4.1% in the third quarter. http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/nokia-us-smartphone-market-share/ http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/nokia-us-smartphone-market-share/
- ebbv 13y ago
  Going from being nearly dead to not quite dead is not the same as being healthy.

batmansbelt 13y ago

Hopefully when MS and Nokia make an Android fork they put up an Android port of Internet Explorer on Google Play. Firefox on android is a great browser (better than chrome), but it would be nice to have more choice. Since the recent death of Opera there are only two browsers on Android.

csmuk 13y ago
I've suffered IE10 mobile for a bit now. It's a great browser but to be honest the entire mobile web is written for WebKit. This makes it painful.
- r00fus 13y ago
  It's not unlike the recent desktop browser days - where the web was written for IE6. However, this time, WebKit is open-source, so at least there's no excuse for other browsers to not simply support it.

tptacek 13y ago

Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that literally and clearly bets the company on it, is going to seem comical: Microsoft is a gigantic company that has no power in the mobile market. All their moves are big (because of their size) and pointless (because of their market position). Big pointless moves look crazy.

jfoutz 13y ago
They could make Visual studio better than XCode for iOS apps. They could make a really nice Android toolchain too. If they could grab a good fraction of mobile developers (5-10% ?) they'd be in a good position to launch some sort of device. Well, they could try.
- jimbokun 13y ago
  "They could make Visual studio better than XCode for iOS apps. They could make a really nice Android toolchain too." Wouldn't this just lead to more and better iOS and Android apps?
  - tstrimple 13y ago
    Yes, but as we've seen with Linux VMs on Azure and Microsoft Office for other platforms, it's better to service the competition than to miss out completely on that market.
shin_lao 13y ago
I think you are underestimating the quality of Windows Phone devices. We'll see what I happens, but I wouldn't write Microsoft off the mobile market yet. Edit: market share is around 10% in five European countries according to this: http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/news-articles/Apple-iPhone-5S-outsells-5C-three-to-one-in-Great-Britain http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/news-articles/Ap...

gfish3000 13y ago

Not at all. Because Android achieved dominance, it's now starting to lock down how much its OS can be modified by other vendors and locking manufacturers into using either Google's services or having to make their own from scratch on top of an outdated OS shell. Microsoft is probably wondering how much appetite there is for vendors to make a break with Android and try to replicate their past successes with a new, more modern mobile OS. At the same time, it's trying to take care of its legacy users and giving them what they want and what they ask rather than simply dictating to them "here's how you will be using your computers." Also, not what you'd call nuts, just listening to consumers and learning from their experiments.

Jemaclus 13y ago

Microsoft isn't nuts, but black text on dark gray background is... yikes.

mcormier 13y ago
Try reloading the page. The server is taking a beating because this article has gone viral. There is a white background if the site loads properly.
- Jemaclus 13y ago
  I tried a couple of times, so I wouldn't make a dumb comment, but it never did show up... I may stand corrected, assuming a white background ever actually loads. :)
dredmorbius 13y ago
Readability to the rescue: http://www.readability.com http://www.readability.com Shouldn't be necessary, but sadly far too often is. I'm also known to tweak site CSS. Rather compulsively these days (Stylebot / Stylish browser plugins help for this).

gdrulia 13y ago

I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.

LordIllidan 13y ago
If they can be resized and used as normal windows - I'm all for it - that's how I use apps on a normal desktop operating system!
- MLR 13y ago
  I'd assume they could scale fine but have a minimum resolution of 1024*768, I think that's what MS used as their base when designing Metro apps.
stordoff 13y ago
I've been using ModernMix [1] for a while to do exactly that. It's a bit janky at times, but I find it much more useful than having metro apps stuck outside of the traditional desktop. [1] https://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/ https://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/

badman_ting 13y ago

They have so much money and are well-entrenched enough in various ways that I expect they will flail around until they hit on something that can sustain their business long-term. Though I admit I have absolutely no idea what that will be. What has been frustrating for me is how this way forward was missing for years now, but criticism of MS management was always shrugged off with references to Windows and Office. Criticism of Ballmer was met with "profits are up", and a sprinkling of "MS is a huge company, you think you could do better?" Mmmm, so helpful. Then the industry they depend on as the source of those profits is registering double-digit declines YOY and all of a sudden it's a crisis. So aggravating.

winslow 13y ago

Would Microsoft benefit from Nokia building an Android phone to help their argument in the EU over the android patent? They could argue that they are indeed using the patent in their own android devices and thus have a compelling argument to keep receiving royalties from other manufactures.

steven2012 13y ago

Microsoft should split up the company into smaller ones. This is something that should have happened with the anti-trust case a decade ago, but unfortunately it didn't happen. I said to myself at the time, it would have been the best thing for the software industry if we saw Microsoft split up into an OS company and an applications company. Now, I think they should split off Windows, Applications, X-box, and Mobile. There are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft still, but they are all stymied with the culture of everything having to center around Windows. X-box was best when it didn't have Windows shoved down it's throat and the same goes for Mobile. Now, Windows is having Mobile shoved down its throat by an increasingly desperate and frenetic management that is drowning in incompetence, and they're taking everyone down around them. What they need to do is just admit that the industry is changing on too many fronts too quickly, and this idea of having horizontal integration across multiple products is unfeasible. Having integration of Internet Explorer into Windows, or the same with Office worked. But they keep going back to the same well too many times. They need to let each market grow organically, and let their good PMs and engineers make the best products they can, not the best products that will keep selling Windows.

TylerE 13y ago
XBox always ran Windows. Even the original XBox was running on a modified Windows 2000 base and kernel.
tstrimple 13y ago
I disagree completely. That's essentially the way things were a few years ago. A big part of Microsoft's problems, both internal and external, come from the fiefdoms that sprung up around the different divisions. They were effectively different companies with the same CEO. They rarely communicated well and this lead to a lot of unnecessary duplication of work. Microsoft is now on a path to unifying the ecosystem and this is fantastic from a developer perspective. I can write an app for Windows 8, and the vast majority of code for it can be reused directly on a Windows Phone or Xbox app. That is significant. As much as people complain about Windows 8, unifying the UX across the platforms is a Good Thing. Using a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet and Xbox all feel very similar. None of that happens with different companies.

rayiner 13y ago

I think this is way off the mark, in general. "But that’s not the roadmap we’re hearing from the Microsoft OS team. Instead, they’re talking about creating a single Windows code base that runs across all types of devices, something that’s technically appealing if you’re a Microsoft engineer but thoroughly uninteresting to customers." If I wanted an Android phone, I'd go buy one of the bazillions of Android phones. If you're someone who isn't just going to buy go a Samsung phone, you're probably, like me, not invested in Google's ecosystem. You don't want a phone that plugs into Google's "cloud" but rather a phone that runs Outlook and Office, and can interface with your company's Exchange Server, Windows-based CMS, etc. That has value; being yet another crappy Android vendor does not. Microsoft's strategy is just fine, it's their execution that sucks. Windows on Phones and Tablets should have featured tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem from Day 1. Instead, they botched Surface RT by releasing it with a half-baked buggy version of Office on a tablet that didn't integrate with Active Directory. Windows Phone 8 has no synergy with Windows on a tablet or a Windows PC, and oh, the roadmap to a proper touch-optimized version of Office includes the phrase "when pigs fly." Microsoft comes consistently late to the party with products that are little better than MVPs, and that's sinking them.

0_o 13y ago

With Start8 installed, the Windows 8.1 is actually the best Windows OS I have ever used. Looking forward to a native start menu!

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

duwease 13y ago

Isn't this just a continuation of Microsoft's recent-years strategy of waiting until other peoples' innovations created a market, and then trying to drop their entry into it? Zune, Xbox, Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, etc.. hell, didn't Ballmer explicitly state that was his strategy?

tstrimple 13y ago
I don't think that's true at all. Zune, Windows Phone, Windows Tablets and Xbox are all more innovative than the competition. The phone and tablet are suffering from being so late to the game, and Xbox is "suffering" from grossly incompetent marketing and PR. All of those products get fantastic reviews from people who actually own them.

coderguy123 13y ago

I don't know guys, I just picked up dell venue 8 pro. this thing is nice. the whole Metro things works really well and it is fast and smooth. The quality of games/apps I am seeing is already better than my kid's Nexus 7 (long way from ipad tho). If they market this thing right, I can see it(windows tablets in general) gain some hold in pure tablet world.

drcode 13y ago

Luckily Windows 8.1 is just barely capable enough for me to run virtualbox with an ubuntu image. How people can get by using Windows 8.1 as their main OS (beyond using it merely as a shell to launch virtual machines) is beyond me. Microsoft deserves to lose big time in the marketplace for their half-assed attempt to glue a phone interface onto desktop PCs.

pmelendez 13y ago
Haters gonna hate. I installed Windows 8.1 on my laptop (2008 model so no touchscreen) and the experience has been great so far. I do spend more time on the desktop side than in Metro side but even then in overall is faster, more reliable and with nicer features (i.e win+x, universal search, etc.) than windows 7.

skywhopper 13y ago

The author says Metro is the new OS/2. I think the correct metaphor would be Microsoft Bob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

ar7hur 13y ago

Very well written. Excerpt: Microsoft could ship a hamster wrapped in duct tape, label it Windows, and a lot of OEMs would bundle it.

pmelendez 13y ago

> "I think a more interesting licensing strategy for Microsoft would be forking Android" Sure, what we really need is having another flavour of Android. That wouldn't be confusing to users at all and will make developers happy (specially because it will be ditching the easier development environment for mobiles )[/sarcasm]

mortyseinfeld 13y ago

But today, Android has huge market momentum, so a phone vendor switching off it would be abandoning most of the available customers, something they are extremely reluctant to do Wrong, consumers aren't attached to phone OS's like they are to windows on the desktop. You'll be betting wrong, if you bet that windows mobile is just "going to go away".