5 ms·

Microsoft Has Turned The Corner

46 points by markbao 17y ago

a2tech 17y ago
I'm not sure you can say Microsoft has turned any corner. I do agree that Bing is a fair piece of software (even if it is long, long over due). However, Bing is too little, too late. IE 8 is a solid browser compared to IE 7 and I'm glad MS is taking steps to produce a browser that can compete with the features of the other 'name brand' browsers. Those ads MS is running though? I thought the Apple ads were smug-they have nothing on the price-comparing ads MS is running.
- old-gregg 17y ago
  This is ridiculous. You're attacking them for not being an effective internet media company. Are you going to go after GM and Chrysler because they haven't launched their own search engines too? To "turn the corner", Microsoft needs to stop its Apple bleeding and make the Office, Windows Server and .NET stack more competitive in the cloud. That's their core business.
  - bep 17y ago
    Windows 7, Azure and Office 2010 are steps in that direction
    - drhowarddrfine 17y ago
      Does anyone use Azure? It was years behind everyone else when it was introduced, like most Microsoft "technology" and won't Office 2010 just be another version of Office? Isn't Windows7 just Vista "fixed"? Rather than take steps in the right direction, it sounds like MS tripping over their own feet trying to get a course correction.
      - sachinag 17y ago
        Wait, Azure's not even live yet, I don't think. And they (like Google) are avoiding the issue with spinning up instances that you have with Amazon's cloud services.
        cellis 17y ago
        CTP. I just tried testing it. Can't use the SDK unless you have Vista, though.
      - hello_moto 17y ago
        How would you change Office 2010 and Vista 7 (ignore Azure) and not alienating their users. NOTE: Some people that yell loudly in "Teh Internet" doesn't necessarily translate to MS biggest users.
  - endtime 17y ago
    I'm working on Office web stuff this summer. I'll just say that I think Office 2010 will indeed be "more competitive in the cloud", as you put it.
  - profquail 17y ago
    I do most of my development in C#/.NET, and I have to say you're right. I think their next step should be towards getting all of their desktop programming into the .NET API; they didn't have time to do it in Windows 7, but perhaps for Windows "8". I'm talking about things like drivers (which can be programmed using the now-free .NET Micro Framework) and lower-level APIs (like writing a screensaver...it should just be a class implementing IScreensaver or whatever, and not written in C any longer). Getting everything (or as much as possible) switched over to the .NET framework in Windows would also help a great deal as far as mitigating security risks as well.
    - mhansen 17y ago
      Not to miss the point of your message, but screensavers can be programmed in any language. I made one in .NET. The only constraint is the program needs to accept some command line parameters. But I agree, it should be an abstract class/interface.
    - kristiandupont 17y ago
      Not saying that you are wrong, but I don't see why this would be important, besides from the security point that you are making, perhaps?
      - profquail 17y ago
        Having the ability to do more system programming on .NET (without having to P/Invoke all over the place) would (should?) make a lot of it significantly easier and faster. Also, the security issue is not to be overlooked -- with managed drivers and lower-level libraries, there'd be a much lower chance of fatal security bugs (e.g. buffer overflows). Also, writing this code in .NET allows developers to take advantage of a great number of new testing tools like Pex and Code Contracts (for fuzzing and static analysis, respectively). Also, .NET 4.0 includes some additions for doing parallel processing to help developers take advantage of multi-core processors. I've been playing around with it for about a month now (I'm writing an open-source managed numerics library in C#) and the new parallel stuff is really quite good.
- scj 17y ago
  Mini has been getting soft in his old age. At least with Vista in 2006, he had the sense to say: "Of course, the proof is in the pudding..." Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if the guy was caught and is now nothing but a mouthpiece.
mattmaroon 17y ago
Anyone who calls the Xbox a failure has no clue. It's the big winner in this round of console wars. It's the only multimedia device that's networked to millions of PCs and hooked up to millions of computers. It maybe hasn't sold as many units as the Wii, but the games per console stat is a blowout. As are paid downloads of content, third party games, etc. And yeah, the red ring of death sucks (has happened to me a few times) but that's how they beat the PS3 to market and won the generation. In the end the 1 year lead is worth whatever they had to eat on that.
- imajes 17y ago
  @matt: what's their per unit cost vs their income of the consoles? i thought they were mostly loss leaders. so how have the games been selling?
  - inerte 17y ago
    Lifetime, Xbox lost money. Their bet is that Project Natal will crush Wii. MS lost on the first years, they're making a profit since Halo 3 launch (yearly, at least until 2008 fiscal quarter) The Xbox 360 has been a success for MS, it displaced Sony. But they made the mistake of focusing on replacing the number one, and forgot the whole, which Nintendo acquired. If the market was a cake, 360's won a slice, but Nintendo baked more.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      I thought Project Natal belonged more to the Cairo, WinFS and Windows for Pen Computing bin, namely, vaporware products that don't work nearly as well as advertised (Milo and Kate? gimme a break), pre-announced by many, many months (if not years) and designed to create a FUD atmosphere that hurt the sales of competitors.
- axod 17y ago
  What's the total profit from Xbox? Considering the complete package - total investment etc from start to finish? Quite a large loss. There's been one clear winner and that's the wii - unless you're looking for something other than cold hard cash profit, and I suspect number of units in peoples living rooms. In terms of hardware, the xBox absolutely sucks. I use it rarely because the thing is so loud with its 100 fans. I have a quieter washing machine. If MS were going after the 'living room multimedia device', they failed spectacularly. The large HDD is also rendered useless, since you still have to put game discs in for 'copy protection purposes'.
_sh 17y ago
When I read pieces like this, I'm reminded of a Cringely article (http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/ http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/). To wit, on the subject of Microsoft stores: Why even do it, then? Why have these stores? Propaganda. Phil Schiller of Apple made the point back in January when he explained that Apple stores had 400,000 visitors per day or the equivalent of 20 Macworld shows EVERY DAY. Microsoft wants the same thing. They want to bypass the press machine that they feel has tainted users against Windows Vista, making sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Windows 7. If Microsoft can achieve that one goal – just that one – then the Microsoft stores will have been worth doing even if they never have a dollar of retail sales. Vista failed partially because of poor development (and all the other usual reasons proclaimed a thousandfold), but also because Microsoft lost control of its perception to bloggers. The pundits were able to set the perception of the software, and they said it was crap. I'm not arguing that it wasn't crap, I'm just saying it was perceived as crap from the get-go by people who'd never tried it. Not so with Windows 7. After reading Cringely's article I became attuned to signs that Microsoft might be tweaking the perception of the OS through its gloved hands. Not by ghosting outright shills (this failed notoriously with Vista), but through more subtler means. Like what? Like the perception that the Windows 7 experience on netbooks will be similar to the desktop experience. Although this has never been proclaimed outright (Microsoft said Windows 7 'will be designed to work with' netbooks), the murmur from the great unwashed that I'm getting is that Windows 7 will be the snappy because they've 'sunk the bloat' and made it work on netbooks. Well hang on a moment and let's see. The only thing of which I'm convinced is that Microsoft has done a far better job of managing the perception of Windows 7 this time around, and I expect to see more of these types of articles ('Microsoft has finally become insanely OK again!') leading up to the release of Windows 7. (Please note these are merely my observations and I'm not implying 'mini-microsoft' is a shill, see your doctor if pain persists).
- drhowarddrfine 17y ago
  I forgot all about those stores! Did everyone else? I haven't Googled for it but was that more FUD action by Microsoft?
  - 17y ago
johngunderman 17y ago
Quite frankly, the only software of Microsoft's that I've ever been impressed with is their Office Suite, and even that has gone down hill in the last few years. What they really need to do is stick to the basics. They need to stop wasting resources in fields they are obviously not good at. They /had/ a strong Office platform, they should improve on that. (and by improve, I don't mean "add more features"). If they want to succeed in the OS market, they have to find a niche. Its hard to compete with free. Apple does it by having excellent design and customer service. Apple sells the experience. What does Microsoft sell? Software that companies are too entrenched in. That's no market at all, at least not for long. Now if Window's could claim to be truly secure, and truly quick, and truly light on resources, I might actually use it. In the meantime, free satisfies all my needs.
- mhansen 17y ago
  How has the Office Suite gone downhill in the last few years? Office 2007 was a major innovation from my point of view. The company threw out an established, yet underperforming UI, taking a huge risk. But it's payed off in greater usability and learnability. The Ribbon user interface (imho) blows away other office suite interfaces.
  - thismat 17y ago
    And the ribbon is a relatively new user experience for such a product as well. This was a huge risk for them considering how widespread office was, but it goes to show you that Microsoft can indeed produce a quality product. I use open office on my home computers, but at work I use Office 2007, I loathe having to spend time in OpenOffice now, because the interface and usability for Office 2007 is just so pleasant to me.

46 points by markbao 17y ago

I'm not sure you can say Microsoft has turned any corner. I do agree that Bing is a fair piece of software (even if it is long, long over due). However, Bing is too little, too late. IE 8 is a solid browser compared to IE 7 and I'm glad MS is taking steps to produce a browser that can compete with the features of the other 'name brand' browsers. Those ads MS is running though? I thought the Apple ads were smug-they have nothing on the price-comparing ads MS is running.

old-gregg 17y ago
This is ridiculous. You're attacking them for not being an effective internet media company. Are you going to go after GM and Chrysler because they haven't launched their own search engines too? To "turn the corner", Microsoft needs to stop its Apple bleeding and make the Office, Windows Server and .NET stack more competitive in the cloud. That's their core business.
- bep 17y ago
  Windows 7, Azure and Office 2010 are steps in that direction
  - drhowarddrfine 17y ago
    Does anyone use Azure? It was years behind everyone else when it was introduced, like most Microsoft "technology" and won't Office 2010 just be another version of Office? Isn't Windows7 just Vista "fixed"? Rather than take steps in the right direction, it sounds like MS tripping over their own feet trying to get a course correction.
    - sachinag 17y ago
      Wait, Azure's not even live yet, I don't think. And they (like Google) are avoiding the issue with spinning up instances that you have with Amazon's cloud services.
      - cellis 17y ago
        CTP. I just tried testing it. Can't use the SDK unless you have Vista, though.
    - hello_moto 17y ago
      How would you change Office 2010 and Vista 7 (ignore Azure) and not alienating their users. NOTE: Some people that yell loudly in "Teh Internet" doesn't necessarily translate to MS biggest users.
- endtime 17y ago
  I'm working on Office web stuff this summer. I'll just say that I think Office 2010 will indeed be "more competitive in the cloud", as you put it.
- profquail 17y ago
  I do most of my development in C#/.NET, and I have to say you're right. I think their next step should be towards getting all of their desktop programming into the .NET API; they didn't have time to do it in Windows 7, but perhaps for Windows "8". I'm talking about things like drivers (which can be programmed using the now-free .NET Micro Framework) and lower-level APIs (like writing a screensaver...it should just be a class implementing IScreensaver or whatever, and not written in C any longer). Getting everything (or as much as possible) switched over to the .NET framework in Windows would also help a great deal as far as mitigating security risks as well.
  - mhansen 17y ago
    Not to miss the point of your message, but screensavers can be programmed in any language. I made one in .NET. The only constraint is the program needs to accept some command line parameters. But I agree, it should be an abstract class/interface.
  - kristiandupont 17y ago
    Not saying that you are wrong, but I don't see why this would be important, besides from the security point that you are making, perhaps?
    - profquail 17y ago
      Having the ability to do more system programming on .NET (without having to P/Invoke all over the place) would (should?) make a lot of it significantly easier and faster. Also, the security issue is not to be overlooked -- with managed drivers and lower-level libraries, there'd be a much lower chance of fatal security bugs (e.g. buffer overflows). Also, writing this code in .NET allows developers to take advantage of a great number of new testing tools like Pex and Code Contracts (for fuzzing and static analysis, respectively). Also, .NET 4.0 includes some additions for doing parallel processing to help developers take advantage of multi-core processors. I've been playing around with it for about a month now (I'm writing an open-source managed numerics library in C#) and the new parallel stuff is really quite good.
scj 17y ago
Mini has been getting soft in his old age. At least with Vista in 2006, he had the sense to say: "Of course, the proof is in the pudding..." Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if the guy was caught and is now nothing but a mouthpiece.

mattmaroon 17y ago

Anyone who calls the Xbox a failure has no clue. It's the big winner in this round of console wars. It's the only multimedia device that's networked to millions of PCs and hooked up to millions of computers. It maybe hasn't sold as many units as the Wii, but the games per console stat is a blowout. As are paid downloads of content, third party games, etc. And yeah, the red ring of death sucks (has happened to me a few times) but that's how they beat the PS3 to market and won the generation. In the end the 1 year lead is worth whatever they had to eat on that.

imajes 17y ago
@matt: what's their per unit cost vs their income of the consoles? i thought they were mostly loss leaders. so how have the games been selling?
- inerte 17y ago
  Lifetime, Xbox lost money. Their bet is that Project Natal will crush Wii. MS lost on the first years, they're making a profit since Halo 3 launch (yearly, at least until 2008 fiscal quarter) The Xbox 360 has been a success for MS, it displaced Sony. But they made the mistake of focusing on replacing the number one, and forgot the whole, which Nintendo acquired. If the market was a cake, 360's won a slice, but Nintendo baked more.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    I thought Project Natal belonged more to the Cairo, WinFS and Windows for Pen Computing bin, namely, vaporware products that don't work nearly as well as advertised (Milo and Kate? gimme a break), pre-announced by many, many months (if not years) and designed to create a FUD atmosphere that hurt the sales of competitors.
axod 17y ago
What's the total profit from Xbox? Considering the complete package - total investment etc from start to finish? Quite a large loss. There's been one clear winner and that's the wii - unless you're looking for something other than cold hard cash profit, and I suspect number of units in peoples living rooms. In terms of hardware, the xBox absolutely sucks. I use it rarely because the thing is so loud with its 100 fans. I have a quieter washing machine. If MS were going after the 'living room multimedia device', they failed spectacularly. The large HDD is also rendered useless, since you still have to put game discs in for 'copy protection purposes'.

_sh 17y ago

When I read pieces like this, I'm reminded of a Cringely article (http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/ http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/). To wit, on the subject of Microsoft stores: Why even do it, then? Why have these stores? Propaganda. Phil Schiller of Apple made the point back in January when he explained that Apple stores had 400,000 visitors per day or the equivalent of 20 Macworld shows EVERY DAY. Microsoft wants the same thing. They want to bypass the press machine that they feel has tainted users against Windows Vista, making sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Windows 7. If Microsoft can achieve that one goal – just that one – then the Microsoft stores will have been worth doing even if they never have a dollar of retail sales. Vista failed partially because of poor development (and all the other usual reasons proclaimed a thousandfold), but also because Microsoft lost control of its perception to bloggers. The pundits were able to set the perception of the software, and they said it was crap. I'm not arguing that it wasn't crap, I'm just saying it was perceived as crap from the get-go by people who'd never tried it. Not so with Windows 7. After reading Cringely's article I became attuned to signs that Microsoft might be tweaking the perception of the OS through its gloved hands. Not by ghosting outright shills (this failed notoriously with Vista), but through more subtler means. Like what? Like the perception that the Windows 7 experience on netbooks will be similar to the desktop experience. Although this has never been proclaimed outright (Microsoft said Windows 7 'will be designed to work with' netbooks), the murmur from the great unwashed that I'm getting is that Windows 7 will be the snappy because they've 'sunk the bloat' and made it work on netbooks. Well hang on a moment and let's see. The only thing of which I'm convinced is that Microsoft has done a far better job of managing the perception of Windows 7 this time around, and I expect to see more of these types of articles ('Microsoft has finally become insanely OK again!') leading up to the release of Windows 7. (Please note these are merely my observations and I'm not implying 'mini-microsoft' is a shill, see your doctor if pain persists).

drhowarddrfine 17y ago
I forgot all about those stores! Did everyone else? I haven't Googled for it but was that more FUD action by Microsoft?
- 17y ago

johngunderman 17y ago

Quite frankly, the only software of Microsoft's that I've ever been impressed with is their Office Suite, and even that has gone down hill in the last few years. What they really need to do is stick to the basics. They need to stop wasting resources in fields they are obviously not good at. They /had/ a strong Office platform, they should improve on that. (and by improve, I don't mean "add more features"). If they want to succeed in the OS market, they have to find a niche. Its hard to compete with free. Apple does it by having excellent design and customer service. Apple sells the experience. What does Microsoft sell? Software that companies are too entrenched in. That's no market at all, at least not for long. Now if Window's could claim to be truly secure, and truly quick, and truly light on resources, I might actually use it. In the meantime, free satisfies all my needs.

mhansen 17y ago
How has the Office Suite gone downhill in the last few years? Office 2007 was a major innovation from my point of view. The company threw out an established, yet underperforming UI, taking a huge risk. But it's payed off in greater usability and learnability. The Ribbon user interface (imho) blows away other office suite interfaces.
- thismat 17y ago
  And the ribbon is a relatively new user experience for such a product as well. This was a huge risk for them considering how widespread office was, but it goes to show you that Microsoft can indeed produce a quality product. I use open office on my home computers, but at work I use Office 2007, I loathe having to spend time in OpenOffice now, because the interface and usability for Office 2007 is just so pleasant to me.