3 ms·

It's true, Microsoft is suddenly a palatable company without the greedy, vengeful, angry attitude of Steve Ballmer. With the anachronistic culture of the founde

It's true, Microsoft is suddenly a palatable company without the greedy, vengeful, angry attitude of Steve Ballmer. With the anachronistic culture of the founders now entirely purged, I see no reason why they would not become a credible competitor in many markets. They are hungry to prove they are relevant again, giving them the incentive of a startup, while they have essentially unlimited cash. As much as some part of me squirms when I say it, Microsoft really is a player again.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Player in what? The Surface looks interesting but its very, very expensive compared to either a laptop or a tablet. Their phones are underwhelming regardless of their massive 'mobile/cloud' first initiatives and are now the bottom-basement phone for the ultra cheap buyer. Office365 is interesting but predates Nadella's leadership. Azure never panned out to be the Windows EC2. OSX keeps eating up laptop marketshare (go to any college campus, no one has windows). Surface RT was a complete disaster. Win8 was underwhelming at best. On the enterprise side of things, a lot of sysadmins are shocked at the low quality of security updates and the massive delay in getting them out. How many were recalled in 2014? Nadella's personal mission at MS was redoing QA and as far as I can tell, he's somehow made it worse. Tabletizing interfaces in Win8 and Server 2013 was a questionable move. Office 2013 is a pig with lipstick and is known for its horror stories. Licensing has somehow gotten more bureaucratic and expensive. I'm not fan of Ballmer, but I think the Ballmer/Gates magic was a real thing for a time, and its obvious this magic needed Gates to work. Nadella's Steve Jobs impersonation is becoming tiresome imo. The cloud/mobile first initiative ate from MS's core competencies- rock solid and featureful enterprise software. The only thing I can say about Nadella is that he's recognizing how important a classic start menu is for enterprise users and its coming back in Win10. Out of all of MS's products, Win10 is the only thing of interest. "Me toos" like its budget tablets/phones or the buying of skype or minecraft, just seem like desperate moves from a company that has lost its way. Frankly, I'd like to see enterprise broken off from loss leaders like surface (which is sold at a loss) and all the things its giving away for free as a sort of catch up to FOSS dominated and Apple dominated areas. One just seems to be eating the other, and the one being eaten is the moneymaker. MS is just too big and is chasing so many tails. Nadella fought to keep the xbox division when investors were pissed about it last year. How much political capital did it cost for him to keep that pig? I certainly don't think MS is going to fail anytime soon, but I don't think its somehow changed its ways. Its still too many chefs chasing too many targets, many of which are probably unhittable for such a bureaucratic giant. Windows phone goes for 50 bucks nowadays and the sales are still unimpressive. Getting this late to the mobile game is a killer. There may be no way to recover lost marketshare that mobile has taken. How many billions will Nadella burn through trying? We're almost three years into the Surface line. When does it finally pay off? When do I actually see one in public?
- bpye 12y ago
  I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK I have certainly seen an increase of Windows devices in the hands of students. I own a SP3, I've seen some others. I've also seen some other Windows convertibles, Macbooks are certainly common, but not overwhelming as you seem to imply. I'll also be interested to see where their new direction in development tools goes, iOS and Android support for C++ in Visual Studio, open source .NET Core etc. The fact that this article exists is a testament to the fact that what they are doing is to some extent working, they are creating interest.
- michaelbuddy 12y ago
  some good details in your assessment but entirely missing a lot of great positives especially on the products you've hit out. Azure is growing, Surface is growing and is not only a solid product but one of those products that is what a lot of people have been dreaming about that other companies just aren't ballsy enough to do. Each iteration in a short time has improved quite a bit either in performance or device spec. That's a lot of fast good work. Xbox one is quite amazing. Sales are good, games are ramping up. Every week some new games are out or announced. I can't wait to see what they do to improve that. Buying of Minecraft was a fantastic decision, it's not like they didn't have any video game division and suddenly bought it. I'm hoping to see more work on it but you saw how they were using it as a platform in their VR announcements, which means that they plan to expand it further and it ideally will continue to be a platform that devs will create new ideas in and from. From just using it and having been kind of annoyed by MS Office since the 2003 days, 365 seems snappier and better than it ever has been. Certain things after getting used to seeing them end up making sense and are attractive. OneDrive is a very nice service, I like it way better than Google, for free and paid you get a lot of storage with it and it's super easy to use and looks classy, not cheap. windows 10 could be insanely good. don't forget the free upgrade offerings too, which is new and much welcomed.
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    A lot of the things you listed are losing money for MS. Yes, they're neat and from an end user perspective, nice toys, but the reality is that cashflow only come from a handful of sources and MS really is screwing up. I think maybe it just needs to find its footing, but at the end of the day, someone needs to pay the bills. Meanwhile Apple and Google are making money hand over fist in those spaces.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

Player in what? The Surface looks interesting but its very, very expensive compared to either a laptop or a tablet. Their phones are underwhelming regardless of their massive 'mobile/cloud' first initiatives and are now the bottom-basement phone for the ultra cheap buyer. Office365 is interesting but predates Nadella's leadership. Azure never panned out to be the Windows EC2. OSX keeps eating up laptop marketshare (go to any college campus, no one has windows). Surface RT was a complete disaster. Win8 was underwhelming at best. On the enterprise side of things, a lot of sysadmins are shocked at the low quality of security updates and the massive delay in getting them out. How many were recalled in 2014? Nadella's personal mission at MS was redoing QA and as far as I can tell, he's somehow made it worse. Tabletizing interfaces in Win8 and Server 2013 was a questionable move. Office 2013 is a pig with lipstick and is known for its horror stories. Licensing has somehow gotten more bureaucratic and expensive. I'm not fan of Ballmer, but I think the Ballmer/Gates magic was a real thing for a time, and its obvious this magic needed Gates to work. Nadella's Steve Jobs impersonation is becoming tiresome imo. The cloud/mobile first initiative ate from MS's core competencies- rock solid and featureful enterprise software. The only thing I can say about Nadella is that he's recognizing how important a classic start menu is for enterprise users and its coming back in Win10. Out of all of MS's products, Win10 is the only thing of interest. "Me toos" like its budget tablets/phones or the buying of skype or minecraft, just seem like desperate moves from a company that has lost its way. Frankly, I'd like to see enterprise broken off from loss leaders like surface (which is sold at a loss) and all the things its giving away for free as a sort of catch up to FOSS dominated and Apple dominated areas. One just seems to be eating the other, and the one being eaten is the moneymaker. MS is just too big and is chasing so many tails. Nadella fought to keep the xbox division when investors were pissed about it last year. How much political capital did it cost for him to keep that pig? I certainly don't think MS is going to fail anytime soon, but I don't think its somehow changed its ways. Its still too many chefs chasing too many targets, many of which are probably unhittable for such a bureaucratic giant. Windows phone goes for 50 bucks nowadays and the sales are still unimpressive. Getting this late to the mobile game is a killer. There may be no way to recover lost marketshare that mobile has taken. How many billions will Nadella burn through trying? We're almost three years into the Surface line. When does it finally pay off? When do I actually see one in public?

bpye 12y ago
I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK I have certainly seen an increase of Windows devices in the hands of students. I own a SP3, I've seen some others. I've also seen some other Windows convertibles, Macbooks are certainly common, but not overwhelming as you seem to imply. I'll also be interested to see where their new direction in development tools goes, iOS and Android support for C++ in Visual Studio, open source .NET Core etc. The fact that this article exists is a testament to the fact that what they are doing is to some extent working, they are creating interest.
michaelbuddy 12y ago
some good details in your assessment but entirely missing a lot of great positives especially on the products you've hit out. Azure is growing, Surface is growing and is not only a solid product but one of those products that is what a lot of people have been dreaming about that other companies just aren't ballsy enough to do. Each iteration in a short time has improved quite a bit either in performance or device spec. That's a lot of fast good work. Xbox one is quite amazing. Sales are good, games are ramping up. Every week some new games are out or announced. I can't wait to see what they do to improve that. Buying of Minecraft was a fantastic decision, it's not like they didn't have any video game division and suddenly bought it. I'm hoping to see more work on it but you saw how they were using it as a platform in their VR announcements, which means that they plan to expand it further and it ideally will continue to be a platform that devs will create new ideas in and from. From just using it and having been kind of annoyed by MS Office since the 2003 days, 365 seems snappier and better than it ever has been. Certain things after getting used to seeing them end up making sense and are attractive. OneDrive is a very nice service, I like it way better than Google, for free and paid you get a lot of storage with it and it's super easy to use and looks classy, not cheap. windows 10 could be insanely good. don't forget the free upgrade offerings too, which is new and much welcomed.
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  A lot of the things you listed are losing money for MS. Yes, they're neat and from an end user perspective, nice toys, but the reality is that cashflow only come from a handful of sources and MS really is screwing up. I think maybe it just needs to find its footing, but at the end of the day, someone needs to pay the bills. Meanwhile Apple and Google are making money hand over fist in those spaces.