Microsoft’s Very Good Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#51

Post by philliphaydon » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 11:56 AM UTC

mrmondo wrote: post #16

Clickbate marketing article name with little valuable substance. I tried Windows 10 in tablet mode and I found the whole experience to be disjointed. It felt out of touch with recent UX trends / advancements, the same old thing with a new skin and even more tiles. Everything I wanted to do took more 'clicks' that I was happy with and there's little-to-no consideration to power users. Am I the only one that doesn't se…

I read this like you're just trying to find reason to hate MS and/or Windows... IMO

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#52

Post by ZenoArrow » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 11:58 AM UTC

andosa wrote: post #2

It definitely feels like Microsoft is on the right track with Nadella in charge.

I like nearly everything Microsoft is currently doing, except for their attitude towards privacy, which means that I'll be making efforts to move away from their platform out of principal.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#53

Post by loudmax » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 11:58 AM UTC

delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

I just transitioned to a new job that uses Exchange for email, and it feels like the old Microsoft. The only way I've found to get Thunderbird to connect to Exchange's IMAP is by using a proprietary add-on. A lot of .doc and .xls files get passed around that I can't modify in LibreOffice without screwing up the formatting. The hardest part of getting work done on a Linux desktop isn't the drivers, it's interoperability with MS Office.

So it is good that MS is been moving in the right direction, but there's still a lot of legacy crap holding back innovation.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#54

Post by wainstead » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:02 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #45

codeulike wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) is now a tactic so common that it is taken for granted. I guess what made it scary is that they really did have a strong monopoly and it looked like they might dominate forever. So its not so much the tactics that offend people, but how much power they had when wielding those tactics. Seems to me like every big tech firm now makes…

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) One other point worth remembering: their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability. They also ushered in the modern era of web applications by inventing XMLHttpRequest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest ). Netscape destroyed itself as much as Microsoft helped them by incompet…

> their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability

IIRC, Microsoft were using hidden APIs to accomplish this, putting Netscape at a disadvantage.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#55

Post by mariusmg » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:03 PM UTC

loudmax wrote: post #53

delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

I just transitioned to a new job that uses Exchange for email, and it feels like the old Microsoft. The only way I've found to get Thunderbird to connect to Exchange's IMAP is by using a proprietary add-on. A lot of .doc and .xls files get passed around that I can't modify in LibreOffice without screwing up the formatting. The hardest part of getting work done on a Linux desktop isn't the drivers, it's interoperabili…

Aaaa....why not use IMAP/POP3 ? If the server administrator only allows that dumb proprietary protocol, you can't really blame Microsoft there.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#56

Post by mrmondo » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:03 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #51

mrmondo wrote: post #16

Clickbate marketing article name with little valuable substance. I tried Windows 10 in tablet mode and I found the whole experience to be disjointed. It felt out of touch with recent UX trends / advancements, the same old thing with a new skin and even more tiles. Everything I wanted to do took more 'clicks' that I was happy with and there's little-to-no consideration to power users. Am I the only one that doesn't se…

I read this like you're just trying to find reason to hate MS and/or Windows... IMO

I don't hate them, I wish they'd become real competition. Competition and diversity in this industry is fundamental to its success. Unfortunately I only see the same old irrelevant, boring products almost no signs of innovation. They're one of the largest companies in the world and the best the best they can do is a tablet with a bendy keyboard running the same old OS with a new theme slapped haphazardly on top? Poor effort.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#57

Post by craigvn » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:03 PM UTC

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #17

delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

To cool down some of the optimism in this comment section: Microsoft is still accepting cash for practically every Android phone made because of their patent threats, or did they change their ways in this regard as well? (I am genuinely curious whether this continues; I tried to google "microsoft android patent threats" but found only news articles from 2013/2014 about the practice.)

While this is true similar practices around patents and technology is undertaken by every large tech company. Why do you think Google are so interested in self driving cars? Not because they want to be the next Toyota but because they want to own all technology and patents behind it which they will happily let Toyota use for a small (ok very large) fee.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#58

Post by hvidgaard » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:04 PM UTC

hga wrote: post #45

codeulike wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) is now a tactic so common that it is taken for granted. I guess what made it scary is that they really did have a strong monopoly and it looked like they might dominate forever. So its not so much the tactics that offend people, but how much power they had when wielding those tactics. Seems to me like every big tech firm now makes…

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) One other point worth remembering: their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability. They also ushered in the modern era of web applications by inventing XMLHttpRequest ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest ). Netscape destroyed itself as much as Microsoft helped them by incompet…

I think a lot of people attribute a lot of Microsofts success to malice. In reality they have invested heavily in improving development methods, and it shows. One only have to read "I.M Wrights Hard Code", to understand exactly how many resources they allocate to improving the development cycle. And mind you this knowledge was distilled into text more than 10 years ago, but was part of the company for far longer.

Re. Netscape, IE on Windows surely helped, but Netscape did the no. 1 mistake and tried to rewrite everything from scratch - I can not think of any working product where it is better to throw everything out and redo everything "the right way", rather than iteratively improving the code. It's knowingly throwing out all business knowledge improvement and bugfixing you have ever done. It killed them, and would have even if IE was never bundled with Windows. In contrast, Windows 10 and Office 2016 contains code that can be traced more than 25 years back, and as evident with Vista development, MS is not afraid to accept when something has gone horribly wrong and throw it out and try again. Note that is not the same as rewriting, it is accepting that you spend a lot of resources making a prototype that ultimately showed no promise.

Not that MS does not do terrible things as a business. They do, exactly as any other business with that size. They have to or they will cease to exist in a few years.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#59

Post by codeulike » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:05 PM UTC

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #42

codeulike wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

extorting cash for patents Standard practice among all the big players office document lock-in Standard practice among the players lucky enough to be able to do it (we now call it 'walled garden') ... My thesis is that all big tech firms now act as MS once did (or would if they could). But we're just used to it now.

Just because the "big players" all do it, doesn't make it right. > But we're just used to it now. It's time for complacency to end, yes?

I didn't say it was right. Just interesting that MS are still the pantomime villain while everyone else copies the script.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#60

Post by kybernetikos » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 12:07 PM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #19

delish wrote: post #14

I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape. I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change. But I would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of someone far more skilled than me programming i…

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) is now a tactic so common that it is taken for granted. I guess what made it scary is that they really did have a strong monopoly and it looked like they might dominate forever. So its not so much the tactics that offend people, but how much power they had when wielding those tactics. Seems to me like every big tech firm now makes…

I'm actually surprised there hasn't been more complaint about amazon using their hugely dominant position in web retail to get into streaming video. Forced bundling of a bit player video service with prime seems to be a particularly cynical way of pushing yourself into a market.