Microsoft’s Very Good Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#181

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

greyman wrote: post #18

emerongi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe so as well. They've switched focus and are going in the right direction now. A few years ago I actually advised everyone to not use Microsoft's products. Every single product was subpar (Windows, Windows Phone, their laptops etc). Today, I'm happy to advise Surface Pro, Windows Phone, etc to anyone. They're striving more for innovation (e.g. Surface Pro, Surface Book), which is cool and will bring them succ…

I agree with the general sentiment, but imho Windows Phone is still not there. Lot of apps are iOS+Android only, or the WP alternative is sub-par.

While I agree on the app front, which is not really that relevant to me, I still believe that it came a very long way in terms of UI and usability.

The one thing I dislike is the mail application (well, one day when I have the nerve and gumption I'll actually figure out how to attach a PDF, I think it has something to do with OneDrive and compatible applications, but I digress) and that there's not really an alternative to it.

In terms of usability it feels to me snappier and more logical than the IPhone of my girlfriend. Even after almost two years it doesn't feel like the performance is degrading.

If they don't kill the platform I plan to stick with it.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#182

Post by hga » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:49 PM UTC

yread wrote: post #174

hga wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. This emphasizes a restriction technical debt may place on your company if your starting foundation is sufficiently poor. Lotus did a combination of these two fatal mistakes, t…

How did MS screw Verizon with Kin? It's not clear from the article...

Late enough to miss the market window, delivered only a fraction of the promised features, less than the Danger Sidekick which it was supposed to build upon.

The official Windows phone unit was doing its best to kill the Kin, it had to switch to Windows CE, it was required to support Exchange, and a lot of the code supplied to the Kin group, especially for Exchange, was in horrible shape.

Ah, and another example of this sort of bad Microsoft behavior: When they bought Danger, they ignored its contractual responsibilities to T-Mobile and expected to immediately repurpose Danger's technical employees. Oops, T-Mobile refused to put up with that, and those employees had to spend some time developing the last Sidekick models (and all this had a morale crushing effect, above and beyond that of being absorbed by Microsoft with its stack ranking el. al.).

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#183

Post by hga » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:54 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #177

Aldo_MX wrote: post #112

Godwin's Law warning I find more ridiculous the statement "we will never forgive Microsoft" than saying "we will never forgive Germany". They're a company, not a charity, they're in the business of making money, and if making money implies using "dirty tactics" such as saying phone manufacturers "bundle Office in your phones or we will use our patents against you" it will certainly happen regardless of which company…

People like to anthropomorphize companies as having a conscience, but you're right: they're just autonomous control structures with the goal of making as much money as possible. Sometimes their leaders will make bad decisions prioritizing money now over money later, but ultimately such decisions are often just as bad for the long-term health of the company as they are for the market (even though they may provide a sh…

You're forgetting the direct example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

He was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading in Qwest stock on April 19, 2007 – charges he and many others claim are U.S. government retaliation for his refusal to give customer data to the National Security Agency in February, 2001.

Given the iffiness of such charges when it's your own company's stock, we have to at least entertain the proposition that refusing to work with the NSA is a ticket to Federal prison. Qwest is said to have been the only big company that refused.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#184

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #175

blumkvist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let them die. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Microsoft isn't going to die, but their enormous influence has eroded nicely. They're a mature, profitable, mostly boring company and I'm okay with that. XBox is pretty hip, but the reset of the company is about as interesting to the general public as Oracle, Cisco, or IBM.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#185

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:57 PM UTC

I could not help myself, I had to get a surface book, it may end up in the pile of things with great potential but I had to give it a shot. Two devices were in the running for my 2015 tablet HW refresh, the Lenovo Yoga 3 and the iPad Pro. This sort of came out of left field.

It has a lot to live up to, I use my iPad every day and for a variety of things, but something I always wanted to do on my iPad, sketch, wasn't very satisfactory. And while I liked the Surface Pro 3's pen experience, its battery life was a challenge and some key Apps weren't there.

So long battery life, a better drawing experience, and a useful typing experience, and, for bonus, I can stop carrying around a laptop as well? Well if this thing can pull that off its a win for me, and I'll just put vmware workstation on it and run Linux when I'm doing my embedded work.

But the other thing it has done is really highlight the impact of market windows. Had the iPad Pro come out last year, or even in Q1 of this year, I would be using it already and probably not be buying the Surface Book.

For historical reasons the first thing I bought to try to do what I wanted was the "Touchbook" from Always Innovating. Detachable keyboard, touch screen. But not enough battery life, and the screen's resistive touch screen was not very useful. I also have the Illiad 2 from iREX which an an epaper display with a watcom stylus, loved the pen, and the readability of epaper, but very little app support and challenging storage options. For a while I've lived with both a laptop and the iPad. I'm really curious if this new box can meet my expectations.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#186

Post by blumkvist » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #175

blumkvist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let them die. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Microsoft isn't going to die, but their enormous influence has eroded nicely. They're a mature, profitable, mostly boring company and I'm okay with that. XBox is pretty hip, but the reset of the company is about as interesting to the general public as Oracle, Cisco, or IBM.

sigh

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#187

Post by WorldWideWayne » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 3:05 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.)

Do you use any Apple products whatsoever? I hope not, because Apple sues over patents too.

If you really care, please stop using any company's products that do this.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#188

Post by ladzoppelin » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 3:06 PM UTC

harkyns_castle wrote: post #64

togusa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an MSDN subscriber, write C# all day and am sitting in front of Win8.1, writing this in IE11 with a Lumia 640 next to me. They are still utter bastards and I sleep with one eye open. Currently the tally of bad stuff is pretty high: Patent wars against competitors, forced bundling agreements, lock in despite the open specification stuff which is mostly just wrong, being fucked over on audits and licensing agreemen…

Personally, I'll never forgive them for their practices. They deliberately stifled competition, shafted developers, abused their position, and rubbed it in our faces. There's no coming back from that, and I'll gladly educate newcomers to IT on their ways. Let them die. The new CEO could be the second coming, you can't fix that cancerous attitude that is entrenched. They deserve to become obsolete, at the very least.

But its attitudes like this that drive people toward Ms. Everybody can see that other companies are doing the exact same thing. For example there is actual proof of Apple conspiring to keeping developer's wages low.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#189

Post by WorldWideWayne » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 3:14 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #175

blumkvist wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Let them die. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Microsoft isn't going to die, but their enormous influence has eroded nicely. They're a mature, profitable, mostly boring company and I'm okay with that. XBox is pretty hip, but the reset of the company is about as interesting to the general public as Oracle, Cisco, or IBM.

Microsoft is as hip and alive as Google is. Google is a boring info-utility to most people. The Xbox is absolutely more cool than anything Google has in their pocket, including Android and self driving car experiments.

Re: Microsoft’s Very Good Day

#190

Post by bane » Thu, Oct 08, 2015, 3:15 PM UTC

ino wrote: post #31

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…

They are marketing really hard where the tech nerds and devs are, astroturfing comment sections and sponsored articles everywhere. Things like Microsoft is changing and giving fuzzy feelings (really?), but the general audience is harder to get. I've seen huge billboards with surface 3 ads, special sections in stores, but I've never seen one in the wild.

I work for a medium sized tech company and the surfaces are absolutely ubiquitous, 1:1 with Mac books easily. People who have them absolutely adore them. I'm considering getting a surface book when the lease on my rmbpro is up.