Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The war Microsoft should have won

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 53 posts

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#11

Post by chriswarbo »

s3r3nity wrote: post #7
uuoc wrote: post #4

tl;dr: Ex. micro-softie laments all the ways ms failed in the mobile space, while completely overlooking the elephant in the room: MS, in the mobile space, did not have an already entrenched monopoly upon which to leverage other market share.

Is this a fair analysis, though? It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share. Unless this is a subtle commentary on Google's use of their search monopolistic power to drive adoption of Android (which drives further adoption of Google products) -- if so, then kudos to you.

> It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share.

The iPhone was a natural progression from the iPod, which dominated the music player market since the turn of the millenium.

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#12

Post by i_are_smart »

Ologn wrote: post #8

I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android: * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25 * The source code is available To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a s…

This is true, but Apple has the same model - you need an OS/X machine (note: much more expensive than a basic windows machine) to develop for iOS, and I believe the app store fee is also $100. It doesn't seem to have hampered iOS at all. (although the argument to be made is that because they were the first to get big, the barrier to entry didn't matter much).

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#13

Post by pklausler »

uuoc wrote: post #4

tl;dr: Ex. micro-softie laments all the ways ms failed in the mobile space, while completely overlooking the elephant in the room: MS, in the mobile space, did not have an already entrenched monopoly upon which to leverage other market share.

Microsoft is a software development company in much the same way that the Corleone family was in the olive oil importation business.

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#14

Post by pfarnsworth »

They lost because their ultimate strategy was "All Roads Lead to Windows." This is what handcuffed all their talented developers and product managers into creating extremely inferior products. The ones that had freedom from the Windows ecosystem, like X-Box, did relatively well in terms of competitiveness.

Steve Ballmer was stuck in his dinosaur thinking and couldn't see the writing on the wall. The break away from the Windows monopoly is one smart thing Nadella did, and hopefully it frees up all these talented developers from creating better products.

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#16

Post by planteen »

Ologn wrote: post #8

I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android: * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25 * The source code is available To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a s…

To be fair, for iOS development, you need a Mac and it is closed source as well. One would argue that Microsoft is closer to Apple than it is to Google.

And Android is not a 100% open source stack, parts of it are closed source.

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#17

Post by geon »

Ologn wrote: post #8

I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android: * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25 * The source code is available To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a s…

Apple had the same hoops to jump through as MS.

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#19

Post by yardie »

i_are_smart wrote: post #12
Ologn wrote: post #8

I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android: * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25 * The source code is available To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a s…

This is true, but Apple has the same model - you need an OS/X machine (note: much more expensive than a basic windows machine) to develop for iOS, and I believe the app store fee is also $100. It doesn't seem to have hampered iOS at all. (although the argument to be made is that because they were the first to get big, the barrier to entry didn't matter much).

I would say the $100 fee even helped the iOS app store. It sets the floor so that I as a user knows that this app most likely isn't spam. And you need an OSX machine because it's compiled and signed by XCode. I know a few developers that held out because of the Xcode requirement (cough, VLC) but eventually even they realised Apple had no reason to change and either the foundation was going to release or someone else.

Re: The war Microsoft should have won

#20

Post by Someone »

chriswarbo wrote: post #11
s3r3nity wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a fair analysis, though? It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share. Unless this is a subtle commentary on Google's use of their search monopolistic power to drive adoption of Android (which drives further adoption of Google products) -- if so, then kudos to you.

> It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share. The iPhone was a natural progression from the iPod, which dominated the music player market since the turn of the millenium.

I don't buy that. If the iPhone was 'just an improved iPod' at release, reception wouldn't have been as mixed as it was ('brilliant' vs 'flop')

The iPhone was a small battery powered box you can hold in your hand and it could play music, just like the iPod, but at the time the iPhone debuted, that's about where the similarities ended.

Also, because of its price ($500 plus a two-year contract) the iPhone targeted a different audience.

Post reply on HN