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Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

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Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#121
post #97
post #70

This article loses credibility with the opening line... FTA: After years of missteps, the software giant is among the few titans of the 1990s to figure out the new world of mobile technology and cloud computing. Saying MSFT have figured out mobile is a little too much of a stretch. They have tried many things in the space, they have figured out more of what doesn't work than what does. Unfortunately the market doesn'…

I think if you focus on their mobile apps and services , rather than their mobile phones , the statement has some pretty serious merit. E.g., Azure's mobile services are used very heavily by iOS and Android apps, I see Office all the time on phones, and so on.

Yes. In fact, one of the common complaints of Windows Phone users is that the Microsoft experience is actually better on Android. (Maybe iOS too, but I don't have any direct experience seeing that.)

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if Microsoft's leadership is being honest or not these days. But they're also far from transparent, and definitely working against my interests: (1) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to assert patents against Linux without giving the broader community enough information to resolve the supposed violations. (I'm not positive about this one.) (2) AFAIK, Microsoft continues to apply for more software patents, witho…

In case you hadn't noticed, "Embrace, extend and extinguish" is from 1995, 21 years ago.

The "embrace, extend, extinguish" meme is largely overused these days in reference to Microsoft. If the trend towards using the cloud continues and the desktop OS becomes more of a terminal to cloud services then we could be looking at a modern version of "EEE". Embrace linux for the customers, extend Windows software to Linux for those customers, and let market trends extinguish the desktop OS.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#124
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerful 2-in-1 that works as a laptop and a tablet; runs sandboxed apps from a web store as well as traditional Windows apps; built in AI assistant; excellent pen operation; built in accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer; cloud integration with OneDrive, Office programs, email etc with the ability to continue work from different devices; face-recognition or fingerprint log-on; increased security features.... Ye…

Microsoft wasn't the first to do a single one of those things. Copying Apple and Google isn't innovative in my opinion nor Websters.

And Apple wasn't the first to make a touch screen smartphone. They were just the first to do it well.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#127
post #66

I just can't agree with this conclusion. Microsoft has taken some great steps since Nadella took over. Doing more projects aimed at regular developers and taking baby steps towards open source, but that is not enough to be a leader. In fact, I think in 2016, we are in a much worse place when it comes to tech leadership than we were in the late 90s and early 00s. The tech world has been poisoned by money and everythin…

They're using their billions to buy advertisements like this 'article'.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've played with Azure and it's terrible. If a client wants me to use Azure instead of Google or Amazon, I literally charge a premium because it's so much more painful.

I don't see how anyone could possible claim GAE or similar offerings from Google compete anywhere close to what Microsoft or Amazon is providing. My take on it between Amazon and Microsoft: Microsoft has less functionality but with an easier UI. Amazon is light years ahead of anyone but their UI scheme (from naming things to where they position features and options) is pretty lack luster.

These days, GCP completely blows away AWS in every area where they overlap, especially VMs, networking and cloud storage.

GCP is generally a lot more consistent and modern, having benefited from a clean-slate design and Google's expertise in designing huge continent-spanning infrastructure solutions. Some examples:

* AWS Glacier looks pretty nifty until you realize that Google's equivalent, the coldline storage class, still gives you millisecond latencies (Glacier's is usually measured in hours), at a much lower price point.

* GCP is designed to automatically migrate VMs between physical hosts, with zero application downtime. This in turn is possible thanks to their rather amazing network stack, a completely transparent, encrypted L4 SDN. AWS, meanwhile, suffers on the awkward mess that is AWS VPC (unless one is still stuck on "legacy EC2").

* Google gets things like consolidated billing correct from the start. Other minor things like IAM management and the command-line toolchain are a breath of fresh air.

Not to say that it's all rosy, of course. GCP has its own set of issues, like any product offering, though no major ones come to mind. But it's clear that some of their services (the StackDriver tools comes to mind) are not up to their usual quality standards.

Of course, Google doesn't have counterparts to all of Amazon's offerings, but then AWS has a lot of odd products (much of it targeting enterprises with legacy infrastructure). Google's focus on Kubernetes and containerization means that some of the deployment-oriented services (CloudFormation, Elastic Beanstalk and so on) are less relevant, and for now Google seems to rely on the community/third parties to come up with their own solutions, which I think is a good call at the moment.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#130
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not entirely gone but it's dying. I'm still in a private office. Lots of devs on my team are doubled up, though. Many teams have already moved to open spaces. Demographics are a factor. Lots of devs, especially younger devs, and especially devs who've worked at other younger companies are asking for open floor plans. Not all of them, but a sizable chunk. That plus reduced cost for providing office space to devs…

They are asking for open floor plans? Is there anything young people won't ruin?

Open floor plan is great way to have life-life balance and not do any meaningful work.
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