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Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

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Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#191

Post by eropple »

widowlark wrote: post #181
Camillo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you seriously feel like you need your own office? We live in the 21st century for god's sake. Rather than a private office, I want to work from home most of the time.

That we live in the 21st century is why I want my own office: because it's chaotic and hectic and a place to concentrate is important.

As a consultant, that office does happen to be in my home. But I wouldn't return to a FT gig without having a place where I can go, separating from "home", to work in productive quiet.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#192

Post by ocdtrekkie »

chmln wrote: post #163
yummyfajitas wrote: post #144

I recently bought a Lenovo sporting Windows 10 and decided to give it a fair try. I've been using Windows exclusively on my personal laptop for about 2 months and so far it's a good experience. This is after 16 years of running linux (or briefly a mac) on the desktop. The window manager is tolerable (not as good as Xmonad, but equivalent to Unity). Windows subsystem for linux is letting me get my work done with no pr…

My experience has been the complete opposite. I've got a Lenovo Y50 running Win10. With a HiDPI display, it is pretty much unusable. While OS elements scale rather well, most of the software doesn't, even using the "DPI fix." [1] There are also ads on lock screen. [2] The "terminal", PowerShell, is slow to launch, path completions are crawling. The subsystem for linux is great, and certainly a move in the right direc…

FWIW, the "ads on the lock screen" thing is a wee overblown. Microsoft is the single-party provider of any of their so called "suggested content". Aka, you saw Tomb Raider not because Square Enix paid to be on the lock screen, but because Microsoft was trying to push that you can get AAA games in the Windows Store. The Surface has been up there, I think they put a movie-related one up once or twice, again, referring you to their own Movies app. And they have no animations, moving bits, or arbitrary code.

They're not targeted ads, so they're not using a data profile on you to power them or anything like that. I wouldn't be surprised if they know how many screens displayed them, but there's not a lot of interaction tracking you can really do with a static lockscreen. So it doesn't have the sort of privacy implications of normal advertising either.

So, while you may not like their choice of wallpaper because it is related to a product they are releasing, it's not really much more egregious than the fact that it downloads daily wallpapers on the lockscreen to begin with: It's all stuff selected specifically by Microsoft. And as others have pointed out, it's really easy to shut off.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#193

Post by scholia »

blowski wrote: post #102

> Under Mr. Nadella, Microsoft is shaping up to be the only pre-internet tech giant to escape the decline of its legacy product—the Windows PC operating system—and emerge as a leader in the new era of cloud computing. Other than Apple, Oracle and IBM?

This is the IBM that has enjoyed 18 consecutive quarterly declines in revenues, including the most recent 21% fall in hardware revenues? ;-)

It has bought more than 100 companies to try to reverse its decline (including Softlayer), so maybe it won't get much worse. However, this is a company that used to be a titan when Microsoft was a midge on its PC division's backside...

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#195

Post by hashhar »

cmdrfred wrote: post #173
hashhar wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really amazing how the list you created includes different products for each bullet but Microsoft (or M$ if you prefer) combined all of them into a single product which actually functions.

So if Apple threw a stylus and a word processor on the iPhone they would be innovators too?

Well, I agree with them not being innovators but they definitely made a marketable product. It's the same thing for which business circles praise Apple. Apple turn already known things into a marketable package which is not so different from what Microsoft did here. That's what being a device manufacturer is about.

Innovations come in small bursts. Take the Surface Hub as an example.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#196

Post by Silhouette »

slumberlust wrote: post #57
rb808 wrote: post #14

I dont understand the new Microsoft business model. I've stopped using office, Windows is now free(?), but most stuff is in the browser anyway. We used to pay a lot of money for SQL server but now there are lots of free open source alternatives. Sure Azure might make some money but its a commodity business, I can't see how it will replace the old cash cows.

If you can't see the business model, you're it.

It seems unfair to downvote the parent comment. It might be a little snarky, but it's still pretty close to the truth in a lot of modern IT.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#197

Post by delecti »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #107
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #79

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.

Additionally, it seems it's pretty much the standard way to do business in the tech world these days.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#198

Post by scholia »

kolme wrote: post #96
scholia wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they charge a licence (I think around 300€) Pretty interesting if Microsoft can charge €300 for an operating system that ships on €150 (£150/$199 or less) laptops ;-) The Windows installation fee used to be around $42-$44 and some versions cost around $11-15 (Windows XP Ultra Low Cost PC version). IBM used to pay $27 (which we know because it complained bitterly about Microsoft tripling the price). The tablet versi…

You are right. I was thinking of the price you get when you buy it off the shelf (which is also now cheaper as it used to be).

Yes, the off-the-shelf package includes a large fee for Microsoft support, and the right to move the OS from one machine to another. You don't get either of those with the OEM versions.

One obvious factor in the fall of Windows pricing is the fall of PC prices. Microsoft could charge a lot when PCs cost $/€/£2,500 each.

As PC prices fell through $/€/£1,500 each and $/€/£500 each to today's levels, the cost of Windows would have been an increasingly large proportion of the total. That was bound to be unsustainable, so I imagine (without any proof) that the price of Windows has come down much like the cost of hard drives and screens....

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#199

Post by ebbv »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #149
ebbv wrote: 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…

> "Do something truly innovative with all your billions Microsoft" What exactly are you looking for? Are devices like HoloLens and Kinect and Surface Studio not innovative enough for you? What would you class as 'truly innovative'?

No, they aren't. Kinect was using motion tracking and stereo vision technology that already existed. They just refined it and it was clearly a dead end. Also it was just a "me too" response to the success of the Wii.

Surface studio is just a big touch screen. Nothing new.

HoloLens is the most innovative but again this kind of AR has been around for a while, it's a refinement and I think it will just be a dead end like Kinect ultimately.

Truly innovative means something that actually changes things. I think the list I gave in my comment makes that pretty obvious; the web, home broadband, Linux and smartphones. Those changed the world. The Surface Studio will not.

Re: Microsoft, Rebooted, Emerges as a Tech Leader

#200

Post by eropple »

digler999 wrote: post #183
Zaheer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not their target demographic. 99% of people don't want to put linux on it.

back in the 90's, 99% of people didn't want linux either, and MS did just fine without "physically" locking you out of their competition.

I'm curious if you have a conception of exactly how much money creating, testing, and deploying a SKU of a product actually runs. Now multiply it by the number of permutations of the product. You should get a reasonably large number with six or seven zeroes at the end. Be honest: are they going to even break even off of the micropopulation that cares?
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