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Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#181

Post by rodh257 »

gaius wrote: post #136
jodrellblank wrote: post #81

Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use - improve them. Far too much of my Microsoft using experience is of a solid technology which is idiotically annoying, and a new version which ups both desirable features and irritation at the same time. I mean the remote desktop client which has a ton of user experience flaws which hasn't improved for years, then developed another security…

Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use - improve them The bits of MS that do do this (e.g. the Visual Studio team) produce extremely high quality. Tho' I can't imagine that the Word or Excel teams use any other word processor or spreadsheet...

I can't imagine that Microsoft doesn't use a Microsoft product wherever they can... surely they use Windows, IIS, etc?

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#182

Post by sapphirecat »

JunkDNA wrote: post #121

Some points: - It's annoying in this day and age to be forced into using the entire MS Stack when I need to work with one specific technology. For example: if I want to test a web app on various versions of IE, I have to run Windows. OK fine, even though IE is the only browser that is tied to one OS, I'll let that go. However, if I want to use the Microsoft-provided free MS Virtual Machine images, I have to run them…

> It's a drag on the whole Microsoft ecosystem and heavily rate-limits the cycle time for new products.

I don't see this as a problem; I like the stability of MS vs. Linux (having watched the rise and fall of devfs and hal now, along with the death of gnome-mount, gconf, gdm theming and xdmcp serving, etc.)

OTOH, I think IE6's 10+ year support guarantee was a bit extreme. But, comparing developing something on IE vs. Mozilla, IE would be the clear winner. I mean, Firefox extensions, which you would expect to be developer-friendly, aren't necessarily compatible between 3.5.x and 3.6.x of the product! Do I really want to be constantly fixing things that used to work every few months? Does the business want to pay for it?

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#183

Post by rodh257 »

seltzered wrote: post #92

I recently got a windows 7 machine. Some things that bug me as a programmer using it, and make me wish I just paid up and got a mac: 1) WPF - I am trying to use this in my work life. It scares me when I hear your ex-product manager twittering that it's dead. I now feel like I should've done my app's front-end in qt or swing. 2) Will microsoft create in-built, tested, virtual desktop support already? More people use l…

What do you want microsoft to do about number 4? Appears to me that short of going back in time and making it sooner so you'll learn it, they can't do much now...

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#184

Post by gaius »

rodh257 wrote: post #181
gaius wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use - improve them The bits of MS that do do this (e.g. the Visual Studio team) produce extremely high quality. Tho' I can't imagine that the Word or Excel teams use any other word processor or spreadsheet...

I can't imagine that Microsoft doesn't use a Microsoft product wherever they can... surely they use Windows, IIS, etc?

That's true but the devs working on IIS probably aren't using all its features for their own homepages.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#185

Post by gaius »

jacquesm wrote: post #39

You want strategy? Ok, here is strategy: Do something bold for a change, really bold. Open source windows or office, do whatever scares you most and then make a go of it. With the talent pool you've got there you should easily be able to out-compete the market when you've done something like that, it will go a long way towards getting forgiveness for deeds done in the past and it will align your goals with the world…

I'd argue that putting F# in VS2010 was pretty bold. Certainly that's the thing I'm most excited about, that any major vendor has done recently.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#186

Post by doron »

Please abandon IE only interfaces for your enterprise products. Having a fully functioning web interface for outlook web access or sharepoint shouldn't be a big deal, but it is a constant problem, you cant force people to use IE, embrace the alternatives.

Added features are not always good, we know Office is a cash cow, but it is also heavy as hell, offer a slim down office suite, not in software, but in features, or at the very least, allow people to easily turn them off. And please please dont do this format change again (from doc to docx) it was a real dick move. oh yeah, embrace and promote open formats.

While we are on the office issue, WHAT THE HELL is your problem with full compatibility between office for mac and windows office, where is access? why did you remove vbscript from the apple product? did you think people will abandon macros? seriously, what the hell are you doing with this one

Add single instance storage capability to your entire server line, it may sound as a minor feature only but it would make your server line better, also simplify your licensing schemes across the board, it is antiquated and annoying for IT staff who wish to be compliant. while we are at it, powershell and cmd, should incorporate unix commands, why not?

Xbox development should open up more, the Xbox market should be more plugin oriented, services like Pandora would give the best product Microsoft had in years, extra boost.

It wont hurt Microsoft to acknowledge the brilliance of other companies, parroting the line that Microsoft invented the Tablet form factor in the face of the ipad and latching windows7 as an alternative to Ios is shortsighted and makes you look outdated and somewhat ridiculous, paradigm shifts should be acknowledged. Please reconsider the courier.

While we're at it, Crapware and glut should be abhorred and disdained and discouraged. if i buy a new windows7 machine, i dont want to reformat it to get rid of the trialware, crapware that is loaded on the average dell etc... Do you know how much of a performance degradation this stuff does? its comical. the speed (and often stability) gained by the computer you just bought when you perform a clean install, makes it feel like a different computer. you will also save time for small business IT.

Microsoft, you are rarely loved, and only admired with caveats. Work on your image better, you outspend Apple on marketing but still manage to look bad, you are not getting your money worth. Get Microsoft Surface technology to museums and public serving institutions, it will help them serve the public, it will help you look cool.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#187

Post by encoderer »

rsbrown wrote: post #79
buro9 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for that last paragraph. Just thinking that you need a billion dollar product or it's not worth it, will mean that no potentially game-changing ideas that start as a seed and will grow can come through the system. You're left with only the options to buy (but now the other companies will not sell as they have wisened up to their value) or partner (and you'll not get the real benefit or possibilities from it, and y…

Totally agree. Many have criticized Google's culture of "try lots of things", but it has clearly worked well for them. Microsoft should be encouraging their young, hungry tech talent to be creating tomorrow's killer apps today. Bureaucracy and top-down direction will kill this type of innovation every time.

Google's product development looks strikingly similar to Microsoft's from my POV.

They buy small companies and assimilate their products. Microsoft has done this many times, making many small but "successful" products. So has Google. And they both have just a handful of home-grown products that support their reputation. Personally, I find no fault with the strategy. But I do find fault with the way people use Google to bash Microsoft when they're so similar in this respect.

Everybody knows about Microsoft's acquire / "embrace extend extinguish" so how about a brief one for Google, to reinforce my point.

1. Search - Home Grown, Obv.

2. AdWords - Embrace/Extend/Extinguish - Copied from IdeaLab, Sued, Settled out of Court

3. AdSense - Acquisition

4. Maps - Acquisition

5. GMail - Home Grown.

6. Android - Acquisition

7. Chrome - Not sure entirely, but def based on WebKit, Seems fair to say it's not an E/E/E strategy tho.

8. Display Advertising - Acquisition

9. Docs - Several Acquisitions

10. Voice - Acquisition

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#188

Post by jacquesm »

gaius wrote: post #185
jacquesm wrote: post #39

You want strategy? Ok, here is strategy: Do something bold for a change, really bold. Open source windows or office, do whatever scares you most and then make a go of it. With the talent pool you've got there you should easily be able to out-compete the market when you've done something like that, it will go a long way towards getting forgiveness for deeds done in the past and it will align your goals with the world…

I'd argue that putting F# in VS2010 was pretty bold. Certainly that's the thing I'm most excited about, that any major vendor has done recently.

To me bold means directly related to your core business. F# is a neat little language but it's success or demise would not mean much on the balance sheet of microsoft corp.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#189

Post by gaius »

rakkhi wrote: post #179
gaius wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's comparable: the work of making Visual Studio is much the same as the work that people would do with Visual Studio. But if you are a Word developer, while you'd use it to write a letter, you might not have much experience of using it for a truly large document, like an entire book.

Maybe not an entire book but might you not read/write a large requirements or design document, set of test scripts before it goes into Quality centre for example. Write-up a lessons learned document or review a threat model for a security push before the new version gets launched?

Even so you would not be the typical Word user, who may be very smart and an expert in their field, but know nothing about computers.

Re: Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

#190

Post by thebigshane »

makecheck wrote: post #11

Microsoft's advertising still doesn't do it for me. Frankly, most commercials makes me think more about their lameness than the product. The exception is Xbox ads. As 'rakkhi' noted, the Xbox product line is actually great, and I think its advertising is one reason for its success. Xbox ads, everything down to the cool logo/sound thing in each one, make me think about the product , instead of making me feel sorry for…

Microsoft's customer base is huge and their advertising targets the non-technical and "hip" crowds and it seems to me to be doing a decent job. Their advertising generally doesn't target us.
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