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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?

#231

Post by elbrodeur »

I would like to tell Microsoft to stop being so risk averse. Stop relying so heavily on market research. Stop acquiring talent with proven track records and stifling them with your rubric.

If you want to survive the next 20 years, you're going to have to innovate. But innovation comes with significant risks, and at the earliest sign of failure or possible failure, you pull out instead of pivot, adapt or wait.

Stop worrying about marketshare. Start worrying that your products are not considered thought leaders; your flagship products are (until several innovations recently, like IE9 and 7) considered buggy, not secure and it's your fault. You've let the competition paint you into that corner.

Stop playing catch up. Start innovating.

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

#232

Post by mmelin »

dmethvin wrote: post #228
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…

Even most casual developers can afford $200 for a Windows license to run on VMWare. Contrast that with testing Mac software in VMWare with a Linux or Windows host -- we can't legally do it because it's against Apple's license.

While I somewhat agree that Apple's licensing of OS X is overly restrictive (though the reasons for those licensing terms are fairly complex), the OP is specifically talking about testing web apps in IE, which is the only browser with >1.0 percent market share that does not run on both Windows and OS X.

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

#233

Post by runjake »

I am not the usual Anti-Microsoftie you see around these parts. I love many of their products. Many of my gripes over the years have slowly been fixed, but there are still some:

- Windows does not have a strong history of (non-half-assed) interoperability. This is a hinderance to using Microsoft products in many projects. Use the same technologies as everyone else and do it right! Screw XPS, Screw WinRM (or tunnel it over SSH like normal people). We're too busy to learn The New Way To Do $foo This Year.

- Stop reimplementing the wheels everyone else uses. A good example is the XPS vs PDF war. Everyone else uses PDF, it's a reasonably open standard, just USE IT. Do go create your own "value-added" garbage.

- Your enterprise products are not only not free, they're costly. I can use a free open source web application stack that is at least as good as ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC. I love Visual Studio though. BizSpark is a start, but what about those of us doing large scale community/"hobby"/not-for-profit projects?

- Ballmer's leadership sucks. Every time I read one of his stupid quotes about his stance on $foo, I cringe.

- blogs.msdn.com is gold. Keep this program and the openness from the engineers going!

- Stop the inter/intra product group fighting that ends up hurting the end users. Get some stronger leadership.

- Stop trying to make Windows more simple for grandma. You're making it harder to navigate for the rest of us (see the Windows 7 control panel as a perfect example).

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

#234

Post by rafaelferreira »

Microsoft should prepare itself for a world in which the consumer computing experience will no longer be dominated by a single player. Apple, Google, Palm/HP, Blackberry, Nintendo, Sony and probably many others will grab a share of the time and money that in the past would've gone to newer Wintel PCs.

Ms should target Windows as a strong business-only brand, and this focus would probably make for a better product. It's probably wise to still play in the consumer market, with XBox and Windows Mobile and whatnot, but expecting lower margins and increased competition.

Also, please hire someone to come up with better names for your products. It's getting ridiculous.

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

#235

Post by runjake »

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…

> MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix.

Some of us have the audacity to believe that NT OS might actually be superior to UNIX-like OSes. Sorry, it's true. And this coming from a "UNIX-like OS guy". I'm all for stripping away the DOSification of NT, like drive letters, instead of native (and UNIX-like) paths, etc though.

Edited slightly due to formatting errors on my part

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

#236

Post by seltzered »

rodh257 wrote: post #183
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...

one pragmatic idea I had was to help support colinux efforts. There's been a lot of debate in that community over getting support for x64 revisions of windows.

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

#237

Post by jcromartie »

sapphirecat wrote: post #182
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.…

> 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.)

The problem that I see is that "stability" in the Microsoft world is entirely conditional on your willingness to upgrade everything all of the time since the whole toolkit is in a constant state of flux. Sure, you get working and officially-supported frameworks, but the goalposts are always shifting further down the field, and I think that's intentional on Microsoft's part.

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

#238

Post by runjake »

x0t wrote: post #206
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…

I agree 100% with your last paragraph... their desire to keep bolting bits onto legacy software is a major annoyance and leads to a lot of kruft.

NT is not legacy software by any means. If anything, they are bolting legacy crap onto NT OS (such as the concept of drive letters, where the NT OS natively uses more UNIX-like paths)

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

#239

Post by fragmede »

cryptoz wrote: post #193

Personally, the main thing I dislike about Windows is the lack of proper window management. There's no real Focus Follows Mouse, you have to use third-party applications to get windows to Stay on Top, or to have a second taskbar on your second monitor, etc. It's unfortunate that your OS is called Windows, but compared to your competition you are severely lacking in your ability to usefully manage windows!

And then, Visual Studio raises itself on activation, making focus-follows-mouse too frustrating to keep using, so you can't even use one of the focus-follows-mouse apps if you use Visual Studio.

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

#240

Post by Maascamp »

rakkhi wrote: post #29
genieyclo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post has so much FUD it makes my brain hurt.

Really? I really try to avoid FUD, this was my honest views, anything specific you thought was FUD?

Your comments on IE9 only reflect the user interface. Writing off the whole browser as non innovative because it _looks_ like Chrome is FUD.
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