Again or for the 1st time? They're focusing on the entreprise business and moved away from the consumer business. So my guess is that it's pretty hard to be "cool" in the entreprise world... Look at salesforce has been trying so hard, it doesn't change the fact that their products don't mean anything to the majority of people. So my answer would be... maybe?
Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
11–20 of 53 posts
Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#12Sure, as soon as they open-source Windows, Office, and Sharepoint and make the XBox platform Open Hardware.
Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#13Sure, as soon as they open-source Windows, Office, and Sharepoint and make the XBox platform Open Hardware.
Open source Sharepoint? Why would anyone want that?
Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#14Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#15Has it ever really been? I think that, as of today, Microsoft is cooler than it’s ever been before.
Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#16They're doing a hell of a lot more cool things than Apple, these days. Windows is moving. macOS is terrible. (Says the guy who's been a Mac user for >15 years and bought every new product Apple has come out with.) Apple is doing this to themselves. As a dev platform, their appeal is waning. (Stop making shit laptops, and make your macOS stable again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) Microsoft, under Nadella, is making the right moves, li…
As a life long Max fan boy who grew up on Apple IIs and Mac SE 30s - I agree
Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#17If someone is on a windows machine, using the pre-installed IE11 or Edge browser, I tend to assume it's a 70 year old these days. Or possibly someone at a firm with some dated internal ActiveX page that needs IE.
That kind of association is extremely difficult to break. Car manufacturers have struggled with similar impressions. You can make the greatest, and cheapest, car in the world, and people won't buy it if it has that kind of negative association.
Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#18Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
When IBM went to the PS/2 architecture, and the OS/2 software, to try to kill the PC clone market and lock up the PC hardware and OS market for themselves, Microsoft was the champion of freedom and openness. Really. Windows 95 and 98 were when the GUI became cool. Well, cool and available - it was cool on the Mac, but nobody had Macs.
Yeah, I could see how finally getting their GUI system more or less working a decade after everyone else could be seen as cool. And yes, keeping the corporate drone market away from a technically better product, also cool.
"After everyone else"? Well, there was the Mac. And there was TopView. And there was... who, exactly, is "everyone else"? There were workstations like Silicon Graphics, but they didn't even pretend to be available (affordable) for the average user. They weren't competition for the PC. On commodity hardware, it was Windows and TopView, and TopView was... not very useful, to put it charitably.
The PS/2 was a technically better product. It was also IBM's attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, so that it could sell hardware at prices considerably above the commodity level. Technically better? Cool. Not having to pay several hundred dollars more for your hardware? The market thought that was even more cool.
Re: Ask HN: Will Microsoft ever become cool again?
#20Has it ever really been? I think that, as of today, Microsoft is cooler than it’s ever been before.
I agree. To me, out of the 'big 4', they are the coolest currently.