Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

$600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 426 posts

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#401

Post by scarface74 »

reaperducer wrote: post #261
thaumasiotes wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What londons_explore said. Windows OS didn't succeed, but the comments about the iPhone seem to have been basically accurate...?

the comments about the iPhone seem to have been basically accurate If by "basically accurate," you mean "not accurate at all." It's a long way from 2% to 45%. Not many companies get to underestimate their competition's potential marketshare by a factor of 22 and survive.

It was partially accurate. Statistically no one bought an unsubsidized phone for $600. Apple lowered the price to $300 within 6 months and then went for the standardized subsidized model the next year.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#402

Post by scarface74 »

mrep wrote: post #363
awucs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "2% or 3%" was very realistic, but you have to remember that when the iPhone first came out it wasn't very good. I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things). Apple was certainly ahead, but the market also wasn't ready nor big at that. When it actually matured there were a couple of solid offerings including from Microsoft, which among other things had arguably better design than An…

> I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things) I bought the first iphone on the day it came out and I believe most phones did not have 3G at the time, almost all didn't have GPS (no real use case as navigation apps didn't really exist for phones), and most just had crappy App Stores. > iPhone first came out it wasn't very good Unequivocally false! It did everything a normal phone did fine. Howeve…

I bought the first iphone on the day it came out and I believe most phones did not have 3G at the time, almost all didn't have GPS (no real use case as navigation apps didn't really exist for phones), and most just had crappy App Stores.

Sprint had been advertising its “Vision network” since at least 2005.

“Sprint Navigation” powered by Telemachus was a J2ME app that was an add on service in 2005.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeleNav

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#403

Post by scarface74 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #147
disconnected wrote: post #96

This article misses the mark completely by assuming that Microsoft still needs Windows to stay afloat. This hasn't been true for years. They have realized that it doesn't matter whether you use Windows, Chrome OS, Android or Linux, or anything else: everything is in the cloud now, so the OS is pretty much irrelevant. Azure, Office 365 and heck, even Linkedin are doing great: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/19/m…

I think that's quite a bit premature. Yes, Microsoft has done a great job diversifying of late, but Windows is still a huge percentage of their revenue. Also, my guess is that people that use Windows are much more likely to use Office (even the cloud version), which is the next biggest part of their revenue.

Google hasn’t made any real profit on anything besides advertising during its whole existence. It’s much less diversified than Microsoft, Apple, or Amazon.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#404

Post by scarface74 »

shrumm wrote: post #348
disconnected wrote: post #96

This article misses the mark completely by assuming that Microsoft still needs Windows to stay afloat. This hasn't been true for years. They have realized that it doesn't matter whether you use Windows, Chrome OS, Android or Linux, or anything else: everything is in the cloud now, so the OS is pretty much irrelevant. Azure, Office 365 and heck, even Linkedin are doing great: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/19/m…

One major differentiator for Azure is its 1st class support for Windows / Microsoft centric tech. Besides that, I find it hard to see why someone would pick them over AWS. So if consumer Windows becomes irrelevant, so does Windows server. If you’re no longer needing Windows server, why get SQL server and so on. I think consumer Windows demand fuels demand for Azure and Office 365.

Amazon has as first class support as Windows as is feasible considering the bloat of Windows. Thier SDKs for .Net and extensions for Visual Studio are top notch.

They aren’t crazy enough to support lambda or Fargate for Windows.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#405

Post by GordonS »

shrumm wrote: post #348
disconnected wrote: post #96

This article misses the mark completely by assuming that Microsoft still needs Windows to stay afloat. This hasn't been true for years. They have realized that it doesn't matter whether you use Windows, Chrome OS, Android or Linux, or anything else: everything is in the cloud now, so the OS is pretty much irrelevant. Azure, Office 365 and heck, even Linkedin are doing great: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/19/m…

One major differentiator for Azure is its 1st class support for Windows / Microsoft centric tech. Besides that, I find it hard to see why someone would pick them over AWS. So if consumer Windows becomes irrelevant, so does Windows server. If you’re no longer needing Windows server, why get SQL server and so on. I think consumer Windows demand fuels demand for Azure and Office 365.

For one thing, the Azure portal is more consistent and so much better to work with than the clunky, rather antiquated AWS portal.

Azure has a huge and every-growing service offering, which includes things like Postgres, so it's not like you are bound to Microsoft tech if you use Azure.

I've been working with Azure for a few years now, and am very happy with it - in the main, I've found there support to be excellent too.

IMO the only area AWS really kicks Azure's arse is for compute - you get a lot more VM for your money with AWS. I really wish Azure would do better here.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#406

Post by 013a »

stinos wrote: post #373
013a wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft has tried various ways to fix this but it only tends to protect high-end models. Try again. Microsoft is complicit in all of this. If you go buy an OEM version of Windows 10 today, even Pro, what you get is a ridiculous set of preloaded games and apps, like Candy Crush, Bubble Witch 3 Saga, Disney Magic Kingdoms, etc. Its disgusting, and everyone who works at Microsoft should be ashamed of it.

Its disgusting, and everyone who works at Microsoft should be ashamed of it. It is disgusting, but I fail to see how e.g. the team working on the C++ compiler should be ashamed for something another completely seperate team was forced to do by management (assuming something like that is responsible for this). In my opinion MS has gone too big for that, with a bunch of seperate departments almost acting as standalone…

That's fair. But; employees at Google who weren't even remotely near the company's work on Drone AI programs were still disgusted and ashamed by it, enough to threaten quitting. Despite being separate firewalled departments, its about Identity and a compatibility of ethics with that identity.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#407

Post by isostatic »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #300
mattkevan wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you could ‘squirt’ songs from one Zune to another. The Zune was a litany of poor decisions, but that word choice must have been the worst.

From the company that brought you “wince.”

Ahh, the line up at the turn of the century -- Windows Cement.

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#408

Post by make3 »

013a wrote: post #142
make3 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all things so small no one has ever heard of them though

Windows Core OS is literally the next major OS from Windows (though who knows if they'll just silently upgrade Win10 without a name change or what). Its not small. The point is to create a modularized operating system, built on OneCore, where they can add or remove major features depending on the platform it is deployed to (even features as big as Win32 support). Andromeda is the codename for their revitalized smartp…

I agree with you, but it's not because it's big that anyone has ever heard of it (consumers, not Microsoft employees)

Re: $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

#410

Post by DennisAleynikov »

debaserab2 wrote: post #333
DennisAleynikov wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's paid off handsomely and cut off apples prospects of expanding beyond the 15% market share they currently enjoy. sure owning 15% of the global smartphone market makes them money but androids 85% share ensures googles dominance in the sector unless apple lowers some of its hardware walls and turns them into bridges. #buildbridgesnotwalls

What does market share matter when you've captured the part of the market where all the significant margins are?

A company that trades like a railroad company shouldn't be gloating about how little of the market share they want. there is no room for apple to expand with their rich people first strategy. Eventually you run out of new rich people to sell your products to.

Apples investors do not expect them to grow much more unlike Google or Facebook which both act as monopolies in both the smartphone and online markets. I'm sure apple knows what it wants but it sure doesn't show any abition to take over the world with their products.

Post reply on HN