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Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

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Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really seeing software, more services including Azure and online versions of apps and even Windows as a subscription. I'm sure there's lots of consulting in there too.

Microsoft doesn't do consulting but has an enormous partner ecosystem.

They do. Usually to very large corporate customers.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every slide deck ever that a director or VP has used to justify their budget for all that great Excel work. Every pitch deck to win a deal. Every teacher or professor that gives a presentation with PowerPoint. I hate endless slides, but fact is millions of people build and present them every day. How exactly is all of that not real work?

Well point one I think it's a shit way to disseminate information. Point two and more seriously, the alternatives aren't much worse in PowerPoint's case.

I don't disagree with you at all. But that is real work that millions of people get paid to spend millions of man-hours on. Specifically with PowerPoint. That's all I'm saying.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#153

"When Satya Nadella took Microsoft Corp.’s helm five years ago, the conventional wisdom was that the company’s glory days were behind it." Have a look at this MS revenues [1] and consider why for a moment there is any 'conventional wisdom' like this? MSFT stock price did languish during this time of amazing growth which I guess validates that 'conventional wisdom' was in fact sour, but it's hard to see why it was. Ro…

> For whatever reason, the industry press never liked Ballmer, and I guess they like Satya. Bad business acquisitions and management decisions notwithstanding... Developers, developers, developers. Chair throwing. Bad dancing. Many other crazy antics. Being an archetypal business man and probably the defining image of MSFT in the 2000s - you literally couldn’t make it less cool. Lots for industry media to troll.

Yeah, it basically boils down to the above. He was just the quintessential suit. Regardless, I think his antics were/are hilarious.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, those help. But it was ultimately recognizing which pie was shrinking and which pie is growing - and is still growing. MS is a software company. Now that they've remembered that, it's producing results.

Microsoft takes earnest shots at hardware, it might not always work out but I appreciate the effort. Long live the Zune!

I love my microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#155
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For whatever reason, the industry press never liked Ballmer, and I guess they like Satya Ballmer made several missteps: 1. Fruitless foray into mobile with acquisition of Nokia and Windows Mobile and Windows Phone strategies. 2. Billion+ dollar acquisition of Skype that basically went no where. 3. Remember a company called aQuantive? Don't worry, neither does anyone else. Ballmer's MS purchased them for $6 billion.…

Regarding Skype, it's acquisition has been argued to have been more in order to allow for NSA interception of VoIP traffic than it making business sense, though the truth behind that statement is highly debatable.

Could you elaborate on this? Why would Microsoft want to lose money for the NSA to benefit?

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#156

Steve Ballmer, technical bits aside. Just couldn't play as a successful CEO in PR Role. He was too aggressive, abrasive and even somewhat rude. Aside from that, one of thing most amusing things and one Ballmer excellent business moves was suing nearly every Android Smartphone Company for patent infringement. Microsoft literally makes money off of Android Smartphones but what's confusing to me is how Apple takes all o…

IIRC the android revenue is rolled into the x-box revenue under some nebulous category when they break out revenue in their earning (forget the exact title). This hides the massive losses they are taking on x-box and all things x-box related. The android revenue is almost pure profit and nearly $2B annually. (they make this money by licencing patents to phone makers that use android such as HTC and Samsung)

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#157

A big resurgence: They make an operating system that supports Linux with just a few clicks. They make hardware devices that can also natively run Linux very well, for when I need it. It feels like Apple when OSX was introduced, only better. Many people here may not like Windows 10, but the more I use it, the more I like it.

I am writing this from my personal Windows 10 machine and I am not a big fan.

Random things that have aggravated me just in the last few days:

  * For some reason I suddenly had to create a pin a few days ago to login instead of my password. why?

  * skype is now magically in my list of background programs. 

  * There is news in the start menu when I want to launch an app!?

  * whenever I want to do something a little hard, like copy a large number of files, things tend to go pear shape very fast.

  * It's very hard to find basic settings from the start button search thingy.  Chrome OS and OS X are way better at that. 

  * windows shell still is unpleasant, and the goobuntu subsystem just isn't convenient due to the incompatibility of windows file paths. Also it's very ugly for some reason

  * More generally dealing with Windows drives drives really sucks. I'm always shuttling things around trying to fit them into particular drives. Linux LVM is so much better.
I could go on. I wish they'd just go back to being an operating system. Now that they're not considered a monopoly anymore they're taking the opportunity to jam their whole 1st party ecosystem of crap down Windows 10 users throats. It's not fun for me.

The only reason I pay for Windows is to play games. I prefer Linux as a user, but the hardware and display issues are a pain. I also agree that Windows feels snappier and prettier. Chrome OS with Crostini would actually be pretty perfect if it didn't crash on me every couple of hours.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft takes earnest shots at hardware, it might not always work out but I appreciate the effort. Long live the Zune!

I love my microsoft natural ergonomic keyboard 4000

The Phone OS is still my favourite UI and was incredibly unique when first introduced. Live tiles in an era of pages of icons was way ahead of it's time. The phone hardware was/is great too; the lack of apps destroyed them though

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't Office365 be counted in cloud revenue? "Cloud Revenue" doesn't exclusive mean IaaS or PaaS.

Because SaaS isn't cloud computing. SaaS is essentially a fully available software application that you don't run on your own machines. There's similarities, but key differences that you can easily look up to better understand. Hence part of why most aren't huge fans of including O365 to claim Azure's bigger than AWS.

Do you think Amazon subtracts their own massive utilization of AWS out from their numbers? Not likely.

Re: Microsoft’s Resurgence Under Satya Nadella

#160
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the one you're asking. But to me, the (most recent) way they ruined Windows was the new interface. I don't want to interact with my desktop via a phone/tablet interface. I don't want to use a touchscreen. I want to use only the keyboard and mouse. More: I don't want to use my computer as a media consumption device. So for me , all the new UI changes are counterproductive. But that's me. Others have different…

So, it seems like you are describing the car crash that was Windows 8? Seriously, if you haven't tried Windows 10 since it first came out, try it - I held out on Windows 7 for years, but I'm really glad I switched.

I can’t thing of anything useful that MS added since Windows XP.

Going from 16 bit cooperative to 32 bit preemptive in the 3.x to 9x change, useful.

Going to multiple accounts with permissions in the 9x to XP change, useful.

Rearranging the UI time and again since Vista, and sucking up CPUs with scannning processes, so what?

Note that I really only used Windows at work, anyway (instead of Linux, or more recently OSX), and I managed to avoid the post-7 cluster-bomb entirely at my current job.

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