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Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

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Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#331

Post by scarface74 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #328
scarface74 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft not only saw mobile coming, Windows Mobile (CE/Pocket PC) was out years before Android and iOS and was decently popular as a smart phone OS. HTC made dozens of models under its own brand and for other manufacturers. But if techies pull their nose up for your platform, you have a long term problem because techies are the people that produce the things that make your platform long term viable. Techies don’t m…

MS saw it coming, enjoyed some brief success with OEMs like htc around 2004, and then Android and IOS steamrolled over it by the 2008-2010 time frame. Sitting ducks basically. I worked at Nokia back in the day. Nokia knew this as well (I read the internal mailing lists, this was debated and speculated on heavily) and they did not act in time either. 2005 was in retrospect the key moment to act. Neither Nokia nor MS m…

2005 is also the same year that AJAX browser apps started displacing desktop UIs at a no doubt alarming rate for MS.

Microsoft created AJAX - it was originally and ActiveX extension that only worked in IE.

Even today, GSuite is not that popular among big corps.

By the time MS was trying to push windows phone, their windows only development stack was a huge part of their problem. They needed developers to write apps for windows phone; especially developers already successful on IOS and Android. Only problem: all the IOS developers were on Macs (because Apple). And many of the Android developers were too (because they were pretty awesome). A windows laptop was a really hard sell to developers at the time because, well, they kind of sucked. Google was actively trying to compete with MS and still best friends with Apple so, the two of them created a developer friendly ecosystem outside of the MS bubble.

Developers go where the money is. It’s not the tiny Indy developers that are making most of the money on mobile. Windows Phone didn’t fail to get apps because developers didn’t want to program on Windows. They didn’t see any money in it. Heck even MS Office was available for iOS before Windows.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#332

Post by maxxxxx »

sooper wrote: post #305
maxxxxx wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser" for the Germans here :-)

I think this is a better aphorism than "trust, but verify". I work in the information security assurance field, I swear that 90% of the issues I see at companies with external service providers comes back to the fact that their contract does not have anywhere enough ability to hold the service provider to task... Get everything you need in the contract / agreement, then hope you never have to use it.

From my experience it’s close to impossible to have a 100% bullet proof contract. If you try that you end up with the typical government contracting style where you spend a lot of time with specs and requirements upfront but it falls apart as soon as it touches reality.

In the end you need to pick suppliers you can work with productively no matter what the correct details are.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#333

Post by Silhouette »

ionised wrote: post #321
TheIronYuppie wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's on by default, but literally the first thing we ask you, actively, is about giving us feedback and let you turn it off right then. It's not remotely hidden. I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! Disclosure: I work at Azure on machine learning

> I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! I don't believe you have, sorry (Microsoft I mean, not you specifically). I get the impression Microsoft is the same company it always was, only now it's better at convincing the gullible that it is on their side. That Windows 10 update prompt for previous Windows versions we…

I'm a little late to this party, but I couldn't agree more (except that I'm in the fortunate position of making decisions about my businesses, so we can decide not to use Windows 10 at all for much the same reasons).

We also don't use VS Code at all, for one simple reason: we tried to determine what the privacy policy actually was, and we couldn't. In particular, there appeared to be wording among the various indirectly linked documents that implied Microsoft might at some point upload our source code without our knowledge or consent, with no guarantees and nothing to indicate how it would or might then be used.

Combine that with an organisation that has a recent deliberate strategy of pushing updates whether wanted or not, collecting data whether volunteered or not, and attempting to coerce or deceive users into accepting those things whether it's in their interest to do so or not, and unfortunately while certain people who work for Microsoft and comment here may have no ill intent, it simply isn't safe to trust the company as a whole with the same benefit of the doubt.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#334

Post by bnt »

maxxxxx wrote: post #95
tabtab wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is because MS wants to move away from being an OS provider to being a service provider. If a service runs on Linux they won't care as long as its generating revenue for them. Whether this is Nadella's push or obvious from MS's accountants is hard to say.

They may turn into an IBM variation long term. Profitable, stable business. Not glamorous, but good money.

Don’t all companies become IBM at some point?

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#335

Post by maxxxxx »

bnt wrote: post #334
maxxxxx wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may turn into an IBM variation long term. Profitable, stable business. Not glamorous, but good money.

Don’t all companies become IBM at some point?

Probably.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#336

Post by yellowapple »

Nextgrid wrote: post #320
yellowapple wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually everyone who owns a cell phone that's not an iPhone. Android apps tend to be ad-supported, though, so not sure if that really helps the point. There's also the TVs, set top boxes, refrigerators, and cars (among many other consumer-facing devices) that run Linux (which completely displaced Windows CE).

We’re talking about using a Linux operating system to replace Windows. I don’t think bringing up where the Linux kernel is used alone is relevant.

Linux is the kernel, though (and debatably also the application API/ABI). That's all it is. At the risk of sounding like some Richard Stallman wannabe, your complaints should be directed at GNU (or perhaps GNOME or KDE).

Trying to argue "well those don't count because they're not real Linux" is 1) blatantly false and 2) a textbook case of a No True Scotsman fallacy. Linux is Linux, regardless of which userland happens to be running on it.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#337

Post by TheIronYuppie »

pm90 wrote: post #295
TheIronYuppie wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's on by default, but literally the first thing we ask you, actively, is about giving us feedback and let you turn it off right then. It's not remotely hidden. I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! Disclosure: I work at Azure on machine learning

@ThIronYuppie Let me say first of all that I really appreciate your sincerity and belief in the Goodness of the company that you work for. The issue is not insincerity, but: * a lack of trust in corporations in today's economic and political climate and * the skyrocketing growth of the online advertising business, which has made user data quite literally the gold mines of the digital age The incentives today are very…

I totally get it. We're a big company, and you're right to question EVERYTHING. All I can say is we'll try and earn your trust every day and laws like GDPR make sure that we're on the hook to do so. Put another way - we CANNOT change this without EXPLICITLY notifying you.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#338

Post by TheIronYuppie »

ionised wrote: post #322
pm90 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@ThIronYuppie Let me say first of all that I really appreciate your sincerity and belief in the Goodness of the company that you work for. The issue is not insincerity, but: * a lack of trust in corporations in today's economic and political climate and * the skyrocketing growth of the online advertising business, which has made user data quite literally the gold mines of the digital age The incentives today are very…

You say the issue is not insincerity but I beg to differ. Microsoft has never been particularly sincere about the reasons it does the things it does. It has been a deceitful bully of a company for a long time. Indeed, one of the main reasons why there is so little trust in corporations is because they are so insincere, anti-consumer and lacking in any kind of social conscience.

I get it - I do. I'm a recent returnee to MSFT, after many years working not at MSFT, and I remember what it was like.

We can't rewind and fix the past, but we absolutely can be better working forward, and we will.

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#339

Post by TheIronYuppie »

yellowapple wrote: post #306
TheIronYuppie wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's on by default, but literally the first thing we ask you, actively, is about giving us feedback and let you turn it off right then. It's not remotely hidden. I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! Disclosure: I work at Azure on machine learning

> We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! Not sure about the Azure team (since my experience with Azure is limited to a one-off project that required a SQL Server instance to test compatibility with some client's legacy DB, plus some very recent dabbling in VS Code and Azure Data Studio), but whichever team runs Windows nowadays, for example, hasn't exactly…

I should have said - "be good actors in relation to how we handle your data."

According to the Windows GDPR statement (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/gdpr-it-gui...), we only collect Windows functional data and Windows diagnostic data, and only if you allow us.

If we did more than that, we'd be liable for huge fines/jail! We have never "siphoned your data for multiple decades" - we only collect WHEN and ONLY WHEN you let us.

The way that our intentions haven't changes is because we are legally required to tell you if they do!

Re: Microsoft, currently the most valuable company, is having a Nadellaissance

#340

Post by TheIronYuppie »

Silhouette wrote: post #333
ionised wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I totally understand, though about trust. We've been asking users for feedback for 20+ years, I hope we've shown ourselves to be good actors! I don't believe you have, sorry (Microsoft I mean, not you specifically). I get the impression Microsoft is the same company it always was, only now it's better at convincing the gullible that it is on their side. That Windows 10 update prompt for previous Windows versions we…

I'm a little late to this party, but I couldn't agree more (except that I'm in the fortunate position of making decisions about my businesses, so we can decide not to use Windows 10 at all for much the same reasons). We also don't use VS Code at all, for one simple reason: we tried to determine what the privacy policy actually was, and we couldn't. In particular, there appeared to be wording among the various indirec…

Good news! The privacy policy is specifically listed in our FAQ on our website - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ

We _only_ collect telemetry data. NEVER user data. And you can opt out! (it's right there during set up - or you can go here - https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/faq#_how-to-di...).

Again, to reiterate, we would never collect data if you didn't consent. It's the law!

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