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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

economist.com

141–150 of 487 posts

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, this seems like it falls in the category of "a company's goal is to make money". Corporate clients just have no right to complain that Microsoft's sales model isn't structured in the way they'd prefer. It's different for personal usage, of course, but all of their personal usage software I'm aware of still has an offline option.

> Corporate clients just have no right to complain that Microsoft's sales model isn't structured in the way they'd prefer. How do you figure? If I'm a business and I want things a certain way, and you won't provide that way to me, then I have every right to complain. Complaining is how I tell you I'm not satisfied and therefore might not buy or continue with your product.

You're right. I gave the original comment a very uncharitable reading that on reflection I don't think it deserved.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#142
post #84

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

I noticed a horrendous slowdown of the default image viewer. Double-clicking on a small JPEG file (less then 1MB) can take up to 20s to finally view. Got so bad, that I now have MS Paint as default image viewer. I kinda like the image viewer's ability to view other pictures in the same directory, but the performance and waiting time to view anything was just way too terrible.

I can recommend ImageGlass.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluet…

I was invited to interview for a position working on the Skype backend. I have no idea if it is a good idea.. since I personally can't take Skype seriously or believe that it is something good to work on. Is that something people at huge companies have to think about often? Good money vs working on a product you believe in.

I'm in a corporation currently "upgrading" from Skype to Teams.

Let me put it this way: Since chatting with Teams, I no longer think quite as badly of Skype.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#144
post #118

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

Windows 10 search function is completely broken, it won't even find a program that's in start menu, not sure if it's because I disabled all the online functionality of search. If I want to find something online instead of my computer I use a browser. Thankfully there are great alternatives for the atrocity, such as Everything, it's mind-blowing how a third party program is orders of magnitude faster than native syste…

One of the reasons I won't switch from macOS to Windows 10 for work is how bad search is and the lack of a proper launcher like Alfred.

It's absurd that Apple came up with Spotlight in 10.4 (15 years ago) and Microsoft still hasn't caught up with such a fundamental game changer.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With office 365, you basically pay for a Dropbox subscription and get all of their office software on multiple computers. Seems like good value

Most of us already bought office before in a perpetual license. I’m not sure but I assume companies also had perpetual licenses of Office, so for them to fork over a consistent stream to Microsoft for O365 just to ensure they have the latest version with all the updates is quite expensive over the long run. But most people think in terms of the sticker cost of 1 year and Office 365 and other subscription apps look ch…

The idea that “most” people aren’t subscribing to Office365 doesn’t jibe with MS’s financial reporting.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#146

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluet…

Use irfannview. Lightning fast.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#147
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Ballmer was a guy who restlessly milked two Microsoft cash cows (Windows and Office) to accommodate investors quarter after quarter. He didn't have a vision or courage to push Microsoft in some other direction, and my impression was that all good things that started under his regime (Azure, more openness) was either reactionary or he simply didn't care (most of early open source push was from his lieutenants).…

Cook hasn't damaged Apple nearly as much as Ballmer hurt MS. During Ballmer's tenure, Microsoft launched the Zune, the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone, Windows 8, and the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360). Cook may not be innovative, but he has yet to have a real failure, much less a disaster on the scale of those.

As someone who bought the Windows Phone it was glorious. When Windows Mobile 10 arrived it was fantastic.

Such a shame they sold it off and yes I know the reasons but it was the best phone I've had in the modern century.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#148

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

Does anybody know how to fix the problem of the taskbar's icons getting stuck to "orange" (notification)? This is for me a problem especially with Skype as I never know if somebody posted a new message into the chat or not (but it happens as well with other programs).

Better explanation of problem is for example here (none of the proposed workarounds work for me): https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/4qlgqp/taskbar_i...

I didn't have this problem in Win7.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(thought better of this comment)

My experience of Azure 100% is that their managers have a strong lack of will to hire people of European descent. Full stop.

I work for Microsoft in the Azure space. I can categorically say that is nonsense. Full stop.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#150
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to contrast Satya with Sundar Pichai, whose company seems rudderless by comparison.

The things is I never read about any major decisions Sundar Pichai has made. There's tons online about Tim Cook, Satya, Netflix's various SLs, Daniel Ek, Elon Musk (admittedly more about his tweets than business strat these days) etc. But I never read about Sunder Pichai's strategies or decisions. What is he actually doing?

Now that I think about it, I'm really curious as well. I didn't work in Cloud, but my perception is TK is really reshaping GCP as well as the Gsuite to whatever it is now.

Sundar's role seems to really be give his lieutenants free reign which I guess makes sense seeing as how he now oversees all of Alphabet.

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