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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

economist.com

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Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#241

Post by toast0 »

mumblemumble wrote: post #194
ProAm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it. I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hard…

As a consumer, I loved the phone. As a developer, I was afraid to touch it. Dumping the old Windows Mobile platform for Windows Phone was understandable, but the compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was really off-putting. Though I think the biggest problem there is that it didn't happen in a vacuum. It was one more event in a fairly long list of Microsoft technologies and APIs that were sh…

If you bailed out after WP8, you missed the really tragic one. Windows Mobile 10 changed everything again (and had the gall to call the new one 'Universal' apps), and they missed their target of all the wp8 phones being upgradable to wm10, and for those that were upgradable, the OS was awful for the first year, and Edge was a worse experience than Mobile IE (which says a lot).

Oh, and they decided to only target the high end of the market, instead of a full range, so they lost the low end market that was selling a lot of phones in poorer nations.

/rant of a dedicated windows phone enthusiast.

At least firefox lets me put the urlbar at the bottom now! And Android picked up dark mode from WP as well.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#242

Post by Wistar »

ToFab123 wrote: post #26
tiffanyh wrote: post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

If there is someone at Microsoft who didn't got enough credit it was Ray Ozzie. Remember him when he was Chief Software Architect? He started Azure / Microsoft transition to the cloud. He created that shift in focus that Microsoft now rides on. Had he not gotten that brief period as BillG's replacement, Microsoft would have continued to live in the past where windows and on-premise office suite was king. Ray Ozzie ch…

CraigMu was a big pusher behind cloud, too.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#243

Post by vp8989 »

raunakdag wrote: post #218
hevelvarik wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If when people say big tech they exclude msft (and include Facebook), they are simply wrong. .net, sqlserver, power bi, hell office are the blood flowing through Government and industry. Gaming is also tech and azure will get there if they just keep at it. The startup world is only a slice of the pie, and not the largest or most important . If you don’t live on the coasts, and you want to invest in a stack that will…

No matter what technologies MSFT have, the number one thought in people’s minds these days when you say big tech is simply FB G Amazon and Apple. It’s no longer MSFT up there with them. Definitely a stigma thing.

FB is big ad. To say that MSFT is not big tech is absurd.

They have a widely used desktop operating system, a top-3 public cloud, they make their own laptops and other hardware, they make multiple widely used programming languages, they have one of the most widely used databases, they have a well regarded research division ... the list goes on

The scope of tech that MSFT works on is as big as anyone, and is what they primarily make their money from ... so why wouldn't anyone think it's "big tech"?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#244

Post by chronofar »

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #153
typon wrote: post #89

With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space - a feat that I would not have predicted them doing 10 years ago. How did Google/Facebook get beaten here?

Well I'd point out that Facebook gave us react, basically altering the default programming paradigm for webdev, and Google, well Google plays God and judges all Webdevs via SEO. Plus regardless of what folks think of Flutter, Google has done some incredible work there. There's some very interesting things happening with it related to WebDev that are slowly but surely coming. Real cross platform native desktop support…

I really hope Flutter for web does come together and doesn't get abandoned or become nerfed or neglected via Google's ever shifting product teams, I like it so much better than any javascript framework out there.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#245

Post by carls »

__tg__ wrote: post #234
blueblisters wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an undergrad degree from Manipal, a private university whose reputation pales in comparison to the publicly funded Indian Institutes of Technology that a lot of Indian CEOs seem to be an alumnus of.

Being an IIT grad mainly proves how well you could prepare for its brutal entrance exam ( A less known aspect of IITs in the past is their gaming of the GRE/US grad school application process, ranging from straight out cheating in the GRE (in the paper-pencil version, IIT students were given a single block of time for all sections rather than having time-limits for the sections, a blatant cheat made possible by their…

Can you share some sources on these claims?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#246

Post by Wistar »

codeulike wrote: post #40
cblconfederate wrote: post #33

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…

omg its so annoying when you click on an image and the photo viewer hangs forever. I've installed 'One Photo Viewer' instead, nice and simple and works instantly https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PM6W4F0XW3H

Photo viewer worked perfectly for a year and then started hanging on about every third photo. None of the "fixes" worked so I just lived with it. About a week ago, it started to work perfectly again and I have no idea why.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#247

Post by mumblemumble »

ProAm wrote: post #237
mumblemumble wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, I loved the phone. As a developer, I was afraid to touch it. Dumping the old Windows Mobile platform for Windows Phone was understandable, but the compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was really off-putting. Though I think the biggest problem there is that it didn't happen in a vacuum. It was one more event in a fairly long list of Microsoft technologies and APIs that were sh…

I think part of that was the size of the paradigm shift MS tried to accomplish. It was a huge gamble and its important to take chances like that, but to change all three platforms so drastically made it hard for developers (table, PC and phone). And then I dont believe MS either A) invested enough or B) gave it enough time so when they pulled support developers definitely felt it. They were also a couple years late,…

Indeed. I'm actually in the middle of dealing with blowback from some Google product yanking right now.

The big difference is, Google pulls stunts like that small things that aren't critical to the company's business. Microsoft, on the other hand, was blithely jackhammering away at the foundation of their business.

They did fine, insofar as they're still profitable and well-capitalized, but one has to wonder what things could have been like for them if they hadn't spent the aughties playing Dr Strangelove's Hand with themselves.

OTOH, one could argue that spending a decade eating humble pie was a necessary step in teaching them how to play nice with others.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#248

Post by jdminhbg »

ogre_codes wrote: post #222
nailer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google hasn't had a major new product for a decade. Prior to 2010: Search, Doubleclick, Maps, Mail, GSuite, AppEngine (which was first serverless platform). All of which were category makers or category killers. Since 2010:

You are over-generous. Android - Acquisition Doubleclick - Acquisition GSuite - Acquisition AppEngine?? - Is that still around? Google is indeed rudderless, but it's been mostly just milking their search cash cow for a long time.

Android was an acquisition but I believe it was completely rebuilt at Google. Pre-iPhone, it was a Blackberryish UI.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#249

Post by goalieca »

Silhouette wrote: post #46

It's tough to argue with success. They obviously wanted someone who was going to go all-in on the cloud angle when they picked Nadella, and to give credit where it's due, the stock price chart for Microsoft says everything you need to say about the results he's delivered. What's worrying in a broader sense is that our societies have come to depend heavily on Microsoft's previous flagship offering, Windows. As the art…

Does the world still need windows? I very much doubt that.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#250

Post by anirudhgarg »

raunakdag wrote: post #218
hevelvarik wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If when people say big tech they exclude msft (and include Facebook), they are simply wrong. .net, sqlserver, power bi, hell office are the blood flowing through Government and industry. Gaming is also tech and azure will get there if they just keep at it. The startup world is only a slice of the pie, and not the largest or most important . If you don’t live on the coasts, and you want to invest in a stack that will…

No matter what technologies MSFT have, the number one thought in people’s minds these days when you say big tech is simply FB G Amazon and Apple. It’s no longer MSFT up there with them. Definitely a stigma thing.

And simply from market cap - no. 2 in the world just behind Apple. 1.62 T
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