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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

economist.com

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Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#471

Post by mekster »

scudd wrote: post #252
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?

I think WSL should also be listed among awesome new developer amenities from Microsoft. I know a lot of people view it as a capitulation considering its Microsoft, but WSL is such a great tool. I purchased a Macbook about 2 years ago out of curiosity, as it seems a lot of developers prefer them. I'll admit the screen is beautiful, but so much of the developer niceties are simply the Mac taking advantage of POSIX inte…

And what is wrong with running a native Linux through VMware player etc?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#472

Post by mekster »

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?

TypeScript is miles ahead of others I'm surprised. Swift can't even tell it's no longer a "nil" after "if some_var != nil" and felt like I'm helping the language instead of the other way and PHP's typing is still very young and Ruby seems to be introducing some weird declaration file instead of simple inline typing.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#473

Post by ogre_codes »

ksec wrote: post #450
sys_64738 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple lost its way when they shoved Scott Forstall out the door for refusing to take the blame for the Apple Maps debacle. Apple has been gliding on the backs of Steve's vision since then and they're terrified to make any wrong decision. That's why they overlap generations of products as they don't have a clue what will succeed.

> Apple has been gliding on the backs of Steve's vision since then and they're terrified to make any wrong decision. That has been some of my view as well. But some of their approach have changed. The old Apple was about making something great, charge a premium. That is about the same with current Apple. Except its whole Services Strategy reeks of money grabbing. There is nothing about Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple F…

> There is nothing about Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Fitness that fits the definition of great.

I'm not sure how you'd consider Apple Music a money grab but are ok with iTunes music purchases? Basically they were expanding their business to follow the industry trend of streaming music instead of buying it. iTunes has been a revenue stream at Apple since the iPod was born.

Also, Apple selling supplemental services and software that are... not amazing is not new either.

The big one? iTunes. For a few years it was great, but for a long long time it was just a giant mess. iHome, iMovie (Garage Band is pretty rad), iPhoto (Photos is way better), Mobile Me, Ping didn't even last 2 years I don't think. Most of those products were meh at best, they did the basic thing they needed to do and that's about it.

The big difference between Apple then and Apple now is they have the money to contract out for their own content.

> Apple TV+, Apple Fitness that fits the definition of great.

Apple TV+ has a paltry selection because they didn't go out and buy a huge external library of content to bootstrap themselves. The content they have is—Decent and getting better. They know this and there is a reason they aren't really charging for it yet.

Apple Fitness doesn't even exist so not sure how you can criticize it.

Yeah, it's all a "Money Grab", they are growing the business, that's what companies do. Fortunately all of this stuff is optional. You can enjoy your computer/ phone/ tablet without any of it. IMO the only egregious "money grab" is their paltry 5GB free iCloud storage. Considering that's the best and for many only way of backing up their $1000 phone with their life stored on it, that's messed up.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#474

Post by btilly »

ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #456
btilly wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to tell. Ballmer became CEO in 2000. But Bill Gates continued being involved in day to day operations until 2009. Considering that Microsoft got religious about security in the 2000s, and this was a shift in corporate policy, I give credit to Ballmer.

He's talking about the TwC initiative, which came from Gates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustworthy_computing . Even after stepping down as CEO, Gates maintained an informal role at MS as an ideas guy for a number of years.

The usual tendency is to give credit to the person who comes up with the idea, and the blame to the person who implements it.

But ideas are a dime a dozen. I give credit not to coming up with the idea, but to actually putting in the elbow grease. And there is no question that Ballmer put a lot of elbow grease into keeping the initiative going.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#475

Post by necovek »

DataGata wrote: post #74
abhinav22 wrote: post #41

I don’t like Microsoft Windows or any of its newer products Windows 7 was the best version and Office before 365 was good too - now they just really milking everyone with subscription payments

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

If you want a "dropbox subscription".

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#476

Post by necovek »

D-Coder wrote: post #447
varispeed wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple under Tim enjoy short term gains and greed has blinded them. The company will soon start failing because of their anti-consumer and anti-environment culture. They create false image of themselves to be super friendly innovative brand for creative people, but the truth is far from this. Their products are designed to fail and to be only repairable by Apple. If your charging port dies on a new Mac, you cannot rep…

"Apple Doomed!" I have seen that headline every year since 1984. Every single year.

Well, at a point it was pretty doomed before iTunes and iPod (and Jobs) brought it back. Who's to say it won't happen again?

Though with the size and cash reserves, it's more likely they get "doomed" the way Microsoft was in the last 10 years (still is, perhaps).

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#477

Post by cabaalis »

hyperdimension wrote: post #341
cabaalis wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, so today I learned this is a thing. IDDQD. There can be only one.

Also for the lazy, since I had never seen it before: IDDQD is the cheat code for 'God Mode' in Doom. I definitely realize that by writing this comment I am both identifying myself as not a gamer and reverse-dating myself. :)

And there can be only one is warcraft :)

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#478

Post by mrpippy »

crandycodes wrote: post #391
pierrefermat1 wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think WSL will get there eventually but in its current state it's just more tedious to use for permissions/networking/compatability issues. Mostly things you can work around but just a bit more tinkering

(disclosure I work for Microsoft but not on this stuff) Biggest benefit for me has been how simple it has made ssh on Windows. I got a nicer spec'd Surface Laptop 3 during my last hardware refresh and haven't missed Macbook at all.

Maybe this isn’t what you mean, but Microsoft shipping OpenSSH client/server in W10 is totally separate from WSL. (It’s really helpful though!)

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#479

Post by pierrefermat1 »

barrkel wrote: post #442
crandycodes wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(disclosure I work for Microsoft but not on this stuff) Biggest benefit for me has been how simple it has made ssh on Windows. I got a nicer spec'd Surface Laptop 3 during my last hardware refresh and haven't missed Macbook at all.

Confusing. Do you mean as an ssh server? Because there is no functional difference between Cygwin ssh client running in mintty vs WSL (1 or 2, doesn't matter) ssh running in wsltty. I think if I sat you down in front of them and switched them out you wouldn't notice a thing.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh

I think he's referring to the SSH integration inside VS code so you can open up a remote folder as if it was a local one in the IDE

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#480

Post by pierrefermat1 »

mrpippy wrote: post #478
crandycodes wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(disclosure I work for Microsoft but not on this stuff) Biggest benefit for me has been how simple it has made ssh on Windows. I got a nicer spec'd Surface Laptop 3 during my last hardware refresh and haven't missed Macbook at all.

Maybe this isn’t what you mean, but Microsoft shipping OpenSSH client/server in W10 is totally separate from WSL. (It’s really helpful though!)

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/ssh I think he's referring to the SSH integration inside VS code so you can open up a remote folder as if it was a local one in the IDE
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