Live data from Hacker News

Untitled topic

news.ycombinator.com

1–10 of 136 posts

Re: undefined

#2
For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.

Re: undefined

#3

For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.

[deleted]

Re: undefined

#4

For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.

You are either 14 or were born retarded.

Re: undefined

#5

For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.

The future will be like the past, because in the past, the future was like the past.

Re: undefined

#7
The anal-retentiveness required to honestly differentiate between navigating an iphone and an android is ridiculous. They both have grids of 4 icons wide. Android scrolls vertically, iphone scrolls horizontally. You touch the icon to launch app. The idea that there is room between android and iOS for a 2nd favorite mobile OS, based upon navigation of app screens is laughable. Either its better than both of them, or its worse than both of them.

Re: undefined

#10

For years MS genes to arrive late and win worked: Windows after Apple, Word after Word-perfect, Excel after Lotus/Borland, networks after Novel, Xbox after Nintendo. They didn't succeed to change this mode, although it doesn't work anymore (search, Zune, mobile). Future is for leaders or way-fast movers.

Microsoft won for one simple reason -- the licensing deal for DOS. (Not that it wasn't smart and ruthless and good at executing.) IBM made DOS the dominant desktop OS, and the licensing deal allowed Microsoft to enable clone makers to displace IBM (without displacing DOS).

Microsoft's legendary persistence -- fast following rival products and iterating them until they didn't suck and eventually drove competitors out of business -- would have been fruitless without the dominant position IBM simply handed to Microsoft with the original DOS deal.

And none of this stuff has taken place since Bill Gates left. Microsoft's record for the last ten years has been of failed initiatives (Zune, WinCE) and barely-successful subsidized persistence (MSN, XBox).

There's one significant case where Microsoft managed to do well without directly benefiting from the original DOS deal and that's XBox. (This indirectly benefited from the DOS deal in that it leveraged Microsoft's dominance of gaming, and subsidized by profits from that dominance, but compared to everything else it qualifies as an independent success.) Of course, XBox has hardly made Microsoft any money.

Post reply on HN