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Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

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Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#11

Post by gfodor »

potatolicious wrote: post #7
taligent wrote: post #4

It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate. It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

Not sure why you were downvoted. Upvoted even though I don't particularly agree. Having lived in Seattle for a couple of years, and knowing many Microsoft employees during that time, my outsider's view is that MS's consumer-side failures are largely geographical and cultural. Redmond, or even Bellevue, is extremely isolated from Seattle, which in and of itself is not exactly deeply intertwined with the cultural cente…

Your observation in many ways can be extended to the Microsoft ecosystem as a whole. Microsoft as a company has always had this weird thing where the materials they release (marketing, documentation) are written in an alternative universe where no non-Microsoft technology exists. I haven't been part of the MS ecosystem for a number of years but I do get the sense this has been changing. But in many ways I don't think it's a deliberate framing, it's likely just as much due to the reality that inside of the Redmond/Bellevue bubble, things like Ruby on Rails, the iPhone, and non-IE browsers are weird, untrusted 3rd party technologies that nobody uses (partly because they think Microsoft products by definition are better, partly because they fear if word gets out they are toying with these things there will be negative consequences.) I remember when C# was originally released the degree to which Microsoft managed to pretend like Java did not exist was just plain bizarre.

I guess one way to look at it is Microsoft is a good counterweight to the argument you should eat your own dogfood. You should, but you should not do so exclusively.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#12

Post by martinced »

jug6ernaut wrote: post #2

No one involved in the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone should be satisfied, it was a complete failure. At the time Windows Mobile pretty much owned the Smart Phone market(unless you consider BB at the time smart phones, they were close to but not just IMO. No where near the freedom as WM). But over Windows Mobiles life time it completely stagnated, but even with that had a large following. With there…

I was working in the mobile business before the iPhone came and owned everybody (waiting then for Android) and I recall things totally differently than you.

The smartphone market was owned by Nokia and their Sxx series. That and the BlackBerries.

We were working on mostly Nokia (either native or Java), Qualcomm BREW (C++) and, granted, we had some demand for Windows Mobile but they were pretty much a nobody in that pre-iPhone world. Just as they're still nobody.

There was hardly any customer demand for Windows Mobile compared to Nokia and the others.

There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered with their phones.

It has always been an utter failure.

Now of course you may your definition of a "pre-iPhone Smartphone" which appears to be: "Certainly not a BlackBerry and certainly not anything that wasn't running Windows Mobile". So then it becomes hard to argue ; )

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#14

Post by Datsundere »

Microsoft had been going downhill since steve ballmer took the Gate's position. They're loosing their empire that Bill built.

But I have to give it to Bill, he knows how to control and take over. Letting others pirate your software just to let your empire grow is astounishing to me.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#15

Post by jug6ernaut »

martinced wrote: post #12
jug6ernaut wrote: post #2

No one involved in the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone should be satisfied, it was a complete failure. At the time Windows Mobile pretty much owned the Smart Phone market(unless you consider BB at the time smart phones, they were close to but not just IMO. No where near the freedom as WM). But over Windows Mobiles life time it completely stagnated, but even with that had a large following. With there…

I was working in the mobile business before the iPhone came and owned everybody (waiting then for Android) and I recall things totally differently than you. The smartphone market was owned by Nokia and their Sxx series. That and the BlackBerries. We were working on mostly Nokia (either native or Java), Qualcomm BREW (C++) and, granted, we had some demand for Windows Mobile but they were pretty much a nobody in that p…

I cant really argue with to much of what you say, but in my defense as i said in my original post i dont really consider BB to be smartphones, i would also extend this to Symbian. Though this is entirely my opinion, most of which i would probably say is as much my bias to WM as anything :).

But at the same time if you look at the statistics here on market percentage [1], you see my main point to that windows has lost nearly all of its previous market share.

[1]

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#16

Post by DenisM »

potatolicious wrote: post #7
taligent wrote: post #4

It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate. It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

Not sure why you were downvoted. Upvoted even though I don't particularly agree. Having lived in Seattle for a couple of years, and knowing many Microsoft employees during that time, my outsider's view is that MS's consumer-side failures are largely geographical and cultural. Redmond, or even Bellevue, is extremely isolated from Seattle, which in and of itself is not exactly deeply intertwined with the cultural cente…

Having worked there for 11 years I also got the impression that company management is inadvertently trying to stay culturally isolated.

For example, when the iPhone came out, the management called AT&T and asked them to exclude the iPhone from the previously negotiated Microsoft Employee Discount program. MS phone is Ok, Blackberry is Ok, iPhone not Ok. The effect was, obviously, even less awareness of the best products out there, especially among the most loyal, and thus most influencing managers. One high-ranked manager told me he can't use an iPhone because he couldn't give money to the company trying to kill MS. Assuming the unlikely that Apple indeed was out to kill MS (rather than the more plausible - to make a good product and a few bucks), that would be a very good reason to get half a dozen iPhones, so that you know well what's going to hit you over the head real soon.

Culture is the least identifiable, least amendable, and yet most influential component of any organization...

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#17

Post by MatthewPhillips »

taligent wrote: post #4

It seems pretty clear that Microsoft's problem isn't with their ability to innovate. It's in their complete inability to get to market quickly, take risks and work together. And that is directly related to their HR policies in particular their ranking system.

I partially agree. I think it's a combination of 2 things (the second being more or less the same as what you are saying):

1) Their brand reputation became toxic over time. Windows ME was seen as a bad product. XP prior to service pack 1 was seen as a bad product. Normal people knew what the blue screen of death with. Normal people made jokes about the quality of Windows. Correct or not, their market dominance (seen as insurmountable) contributed to it. By the early 2000s, no one liked Microsoft.

Windows Mobile was just as good as the competition (pre-iPhone). It might not have been dramatically better, but it was just as good. In the 90s that would have been enough for them to swallow up the market completed, but it didn't happen here. People were slow to adopt smartphones in this time period.

2) They are just an old company. As you said, they are slow to get to market. It's the ship you can't turn around. Google is a lot like Microsoft in their ability to form partnerships, but unlike Microsoft is very nimble and able to adapt to the market, has the courage to try something completely new (Chrome OS was laughed at just a few years ago), and has the right amount of cockiness to make it happen (usually).

There can only be one Google/Microsoft in technology. If you accept that, how can Microsoft possibly win?

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#18

Post by macspoofing »

martinced wrote: post #12
jug6ernaut wrote: post #2

No one involved in the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone should be satisfied, it was a complete failure. At the time Windows Mobile pretty much owned the Smart Phone market(unless you consider BB at the time smart phones, they were close to but not just IMO. No where near the freedom as WM). But over Windows Mobiles life time it completely stagnated, but even with that had a large following. With there…

I was working in the mobile business before the iPhone came and owned everybody (waiting then for Android) and I recall things totally differently than you. The smartphone market was owned by Nokia and their Sxx series. That and the BlackBerries. We were working on mostly Nokia (either native or Java), Qualcomm BREW (C++) and, granted, we had some demand for Windows Mobile but they were pretty much a nobody in that p…

>There has been no "transition" because MS never was anywhere that mattered with their phones ...

That's not really true because there was the PDA market, which was dominated by Palm and Microsoft. So you had RIM and Nokia in one corner, and Palm and Microsoft in the other. Any one of them could have created the iPhone but none of them really got it, and they are where they are.

Re: Bill Gates 'not satisfied' with Microsoft's innovations

#19

Post by DenisM »

jug6ernaut wrote: post #2

No one involved in the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone should be satisfied, it was a complete failure. At the time Windows Mobile pretty much owned the Smart Phone market(unless you consider BB at the time smart phones, they were close to but not just IMO. No where near the freedom as WM). But over Windows Mobiles life time it completely stagnated, but even with that had a large following. With there…

You're mixing the time frames.

When Widows Mobile Smartphone came out in 2003, it was the most advanced, most open, most app-friendly phone OS. However, there were not substantial improvements for the next 5 years - the product was in fact stillborn. The Windows Phone team was then brought in to bury the corpse, and start afresh, which is what they did. It wasn't their fault that the predecessor has died several years earlier.

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