What is Microsoft smoking? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#101

Post by glogla » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:22 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #93

bromagosa wrote: post #77

I'm going to rant big time, and I expect downvotes, but this is my true opinion, has always been and will always be, so I see no reason to not write it down here. I don't think Microsoft ever cared at all about customers or products. Microsoft has been making money out of patents and white-gloved mobbing for ever, not out of customer happiness. Probably around 90% percent of what they earn in OS licenses comes from p…

Ok, interesting claim. So, how much money has Microsoft been making from patents exactly? Since you've made a very dramatic statement, I'd like to see a specific figure. And then I'd like to see that compared to Office, Windows, Server & Tools, etc. Why would anybody buy hardware with Windows on it, only to install Debian? Build your own systems, that's the really obvious and really simple answer. You're blaming Micr…

Building laptops from scratch. Right.

Requiring people to do the impossible or else they are "entitled" doesn't make for a very good argument.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#102

Post by jiggy2011 » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:22 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #65

jiggy2011 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a large chunk of the really compelling Windows Server applications are about management of Windows desktop.

The really compelling applications are at a business level - ERP, CRM, finance, engineering etc. - and might not come from Microsoft. There is a huge world of specialised business applications out there that are ignored on HN (often for good reasons) that any large enterprise will have hundreds of - a lot of these run on Windows.

True, but third party vendors can shift platforms a lot more easily than an entire enterprise on Windows 7 desktops.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#103

Post by vetinari » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:24 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #65

jiggy2011 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a large chunk of the really compelling Windows Server applications are about management of Windows desktop.

The really compelling applications are at a business level - ERP, CRM, finance, engineering etc. - and might not come from Microsoft. There is a huge world of specialised business applications out there that are ignored on HN (often for good reasons) that any large enterprise will have hundreds of - a lot of these run on Windows.

Yes, there are many business applications, that run o Windows.

However, there are two trends now:

1) Move the application to the web. Many of them are getting HTML frontends, and the backends are OS-independent.

2) Those, that are not getting ported, are being thrown into Citrix XenApp (or into other desktop virtualization environment). It is actually very interesting to see using your business app on device like Asus Transformer. And then you start question yourself - why do you need Windows on client and all the heavy infrastructure in the server room it needs?

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#104

Post by bergie » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:24 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #73

jiggy2011 wrote: post #46

Everyone on reddit seems to be up in arms about used game sales, as in the ability to trade in a box + disk. But really, this will likely be the last generation of consoles to support a physical disk. I imagine that by the end of this "round" of consoles 60%+ of game sales for these consoles will be digital downloads. What do use game sales look like in a digital marketplace? If you allow gamers to freely transfer li…

One of the guy introducing "The Crew" at the E3 told one journalist : "you have an iPad? How does it feel whan you don't have WIFI or 3G for it? It feels empty and dead right? I believe consoles are becoming about online now and in a few years you'll understand what I meant here".

When I still had an iPad, I spent many long flights playing games or watching films with it offline.

But poor comparison in that iPad is a mobile device you're supposed to carry around with you, while the consoles are stationary.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#105

Post by w0utert » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:24 AM UTC

plainhold wrote: post #43

mattchamb wrote: post #18

Im probably going to lose what little karma I have for saying this, but the XBox One's licensing model is more attractive to me than the PS4's model. I'm getting all of my information from here: http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license These are the points I find interesting: - Access your entire games library from any Xbox One ... while you are logged in at your friend’s house, you can play your games. From this, i can…

It may be obvious but to clarify only one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time.

Exactly, the OP is completely glossing over the fact that it is not possible to 'share your game with a friend in another city', because that implies that he a) has to sign in using your XBL account, and b) you can not be playing the same game at the same time. This also holds for the whole 'family' sharing 'feature', which I don't really get anyway. If the XBox One is supposed to be the center of the living room media experience, I don't think many households will buy multiple, and even less so, play them at the same time.

One thing that MS apparently does allow you to do is lend the game disc to a 'friend' (someone who has been on your XBL friend list for more than 30 days) and play the game as long as the disc is in the console, and it can phone home every hour for some kind of DRM check I don't understand...

I don't blame the OP for getting confused by the ToS on the Microsoft site, which obviously have been carefully crafted to make them sound more reasonable. The whole licensing model of the XBox One is one big, crazy and hard-to-follow mess. What I understand from it, is that it doesn't allow you to do anything the PS4 doesn't allow, except going over to someone's house and play a game without having to bring the disc with you (yay, big deal!).

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#106

Post by ecdavis » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:27 AM UTC

mattchamb wrote: post #18

Im probably going to lose what little karma I have for saying this, but the XBox One's licensing model is more attractive to me than the PS4's model. I'm getting all of my information from here: http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license These are the points I find interesting: - Access your entire games library from any Xbox One ... while you are logged in at your friend’s house, you can play your games. From this, i can…

> This means that I can coop with my friends (almost) anywhere in the world even if they havent bought the game! I think this will be a huge feature.

Everything else you've said is correct, but this is not true. Unfortunate, but understandable.

"The only limitation, it seems, is that only one person can be playing the shared copy of a single game at any given time."[1]

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/06/microsoft-defends-the-...

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#107

Post by vetinari » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:27 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #93

bromagosa wrote: post #77

I'm going to rant big time, and I expect downvotes, but this is my true opinion, has always been and will always be, so I see no reason to not write it down here. I don't think Microsoft ever cared at all about customers or products. Microsoft has been making money out of patents and white-gloved mobbing for ever, not out of customer happiness. Probably around 90% percent of what they earn in OS licenses comes from p…

Ok, interesting claim. So, how much money has Microsoft been making from patents exactly? Since you've made a very dramatic statement, I'd like to see a specific figure. And then I'd like to see that compared to Office, Windows, Server & Tools, etc. Why would anybody buy hardware with Windows on it, only to install Debian? Build your own systems, that's the really obvious and really simple answer. You're blaming Micr…

So while we are here, why the entitlement to use Intel CPUs, right? They should go and and make their own silicon ingots and then their own CPUs in their own fab, right?

There is a reason why the world is organized around this 'division of labor' concept. Excluding someone from it and then calling the complains about it an entitlement is not a good way forward.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#108

Post by RyJones » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:28 AM UTC

nigelsampson wrote: post #79

vacri wrote: post #15

Mandatory internet connection while programming Windows Store apps? This one beggars belief. What happened to 'developers developers developers'? At least with the online requirement for gamers, there's a certain interal logic to it (however crazy and wrong) but there seems to be no sense in making it harder for developers to create content for you.

This one is certainly not true as a developer who spends his day job building Windows Store apps. You will need an internet connection to acquire a developer license once every thirty days but that takes about two minutes and that's about it.

This misfeature causes me more heartburn than the others. I have to manually touch all of my build slaves once a month to keep them compiling.

Furthermore, you can't run unit tests without an interactive session, so the build slaves would have to auto-login on boot; we chose instead to not run the unit tests automatically on checkins.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#109

Post by mattchamb » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:29 AM UTC

plainhold wrote: post #43

mattchamb wrote: post #18

Im probably going to lose what little karma I have for saying this, but the XBox One's licensing model is more attractive to me than the PS4's model. I'm getting all of my information from here: http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license These are the points I find interesting: - Access your entire games library from any Xbox One ... while you are logged in at your friend’s house, you can play your games. From this, i can…

It may be obvious but to clarify only one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time.

Good spotting, it looks like I didn't read it thoroughly enough and misinterpreted it as a result. This does take away a bit of the power from this kind of licensing, but even so, playing co-op online with a single friend who hasnt bought the game is better than only being able to play with friends who have bought the game.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#110

Post by rainforest » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 10:30 AM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #96

rainforest wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Microsoft's approach the way I see it is that they're offering no value-add for the inconvenience. Gamers are used to discs being transferrable but MS is making a bold choice to devalue them and treat them as tokens to be redeemed (despite the fact this already happens with online purchases of 360 games). Since they're going with the requirement for 24hr checkins it would seem that going digital-only…

Physical media is much higher friction to transfer since you have to shift a physical box around which is slow , expensive and time consuming. I have a ton of original xbox games I could have traded in but never bothered because I was too lazy to put them on ebay or take them into the shop. There is also the risk that the disk is scratched which puts people off buying used. OTOH a digital license can be transferred a…

Isn't the issue of being able to transfer licenses more of a problem with the First Sale Doctrine? To that end, do you think consumers would have the right to transfer books, CDs, DVDs etc. if they were indestructible?

Perhaps we disagree, but I think this should be seen as an encouragement to change approaches rather than an opportunity to change a market because it doesn't suit the producer.