What is Microsoft smoking? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#161

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:10 PM UTC

sentenza wrote: post #142

venomsnake wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft had all the cards to win the device war. But they forgot what made them win the PC war. They tried to emulate apple while forgetting that people that bought into apple ideology already had apple. If the W8 arm was unlocked it would have been a big winner. WP7 just needed fast moving instead of stagnation and they almost got everything right with the original xbox and X360 in the beginning. But I am moving a…

From my experience, Arch with KDE and XP/Win7 are extremely similar with regards to user experience quality, so that I myself wouldn't be willing to call one or the other better. At this point, a person more used to Windows might get annoyed by having to edit config files on Arch/KDE every so often, and a person more into Linux might be frustrated that in Windows, some things can't be easily fixed. But these are more…

[deleted]

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#162

Post by laumars » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:12 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #51

zainny wrote: post #4

Interestingly enough there is a point at which I thought Microsoft was really going to hit some home runs not all that long ago. Since then though the trifecta of Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, and Xbox One has turned me away from their entire product line. Combined with my own movements over the years towards open source desktop software and web applications (Google Docs, etc.) and Microsoft barely rates a mention in m…

Microsoft had all the cards to win the device war. But they forgot what made them win the PC war. They tried to emulate apple while forgetting that people that bought into apple ideology already had apple. If the W8 arm was unlocked it would have been a big winner. WP7 just needed fast moving instead of stagnation and they almost got everything right with the original xbox and X360 in the beginning. But I am moving a…

Arch's fonts can be prettified a lot with Ubuntu patches from AUR: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_Configuration#Ubun...

(I'm another Arch + KDE user - both at home and at work)

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#163

Post by GrantS » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:15 PM UTC

cpfohl wrote: post #148

What's wrong with the name 'XBox One'? Makes as much sense as 'xbox' or 'xbox 360.' Considerably more sense than Atari or Wii... And a focus on TV makes a good deal of business sense as more and more people are dropping cable in favor of streaming shows and movies. Something is going to replace that, for the most part people don't drop a service without replacing it. As far as where the games are...the XBox had 17 ga…

"...more and more people are dropping cable..."

Exactly -- this is why it was baffling that they spent half the intro event showing features that only work with a separate cable box hooked up to the Xbox, so that you control your cable box via Kinect voice commands. I can completely understand why someone who didn't watch the intro would be reluctant to believe it was mostly about cable television, but it really was.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#164

Post by pm » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:19 PM UTC

varunkho wrote: post #155

pm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention things like no automatic logging, no automatic HTTPS, 20-60 minute deploy times, unstable dev tools. I've dealt with the quirks of MVC4 which I grew accustomed to, but the other problems are making deploying a solution (something I'm trying to do now) very painful.

With Azure websites (in preview) deployment of Mvc4 projects is in the matter of seconds (I have been using it for some months). If you fork a hosted service, yes deployment does take time if you use the official way. Afaik, you can also use the accelerator for web roles [1] to reduce this delay considerably [2]. [1]: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/07/12/now-... [2]: accelerator is no longer being…

Cheers. Unfortunately while we have a web role we have two worker roles running long-background processes to deal with Exchange streaming subscriptions (this isn't really a website, it's an API). This is more than I found when attempting to search for a solution to a quicker deploy, however.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#165

Post by alextingle » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:25 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #81

venomsnake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speed with which one technological company can fall is amazing as history has shown time and time again. According to joel spolsky Excel 4 made lotus 1-2-3 obsolete virtually overnight and that was the beginning of the end for them. The fact that MS is strong now means nothing in the long and even midterm. The total share of world computing that Microsoft controls now is lower than in the 90s. They have trouble g…

Actually, their substantial diversification beyond Windows means that it's very, very unlikely Microsoft is going to fall (easily or quickly). Microsoft could lose the entire consumer Windows business and be just fine (despite the hit their stock would take), particularly as they keep growing in other sectors while Windows becomes less important by the day (and is clearly done growing as a business). Consumer Windows…

The vast majority of Microsoft's profits come from Office. Windows makes a little bit, and everything else loses money.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#166

Post by seanalex » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:44 PM UTC

pm wrote: post #141

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have to keep in mind Azure is not just a PaaS (which of course is still in beta as websites) It's has an IaaS equivalent of EC2.

If I wanted to do IaaS I would have done so already, and most likely on EC2. However, I don't want to spend time doing devops, which is what makes PaaS so attractive in the first place. Actually the true PaaS is Cloud Services, which we've integrated along with the queues and tables. It's definitely not in beta - it's been out for quite some time. Most of my PaaS experience comes mostly with App Engine, which I liked…

Sadly, this very much mirrors my experience. I love Azure and ASP.NET MVC4. But the moment my deploys went from 5 minutes to 20 minutes and more, I started hating myself for any random code or test I wish I cleaned up first.

Overall though, Azure is a great product and once you wire things up correctly, it makes out to be a fantastic hosting service. I do not have experience with Amazon's hosting stack, but I plan on sticking with Azure for the long haul.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#167

Post by WayneDB » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:46 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #143

jacques_chester wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The speed with which one technological company can fall is amazing as history has shown time and time again. I disagree. The speed with which companies relying on a single product can fall has been shown again and again. Companies which are diversified have lasted much longer. Lotus is gone, Borland is gone, Apple almost died -- but Microsoft are still around. Microsoft are no longer the absolute masters they used…

But Microsoft have single product. While they do sell it from 5 different department is combines to one interwoven whole. That is great on the rise but can be terrible when every customer lost means losing network effects. The more google apps/ Libre gain traction the less valuable the windows desktop becomes. The less valuable the desktop - the server becomens less valuable and from there the DB. Computer ecosystems…

If Microsoft has a single product, so do Apple and Google.

Your summation of Microsoft's position is way off. Microsoft was never much of a trend setter. They tend more to come into an established business and try to dominate it and they do that well.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#168

Post by Mythrl » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:46 PM UTC

mattchamb wrote: post #57

inthewind wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there is an air of convenience to being able to pull your games from thin air, it's not really that difficult to carry around your games. Perhaps being able to store them on an SD card would be a pretty good comprimise. I like the idea of not having a load of plastic - but it's no great hardship plugging in a cable, or carrying a TV from one room to another. I keep my gamecube (yes gamecube,) packed away, if I…

I agree with you about carrying around discs being easy. I am based in New Zealand, and carrying around a disc is alot easier and cheaper than always downloading the game. I think downloading games is an incidental feature when the game licencing is centrally controlled with cloud-based distribution. I think Microsoft's biggest failure is the marketing around the Xbox One and their failure to explain how the game sha…

Only one person of the 10 with whom you share can play at a time. This will not restrict you from playing though. It's not clear whether you can play a co-op game together on a single copy. To me this seems better than actually lending a disk to someone since you can still play your game while you lend it out.

I have no idea why Microsoft are saying outright you can't lend games, since you can share them. I think their messaging has been absolutely awful.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#169

Post by Mythrl » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 1:49 PM UTC

mattchamb wrote: post #95

easytiger wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Access your entire games library from any Xbox One ... > > while you are logged in at your friend’s house, you can play your games. This applies for all PSN games also. > - Share access to your games with everyone inside your home .. Anyone can play your games on your console--regardless of whether you are logged in or their relationship to you. Interesting. But I'm not sure the value. How many homes have > 1 uni…

>How does one define family? How do they prove it That is something I am also wondering. The worst case would be that they ask for proof of a familial relationship of any form. That is something even I am not prepared to give Microsoft.

They have explicitly said that it can be anyone. It can be a friend across the country. It can be your cousin. It could be a sibling. You could even add your enemies and limit the sharing folder to only include awful games.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#170

Post by pm » Thu, Jun 13, 2013, 2:16 PM UTC

seanalex wrote: post #166

pm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I wanted to do IaaS I would have done so already, and most likely on EC2. However, I don't want to spend time doing devops, which is what makes PaaS so attractive in the first place. Actually the true PaaS is Cloud Services, which we've integrated along with the queues and tables. It's definitely not in beta - it's been out for quite some time. Most of my PaaS experience comes mostly with App Engine, which I liked…

Sadly, this very much mirrors my experience. I love Azure and ASP.NET MVC4. But the moment my deploys went from 5 minutes to 20 minutes and more, I started hating myself for any random code or test I wish I cleaned up first. Overall though, Azure is a great product and once you wire things up correctly, it makes out to be a fantastic hosting service. I do not have experience with Amazon's hosting stack, but I plan on…

The wiring up is killing it for me - the wrong parts have been overengineered (MVC4, JSON) and not enough attention has been paid attention to the things that need to be stable (Azure dev tools). Overall the service has amazing potential, insofar as you can do a lot more than you can do on something like App Engine (which only supports HTTP - which after using Azure, was a good decision). But it drops the ball on all the basic features, whether they be buggy or missing.

The big issue I have with MVC4 (and many other Microsoft things with which I've been working) is that MVC4 doesn't work to fit around me - I need to work to fit around it. Compare that to working with Flask - supporters say it's a "beautiful API", but really what it comes down to is that Flask is minimal enough (not minimalist), gives you everything you need to work with the web, and if you need to do something complex, doesn't get in the way. It's at the appropriate level of abstraction. MVC4 is not.

I guess we'll see how the cost goes over time as well - not sure how that will pan out. I wish I had better stuff to say, because I was quite excited about it when I first started using it, but I have soured on it and won't use it for anything not Microsoft-centric.