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What is Microsoft smoking?

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Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#221

Post by mercurialohearn »

o1iver wrote: post #219
podperson wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft had all the cards back in 2008, maybe. The missteps started with Vista and Zune, and continued with Windows Phone 7, and were magnified with Windows 8, Windows 8 RT, and now XBox One. There's also the big non-step of trying to starve the iPad by not porting Office to it -- which has made it glaringly obvious how little we need Office to get stuff done. I'd say Microsoft's problem now is pretty intractable.…

Why did Bluray loose? I love Bluray. And I buy them too...

i think he's referring to the fact that disc-based delivery of content is quickly becoming obsolete.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#222

Post by kvb »

Zarathust wrote: post #185
jemeshsu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They tried to emulate apple while forgetting that people that bought into apple ideology already had apple. Agreed. Their enterprise offering is strong. And one day they will realize it is IBM that is their destiny, and drop out of consumer market.

I see Microsoft in a position similar to RIM 5 - 8 years back. They have tons of revenue from big business that are kinda locked in to their stack. There is no need for large innovation in those very mature markets and they innovate by pushing more of the same. I may not be an office power use, but I see very little significant changes in Office since 2003, only small features tweaked.

Office has changed dramatically since then. The ribbon, while a superficial change, apparently has a huge impact on discoverability of Office features and usage. There's now an online version of the applications, and integration with Skydrive/SharePoint. There are tons of smaller additions that are very useful, too (e.g. Flash Fill in Excel, multi-monitor support in PowerPoint, etc.).

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#223

Post by marcosdumay »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #158
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…

Every Microsoft debacle peels off a few more users. I grew up on DOS as a kid and rode the Microsoft train through Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98SE, Win2K and WinXP but jumped ship to Ubuntu in 2008 after everyone had a chance to see just how bad Vista was. I was also increasingly conscious of the cultural shift in Microsoft: away from a legendary fidelity to API stability and toward an ever-shifting grab bag of disposabl…

My impression is that Linux is not some weard system that nobody uses anymore. Now it's a weard system that this or that person uses because they like to be different for difference sakeness.

I wonder how many more users Linux must gain untill people perceive it as something normal that they can just use.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#224

Post by marcosdumay »

w0utert wrote: post #105
plainhold wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 med…

> except going over to someone's house and play a game without having to bring the disc with you (yay, big deal!).

I doubt it'll allow that, simply because it's not practical. You'll still need all the data at the disk, and MS probably won't add a very expensive network service to make it easier for you to not buy a game.

That portion of the ToS probably means that the XBox won't refuse to play your game once you put the disk in a console and log with your account, even if the console isn't yours... Maybe restricted only to a friend's machines, but the part about any XBox One implies that they won't check it. Anyway, you can't just make that kind of assumption from MS licensing terms, the word "any" there could mean anything and we'll only know the exact meaning once somebody tries it.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#225

Post by riskable »

kyllo wrote: post #193
astrodust wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has no hope of becoming an IBM. IBM manufactures lots of hardware, produces new technology it licenses, and has an enormous software consulting division. Microsoft does none of these things. If anything, Microsoft will become like Computer Associates (CA Technologies), a company that milks products enterprise is hooked on and can't quit, squeezing money out of these things for decades to come.

Consulting, not so much, but they have an integrated, whole-enterprise stack that includes: Office (especially Word / Excel / Outlook trifecta which practically everyone uses at work for documents, scheduling, e-mail) Lync (text, voice, video chat that is integrated w/ Outlook contacts) Sharepoint for intranet portals, content management, collaborative documents with version control Dynamics ERP & CRM for accounting…

The biggest (of many) problems with these offerings is that they only work in and of themselves and only on Windows. I cannot run any of them on my Linux desktop, an Android device, an iPad, etc. Microsoft will not port any of these things to alternate platforms because Windows is their religion.

So the less people use Windows the less appeal there will be for these products. They are all anchored to the same sinking ship.

Also, SharePoint sucks. I had to say it. It's a worst-in-class product in a sea of vastly superior web application and document sharing platforms. I can't believe you included it in your list. I severely dislike many of those other products (Outlook, Exchange, and SQL Server, specifically) but even I'll admit that those products actually do what they're supposed to. SharePoint is nothing but a black hole where documents, time, and energy go in but nothing useful ever comes back out.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#226

Post by riskable »

_pmf_ wrote: post #130
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…

The reasons why Microsoft fail seem so petty. They are technologically probably the most advanced company, but ruin it by dubious politics.

> They are technologically probably the most advanced company

What?!? How could you possibly believe that when you know they're all using Windows in Redmond. It has absolutely zero technical superiority over everything else out right now (e.g. Linux, Mac OS X, iOS, etc).

I don't want to say which company is the most technically superior right now but I'd probably start my investigation at Google because of things like Google Glass, Google Now, self-driving cars, Maps & Street View, and a search engine that still bests everything else out there by huge margins.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#227

Post by riskable »

obtino wrote: post #139
hboon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of most of their products, but I've heard good things about Azure, even for Linux hosting. Disclosure: I was at Microsoft for a couple of months due to an acquisition.

> I'm not a fan of most of their products, but I've heard good things about Azure, even for Linux hosting. I have to agree on Azure. It's simply amazing for Linux VM hosting. I urge everyone to try it (whether you like MS or not). The UI for this service is simply amazing!

You actually use the UI? I've been using Rackspace and AWS for a while (years?) now and I can't say I've logged into their web interfaces much at all. Not in months, for sure.

How's their API? Can I whip up (and down) servers and DNS from a Python script in a few minutes? That's what I do with AWS and Rackspace and franky, I won't use a cloud provider that doesn't give me that power. Automation is critical for any use of the cloud these days.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#228

Post by jmcqk6 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #223
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Microsoft debacle peels off a few more users. I grew up on DOS as a kid and rode the Microsoft train through Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98SE, Win2K and WinXP but jumped ship to Ubuntu in 2008 after everyone had a chance to see just how bad Vista was. I was also increasingly conscious of the cultural shift in Microsoft: away from a legendary fidelity to API stability and toward an ever-shifting grab bag of disposabl…

My impression is that Linux is not some weard system that nobody uses anymore. Now it's a weard system that this or that person uses because they like to be different for difference sakeness. I wonder how many more users Linux must gain untill people perceive it as something normal that they can just use.

>I wonder how many more users Linux must gain untill people perceive it as something normal that they can just use.

If that happens, it will happen after the people no longer notice what OS they're using and don't even know that they are using Linux (E.g. android, chromebook, etc).

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#229

Post by jmcqk6 »

riskable wrote: post #227
obtino wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not a fan of most of their products, but I've heard good things about Azure, even for Linux hosting. I have to agree on Azure. It's simply amazing for Linux VM hosting. I urge everyone to try it (whether you like MS or not). The UI for this service is simply amazing!

You actually use the UI? I've been using Rackspace and AWS for a while (years?) now and I can't say I've logged into their web interfaces much at all. Not in months, for sure. How's their API? Can I whip up (and down) servers and DNS from a Python script in a few minutes? That's what I do with AWS and Rackspace and franky, I won't use a cloud provider that doesn't give me that power. Automation is critical for any us…

Their UI is actually just a wrapper around their API, so while I haven't used Azure, I believe the answer to this is yes. Microsoft also publishes Node/javascript bindings to their API.

Re: What is Microsoft smoking?

#230

Post by nigelsampson »

RyJones wrote: post #108
nigelsampson wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed it's still frustrating, but it's no where near the clusterfuck the OP implies.
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