>>>A MSFT share was worth about $35 dollars when Ballmer took over This is incorrect. In December of 1999 the shares were selling around $58/share. Even in March after he took over the stock still hovered around $53/share. By May, the price had crashed to around $30/share - which coincides with the first dot com bubble bursting.
IIRC the MSFT 'crash' was on the day they were found guilty of antitrust violations, and a bit before the bubble actually popped.
You are correct. Microsoft stock crashed twice. (It also went down when the bubble went down.)
Originally, of course, Netscape was a rewrite of Mosaic (they even tried to rip off the name) and Microsoft licensed the Mosaic code to get a quick start in the browser business. Microsoft did a complete re-write to componentize the browser and after IE3 (I think), IE was generally better than Netscape. At least, Walt Mossberg said so. Hard to know why Microsoft stopped developing IE6 and you may be right. However, t…
>Hard to know why Microsoft stopped developing IE6 and you may be right. Surprisingly little known story: in short MS was afraid of Linux as desktop OS, OSS world was seen as capably of quickly copying any innovative single feature. This is resulted in idea of "integrated innovation": produce innovation in app development, app framework, data access, communication, os based on it and ship it all at once, so Linux wou…
Thanks, fascinating story.
Presumably all that happened under Allchin after bradsi left....
I remember his first reaction was to laugh at the iPhone for being too expensive. It's hard to think of any better example of missing the entire point.
But it WAS too expensive. The fact that the iPhone price dropped within two months of it being introduced is proof of that. And you have to remember, that most touch phones sucked at the time, and they ALL sucked if they didn't have a stylus, and it was a really, really, big deal to have an all touch interface that truly worked. And, it wasn't as if Microsoft didn't have a mobile OS. Windows Mobile always worked dece…
If you watch jobs unveil the iPhone, there is a moment, when speaking of three new revolutionary devices being released that day (http://youtu.be/0KfrSzyXmiw?t=1m5s), he says "the first one is wide screen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.", repeats the line, and then chuckles as everyone realizes that they're all one device... I remember streaming that live and thinking: "Holy crap, phones don't suck anymore". If Balmer watched that and laughed at it, I'm going to be hard on him. He had the chance to react and he let Jobs walk away with it. So many people, including me, we're just waiting for a cell phone that didn't suck.
I remember his first reaction was to laugh at the iPhone for being too expensive. It's hard to think of any better example of missing the entire point.
But it WAS too expensive. The fact that the iPhone price dropped within two months of it being introduced is proof of that. And you have to remember, that most touch phones sucked at the time, and they ALL sucked if they didn't have a stylus, and it was a really, really, big deal to have an all touch interface that truly worked. And, it wasn't as if Microsoft didn't have a mobile OS. Windows Mobile always worked dece…
But as a leader of technology, Ballmer should have realized that in the early stage, new technology is expensive, and people (particularly fans of apple) will buy. The iPod only a few years earlier was also too expensive, and had a bunch off early tech 'flaws' ( Mac only, FireWire only, etc), yet came to dominate the market, and Microsoft couldn't catch up. Ballmer, or the other senior leaders at MS should have recognized the iPhone as the evolution of the iPod.
In a single day, I routinely use up to four different operating systems and none of them are Windows.
Congratulations? Are you aware that like 90% of corporations run Windows? No other operating system can claim anything even close to that.
My point is that operating systems are largely commodified now, and that Windows' strategic value (for both Microsoft and the corporations using it) only holds in very homogenous environments.
That is the state of most corporations today, but at best, I would consider Windows a rapidly depreciating asset (in a strategic sense -- I'm sure it will continue to be a major source of cash for a while).
"(MS did things second, not first, was only a minor hardware developer, and seldom gave things away except when tied to something they sold)" This is where Jobs learned a lesson from his first time running Apple. Apple introduced such a polished product for an initial launch, and iterated so fast with iPhone that the market was already taken before Microsoft understood what was happening. I can imagine Gates respondi…
I remember his first reaction was to laugh at the iPhone for being too expensive. It's hard to think of any better example of missing the entire point.
It's entirely possible that he recognized the threat but had to denigrate it for public consumption. But even if he says exactly that in his memoirs, nobody will believe him.
>Hard to know why Microsoft stopped developing IE6 and you may be right. Surprisingly little known story: in short MS was afraid of Linux as desktop OS, OSS world was seen as capably of quickly copying any innovative single feature. This is resulted in idea of "integrated innovation": produce innovation in app development, app framework, data access, communication, os based on it and ship it all at once, so Linux wou…
Thanks, fascinating story. Presumably all that happened under Allchin after bradsi left....
Yes, it was under Allchin, but I suspect that "integrated innovation" couldn't happen without Gates' approval and stewardship.
There is another twist - after XP Windows was split into two branches (since they didn't want to delay client to wait for server): Server and Longhorn. Brian Valentine managed Server (shipped as Server 2003), at same time different war room, different managers managed Longhorn ship. So essentially experienced management team was shipping server, and non-so heavy weight - Longhorn. Then some people were taken to manage XP SP2 (result of "security push"). So there is no surprise Longhorn had problems and required "reset" to finally ship as Vista.
And the lesson is: never ever branch to v+1 and v+2 branches unless absolutely required - one of them is going to be neglected.
Yep. All the good once are stuck playing *craft games. Find a modern 8-year old, who understand PC circuitry (at analog and digital level), seen manufacturing processes, can re-solder components, can write C/assembly, can develop basic useful applications (like, say MS Paint). I bet you could easily find one like that, back in 70s-90s, particularly here in the silicon valley. Now - I'm not so sure.
I'm going to call you on that. First for moving the goal posts and second for generalizing without any backup whatsoever. From "Basic -> C/assembly"? Wow. That escalated quickly.
Is'nt it the logical transition, at least in some schools it was, and i was thought the same way, begin with BASIC, and then as our curiosity increased we moved onto c and 8051 hardware/assembly.
I remember his first reaction was to laugh at the iPhone for being too expensive. It's hard to think of any better example of missing the entire point.
But it WAS too expensive. The fact that the iPhone price dropped within two months of it being introduced is proof of that. And you have to remember, that most touch phones sucked at the time, and they ALL sucked if they didn't have a stylus, and it was a really, really, big deal to have an all touch interface that truly worked. And, it wasn't as if Microsoft didn't have a mobile OS. Windows Mobile always worked dece…
Everything is too expensive when it first comes out. The first cars were so expensive that building a car that the men on the assembly line could afford was an innovation (so was using an assembly line). Ballmer himself probably remembers when microcomputers were fairly expensive. Maybe he laughed at his college buddies for dropping out to write microcomputer software and start a company on that premise. But if he didn't learn his lesson in his decades in the tech industry, I don't know what he thought he was doing at Microsoft.
Microsoft was there as an epiphenomenon. If they didn't exist (at all) the PC industry would still be here and some would argue that without the monopolistic innovation stifling practices, it would be much more vibrant today.
What? Correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly, but before Microsoft (and Compaq's IBM PC "compatibles") caused PCs to be commoditized, every computer-maker was trying to foist their own closed, proprietary walled garden onto the market. Instead of the PC revolution that created a common platform everywhere, we'd have a hundred small, fragmented, incompatible ecosystems fighting each other for market share. That jus…
Citing you as a source, how was MS involved in the clones? Compaq made a clone of the IBM PC. The IBM PC was cloneable in the first place because they went extremely low budget and stuck together off the shelf parts. Yes, the cheap clone army definitely spurred the small computer revolution. But I don't see how MS can viewed as an entity that shepherded it along. They certainly weren't the only ones make a CPM clone either.