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Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

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Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#21

But they did build a lot of that video. A few things even succesfully, like Lync/Skype (video conferencing) and SharePoint (document sharing) However, they failed at most things: - they were too early and the market and technology was not ready for it (Pocket PC) - they were too late (Zune, Windows Phone) - plans were blocked by companies who's support they needed but who were scared of them (music/movies/mobile phon…

> everything speech

To be completely fair, Kinect Audio recognition is awesome.

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, like you said, the problem was that they spent too many years in "lets fix that later" mode. They couldn't be agile because they had too much crap on the plate. MS needs to have a haircut like Marissa Mayer gave Yahoo. Hardware and SAAS are not the way for MS; they need to get back into large(r) system OS dev in a big way, to run house and building automation. The game console should only be p…

Part of that is due to the way they do employee reviews. People are rewarded more (in the form of control over their own job, promotions, and bonuses) for building new things in a short time frame than they are for fixing old stuff that's broken or flawed.

are you saying they have too much focus on innovation?

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#23
Ballmer building any of that would be equivalent to Microsoft actually building some of the technology from their latest "Vision" clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0

All of those things seem simple in hind sight, but there were very real hurdles preventing them from being realized at that time (for example, the Internet infrastructure for real-time video chat).

Concept videos like this are just the tech world's version of concept-cars by the auto industry. They make the company seem innovative and research oriented without the significant resources required to make a practical product. True, they sometimes yield useful research, but most of the time they're just meant to be good P.R.

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#24
post #8
post #4

This video won't play in Firefox on Debian or in Chrome on Android. Anyone know where else this video can be found?

Get a real OS and browser dude! Just kidding. It's in flash man, no plugin no play.

Well it doesn't run neither in chrome with w8... I think it just has problems now, probably handling the requests we are pushing on the server

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#26
Some of these were built, other ideas just don't scale.

But most of these? They exist now. Not quite as nice as the video shows, but they exist.

Kinect actually enabled a lot of the voice control experiences, Skydrive and Sharepoint do some of the other sharing scenarios, just not as nice as they all should be. I saw some awesome mapping stuff working on Windows Mobile well before the iPhone came out, including actual building maps and linking into ones "social network" (however limited that was at that time) to show where one's friends sat.

It is actually sort of sad that none of the experiences have been polished nearly as well as they should have been, by any of the players in the market really. Google Hangouts comes close with some of their collaborative tools, but then something falls apart in the experience, for example in the case of Hangouts, it can be a pain to start one depending on which UI path ones chooses to take, and various bugs pop up and just break the immersion of the experience.

MSN Messenger had a lot of good stuff, video and voice conferencing both worked long ago, but then that market fell apart.

Collaborative Document Editing was done right by Microsoft with One Note 2007, and then completely ignored from then on by the rest of the Office line. Amazing technology, not sure why it wasn't more widely adopted (I'm guessing due to file format needs, presumably the One Note team had the advantage of building up from scratch).

Perhaps most amusing in this video is what people thought LCD screens would look like! I am thankful the ID on LCDs did not go that way!

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#27
post #5
post #2

Kind of reminds me of the Windows tablet being way before the iPad, yet the iPad blowing it out of the water. Microsoft had all these great ideas, but failed to execute. It really reinforces the 'ideas without good execution are worthless' motto.

FWIW, Windows Journal was epic , and nothing on the iPad even comes close (nor really can it, due to the inaccuracy of the input compared to an active pen digitizer). I provided some more details on this a long time ago on Quora (which kind of sucks, but it at least saves having to go into a long description ;P). http://www.quora.com/Tablet-Devices-and-Tablet-Market/Why-do...

OneNote is incredible, couldn't find anything close on iPad - but feels like zero effective marketing there. If Apple made anything like that it would be all over their keynotes and ads as a USP.

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#28

But they did build a lot of that video. A few things even succesfully, like Lync/Skype (video conferencing) and SharePoint (document sharing) However, they failed at most things: - they were too early and the market and technology was not ready for it (Pocket PC) - they were too late (Zune, Windows Phone) - plans were blocked by companies who's support they needed but who were scared of them (music/movies/mobile phon…

"A few things even successfully, like Lync/Skype"

Didn't they buy Skype?

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#29
post #26

Some of these were built, other ideas just don't scale. But most of these? They exist now. Not quite as nice as the video shows, but they exist. Kinect actually enabled a lot of the voice control experiences, Skydrive and Sharepoint do some of the other sharing scenarios, just not as nice as they all should be. I saw some awesome mapping stuff working on Windows Mobile well before the iPhone came out, including actua…

Don't forget Microsoft TerraServer which was a 1998 version of Google Maps.

Re: Microsoft's Concept Videos From 2000: Why Didn't Ballmer Build Any of It?

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, like you said, the problem was that they spent too many years in "lets fix that later" mode. They couldn't be agile because they had too much crap on the plate. MS needs to have a haircut like Marissa Mayer gave Yahoo. Hardware and SAAS are not the way for MS; they need to get back into large(r) system OS dev in a big way, to run house and building automation. The game console should only be p…

Speaking of Yahoo, have Mayer's ideas turned out to be very effective yet?

They're definitely seeing more traffic.

http://readwrite.com/2013/09/11/yahoo-marissa-mayer#awesm=~o...

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