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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?

#51

Post by defen »

corresation wrote: post #31
acchow wrote: post #7

Ideas are worth nothing. A 15 minute conversation with any expert in HCI 15 years ago would cover 95% of these ideas. Execution is everything. Microsoft tried to execute on some of these ideas, but the result was always too cumbersome/confusing.

"Ideas are worth nothing." While it is seen here regularly -- and is always strangely given a pass -- this remains the most profoundly meaningless, if not outright stupid, thing that anyone in this industry can mutter.

The missing two words there are "without execution", and it's true, not "profoundly meaningless", especially in this industry. Hell, this is the industry that invented "worse is better".

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

#52

Post by milesf » 

  FTA: "Ballmer's Microsoft wasn't lacking for ideas; it was lacking execution."
Derek Sivers said it best "To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions." (see https://sivers.org/multiply)

Whatever the reason for Microsoft's inability to execute, the history shows that Gates (a programmer) could get stuff done, and Ballmer (a salesman) can't.

IMHO it's probably stack ranking that killed their execution (http://slate.me/19Jf74r). Salespeople (like Ballmer) use external fear to motivate people (Make the sale or my boss will fire me!). Programmers (like Gates) use internal fear to motivate themselves (Make this code work or my colleagues will think I'm stupid!). How can any programmer execute properly in an environment of both internal and external fear?

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

#53

Post by shubb »

dimitar wrote: post #17

I was reading about the worlds navies around the turn of the 19th century. The British dominated the seas and were very innovative during the wars with the French and Dutch. But then they stopped. They knew that they had the best sailing ships and knew that changing the technology will only disrupt seas in a way threatening their supremacy. And so the torpedo was invented by the Austrians, the steam and iron ships we…

As an aside, it scares me a little that Windows for Warships is a thing. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/windows_for_w...

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

#54

Post by rbanffy »

Most of these devices were built, some of them with Microsoft technology, but the technology wasn't ready, the implementation was bad (the interfaces are horrendous, for instance), the licensing was prohibitive and Microsoft didn't see themselves as a device company. They saw themselves as building the technologies that supported those devices, not the devices themselves.

We must all keep in mind these concepts were showcased 13 years before in the famous Knowledge Navigator video or in Sun's less known 1994 Starfire video.

And, probably, on many others that remained unseen by the masses.

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

#55

Post by rbanffy »

acchow wrote: post #7

Ideas are worth nothing. A 15 minute conversation with any expert in HCI 15 years ago would cover 95% of these ideas. Execution is everything. Microsoft tried to execute on some of these ideas, but the result was always too cumbersome/confusing.

> Ideas are worth nothing.

Let's all agree ideas alone are not industrial products.

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

#56

Post by gnaritas »

MAGZine wrote: post #46
riggins wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this remains the most profoundly meaningless, if not outright stupid, thing that anyone in this industry can mutter. do you really not understand what this means? here's an awesome idea. A sensor and software that can read your brain waves so you don't need mouse or keyboard. Awesome idea, right? Worthless without the implementation.

Here are 500 of the industry's most talented engineers, artists, HCI experts, etc, entirely yours, for 10 years. Worthless without a money-making proposition, which is, in many cases, the idea. if you've got money (and thus, talent), the idea is the most valuable part. good ideas might be valueless (though you could make a case to say this is also untrue), but they're definitely not worthless.

If you have that much talent on hand, you don't need an idea, you can simply copy and out-compete existing players in existing markets. To call that worthless is to seriously misunderstand the nature of business.

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

#58

Post by x0054 »

feniv wrote: post #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…

You know what's really sad about that Video, even in the future Microsoft imagines them selves using low resolution displays. I mean, for god sakes, every time they would zoom in on that frameless phone thing you would clearly see pixels. Since it's all CGI, they actually went out of their way to give it low res screen look my painting in the pixel lines.

I think, at least for me, the true failure of MS Surface was the crappy display it came with.

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

#59

Post by film42 »

corresation wrote: post #31
acchow wrote: post #7

Ideas are worth nothing. A 15 minute conversation with any expert in HCI 15 years ago would cover 95% of these ideas. Execution is everything. Microsoft tried to execute on some of these ideas, but the result was always too cumbersome/confusing.

"Ideas are worth nothing." While it is seen here regularly -- and is always strangely given a pass -- this remains the most profoundly meaningless, if not outright stupid, thing that anyone in this industry can mutter.

I agree that saying,"Ideas are worth nothing" is kind of weak, and I'd like to explain why.

Ideas are cheap and contagious, execution is expensive and risky.

When I think about the concept of an "idea" vs "execution," I think about the youtube, vimeo, blip, etc sprint. Each company had relatively the same idea--video on the internet--but no number of analysts could've predicted that youtube would be the outright success of the lot. All of them had excellent execution, but it's always risky, and for youtube, it paid off.

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

#60

Post by jessedhillon »

debt wrote: post #44
corresation wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ideas are worth nothing." While it is seen here regularly -- and is always strangely given a pass -- this remains the most profoundly meaningless, if not outright stupid, thing that anyone in this industry can mutter.

Ideas are worth nothing. Ideas have a mental effect, but execution still has tangible results. I could just do something, literally anything, and me, having done a thing, would be worth way more than me, having an idea. Many people have great ideas, few people have the balls or resources to actually execute them and make them worth something . Just a thought.

I could just do something, literally anything, and me, having done a thing, would be worth way more than me, having an idea.

The overall claim has some limited merits, but don't overstate the case.

You generating an idea in your seat about a site that, say, scrapes some public resource and presents in a useful way, are more valuable than the you who uses that same time to make yourself a sandwich.

And the ideas you can have -- ideas which you can only execute after having the ideas themselves -- are of a higher quality than someone who doesn't have your cultural and intellectual resources. Your ideas are more valuable because they are informed by a more nuanced knowledge of how things actually get done.

Or to put another way, if you were approached at a party about an opportunity to work on someone's seed of a project, would you rather that person be an engineer or a fast food employee? No offense to fast food workers, but the engineer has more, and more salient, skills when it comes to this question.

The idea can't be cashed in until it's executed, and an executed idea is superior to an unexecuted one, but in choosing which idea to act on there are clearly better and worse ones.

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