Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
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Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#2I do feel like Microsoft has been listening to what its consumers are asking for more than it used to. I think they got humbled by Vista more than they'd like to admit.
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#3Microsoft Research has some very cool stuff. But that technology gets into consumer products very slowly, if ever.
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#4Ray Ozzie certainly seems to be changing their corporate culture for the better. On the provided examples, Natal looks like an unambigious winner if it delivers; Sideshow looks more in the pattern of MS delivering an awkward implementation of a basically good idea.
Let me rephrase that. Sideshow looks stupid and the name invites mockery. Make it a tablet touchscreen and say it's the future of the mouse, and then please send me one if this turns out to be profitable.
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#5There are many innovative companies like Philips, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Sun, formerly AT&T, but Apple and Microsoft are not among them. Their core competencies are quality and marketing. There's way more money in that.
Apple did not invent the phone, mp3 player, video player, application store, etc. They just perfected and skillfully crafted hypes around them. Microsoft did not invent the Office suite, IDE's or the hardware acceleration layer, but they did perfect and deploy them through aggressive business strategies.
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#6There are many innovative companies like Philips, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Sun, formerly AT&T, but Apple and Microsoft are not among them. Their core competencies are quality and marketing. There's way more money in that. Apple did not invent the phone, mp3 player, video player, application store, etc. They just perfected and skillfully crafted hypes around them. Microsoft did not invent the Office suite, IDE's or the har…
>Apple did not invent the phone, mp3 player, video player, application store, etc. They just perfected and skillfully crafted hypes around them. Microsoft did not invent the Office suite, IDE's or the hardware acceleration layer, but they did perfect and deploy them through aggressive business strategies.
Is your claim that a company must invent something from whole cloth to be "innovative"?
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#7There are many innovative companies like Philips, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Sun, formerly AT&T, but Apple and Microsoft are not among them. Their core competencies are quality and marketing. There's way more money in that. Apple did not invent the phone, mp3 player, video player, application store, etc. They just perfected and skillfully crafted hypes around them. Microsoft did not invent the Office suite, IDE's or the har…
"Apple did not invent the phone, mp3 player, video player, application store, etc."
That doesn't mean they aren't innovative. It's easy to invent the MP3 player. It's hard to invent the MP3 player that people actually want to use. That doesn't suck.
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#8"For example, no one wants an iPod. They never have."
Obviously this guy has never watched a television. Apple spends hundreds of millions each year making sure people do want an iPod.
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#9"For example, no one wants an iPod. They never have." Obviously this guy has never watched a television. Apple spends hundreds of millions each year making sure people do want an iPod.
Apple doesn't spend its money making sure people want iPods, they spend their money making sure people want to listen to "the right song wherever they are," and making sure that the iPod is the device that lets them listen to "the right song wherever they are."
Re: Is Microsoft Actually Innovating?
#10For example, no one wants an iPod. They never have. What people want is to hear the right song at any given moment in time anywhere they are at without any device whatsoever.
That's an adorable bit of engineer-brain reductionism, but I don't think it's right. Having some kind of device in the loop is useful as a symbol. It tells other people that you're listening to music, that you spent a certain amount of money to do so, or that you do or don't pay attention to what's popular. If you bought a certain color, you probably did so to convey (or to avoid conveying) something about yourself, etc. People like to carry around and display tokens of their interests.