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Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

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Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#381

Post by teyc »

This is an interesting pick. He may be diplomatic but he is quite clear about the current organisation problems, that Microsoft's need to amplify their work. Microsoft has been a traditional technology company but increasingly, they are getting trounced on the consumer side because they never had to build up a competency due to their incumbency.

Microsoft is very good at long term support platforms. They have clearly articulated how long they will support each of their iteration of OS, and software packages. These work extremely well in the enterprise space. Moving a lot of their disparate services into long term support - e.g. skydrive makes good sense.

If they can now do the same for their software platforms and provide long term support for how to write long lived applications that will run well on the ARM and x86 platforms, we should start seeing some consolidation in the APIs again.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#382

Post by skywhopper »

lotso wrote: post #263
skywhopper wrote: post #71

I hope the new CEO has the courage and the power to set out a vision and stick to it for more than just a few years in a row. Microsoft under Ballmer has been a study in short attention span. Changing themes, names, and directions every three to five years. When I was a Windows sysadmin back in the day, it was incredibly frustrating to build anything on the Microsoft platform because by the time you wrapped your brai…

The Zune is at the foundation of Microsoft's Metro design language.

Right, my point is that they didn't have the guts to stick with that product or the brand. It didn't do well after a couple of revisions, and they dropped it for the newest unified marketing idea.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#383

Post by tanzam75 »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #360
MartinCron wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Zune was a market failure, but it was a really great product that was totally underrated.

I tried to buy one not long ago and was sad that they had been discontinued. I don't know if this is still the case today (or even relevant in the world of smartphones) but I could not for the life of me find an MP3 player with an FM tuner in it. But the Zune had one, did it not?

> I tried to buy one not long ago and was sad that they had been discontinued. I don't know if this is still the case today (or even relevant in the world of smartphones) but I could not for the life of me find an MP3 player with an FM tuner in it. But the Zune had one, did it not?

A Nokia Lumia 520 is dirt-cheap and has an FM tuner.

All you have to do is to pretend that it isn't also a phone.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#384

Post by chrishynes »

bhauer wrote: post #256
pdpi wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their influence on desktop is slowly eroding, though, and the new battlefield is the internet.

Furthermore, either desktop is no longer relevant as the New Guard (Apple, Google) want us to believe, in which case Microsoft's past and current dominance on desktop is a fairly moot point as far as today's technology is concerned OR desktop remains relevant and we should be pressuring the New Guard to prioritize innovation in that space. I personally strongly prefer modern "desktop" computing (that is, working with…

I agree with most of your points, but I think the key missing piece is integration.

IMHO, it's not an issue of "desktop" vs. small device, but integrated applications and presence that works smoothly across platforms vs. monolithic and siloed apps that keep you on one device.

Nobody does this well yet, but the holy grail of computing is to be able to move from desktop to tablet to laptop to phone and have your apps, data, and presence seamlessly follow you around.

Mobile has lept ahead in perceived value because it provides an illusion of that integration. Since you have the device with you always, you get a taste of what having everything everywhere would be like. However, that is fleeting and the providers have jumped at the chance to make it a walled garden that feels open (since the device is always with you), but doesn't share or play with others.

Eventually, people will become aware that mobile only is closed and bad, and integrated open multiplatform will rise, whether that is based on multi cloud or personal cloud or whatever technology best supports that seamless transition between devices.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#385

Post by skywhopper »

javajosh wrote: post #124
skywhopper wrote: post #71

I hope the new CEO has the courage and the power to set out a vision and stick to it for more than just a few years in a row. Microsoft under Ballmer has been a study in short attention span. Changing themes, names, and directions every three to five years. When I was a Windows sysadmin back in the day, it was incredibly frustrating to build anything on the Microsoft platform because by the time you wrapped your brai…

> Remember Zune? Remember Live? Remember the Kin?? We should be very careful about criticizing others for their failed products. The side-effect of experimentation and innovation is that some of the experiments will result in failure to find market fit. Market fit failure isn't a good thing for a company, but it's much worse to not experiment at all.

I guess I failed to make my point clearly. These were not necessarily bad ideas. The Kin got pushed out too early and too sloppily. It would have been better to kill the project before launch than what happened.

Zune could have been a good brand but rather than sticking to their guns, they abandoned it. Live was another unifying brand that they gave up on too quickly in favor of new rebrandings -- Bing, Office365, etc.

My point is that the constant jumping from idea to idea and rebranding instead of sticking with good ideas and revising until they're successful is a pattern of the Ballmer years that is a big part of Microsoft's lack of impact in the computing world over the past 5-10 years as Apple and Google and Amazon have risen to the forefront.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#386

Post by BlackDeath3 »

tanzam75 wrote: post #383
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to buy one not long ago and was sad that they had been discontinued. I don't know if this is still the case today (or even relevant in the world of smartphones) but I could not for the life of me find an MP3 player with an FM tuner in it. But the Zune had one, did it not?

> I tried to buy one not long ago and was sad that they had been discontinued. I don't know if this is still the case today (or even relevant in the world of smartphones) but I could not for the life of me find an MP3 player with an FM tuner in it. But the Zune had one, did it not? A Nokia Lumia 520 is dirt-cheap and has an FM tuner. All you have to do is to pretend that it isn't also a phone.

Does it function poorly as a phone?

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#387

Post by c0achmcguirk »

_random_ wrote: post #291
moistgorilla wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will switch to windows if they make it as easy to develop on as it is on unix. Maybe have a fully supported unix commandline emulator?

80-s want their command line back.

Cartoon UI wants it's clicky-clicky and inefficient workflow back.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#388

Post by hershel »

Encosia wrote: post #321
hershel wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding VR: Valve claims that pc's are a better fit to VR and they've done some serious research on VR. I'm taking it on face value(maybe i shouldn't ?). Cloud gaming is when games are run on a server and streamed to your home. Combine chromecast and cloud gaming, and you suddenly got a huge platform, with much more users than xboox one/ps4. And since it's google ,it would probably run android games which there are…

I'd heard of this before, but never tried it myself. Out of curiosity, I just tried playing a game through OnLive, using my relatively high-end (for the US) business broadband connection. I chose Witcher 2 since it was featured on the OnLive home page. As the intro video streamed, I was impressed. It was smooth and the quality was good. After the intro video, it all fell apart. The round trip latency on the menu scre…

For low latency, That's the sort of problem google likes to have: hard technical problems that require a lot of capital(building plenty of gaming clouds physically close to users).Maybe onlive just didn't had enough money so your cloud is far from you.

BTW: sony will be also offering it , so maybe the tech is ready ?

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#389

Post by tanzam75 »

nailer wrote: post #172
ygra wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been there and no one used it.

IIRC (old Windows NT4 MCSE here) POSIX subsystem never had access to TCPIP, which made it pointless. It was a sales point, rather than a genuinely useful subsystem. That said, I think OSs are irrelevant: people are happy to pay for apps, cloud hosting etc and MS are happy to provide it to them, Windows or not, for money.

Microsoft acquired Interix in 1999. That was a much more complete POSIX subsystem than the one that originally shipped with NT.

Another lost opportunity. Microsoft could've captured the academic and web-developer market that eventually turned to OS X as a client OS.

Re: Satya Nadella – Microsoft's CEO

#390

Post by michaelwww »

forgotAgain wrote: post #166
michaelwww wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point that Gates will be spending more time at Microsoft to lend gravitas to Nadella amongst the other Microsoft managers he beat out for the job. I imagine once they get the message and give the guy a chance to get his sea legs, Gates will back away.

I agree with your assessment but I think its a negative. Nadella needs to be able to command respect on his own. If you're right in your thinking then it indicates that the board really doesn't have confidence in him.

It was mentioned several times he has a calm and thoughtful approach, which is 180 from Balmer. It will be interesting to see if they can all make the adjustment.
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