Microsoft, Past and Future
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Microsoft, Past and Future
1–10 of 203 posts
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#2I think this is an interesting contrast with PG's "Microsoft is Dead (2006)," because it points to a reason why Microsoft lost their hunger and dominance: they had no driving company goal after they got to "a computer in every home (running Microsoft software)." Both read true to me, as a 20-something who never really appreciated Microsoft during its dominance. By the time I got to high school, Apple had already switched to Intel, and I purchased the first iPhone for $600 in 10th grade. I've never used Outlook, and I don't think I ever will.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#3> Here’s my stab at it: Microsoft services, sending data to and from every networked device in the world. The next ubiquity isn’t running on every device, it’s talking to every device.
That sounds more like Google to me!
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#4> No company today has reach or influence anything like what Microsoft had during the golden era of the PC. Not Apple, not Google, and not Microsoft itself.
I think Google is pretty close, really. They obviously don't have an operating system for laptops or desktops that everyone uses, but using a computer without Google products is something that people just don't really do anymore. iOS, Android, OSX, Windows, Ubuntu, etc. no matter what you're probably using something Google wrote on it.
Which is really a very old-school Microsoft strategy brought up to date to the early 21st century. Google recognized that the OS doesn't matter anymore and Microsoft continued to believe it was everything.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#5I think this is an interesting contrast with PG's "Microsoft is Dead (2006)," because it points to a reason why Microsoft lost their hunger and dominance: they had no driving company goal after they got to "a computer in every home (running Microsoft software)." Both read true to me, as a 20-something who never really appreciated Microsoft during its dominance. By the time I got to high school, Apple had already swit…
It's going to take a hell of a lot from MS in order to have someone like me buy back in.
I'll present one of the other perspectives.
I was all-Microsoft, from MS DOS up through Windows Server 2003. Late 90s MCSE, nothing but MS. Most of my time was spent building and maintaining NT4.0 installations and then migrating to 2000.
I got tired of keeping pace with the amount of changes in all of the services somewhere between Server 2003 and Server 2008 and have since jumped ship.
Now I use entirely open source software and a mix of AWS instances and dedicated servers in various parts of the country for heavy lifting. (I work with multiple small companies rather than one large company that would benefit from the perfect AWS deployment.) This is after having spent time and personally maintained dozens of machines in half a dozen different data centers stretching back to 1998.
It's going to take a hell of a lot.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#6> No company today has reach or influence anything like what Microsoft had during the golden era of the PC. Not Apple, not Google, and not Microsoft itself. I think Google is pretty close, really. They obviously don't have an operating system for laptops or desktops that everyone uses, but using a computer without Google products is something that people just don't really do anymore. iOS, Android, OSX, Windows, Ubunt…
using a computer without Google products is something that people just don't really do anymore
This is rather naive. In certain circles yes but by far the majority of people use just their search.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#7I think this is an interesting contrast with PG's "Microsoft is Dead (2006)," because it points to a reason why Microsoft lost their hunger and dominance: they had no driving company goal after they got to "a computer in every home (running Microsoft software)." Both read true to me, as a 20-something who never really appreciated Microsoft during its dominance. By the time I got to high school, Apple had already swit…
It's going to take a hell of a lot from MS in order to have someone like me buy back in. I'll present one of the other perspectives. I was all-Microsoft, from MS DOS up through Windows Server 2003. Late 90s MCSE, nothing but MS. Most of my time was spent building and maintaining NT4.0 installations and then migrating to 2000. I got tired of keeping pace with the amount of changes in all of the services somewhere betw…
I did the opposite. I was a Unix/netware guy for years. Netware fell off a cliff and so did commercial Unix. Left me with Linux and FreeBSD.
Whilst I rather like FreeBSD, when I have to throw an architecture together that will survive over a decade, Microsoft wins every time. They're the only company which provides certainty. RedHat are close but their support sucks.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#8> No company today has reach or influence anything like what Microsoft had during the golden era of the PC. Not Apple, not Google, and not Microsoft itself. I think Google is pretty close, really. They obviously don't have an operating system for laptops or desktops that everyone uses, but using a computer without Google products is something that people just don't really do anymore. iOS, Android, OSX, Windows, Ubunt…
> Google recognized that the OS doesn't matter anymore and Microsoft continued to believe it was everything.
I think they recognize all too well that it matters, which is seen by the massive effort in developing and supporting Android, Chrome OS etc. This is just Googles version of Microsoft giving away IE.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#9> No company today has reach or influence anything like what Microsoft had during the golden era of the PC. Not Apple, not Google, and not Microsoft itself. I think Google is pretty close, really. They obviously don't have an operating system for laptops or desktops that everyone uses, but using a computer without Google products is something that people just don't really do anymore. iOS, Android, OSX, Windows, Ubunt…
using a computer without Google products is something that people just don't really do anymore This is rather naive. In certain circles yes but by far the majority of people use just their search.
Is there some particular reason to exclude that? Because most of those people who 'just' use their search use their search a lot.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#10> The world is in need of high-quality, reliable, developer-friendly, trustworthy, privacy-guarding cloud computing platforms.
That's the thing for me: That doesn't work anymore. Privacy-Guarding destroys that. Normally, I would fully agree that this is a good vision for Microsoft, continuing to be on the Desktop (especially corporate), trying to be on other markets and failing mostly, but becoming a big cloud player. But for me, the cloud is dead, and the NSA killed it - I try not to use it if it is not really helpful and without obvious privacy issues (like http://rsspusher.eu01.aws.af.cm/, appfrog was fine for that, I still think that even if it predates that thought). And I know I'm not alone with that attitude.
Maybe that doesn't mean that the cloud is dead, rather that there is a minority for which it is. I'm not sure how to predict the influence of the surveillance on the techological future. But what it means for sure is that for me and a few other guys, a Microsoft being a big cloud player would be as dead as it was before. We will see whether that matters.