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Microsoft is Dead (2007)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#71

Post by cpayne »

weixiyen wrote: post #61
wtallis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're referring to the visual style, but I think the comment you were replying to was about the structure and behavior more than mere skinning, and about differences that far predate iOS 7. There's a reason the term is "look and feel", not just "look"; that second half is where Apple so often distinguishes itself.

No. I'm not referring to the visual style alone. Microsoft didn't just do flat UI to be cool. There was a purpose behind it to focus on content first, the same thing literally is being preached by Apple. Apple just executed better when it came down to it but they definitely borrowed many ideas from both Android and MS in terms of interaction alone.

I love the live tiles in Windows. No idea why Apple ignored that...

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#72

Post by coldtea »

Beltiras wrote: post #42

I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted) and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid ( http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm ). Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest. His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her inv…

>I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones*

You mean like the plastic Cube, G3, G4, Macbook and iPod's that preceded them during Jobs tenure? Only with even better and novel quality plastics used?

>and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted)

Jobs probably knew about the mini all along, it takes more than a year to prototype and ship such a device. Besides, what jobs "resisted" or not is mere speculation, unless there are actual sources of him rejecting them. But even then, Jobs, according to witness accounts, changed ideas about lots of things he once rejected (e.g the iBooks).

>and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid. Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest.

At a time when the warchest was still small. When Jobs died it rivalled the US economy. After some point it's silly to ammass even more money.

>His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money.

Only, whatever the board thinks, the invester CAN go elsewhere with that money, and that would have an effect on stock, morale etc. Better throw a bone and keep investors happy too.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#73

Post by insaneirish »

Beltiras wrote: post #68
insaneirish wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first iPad mini was introduced on 2012-10-23. Steve Jobs died on 2011-10-05. It's certain that Steve both knew about the iPad mini and supported its development. Apple's hardware development takes time and does not shift on a dime. "Apple is no longer hungry, nor foolish" is such a facile statement that means absolutely nothing.

I was actually rephrasing my point, using the quote. Sheding money as dividends means Apple is not hungry. Having no visionary guide to quell the aversion of risk, Apple is no longer foolish. I'm a bit embarrassed having to explain it.

Their war chest will remain strategically as big as it needs to be. The amount of cash they have is ridiculous.

And while an Icahn sized stock buy back is probably too much, their current buy back makes all the sense in the world. The stock is tremendously undervalued.

You can't say it more eloquently than Warren Buffet: "If you could buy dollar bills for 80 cents, it's a very good thing to do." [1]

[Disclosure: I am long AAPL.]

1: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/03/04/apple-warren-buffett-...

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#74

Post by coldtea »

LeicaLatte wrote: post #48

Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch. Xbox took gaming to next level, especially online gaming and managed to build a great ecosystem for games. The younger ones, in the last line, are all actually playing on Xbox. Microsoft has greater identification among younger people as brand than say, Apple given their…

>Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch.

Yes, clearly he's not a 17-something gamer.

He also focused on things that matter. In Microsoft's bottom lime, the Xbox is marginal at best. For ages it has not even be profitable.

Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft.

To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry, compared to IT/mobile sales.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#75

Post by ajcarpy2005 »

Microsoft is lumbering and beurocratic but they do actually ship a lot of code and support the developer community. Xbox is also very successful obviously. Windows 8 was a huge flop in most people's opinion due to terrible user interface, despite the welcome creation of a Windows app store.

They still have a lot of momentum behind them because of all the PC applications that only work with Windows.

It's an interesting reality that Apple has their OS locked "officially" with their own hardware. In that respect, Microsoft seems more open to hardware competition. (IMO)

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#77

Post by simonh »

us0r wrote: post #52

2007 - $51.12 billion 2013 - $77.85 billion I'd love to die like that.

People were saying that about BlackBerry right up until a few years ago. Where are the true mobile versions of Office or Outlook? When will Windows 8+ become anything other than a painful mess for ordinary users? Will anyone ever ship a Metro app anyone cares about?

The old Microsoft isn't part of the computing platform of the future, mobile and services, but the server division is. For the division Nadella is from, their competition aren't Apple or Yahoo or even Google, it's Rackspace and AWS. For them Apple etc are customers and allies. The old Microsoft is dead in the water, but can a new Microsoft fully emerge from its shadow to take a valuable place in the future of the computing industry?

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#78

Post by schuke »

beefman wrote: post #28
eldavido wrote: post #10

It's really interesting how in 2007, I believed (as did pg, seemingly) that the web would eventually overtake desktop software. Fast forward seven years, and some of the biggest names in software (Instagram, Lyft) have completely abandoned the web for "desktop" (really, native) software. That so much code ships directly to mobile devices says a lot about the power of centralized app stores and truly sandboxed install…

The critical characteristic of the desktop here isn't its use of native code. It's more the local filesystem. Many mobile apps use network data. From this perspective they have more in common with web apps than with desktop software. Despite this, I'm inclined to agree that the web is threatened. The desktop may be defined by local files but the web wasn't defined by remote ones. It was more about the culture. More a…

> It's not that people who learned to compute on the desktop are abandoning it for mobile. It's that most people couldn't handle desktop computing in the first place.

Totally agree. For most everyday scenarios, using Windows is like flying a Boeing 737 for your daily commute: it's a huge overkill, requiring way too much setting up and maintenance and when you incidentally touches one switch the whole thing stops working.

Windows 8 didn't take off because what MSFT did was in addition to all the panels of the 737, they put an iPad in the cabin. For those familiar with Windows that's no big deal: this is why we see people shrug off all the Win 8 hate, saying "it's just Windows 7 plus touching interface". But for those had trouble coping with Windows in the first place, it's now doubly confusing.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#80

Post by FleshGordon »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #70
us0r wrote: post #52

2007 - $51.12 billion 2013 - $77.85 billion I'd love to die like that.

Giving the inflation levels of the years in between, I wont say they have grown so much.

Adjusted for inflation they started at 59,03$bn. That's not startup levels of growth for obvious reasons but the growth is very real.
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