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Microsoft, Past and Future

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Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#21

Post by spiderPig »

NDizzle wrote: post #5
jitl wrote: post #2

I 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…

That doesn't sound like a good habit to have in this industry, things change and software evolves. Android's first few versions sucked..a lot for instance. Heck, most the of the early versions of OSS suck. Are you saying there should be a constant rate of change? If you're a programmer, you should really try coding on Visual Studio 2012/.NET/F# and C#. It's a breeze. Very smooth compared to Eclipse.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#22

Post by 23arboo »

temuze wrote: post #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!

Microsoft can can do in the enterprise, they are entrenched pretty deep!

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#23

Post by no_gravity »

"Microsoft services, sending data to and from every networked device in the world"

There already are servers sending data everywhere. For example the servers of Google, Facebook and Wikipedia. How would Microsoft convince those guys or new companies to get rid of their solid, free and open stack and pay for Microsofts closed stuff?

This is much different from "A computer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software". Back then, there where no computers on desks and homes to begin with.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#24

Post by 23arboo »

tempestn wrote: post #12

This piece seems pretty spot-on all around. That said, I don't know anything about Mr. Nadella, but I have spent a significant chunk of time trying to use the Bing API from the Azure market, as well as competing products from Yahoo and Google. I found the Microsoft API to be significantly behind both competitors in features, performance, documentation, terms of use, and price. Even with Yahoo BOSS using Bing's index,…

Speculation: Azure will get a decent priority now that Nadedlla is CEO. Azure has been playing catcup with aws for quite some time now.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#25

Post by csmithuk »

acqq wrote: post #19
csmithuk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sorry but I just can't believe you're real. Red Hat has the most stable (measued in the years of support without the change in the underlying technologies) OS configurations of all commercial offerings. What was that that you got better supported from Microsoft than from Red Hat? Specifics please.

Actually no. We get 13-14 years out of Microsoft offerings which is enough lead time for test, provisioning and an 8-10 year lifecycle. Plus due to overlap we have enough time to test v.next.

With respect to support you get a very narrow configuration of supported software and hardware with RH. Keeping it rolling isn't as easy as it looks. The developer support is awful as well. Documentation is shitty,you're tied to C++/JDK versions that are ancient etc. Also no MSDN, no partner support (which is pretty awesome). My few dealings with RedHat support have left us without a solution.

For ref - platforms: Exchange, Windows Server, IIS, SQL Server (the latter I've got an installation that has been cleanly upgraded since 1996 though TWO versions)

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#26

Post by josteink »

stormbrew wrote: post #9
csmithuk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People use Google-search because it's the default in all browsers.

That's why Google is still paying Mozilla money to make it the default in Firefox and it's why Google made Android and Chrome to be able to control what web-services people use by default, also on their mobile devices.

If the defaults switch from Google, most people wont notice. If you have any doubts about that, observe all people which has their search hijacked by malware.

Their search page has been diverted to a scummy non-Google page and nobody notices that anything is wrong.

Google definitely has a strong hold on the web, but they're a lot more fragile than you think.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#27

Post by csmithuk »

no_gravity wrote: post #23

"Microsoft services, sending data to and from every networked device in the world" There already are servers sending data everywhere. For example the servers of Google, Facebook and Wikipedia. How would Microsoft convince those guys or new companies to get rid of their solid, free and open stack and pay for Microsofts closed stuff? This is much different from "A computer on every desk and in every home running Micros…

Depends on what you mean by data.

Google/Facebook mean social and crudely document shaped data. Wikipedia means data that looks like encylopedia pages.

Microsoft mean ANY data you want to shift with the same languages and tools across all platform form factors which is why people buy into the ecosystem. Even going back to 2004, I could knock out an app (in C++/C#) that worked on the desktop, on the web and on mobile devices. In fact I did and it's still in use today managing private couriers with minimal code changes.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#28

Post by beloch »

What I find surprising is that, in the process of writing a historical review on Microsoft, anyone would ignore the fact that MS has repeatedly identified areas of profit, moved in, failed spectacularly, iterated aggressively, and ultimately become dominant, at least for a time. e.g. What killed Netscape?

Microsoft's surface tablets are signs of big things to come. They're currently too expensive for what they are, but they could find a huge niche. They're portable tablets meant for content creation, not mere consumption. If you want a tablet that will let you draw, take notes, etc. as easily as on paper, iPads aren't even close to the current Surface. The surface pro would have been exactly what I wanted in undergrad physics for a lecture-hall machine. Many artists probably feel the same way now.

Tablets have long been too underpowered to tackle real creative tasks. The surface proves that the hardware has changed, although the cost is still high. I expect the next few generations of surfaces to get cheaper and more refined rapidly. People who love tablets are soon going to want something more than a glorified phone, and the Surface is going to be the go-to option.

Yeah, so MS might dominate the content-creation/student/artist tablet niche. Big whoop. Well, success in any consumer hardware niche might do for MS what it did for Apple. Namely, make them a huge pile of cash and jump-start their supply-chain so they can move into other areas. It might not play out this way. Apple has been looking for ways to make the iPad more content-creation friendly beyond just marketing them as such. Still, iOS on an iPad is a huge step behind Win8 on a Surface pro for creative tasks right now. All MS has to do is keep iterating the Surface and avoid another Vista-style PR blunder with Win9.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#29

Post by CamperBob2 » 

   Steve Fucking Jobs said that (the desktop PC was dead and 
   innovation had virtually ceased). He was exactly right. 
   And who knows where we’d be today if Jobs and Next had not 
   been reunified with Apple the next year.
As a Windows user, I suspect I'd be about where I am today, except that I wouldn't have to install ClassicShell to get rid of Metro.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#30

Post by gnaffle »

csmithuk wrote: post #25
acqq wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but I just can't believe you're real. Red Hat has the most stable (measued in the years of support without the change in the underlying technologies) OS configurations of all commercial offerings. What was that that you got better supported from Microsoft than from Red Hat? Specifics please.

Actually no. We get 13-14 years out of Microsoft offerings which is enough lead time for test, provisioning and an 8-10 year lifecycle. Plus due to overlap we have enough time to test v.next. With respect to support you get a very narrow configuration of supported software and hardware with RH. Keeping it rolling isn't as easy as it looks. The developer support is awful as well. Documentation is shitty,you're tied to…

How are you any more tied to old JDK versions on Linux, compared to Microsoft? Also, I'm curious to what requirements you have that makes it OK to upgrade hardware and apply service packs and Java updates, but not to do OS release upgrades on Linux?
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