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Microsoft is Dead (2007)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#121

Post by codeulike »

angryasian wrote: post #60
primitivesuave wrote: post #18

The most common form of Microsoft-hate usually centers around how a company of such gargantuan size makes such gargantuan fuck-ups. But this is to be expected of companies of gargantuan size, and is certainly not limited to Microsoft alone (although recently they've had more than their fair share). My qualm with Microsoft is all the little things that they let slip through. Little things like having a control panel w…

I thought all the microsoft hate came from the anti competitive behaviour like - embrace, extend and extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish , along with documented anti competitive behavior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft and similar patent trolling against linux and most recent android.

All of those things that Microsof were hated for in the 90s are just mainstream tech business practice in 2014. For better or worse, they were trailblazers that big tech companies since have copied, not just a one-off bad guy. Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are all doing exactly the same stuff, where they can and where they calculate they can get away with it.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#122

Post by anonymfus »

pancakesown wrote: post #56
primitivesuave wrote: post #18

The most common form of Microsoft-hate usually centers around how a company of such gargantuan size makes such gargantuan fuck-ups. But this is to be expected of companies of gargantuan size, and is certainly not limited to Microsoft alone (although recently they've had more than their fair share). My qualm with Microsoft is all the little things that they let slip through. Little things like having a control panel w…

System Configuration (msconfig) for me was a huge, huge disappointment product after product by Microsoft. Sure it's for "power" users, but I think a lot of people want to make certain applications not start up at boot, and not all software makes it easy to do in application. For more than a decade I have waited for them to allow resizing the damn window so I can read something more than the first few letters of an a…

In Windows 8 they moved this functionality to new Task manager, and it's window is resizable.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#123

Post by seanmcdirmid »

codeulike wrote: post #121
angryasian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought all the microsoft hate came from the anti competitive behaviour like - embrace, extend and extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish , along with documented anti competitive behavior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft and similar patent trolling against linux and most recent android.

All of those things that Microsof were hated for in the 90s are just mainstream tech business practice in 2014. For better or worse, they were trailblazers that big tech companies since have copied, not just a one-off bad guy. Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are all doing exactly the same stuff, where they can and where they calculate they can get away with it.

IBM existed before Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#124

Post by codeulike »

yzzxy wrote: post #20
mehwoot wrote: post #5

Microsoft as the concept of an all powerful dominating IT company is dead, and nothing has or will replace it. The company itself is still doing fine- they still make roughly twice the profit google did last financial year.

Is that just net profit, or does it account for growth? Net profit is not always a good metric for a large company's performance, as there are a lot of incentives to keep that number down and invest money back into the business (such as taxes). Amazon, for example, almost always operates near or at a loss from a quarterly or yearly perspective, but makes huge growth as business.

This Ballmer slide from a few months ago compares Microsoft financials to some of the other big players.

https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728

Pretty interesting: they are still big, and they are arguably much more diversified than any other the other big players.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#125

Post by polymatter »

jmnicolas wrote: post #44

It's a good thing Microsoft is "dead" so now when appropriate we can use MS tech without having to endure the critics. As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS.

I think you mean "Google is much more scary than MS". The gerund doesn't make a lot of sense in this context.

For bonus fluency points, it reads better if you say "I fear Google much more than MS".

I apologize if feedback on your English was unwanted.

---

On another note, I generally agree. Google has a lot more scope for evil than Microsoft does. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish applies to what appeared to some Google properties too (eg Reader).

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#126

Post by adamconroy »

spaceborn wrote: post #27
adamconroy wrote: post #4

It is an insightful piece but nothing annoys me more than sensationalism. Its click bait and I am annoyed I got sucked into reading it and annoyed that I feel compelled to waste time commenting. Anyway, if it isn't obvious, the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead. Microsoft clearly isn't dead it just isn't the biggest player on the internet, and isn't really a player in the start up space.

> the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead How? The author clearly doesn't mean "out of business" when he says "dead". He means that what Microsoft once was, or what it represented, is dead. The idea once conveyed by the word "Microsoft" is dead. It's not sensationalist clickbait, it's a metaphor.

If they were really dead he wouldn't need to say it, it wouldn't be of interest to say it, and he wouldn't have bothered saying it. Microsoft only needs to be concerned when people stop banging on about them.

It would have been better if had said he wished they were dead because he doesn't like them, or because he thinks they are bullies or he thinks they are ruining the web or something of that nature. I would respect that.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#129

Post by okwa »

primitivesuave wrote: post #18

The most common form of Microsoft-hate usually centers around how a company of such gargantuan size makes such gargantuan fuck-ups. But this is to be expected of companies of gargantuan size, and is certainly not limited to Microsoft alone (although recently they've had more than their fair share). My qualm with Microsoft is all the little things that they let slip through. Little things like having a control panel w…

In XP, when connecting to a wireless network, you are required to type the network's password twice. How the UI team came to that decision I'll never know.

Re: Microsoft is Dead (2007)

#130

Post by Nilzor »

"no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway."

That was a false statement in 2007 and is still today. I'm the evidence, if no one else. And I don't think I'm alone, although it does puzzle me when I see Microsoft evangelists at conferences holding speeches from Apple computers.

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