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Microsoft, Past and Future

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Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#131

Post by antimagic »

stormbrew wrote: post #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, Ubunt…

No, not really. It's still exceedingly easy to make Google a bit player in your life. For example, I use Apple gear for my home computer / phone / tablet (although I have a custom AOSP tablet for work - we flash our own firmware for it though, so it's not really google-y). I use Google for maybe 5% of my searches, I only use GMail for work, and quite frankly we could switch at a moment's notice to another email solution), and I only use Google Maps when I want to look at a map on my work PC, which runs linux.

Apart from the 5% of search that I find I need Google for, the rest is very easy to switch out. Compare that to the world of computing in the 90s. Your computer needed to be able to read FAT32. Your web site needed to work well for IE. There was only one valid office suite out there. Most peripherals only came with Windows drivers, shutting everyone else out of the fun. Indeed one part of the rebirth of the Mac was the recognition that peripheral driver support would have to be done in-house, rather than relying on 3rd parties to provide Mac drivers for their products.

The Microsoft dominance of the 90s made computing on competing platforms difficult. Google does not have anything like that level of domination / lock-in.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#132

Post by Guvante »

DrJokepu wrote: post #85
beloch wrote: post #28

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, b…

> 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 ... When was the last time they have actually managed to pull this off? Maybe the Xbox? It was never dominant or an area of profit. .NET? Never dominant or a di…

I don't know why you are saying the Xbox was never dominant. I don't think anyone could see the 360 doing any better. .NET is doing extremely well given the alternatives.

Azure is picking up speed fairly well too.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#133

Post by jasonpbecker »

bane wrote: post #117

"Steve Fucking Jobs said that. He was exactly right." Well it's good he said that, otherwise Gruber would twist himself into a knot trying to argue otherwise. Though this is interesting "If we include all iOS and Android devices the “computing” market in Q3 2008 was 92 million units of which Windows was 90%, whereas in Q3 2013 it was 269 million units of which Windows was 32%." Actually doing the math, Q3 2008, Micro…

> I mean, nobody really conflated these categories when it was just Blackberries and video game consoles. Do I get to add Xbox units to this too?

Did Xbox or Blackberry serve as direct substitutes for traditional PCs? No. Have Android and iOS phones and tablets serve as direct substitutes for traditional PCs? Yes.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#134

Post by herge »

angersock wrote: post #129
DrJokepu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ... When was the last time they have actually managed to pull this off? Maybe the Xbox? It was never dominant or an area of profit. .NET? Never dominant or a di…

Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox 360... yeah, sorry, they pretty much perfectly illustrated that point. Considering the early advantage Java had over C#, who seems to be laughing now? Business apps (you know, the boring 90% of software) seems overwhelmingly in favor of those two languages, with C# doing a bit better. I think you're rather wrong.

C# also begets MSSQL.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#135

Post by DrJokepu »

Guvante wrote: post #132
DrJokepu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ... When was the last time they have actually managed to pull this off? Maybe the Xbox? It was never dominant or an area of profit. .NET? Never dominant or a di…

I don't know why you are saying the Xbox was never dominant. I don't think anyone could see the 360 doing any better. .NET is doing extremely well given the alternatives. Azure is picking up speed fairly well too.

I don't think Xbox ever dominated the console market the way Windows dominated the desktop operating system market or Office dominated the office application suite market. Not even close. Same goes for .NET. These are clearly very successful products but are very far from "dominating the market".

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#136

Post by bane »

jasonpbecker wrote: post #133
bane wrote: post #117

"Steve Fucking Jobs said that. He was exactly right." Well it's good he said that, otherwise Gruber would twist himself into a knot trying to argue otherwise. Though this is interesting "If we include all iOS and Android devices the “computing” market in Q3 2008 was 92 million units of which Windows was 90%, whereas in Q3 2013 it was 269 million units of which Windows was 32%." Actually doing the math, Q3 2008, Micro…

> I mean, nobody really conflated these categories when it was just Blackberries and video game consoles. Do I get to add Xbox units to this too? Did Xbox or Blackberry serve as direct substitutes for traditional PCs? No. Have Android and iOS phones and tablets serve as direct substitutes for traditional PCs? Yes.

> Did Xbox or Blackberry serve as direct substitutes for traditional PCs?

Yes. If you don't think a Blackberry served as an entire mobile office, almost replacing PCs for most use-cases, for millions of road warriors, then you never had one or lived through that time.

The Xbox line has replaced PCs as both a gaming platform for millions as well as a media center and emulation platform for many many others. XBMC after all means "Xbox Media Center".

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#137

Post by JohnBooty »

Guvante wrote: post #132
DrJokepu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ... When was the last time they have actually managed to pull this off? Maybe the Xbox? It was never dominant or an area of profit. .NET? Never dominant or a di…

I don't know why you are saying the Xbox was never dominant. I don't think anyone could see the 360 doing any better. .NET is doing extremely well given the alternatives. Azure is picking up speed fairly well too.

They sold a lot of XBox 360s, but that division has never made much money, which is the point.

References: http://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earn...

(Of course, check out "gross margin" and not "revenue.")

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#138

Post by bovermyer »

beloch wrote: post #28

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, b…

Speaking as an artist, my Samsung Series 7 Slate running Windows 8 with the Mischief art application is pretty much the perfect portable digital art studio for me.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#139

Post by [deleted] »

simonh wrote: post #59
dingle_thunk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple were not the first company to create a phone with navigation features. Surface is a tablet which can also run Photoshop, AutoCAD, MATLAB, Visual Studio, Flash, and whatever other weird legacy apps are kicking around. It can multitask. It has a proper digitizer. It has a kickstand and a very innovative cover. Yes it's not a laptop. No it doesn't have the Android store. That doesn't mean it's useless. (P.S. just…

You had me interested right up until Flash. Really? Adobe and Autodesk all have multiple apps on iOS. How many Metro apps have they released? That's the metric that counts when we're talking about tablets. All the software you're talking about only really works in desktop/laptop mode with a mouse. As long as that is true, MS will be an also-ran in the tablet space.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#140

Post by stinos »

GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #76
josteink wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure has been playing catcup with aws for quite some time now. And it shows. A year ago I wouldn't even consider Azure as a platform. Now I'm starting to wonder if AWS is worth it. They've been iterating like crazy .

All I can add is that, from a fairly n00by point of view, Windows Azure is easy to use and clear, AWS is messy and difficult. Also the free trial of Azure is brilliant, the AWS is so crippled it makes it feel like their whole service is lame.

Nail on the head. I eveluated both of them a month ago, and while functionality-wise thay seemed pretty much alike, usability-wise Azure kinda owned AWS all over the place.
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