Microsoft is interesting again

Player in what? The Surface looks interesting but its very, very expensive compared to either a laptop or a tablet. Their phones are underwhelming regardless of their massive 'mobile/cloud' first initiatives and are now the bottom-basement phone for the ultra cheap buyer. Office365 is interesting but predates Nadella's leadership. Azure never panned out to be the Windows EC2. OSX keeps eating up laptop marketshare (go to any college campus, no one has windows). Surface RT was a complete disaster. Win8 was underwhelming at best.

On the enterprise side of things, a lot of sysadmins are shocked at the low quality of security updates and the massive delay in getting them out. How many were recalled in 2014? Nadella's personal mission at MS was redoing QA and as far as I can tell, he's somehow made it worse. Tabletizing interfaces in Win8 and Server 2013 was a questionable move. Office 2013 is a pig with lipstick and is known for its horror stories. Licensing has somehow gotten more bureaucratic and expensive.

I'm not fan of Ballmer, but I think the Ballmer/Gates magic was a real thing for a time, and its obvious this magic needed Gates to work. Nadella's Steve Jobs impersonation is becoming tiresome imo. The cloud/mobile first initiative ate from MS's core competencies- rock solid and featureful enterprise software. The only thing I can say about Nadella is that he's recognizing how important a classic start menu is for enterprise users and its coming back in Win10. Out of all of MS's products, Win10 is the only thing of interest. "Me toos" like its budget tablets/phones or the buying of skype or minecraft, just seem like desperate moves from a company that has lost its way. Frankly, I'd like to see enterprise broken off from loss leaders like surface (which is sold at a loss) and all the things its giving away for free as a sort of catch up to FOSS dominated and Apple dominated areas. One just seems to be eating the other, and the one being eaten is the moneymaker. MS is just too big and is chasing so many tails. Nadella fought to keep the xbox division when investors were pissed about it last year. How much political capital did it cost for him to keep that pig?

I certainly don't think MS is going to fail anytime soon, but I don't think its somehow changed its ways. Its still too many chefs chasing too many targets, many of which are probably unhittable for such a bureaucratic giant. Windows phone goes for 50 bucks nowadays and the sales are still unimpressive. Getting this late to the mobile game is a killer. There may be no way to recover lost marketshare that mobile has taken. How many billions will Nadella burn through trying? We're almost three years into the Surface line. When does it finally pay off? When do I actually see one in public?

Microsoft has always failed when they have tried to enforce their own standards in the industry. Moving away from this mistake and recognizing that promoting something that is relevant and makes sense is the only way to go forward is a huge step.

Funding new interesting ideas will always help them also secure a better seat in the open source community as most startups rely on open source technologies.

I didn't think this was horribly written until I saw the "move to SF" line about 8 times. Sorry, SF location isn't going to do anything for MSFT. So sick of all the fanboy shit about life in SF.

> The free version of Win 10 requires mandatory updates from Microsoft, not just security updates but app updates.

Are you from the future when the final version is out or can you back this up with some credible source?

> There is also a variety of user data tracking

Aren't you just saying that because the preview version was built specifically to provide lots of feedback data to microsoft (and they were pretty clear about it)?

Because a "preview build" and a "final product that is not even released yet" are different things, you know...

Unless you are just being a dick on the internet talking shit about things you don't know and don't even use. I heard that some people do that.

There will be three "branches": Consumer, Current & LTS.

Jan 2015, Terry Myerson of Microsoft, http://blogs.windows.com/business/2015/01/30/windows-10-for-...

"With Windows 10, the experience will evolve and get even better over time. We’ll deliver new features when they’re ready, not waiting for the next major release. We think of Windows as a Service – in fact, one could reasonably think of Windows in the next couple of years as one of the largest Internet services on the planet.

And just like any Internet service, the idea of asking “What version are you on?” will cease to make sense – which is great news for our Windows developers... Many consumers today expect their devices to receive ongoing feature updates without having to take an action. However, we understand that businesses require more control in how updates are delivered, and at what pace.

For example, systems powering hospital emergency rooms, air traffic control towers, financial trading systems, factory floors, just to name a few, may need very strict change management policies, for prolonged periods of time. To support Windows 10 devices in these mission critical customer environments we will provide Long Term Servicing branches at the appropriate time intervals.

... we are introducing a new approach for business customers, which we are referring to as the Current branch for Business. By putting devices on the Current branch for Business, enterprises will be able to receive feature updates after their quality and application compatibility has been assessed in the consumer market, while continuing to receive security updates on a regular basis."

Feb 2015, analysis of Jim Alcove (MS) blog post, http://blogs.windows.com/business/2015/01/30/windows-10-for-... & http://www.computerworld.com/article/2877983/microsoft-talks...

"Rather than rely on its decades-old practice of rolling out a new operating system every three years, Microsoft will stick with Windows 10 for much, much longer, updating the software on a frequent schedule with not only security fixes -- offered monthly since 2003 -- but also new features, new functionality and UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) changes and improvements.

The revamp, which experts have called Microsoft's biggest-ever change to its update and upgrade process, is integral to the firm's "Windows as a service" strategy."