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Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

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Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#131

Post by rikafurude21 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #113
rconti wrote: post #14

The web/webapps/mobile helped lead to this era of "desktop PCs" (to include laptops) where the browser mattered more than the OS. It allowed Apple to become resurgent in the desktop market because OS compatibility mattered less than ever. It's not weird that it led to Apple regaining _some_ market share because clearly there was demand for the Apple/MacOS/OS X experience that may have been tempered by incompatibility…

You mean alienate their desktop users by making chips specifically targeting them that are fast, run cool, quiet and have ridiculously long battery lives? You’ve seen much more frequent updates in the Mac line post ARM than you did in the Intel era.

Letting go of x86 was just one of the first steps on the road to a world completely dominated by mobile devices. Macs just caught up with all the progress that mobile devices had made when apple made the switch.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#132

Post by crazygringo »

GeekyBear wrote: post #24
crazygringo wrote: post #9

> Number one is that Microsoft just does not feel like a consumer tech company at all anymore. At least in terms of Windows/Office, Microsoft has never been a consumer tech company. They've always been focused on corporate sales. There have always been consumer-focused side areas, from Bob to Encarta to MSN to Xbox. But Microsoft's bread and butter has always been corporations. I don't understand how the author think…

> Microsoft has never been a consumer tech company. The Zune wasn't consumer tech? Windows 95 was definitely consumer tech. Windows XP was about making the Windows NT line accessible for home users going forward. Weirdly, Windows Phone was aimed at consumers at a time when they really could have leveraged integrations with products like Exchange and Office to stand out.

Zune belongs with Bob and Encarta. I said Microsoft has had side areas.

But Win 95 and XP were were absolutely built for corporations.

Sure, XP came in separate "Home" and "Professional" editions. But the important thing is that it was the Home version that was missing features to make it cheaper -- not that the Professional edition was primarily a consumer product with some business functionality bolted on.

Obviously Windows has always been used by both home users and corporate users. But the bulk of Microsoft's revenue has always been from corporations. There is no sense in which Win 95 was designed primarily for individual consumers, and then business sales were somehow secondary.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#133

Post by rowanG077 »

wongarsu wrote: post #45
rconti wrote: post #14

The web/webapps/mobile helped lead to this era of "desktop PCs" (to include laptops) where the browser mattered more than the OS. It allowed Apple to become resurgent in the desktop market because OS compatibility mattered less than ever. It's not weird that it led to Apple regaining _some_ market share because clearly there was demand for the Apple/MacOS/OS X experience that may have been tempered by incompatibility…

Apple is at least in part operating like they are a fashion brand. Functionality and usability are secondary to looks. Both in their devices and their software. It's hard to argue they aren't successful with that. It probably helps that Microsoft has also abandoned usability, just for very different reasons

I'm not sure that's true. Apple has arguably the best laptops there is in terms of hardware. Making the highest end SoC year after year. That's not operating like a fashion brand.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#134

Post by encom »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #117
wongarsu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is at least in part operating like they are a fashion brand. Functionality and usability are secondary to looks. Both in their devices and their software. It's hard to argue they aren't successful with that. It probably helps that Microsoft has also abandoned usability, just for very different reasons

Are you complaining that Apple is releasing computers that are fast, quiet and with a ridiculous long battery life that are well built as “not functional”?

Apple has famously been form over function almost since their inception.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#135

Post by encom »

Kye wrote: post #96
riversflow wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. The Apple experience, at least on the OS side, matters less and less in the webapp world. I see it the opposite. At least for iPhone owners Universal Clipboard and file sharing with Airdrop are killer apps.

I didn't really get it until I Airdropped a shipping label PDF to the guy at the UPS store to print from his phone, which was already set up for the label printer.

File transfer! What will they think of next?

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#136

Post by samdoesnothing »

encom wrote: post #134
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you complaining that Apple is releasing computers that are fast, quiet and with a ridiculous long battery life that are well built as “not functional”?

Apple has famously been form over function almost since their inception.

This is true, with the caveat that their function is also best in class. And I mean yeah, they make gorgeous devices, but even if they were ugly id still choose them because they also work better than any alternatives.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#137

Post by maximus-decimus »

sedatk wrote: post #93

> The only thing of note they have added to Windows in the last five years is Copilot That's a quite unfair take, especially when it fails to compare it with what things of note Linux distros have added over the last five years. Valve made Windows emulation better, yes. That's it. What else? Actually, I wouldn't even call Copilot a thing of note. It's just ChatGPT-in-a-popup at the moment. A real thing of note is WSL…

I like WSL, but their search bars have gotten worse which really kills any good will I have towards them.

On my work computer, the search bar can't even find Intellij which is installed in a totally normal way. It's even in the same folder as clion in the program files and it can find that one. I also had a problem where the file explorer couldn't find a file by name and it made me look like an idiot.

You know what feature my menu bar has though? I tells me when the s&p 500 goes down in value to try to make me panic sell. That's a feature I really want in my work computer's os menu /s.

Also when I clicked on the time, it used to show me a calendar, but now it shows me a pomodoro app?

I don't want more features in notepad, what I want is the os to do basic stuff, like finding my programs and files or show me the time, right.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#138

Post by samdoesnothing »

rowanG077 wrote: post #133
wongarsu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is at least in part operating like they are a fashion brand. Functionality and usability are secondary to looks. Both in their devices and their software. It's hard to argue they aren't successful with that. It probably helps that Microsoft has also abandoned usability, just for very different reasons

I'm not sure that's true. Apple has arguably the best laptops there is in terms of hardware. Making the highest end SoC year after year. That's not operating like a fashion brand.

Some fashion brands (eg Lulu) make excellent quality products as well. Apple nails both form and function imo.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#139

Post by nitwit005 »

qgin wrote: post #17

Nobody seems to want to use Copilot, but Microsoft is in a great position when AGI "drop-in office workers" become a thing. They can just provision however many virtual coworkers to a Microsoft Teams instance and you'll be handing off documents and chatting with the AGI workers pretty much as you would any other remote worker. Microsoft doesn't have to be first or best here. Just owning the plumbing of so many presen…

People will just have the thing open in another window, and move the result over, rather than pay for a bunch of Teams licenses.

In general, we should expect more AI use to decrease the value of human oriented products. A word document is just some XML collection to a computer program. An AI won't need Word to create or edit the files.

Re: Are consumers just tech debt to Microsoft?

#140

Post by groundzeros2015 »

blizdiddy wrote: post #3
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Yeah, this book was hugely influential https://www.google.com/search?q=innovator%27s+dilemma&ie=UTF... And came to the conclusion that many firms like DEC and Xerox did not sufficiently move to new technology because their customers were not interested and didn’t feel served by it, at least not until it had decades to improve. Today we have the FOMO dilemma where executives all read that book and no way they are goin…

The “CTO” at my small employer used this book to explain why we needed to stick with Perl and Oracle 9i in 2020.

Would that have failed? It still works
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