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Microsoft, Past and Future

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Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#151

Post by Joeri »

JohnBooty wrote: post #137
Guvante wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.")

Microsoft doesn't make money from consumers because there is basically no money in the consumer software market (not billions of dollars anyway). They stay in the consumer market not for profit but for mindshare.

Balmer explained it in his exit interview:

Q: I'm curious why you guys are so taken with being a player in consumer. Why not 'just' be IBM? You're already so successful in enterprise, why not just focus there?

Ballmer: I would say -- and I'm going to actually even let John (Thompson) echo, because this is one where I think the board and I are on the same page together, but it takes some thinking to get there.

The key isn't are you in consumer or are you in enterprise. If you're going to be in e-mail, you're going to be in e-mail. You can't say, okay, I only want to be in enterprise e-mail. If you're in real time communications, what, you only want to let enterprise people talk to enterprise people but never talk to consumers? These experiences span.

Similarly, if you're in devices -- and we are in devices. With Windows, the Windows operating system means we are in device definition. And nobody has ever managed to figure out how to build a device for a user that was just enterprise or just consumer. These core experiences do span, 'consumer and enterprise.' These core devices span consumer and enterprise.

So I know there's a lot of press, blah, blah, blah about this, but the truth of the matter is I don't even know how you could opt, what it would mean to just opt to be all enterprise, unless you want to look like Oracle and not participate in certain high value activities, or you want to choose to look like Apple and not participate in certain enterprise activities. But that's not where we grew up. We grew up with a horizontal experience called Windows and Office that's equally applicable to people in their personal lives and their professional lives.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#153

Post by SloopJon »

nivla wrote: post #62
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which problems do Surface tablets solve? For example, iPhone completely changed my life overnight, mostly due to its navigation features and ability to look up phone numbers. I think Surface will only be dominant if it solves a problem for people. So, which problem does it solve, and why is it useful for people?

For me its the form factor + the power to use a full blown OS when travelling. I don't have to lug around my laptop anymore. On my way I can get some work done; when feeling tired I can switch to the Metro, play games for sometime and get back to work again. I find it to be really productive. I have also set it up so when I am back home it automatically syncs the changes to my laptop (using BitTorrent Sync).

I was disappointed that the iPad turned out to be essentially a giant iPhone. The Surface Pro looks like it finally delivers on the promise of a slate that runs a real O/S. There's a bit of sticker shock if you compare it to a Nexus or iPad, but it's not bad for an ultraportable with a high-res display and Wacom digitizer. I ordered the Ivy Bridge model during Best Buy's fire sale, and I'm looking forward to putting it through its paces.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#154

Post by vailripper »

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…

.NET is massive driver for their Enterprise business which is an absolute goldmine for them currently. So I'd say they're doing okay there.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#155

Post by okaram »

pmelendez wrote: post #124
whitef0x wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to add to that, quality of design that third party apps and native apps on Mac OSX seem to have (in general) is much higher; this brings the more 'artsy' and student vertical onboard. UI/UX has obviously been a large part of OSX for quite sometime, which is obviously aided by Apple's minimalist design philosophy. Moving from OSX to Windows I have noticed a large lack of ease of use and good UX flows in a…

>"Moving from OSX to Windows I have noticed a large lack of ease of use and good UX flows in a lot of third party apps." I would say that is because you were really used to OSX. I was the other way around and really dislike the whole OSX UI experience. I think it is just a bias based on our previous experience. Right now after moving freely between OSX, Ubuntu and Windows at different jobs for the last 5 years, I sti…

Have you tried Powershell ? It is pretty nice. If I didn't have 20 years experience with bash, I think I'd even prefer it to it.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#156

Post by mwfunk »

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 you describe in your first sentence is absolutely their MO. I don't think anyone making any sort of serious attempt to understand Microsoft ignores that or is unaware of that. The whole uncertainty surrounding Microsoft for the last 10 years (fair or not) is the fact that that approach doesn't work for them anymore and hasn't worked in years, their lack of dominance in the mobile industry being the prime example of that failure, despite having a significant head start (likewise for tablets). Yet, in a lot of ways, they still to this day cling to that strategy. You cited Netscape as an example, but Netscape is the most recent example I can think of of this strategy working for them.

I actually want Microsoft to succeed; I want them to do much better than they have been. Microsoft does certain things really well that their competitors don't, and I would especially love to see more competition in the mobile and tablet space. Their own processes and business strategies seem to have calcified around 2003, which have since dragged down a lot of things that could have been great products.

Totally tangential, but this is ignoring the fact that they actually have been doing really well in the one area that you would think would be the only thing people care about: profit. But no one seems to care about that, even though I personally don't think that that profit is going to dry up anytime soon. They could keep going like this forever, and people would still talk about how they're dead or dying. I understand why this is, it's just unfortunate that simply being a successful business isn't enough to avoid being branded a failure.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#157

Post by cgh »

shmerl wrote: post #148
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…

Netscape story? MS because dominant in browsers (for a while) because of the nasty lock-ins, not because of any positive iterating. Their own slowness became their downfall - IE didn't iterate for a long time, and when they realized that competition is way ahead it was too late for them. MS mentality barely changed. Lock-in remains their primary strategy in many areas (it's well described here: https://en.wikipedia.o…

Yes, exactly. And not just lock-in. For those that were around at the time, think of the IE5 tcp shenanigans to make IE seem "faster" when talking to IIS by messing with sequence numbers, sending RST instead of FIN, etc.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#158

Post by cgh »

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.

Disagree about C#/.NET "doing better" than Java (by which I think you mean more widely deployed). Java is nearly ubiquitous in big corps from Cisco to LinkedIn and everything in between. On the desktop, C# obvious wins, however.

But your point still stands: MS went from a standing start to a credible competitor, overcoming their early embrace-and-extinguish failures like Visual J++.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#159

Post by mwfunk »

mwfunk wrote: post #156
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 you describe in your first sentence is absolutely their MO. I don't think anyone making any sort of serious attempt to understand Microsoft ignores that or is unaware of that. The whole uncertainty surrounding Microsoft for the last 10 years (fair or not) is the fact that that approach doesn't work for them anymore and hasn't worked in years, their lack of dominance in the mobile industry being the prime example…

Also, I think a big problem with Microsoft's strategy is it's based on attempting to replicate the same level of success they enjoyed with Windows and Office. Microsoft's strategy isn't to become a strong competitor, Microsoft's strategy all too often is to attempt to become the overwhelming market share leader. They see that things like Windows and Office enjoy 90-95% market share in their respective market segments, so new products are designed with that goal in mind (achieving monopolies rather than trying to simply put great products on the market and having those products compete solely on their own merit). This is why everything they make tries to be everything to everyone, but such products usually end up appealing to no one.

I think a lot of Apple's success (one possible example of many) is due to the fact that they consciously don't try to please everyone. In fact, they make many decisions about such things knowing full well that those decisions will turn off many potential customers and put a ceiling on their potential market share. Their goal is to make what they think will be very desirable products for some target audience, as opposed to making something that they think will appeal to every customer in every segment of the market. IMO, Microsoft is constantly forcing itself to strive for an ambitious but impossible goal that tends to water down whatever the original product vision was.

Re: Microsoft, Past and Future

#160

Post by mortenjorck »

jrs99 wrote: post #88
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…

Microsoft isn't even close to where apple was in terms of hitting a low.

Another five years with Ballmer probably would have done it.
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