Funny, that seems to be what dropbox is going for with their new datastore API
Microsoft, Past and Future
181–190 of 203 posts
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#182What 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…
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#184What 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…
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they'd like that to be the case, but it hasn't worked yet in that division's decade-plus existence. Unless we're going to say that the XBox is helping them sell SQL Server and Office licenses over in the other divisions.
It's a long play. Xbox got them in to the fray. Xbox 360 got them to the front of the pack. Xbox One is probably where the plan is supposed to come together.
The NES came out in 1983-85, Playstation came out late 1994 and Xbox in late 2001. Microsoft came in with a fairly cold gaming brand and new image.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
No, that's revisionist history. IE 3 was a better browser than Netscape at the time, and IE 5 was much better than Netscape 4. CSS support, for example.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#187Earlier 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…
I wish Microsoft would could out with a desktop OS (like windows 7) with pixel scaling and a nice flat UI (so I don't have to install some sketchy theme that screws up my font sizes and close/minimize/maximize buttons)
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they do these projects more out of a concern of being shut out of other OS' the way Netscape was effectively shut out of Windows. And that shows in which of those platforms they've placed the most effort: the one where their competitor is the most likely to shut them out.
How was Netscape shut out of Windows?
This isn't really controversial, it was one of the major factors of the antitrust case against MS, and MS didn't argue they didn't do it, only that it wasn't illegal afaik.
[0] http://www.businessweek.com/1998/42/b3600109.htm [1] http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f2600/2613toc_htm.htm
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#189Earlier 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.
Re: Microsoft, Past and Future
#190Earlier 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.