Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 237 posts

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#191

Post by gigatexal »

stonogo wrote: post #190
sealeck wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An incredibly irrelevant comparison which kind of ignores thinking and just reduces things to "haha I have more money than you so I'm more important" (a strange way to think).

Paul Graham lives in a bubble. This article ignores the entirety of the actual real world because he talked to one person who didn't understand a reference to ancient history. Microsoft's entire business model has changed, but Paul Graham's bubble hasn't. Every single startup Paul's company funds uses a Microsoft product one way or another. YCombinator is giving out Azure credits to their funded startups. When Sam Al…

You said it better than I did. I was trying to say just this.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#192

Post by aprilthird2021 »

roenxi wrote: post #4

My favourite paragraph was "The most obvious is Google. There can only be one big man in town, and they're clearly it. Google is the most dangerous company now by far, in both the good and bad senses of the word. Microsoft can at best limp along afterward" Is Google dying or dead in this sense now too? I can't think of any company they've bullied recently but maybe I'm just not in their space. All the excitement seem…

The number one signal of the death of Microsoft was the emergence of a newcomer (Google) who took off in a world they didn't operate in. Who does that today? I can't think of a company like that personally...

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#193

Post by aprilthird2021 »

breadwinner wrote: post #158
karterk wrote: post #5

Satya saved Microsoft by doubling down on Azure and Cloud. Something that Balmer failed to do with Mobile.

... by becoming OSS friendly, and especially Linux friendly. Prior to that Microsoft and Azure were irrelevant because nobody wanted to run their backends on Windows.

Azure always had a very large and devoted following of corps who were all in on Windows, even in the early days when everything Azure ran on Windows. They had a very deep fanbase which caused them to not see things from the Silicon Valley perspective

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#194

Post by AlchemistCamp »

josefrichter wrote: post #95
buran77 wrote: post #14

> Their [n.b Apple's] victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops So nearly all of the (relatively) very few people that are funded by YC have Apple and that's proof of Apple's complete victory over a dead MS. In a year when MS was still on an upward trend, growing by 20% market cap to become double that o…

This also reminds me of "garage startups". In fact, probably only a fraction of people around the world own a garage. If your family has a garage, it means you are probably among the top ~1% richest people on Earth.

That’s silly. When I was growing up, we always had a garage and my family was ~25% under the median income. Hundreds of millions of Americans have a garage at home and it’s not the richest 2/3 of the country. It’s basically the people outside the largest cities.

There are probably about an equal number of people living in a home with a garage in China too, though it’s wealthier suburban areas as opposed to lower and middle class people.

They’re common in Japan, too, outside of the densest few cities. And of course there are plenty of other countries where garages are common, like Canada and Australia.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#195

Post by robertlagrant »

thesuitonym wrote: post #111
robertlagrant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family golden nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower that allows one to fail many times and still be able to try again until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world can't even afford to try. Most of the rest can't…

From Wikipedia: Graham received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in philosophy from Cornell University in 1986. He then received a Master of Science in 1988, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1990, both in computer science from Harvard University. Graham has also studied fine arts and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. Note that most people can't even afford to go…

> Note that most people can't even afford to go to one university, let alone four. That definitely seems like someone who had a safety net that allowed him to focus on acquiring wealth, instead of acquiring shelter or food.

In 1986 a smart person who was willing to live cheaply could definitely do this. Doing a PhD is not evidence of a "family golden nugget", in my view. I don't know when he did his art studies, but still. Giant numbers of middle class people do not do what Paul Graham did, even though they had enough "safety net" to do that studying.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#196

Post by robertlagrant »

DonnyV wrote: post #109
robertlagrant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family golden nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower that allows one to fail many times and still be able to try again until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world can't even afford to try. Most of the rest can't…

Yup, nepo kid "...father worked for Westinghouse, modelling nuclear reactors, then was named the Director of Nuclear Safety for Atomic Energy of Canada" https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/16002

I don't understand. Are you saying Paul Graham got a job at Westinghouse due to nepotism?

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#197

Post by robertlagrant »

graemep wrote: post #102
robertlagrant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading rich people's blogs reminds me every time that there's a reason wealth is also called "fortune". Because it's more about luck than anything else. And by luck I mean a family golden nugget, or lucky first investment, or both. A superpower that allows one to fail many times and still be able to try again until they hit the next fortune. Most people in the world can't even afford to try. Most of the rest can't…

I do not know about Paul Graham in particular, but it is true of many rich people.

I know it's an oft-recited thing in the last decade or so, but I don't really understand it. It's true that in markets with lots of value to provide someone will win, and probably make lots of money, but to do so they would have to out-compete all the other people. That is extremely difficult, and calling it luck just seems a bit silly. People who got rich through building businesses aren't like lottery winners or heirs of fortunes. Why pretend they are, and what's behind that mindset?

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#198

Post by graemep »

robertlagrant wrote: post #197
graemep wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know about Paul Graham in particular, but it is true of many rich people.

I know it's an oft-recited thing in the last decade or so, but I don't really understand it. It's true that in markets with lots of value to provide someone will win, and probably make lots of money, but to do so they would have to out-compete all the other people. That is extremely difficult, and calling it luck just seems a bit silly. People who got rich through building businesses aren't like lottery winners or he…

Because it is demonstrably true for many people that luck or family influence or money played a factor.

They may have had to compete with other people in the same advantages in the same business - which may not be very many.

There is an overlap between people who build businesses and heirs of fortunes. Far more people increase an existing fortune than become rich from scratch.

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#199

Post by buran77 »

fogpudding wrote: post #177
buran77 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a bunch of people misunderstood his point the same way you're doing Nobody implied he meant "dead dead" so that's a straw man, just that he completely missed the mark with his observation. Everything else is a backsplanation. PG even acknowledges he may look like a fool in retrospective. > He was talking about cultural dominance among people developing new tech [...] Everyone's using Macs So... a cultural thing you…

They implied that he meant Microsoft's financials were in trouble, when he was more saying that Microsoft had become the new IBM. I don't think Macs are popular in tech merely due to frivolous or circular fashion. Basically no one used Windows to do 2009-2016 era web dev. Not because founders were pushing employees to use Macs so investors would see when they came to visit; Microsoft genuinely lost a lot of reputatio…

> genuinely lost a lot of reputation

Billionaires also genuinely lost a lot of reputation. Present discussion and times stands proof. "Billionaires are dead", to mirror PG's sentiment. Surely you agree that having an opinion on rich people's predictive powers is at least as relevant and justified as having an opinion on MS's future.

PG called MS dead by observing a cultural/fashion trend among a sliver of the IT crowd and predicted a larger shift that never happened to any meaningful degree. He missed that what he was looking at wasn't truly of interest to MS. The 90% of regular users were and they had way more inertia than what PG though the few people in his line of sight could oppose.

> how rich and pretentious he is

Rich yes. "Pretentious" is your assessment. I made no moral judgement on the man. Just counterbalancing the common narrative seen even here that rich people have a superior intellects, they see things others don't even in the dark uncertainty of the future. In reality it's mostly bias, successes are praised, failures downplayed. It tricks people into believing rich people are oracles, or that not rich means not intelligent. You don't object to the praising and you'll fight to support that bias? That looks disingenuous.

> If he's wrong, why not just say why?

I did, repeatedly. You just cared more about responding than about understanding. No amount of "saying why" will change your mind because there's always some other place to shift the goal posts. "It's cultural but actually technical. It's dead but just dead for some coders. It's just a few coders but SV is all that matters. Time proved it wrong but it surprised everyone." You'll also put words in my mouth that I absolutely never suggested hoping it brings my argument low enough that you think you have a chance of fighting it. Not in a million throwaway accounts ;).

Re: Microsoft Is Dead (2007)

#200

Post by carlosjobim »

caspper69 wrote: post #178
carlosjobim wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your intuition is anecdotal. Plenty of people either don't care, or gasp prefer Windows. They are not stupid (I'm one of them, which I'd be happy to discuss with anyone, up to and including Mr. Torvalds). You're one of who?

> Plenty of people either don't care, or gasp prefer Windows.

Your statement could have been interpreted a different way ;)

> Your intuition is anecdotal.

Absolutely. I'm talking about what I've seen around the world in the past decade or so. When I have visitors who have never used a MacBook, they want to touch it and try it, they comment on how nice it is. And this is a design that hasn't changed much in 10 years.

In airports and cafés, I see more people using MacBooks than PC laptops, but this could be related to that PC laptop battery life generally doesn't allow you to bring the computer far from home without a cord.

> Plenty of people either don't care

Yes, as I've mentioned. And they usually don't buy a computer at all, and are happy with their smart phone and/or tablet. Some people buy the cheapest laptop they can find because their job demanded it. They won't care either, the computer is just an extension of their job and they hate the device.

And of course, a whole lot of people cannot afford anything but a cheap laptop if they need a laptop. But Apple is dangerously close to approaching these customers' budget with the Mac Mini. And if you consider re-sale value, there is even less reason to buy any other brand.

Post reply on HN