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An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

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Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#231

Post by _-___________-_ »

tester34 wrote: post #131
_-___________-_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which are nowhere near the most common type of computer, so it's a fairly significant change.

honestly what kind of gymnatics we have to do in order to just accept the fact that windows is most popular os on desktop/home/work(non-server) PCs?

Sure, if "computer" to you means "laptop or desktop PC".

My smartphone is a computer, which I use at home and work, and it sure as hell doesn't run Windows. Smartphones are a far more significant type of computer in the modern world than laptop or desktop PCs.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#232

Post by 3pt14159 »

nailer wrote: post #184
3pt14159 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but their market cap is like 10x in the past decade. Their revenue streams are different now, yes, but they recognized they'd lost the platform with the SaaSification of most things and they wisely moved into other areas. Yes, they could have tried something else that kept them as the winners of the OS game, but vertical integration wasn't really in their bloodstream. Platforming and services were.

>> A decade later (when Ballmer finished) they lost all three and their market cap barely moved. > their market cap is like 10x in the past decade Steve Ballmer left 6 years ago. Pick your source regarding Microsoft's market cap while Ballmer was leading: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=steve+ballmer+market+cap https://duckduckgo.com/?q=microsoft+lost+decade

Oh, I'm wrong then. I was under the mistaken impression that he was CEO much more recently than that. Thanks for the correction, it appears that you're completely correct about his leadership.

Thanks for updating my view!

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#233

Post by pjmlp »

thekyle wrote: post #228
pjmlp wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point wasn't that it isn't available, and indeed lots of people use it to read documents. The point was about actually working on documents with a proper level of quality that aspires to good evaluations.

What features of Microsoft Office do you think are missing on mobile that a typical student would be required to use in school?

Starting by not having a keyboard and mouse available, good luck typing a 2 pages report on screen keyboard, let alone something with more deep content.

Then proper copy-paste workflows across applications when placing those pictures into the word document, alongside the table created in Excel for the respective field information and bar charts with the results.

Yes, it is doable, but better have lots of patience and time available to jump through all the obstacles to make it work on Android tablets.

There is also the possibility to use a pen instead, which again is very much hit and miss across Android tablets, more miss than hit actually, when compared with the capabilities of Windows Ink and surface pens.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#234

Post by krisroadruck »

macintux wrote: post #229
krisroadruck wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tale of saturation. Toaster sales are probably relatively flat as well. Not because toaster use has declined but because people already have a toaster that meets their toasting needs. PC improvements have slowed to a crawl over the past decade in terms of real-world performance gains for the average consumer. Their 5 year old rig still manages to surf the web, stream videos, play games and send emails just f…

Well, smartphone sales have saturated at 1.5 billion while PC sales are around 75 million. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone... The original proposition was that desktop sales would rise with mobile sales (with a lag time), and that's clearly not the case to this point, and there are no indicators that will ever be true.

Have to agree with you there, smartphones are still seeing 2-3 year turn over that PCs no longer enjoy. Because they are small and visible out and about you have a second motivator for replacement besides straight improvement pressure. People using them as a status symbol/indicator feel the need to have the latest and greatest.

Phones, even the premium tier are a much less costly investment than a desktop PC. In addition to the $1500-$2500 for a decent desktop computer you also have all the supporting bits, a desk to put it on, a chair, maybe a printer, + the floorspace to house it all.

With a phone it's just the phone, and maybe a case. So while a household might be satisfied with a single desktop computer, every member of the household is going to want their own phone. More devices per household + higher turn over frequency = higher volume annual sales even at saturation.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#235

Post by mypalmike »

bergstromm466 wrote: post #185
mypalmike wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not toxicity though - it's human psychology. The classic book "How To Win Friends And Influence People" even mentions this strategy when discussing winning people over to your ideas. People are far more willing to promote an idea they played a role in creating than one which they are just a passive party to. In large organizations, getting buy-in is critical to moving anything forward, so you need to have higher…

> "How To Win Friends And Influence People" "This book had a profound effect on me, however, of the negative variety. It did give me pointers on how to actually break out of my shell and "win friends" but in the long term, it did way more harm than good. Not the book per se, but my choice to follow the advice given there. The book basically tells you to be agreeable to everybody, find something to honestly like about…

Interesting. I have tended to think the book's main flaw is in encouraging some amount of manipulation of others and a degree of artificiality in doing so. I always thought of it in tactical terms for things like business negotiations. It never occurred to me to treat it as a general guidebook to personal interaction, but I can see how that could cause problems.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#236

Post by phkahler »

rytill wrote: post #70
phkahler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers have been going back and forth between desktop and central servers for 40 years. When people tire of the cloud and shift back to local control, microsoft will no longer have an advantage over alternatives.

I can’t tell if this is a manufactured pattern, or if it’s true and I’m missing something because I haven’t been alive long enough. From what I can tell, once upon a time we had mainframes and server rooms and big expensive computers, and there was no personal computing. Then, we got personal computing and had very limited consumer connection to centralized servers on them. A lot of people barely had internet. Then,…

After desktops came along like the Apple II and DOS based PCs, people had full control. Then we got networking to share printers, and IT started controlling things again. It's been a constant back and forth ever since. Not all the way to the extremes, and not every company at the same time. Not everyone ran Novell Netware for example.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#237

Post by thekyle »

pjmlp wrote: post #233
thekyle wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What features of Microsoft Office do you think are missing on mobile that a typical student would be required to use in school?

Starting by not having a keyboard and mouse available, good luck typing a 2 pages report on screen keyboard, let alone something with more deep content. Then proper copy-paste workflows across applications when placing those pictures into the word document, alongside the table created in Excel for the respective field information and bar charts with the results. Yes, it is doable, but better have lots of patience and…

Well maybe you're right. But it does seem like Chromebooks and iPads are extremely popular in the education market. Both of which use the mobile versions of Office.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#238

Post by hoten »

aparsons wrote: post #211
Bakary wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that we are looking at this from a position of strong bias, having the technology in front of us already. But surely smart engineers in that sector would be well aware of how easily science-fiction can turn into reality, having witnessed half a century of astounding developments? Did no one really take Bill's predictions that seriously at the time?

Lot of people understood it was going to be massive. But they understood it as “doing X on the internet”. Just like everyone was making “Uber for X” three years ago. Yahoo was yellow pages on the web. Viaweb was shopping. Broadcast was radio. All X on the web. At the time, most web sites were official company sites (basically HTML ads). A few news sites (Bloomberg was an early one). Some research labs and universitie…

> and Google figuring out hardware didn’t matter on the server side (2000).

What do you mean by this?

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#239

Post by hoten »

Iv wrote: post #23
pupppet wrote: post #13

>But look, the reality is that, again, you need to remember that this is a company that doesn't understand games, let alone consoles." ...so let’s make a game console?

The few games Microsoft did were actually pretty good. Age of Empire is still going on today.

Indeed... Steam says I've played 450 hours this year.

Re: An internal team 'hoodwinked' Bill Gates into launching the Xbox project

#240

Post by bobobob420 »

jjeaff wrote: post #57
bobobob420 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He botched Microsoft pretty bad.. windows 8 was his hallmark project no? And the beginning of surface was not that good. Once Satya took over Microsoft became a powerhouse again with their cloud/office integration + focus on azure.

And yet, azure and office 365 were both created under Ballmer.

So what they would have been created anyways. It’s satya’s business mind in propelling Microsoft’s business that made it a huge success, something ballmer was failing to do
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