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Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

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Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#31

Post by Florin_Andrei »

tptacek wrote: post #6

Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…

> Microsoft isn't nuts.

Yep. Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed, that's all.

Look, they've been great simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. There was an incredibly TREMENDOUS hidden demand for a PC and an operating system for it, and MS happened to be there at the time. A half-blind monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money too. It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time.

And that was a market that worked well if unified on a single standard. As luck would have had it, that was Windows. Okay, not entirely luck, Bill Gates is also a shrewd businessman. But from a technical perspective, MS has always been mind-numbingly mediocre and uninspired and anti-visionary. Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.

Well, now the tremendous hurricane lifting MS up is dying down, and it's becoming apparent that it really takes gale-force winds to keep flying an object with all the graceful aerodynamics of a brick.

With the tides of history turning against them, it's now obvious to everyone that they are really inept at innovation. What's funny is that this is considered "news".

Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long. You've probably cost us all perhaps a decade of progress. Nobody of consequence is going to miss you.

Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#32

Post by rayiner »

I think this is way off the mark, in general.

"But that’s not the roadmap we’re hearing from the Microsoft OS team. Instead, they’re talking about creating a single Windows code base that runs across all types of devices, something that’s technically appealing if you’re a Microsoft engineer but thoroughly uninteresting to customers."

If I wanted an Android phone, I'd go buy one of the bazillions of Android phones. If you're someone who isn't just going to buy go a Samsung phone, you're probably, like me, not invested in Google's ecosystem. You don't want a phone that plugs into Google's "cloud" but rather a phone that runs Outlook and Office, and can interface with your company's Exchange Server, Windows-based CMS, etc. That has value; being yet another crappy Android vendor does not.

Microsoft's strategy is just fine, it's their execution that sucks. Windows on Phones and Tablets should have featured tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem from Day 1. Instead, they botched Surface RT by releasing it with a half-baked buggy version of Office on a tablet that didn't integrate with Active Directory. Windows Phone 8 has no synergy with Windows on a tablet or a Windows PC, and oh, the roadmap to a proper touch-optimized version of Office includes the phrase "when pigs fly." Microsoft comes consistently late to the party with products that are little better than MVPs, and that's sinking them.

Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#34

Post by smacktoward »

cylinder wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #6

Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…

I think Surface Pro is an excellent device for enterprise, much better than the iPad. Problem with Microsoft is always their marketing and branding. They're making a huge push for consumers when they should instead be doing enterprise and education.

The problem there is that the IT department may love Surface, but if all the VPs insist on bringing their iPads into the office, IT is gonna have to support the iPad. Then it's a question of "do we support iPad and Surface, or just iPad?" Because "IT says so" isn't much of an argument when it regards telling someone with power in the corporate hierarchy they can't do what they want to do.

In a way this mirrors the early days of the PC business, when people lugging their Apple IIs and Trash-80s into the office so they could run VisiCalc...

Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#35

Post by rayiner »

cylinder wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #6

Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…

I think Surface Pro is an excellent device for enterprise, much better than the iPad. Problem with Microsoft is always their marketing and branding. They're making a huge push for consumers when they should instead be doing enterprise and education.

The problem with Surface Pro isn't just marketing and branding. It's a poor point in the design space. It's as expensive as an ultrabook, but makes major compromises in screen size and keyboard quality in order to be able to pinch-hit as a tablet. Enterprise and education aren't the kind of forward-looking places where you want to be pushing a novel form-factor.

What Microsoft should have done was release a single Surface product based on an x86 Atom processor at the $500 price point, along with accessories like a mobile dock. That would've been a product they might've gotten Enterprises to buy into.

Of course, they're continuing the failed dichotomy to this day. The mantra behind Surface is "a tablet that can run your legacy apps!" but they still ignore the processor that's best-suited for hitting that design point: Bay Trail. You can run "real windows" in a tablet device that can retail for $400! They're leaving that whole market to HP, Dell, etc, who've proven over and over they don't have an innovative chromosome in their entire DNA.

Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#36

Post by stordoff »

gdrulia wrote: post #10

I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.

I've been using ModernMix [1] for a while to do exactly that. It's a bit janky at times, but I find it much more useful than having metro apps stuck outside of the traditional desktop.

[1] https://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/

Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#37

Post by Guvante »

smacktoward wrote: post #34
cylinder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Surface Pro is an excellent device for enterprise, much better than the iPad. Problem with Microsoft is always their marketing and branding. They're making a huge push for consumers when they should instead be doing enterprise and education.

The problem there is that the IT department may love Surface, but if all the VPs insist on bringing their iPads into the office, IT is gonna have to support the iPad. Then it's a question of "do we support iPad and Surface, or just iPad?" Because "IT says so" isn't much of an argument when it regards telling someone with power in the corporate hierarchy they can't do what they want to do. In a way this mirrors the ea…

If we are talking enterprise, Microsoft is doing just fine. VPs will soon see that a Surface does most of what the iPad does, and everything their desktop does. Unless you can live without Office the Surface is a great device.

The problem for Microsoft is the enterprise is where they currently dominate, so maintaining that market is nice, but doesn't do much for their problem of the mobile market as a whole.

Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#38

Post by huxley »

Joeri wrote: post #21
tptacek wrote: post #6

Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…

Microsoft / nokia are still likely to exceed iOS phone market share globally within two years as they are growing much faster. Nokia has been growing the market at the low end where there is no iOS and where android is a poor experience (and Windows Phone surprisingly is quite good). The US market is locked into high end phones due to the carrier subsidy model, but in the rest of the world the story is very different…

Nokia has done a great job of building marketshare on the back of extremely-low-margin phones like the 52x series, but I would hesitate to declare it a victory for Microsoft/Nokia just yet, it might just be a dead-cat bounce.

Re: Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

#40

Post by FigBug »

pantalaimon wrote: post #12
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #3

How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices. Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.

Why do people repeat saying that "the personal pc landscape is […] moving toward mobile devices"? I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sure there is a decline in sales for PCs because the market is saturated and for the most people, unless they are gamers, their 5 year old computer will do just fine. Yet people keep shouting that the days of the desktop computer…

For Microsoft, it doesn't matter how many people are using PCs, it's how many are buying them. If usage is down, replacement time is up and OS price is down, how is that anything but bad for Microsoft? There are still a lot of XP users that have given Microsoft no money since at least 2006 and have still costed them money in support.
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