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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

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Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem I have with Windows 10 is the forced restarts.

I've been using Win10 on multiple machines since release day and I have never once seen a forced restart. That was a problem on Windows 7, but I honestly don't know how people are still having this problem with 10.

Do you regularly restart?

I typically don't restart my MBP for months at a time. With Windows 10, it'll tell me I need to restart after updates. I can ignore it to a point, but eventually it just reboots without asking, and whatever was opened at the time is lost.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#372
post #89

With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space - a feat that I would not have predicted them doing 10 years ago. How did Google/Facebook get beaten here?

Well I'd point out that Facebook gave us react, basically altering the default programming paradigm for webdev, and Google, well Google plays God and judges all Webdevs via SEO. Plus regardless of what folks think of Flutter, Google has done some incredible work there. There's some very interesting things happening with it related to WebDev that are slowly but surely coming. Real cross platform native desktop support…

There's angular for Google and Microsoft too, even though React is better for a lot of use cases, a lot of traditional devs still place their bets in Angular. As a brazilian a see this a lot in some regions of the country. We can't forget the differences in context of the different parts of the world

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#373
post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

What on earth are you talking about? Ballmer should have been met at the airport and given his walking papers when he got back from laughing at the iPhone on the Today Show.

He basically won the lottery by getting assigned to the same dorm floor at Harvard as Bill Gates, and has been coasting ever since.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#374
post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimmick or not, wearables (Watch + Airpods) are a massive business for Apple. Large enough that they would be a F500 company if spun out at current revenue numbers. https://fortune.com/2019/08/06/apple-airpods-business/ I don't think you can characterize that as a business failure.

Yeah, hugely successful products are by definition __not__ gimmicks.

You've obviously never heard of Pet Rocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#375
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft stock was flat under Ballmer because of hangover from the massive dotcom bust in 2000 and the DOJ consent decree which didn't expire until 2011. It would've been hard for anyone else to do better.

The DOJ consent decree was toothless and a non-issue. The one that hurt Microsoft was the EU decrees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission may remind you of that. That said, the one thing Ballmer did right is that he took on the difficult problem of locking down Microsoft products on a security front. This was a hard and thankless task, but absolutely necessary in the long run.

That was Gates.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#376
post #252
post #89

With VSCode and Typescript, Microsoft owned the web developer space - a feat that I would not have predicted them doing 10 years ago. How did Google/Facebook get beaten here?

I think WSL should also be listed among awesome new developer amenities from Microsoft. I know a lot of people view it as a capitulation considering its Microsoft, but WSL is such a great tool. I purchased a Macbook about 2 years ago out of curiosity, as it seems a lot of developers prefer them. I'll admit the screen is beautiful, but so much of the developer niceties are simply the Mac taking advantage of POSIX inte…

I think WSL will get there eventually but in its current state it's just more tedious to use for permissions/networking/compatability issues. Mostly things you can work around but just a bit more tinkering

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See e.g. the annual reports in https://www.apple.com/environment/ regarding environmental responsibility and the graphs in https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/ regarding improvements in supplier responsibility. Even Greenpeace acknowledges quite a bit of progress in many respects: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/GG... — keep in mind that they used to picket Apple annual meetings. A…

Perhaps there has been an improvement in other parts of the supply chain, but the situation in DR Congo (where e.g. coltan used for capacitors is mined) seems to only be getting worse.

Do you mean the situation generally in the DRC or specifically in the mines? Any articles/relevant links?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, I loved the phone. As a developer, I was afraid to touch it. Dumping the old Windows Mobile platform for Windows Phone was understandable, but the compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was really off-putting. Though I think the biggest problem there is that it didn't happen in a vacuum. It was one more event in a fairly long list of Microsoft technologies and APIs that were sh…

> " Dumping the old Windows Mobile platform for Windows Phone was understandable, but the compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was really off-putting. " My memory is fuzzy on the specifics but the breaks weren't done just for the fun of it. If I recall correctly, refactoring on a titanic scale on the Windows Phone OS was underway along with the same on Windows itself to both make Windows a…

It's not that they didn't have a plan, it's that the plan was so thoroughly ill-conceived and ill-executed.

iOS has not been unified with OS X, and Android has not been unified with Chrome OS. And all four OSes are quite successful despite the lack of unification. Meanwhile, the Windows RT Surface tablets never took off, and the Windows 8 unified experience was universally recognized as an unmitigated disaster on launch day, if not earlier.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#379
post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

I read somewhere that Satya openly expressed is views against Ballmer's Nokia/windows phone strategy and every other strategy which ended in failure during Ballmer's tenure during their meetings and that it played a crucial role in appointing him to the top role later on.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#380
post #8

I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer. It wasn't a coincidence that on the day Ballmer stepped down and Satya became CEO (2014), Microsoft also announced Office for iOS, Cloud first strategy, and a whole slew of cloud/Azure product announcements. All of which was developed under Ballmer watch and he handed off the launch and continued execution to Satya.

| I'm as big of a Satya fan as anyone, but someone who doesn't get enough credit is Ballmer.

Agreed. Ballmer's tenure is widely misunderstood. Gates does not receive enough blame for the missteps of that era.

Great read: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-l...

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