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

Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

blog.seattlepi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 137 posts

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#41

Post by mikecane »

Anechoic wrote: post #3

Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Fog Creek, Amazon, Y Combinator, etc. Companies have ups and down. Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience, become a better competitor and then we as consumers will benefit.

Or MS is next in line after Nokia and Sony, on the downward spiral. Seemingly-invincible companies go under all the time. It doesn't have to be one big explosion, but death by a thousand cuts.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#42

Post by mikecane »

astrange wrote: post #9
tmsh wrote: post #4

Can you think of a project, a product or a company that succeeded with a somewhat negative-sounding name (even if meant somewhat ironically or as sort of a renegade mentality)? I'm drawing a blank.... It's odd that I can't think of a single one though. Even among game studios, etc.

What do you mean "a somewhat negative-sounding name"? Products succeed with embarrassing names like "Wii" all the time.

But Wii = Whee.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#43

Post by rbanffy »

kenjackson wrote: post #28
rbanffy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's complicated. Apple's products were always highly regarded. Their problem was pricing - they charged too much for boxes Dell sold for much less.

Apple's products weren't highly regarded through most of the 90s. The survived on a niche market at the time, but weren't highly regarded during this phase either for their design or technical architecture. Pricing wasn't their problem -- their products were the problem. It wasn't until 2000 or so when they got their mojo back.

They were highly regarded in their niches. If you needed a computer to edit photos or to assemble a print publication, a Mac would be your obvious choice. In the PowePC era, it was the fastest computer you could buy that ran off-th-shelf productivity software and many found their way into labs as instrument controllers. Considering the size of their lineup, a couple lemons (pun intended) were to be expected. Still, considering how many models were made, I saw more bad computers coming from PC makers.

And, until the arrival of NT4, PC GUIs had little to no advantage over what Apple was offering. Windows was ugly and crash-prone. In retrospect, NT4 was also very crash prone, probably because MS moved graphics drivers onto kernel space. Windows only became more acceptable (some would prefer "less offensive") visually with the NeXT-like visuals of 95.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#44

Post by mikecane »

The problem with Microsoft isn't a lack of bright talent. It's "Who's Next?" People are jockeying for political positions, not concentrating on products. Ballmer won't be there forever and everyone wants to be the next Ballmer. If Steve Jobs passed away tomorrow, there could be similar jockeying at Apple -- we've already seen how product introductions lacking Jobs have been split up among several people. We don't know how many of those people got the idea from that experience that they could be "the next Jobs."

Jobs also once criticized company leadership in general (someone else can go find this), stating that what happens after a founder leaves is that a marketing person ascends to the top -- and he pointed to Ballmer as an example. It's interesting to note that Palm began to sink also when a marketing person was leading it -- Ed Colligan.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#45

Post by lanstein »

tmsh wrote: post #24
astrange wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "a somewhat negative-sounding name"? Products succeed with embarrassing names like "Wii" all the time.

I mean like Evil. Or Gloom. Or Danger. Embarrassing is a much wider set. Anyway, just curious...

Danger

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#46

Post by InclinedPlane »

Anechoic wrote: post #3

Before succumbing to schadenfreude just remember that this will eventually happen to your favorite tech company in the future, be it HP, Dell, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Fog Creek, Amazon, Y Combinator, etc. Companies have ups and down. Hopefully MS will see this as a learning experience, become a better competitor and then we as consumers will benefit.

Any company that has empire-itis, yes. But there's hope that some companies can escape that disease.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#47

Post by rbanffy »

MartinCron wrote: post #40
rbanffy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would be better off giving up on owning the mobile platform They can't afford that. Their strength comes from the lack of viable options - each of their product lines reinforces the dependency on other product lines. If you use Exchange, you probably won't be able to use anything other than Outlook, which runs on Windows and is part of Office, which makes using Sharepoint more or less painless, which runs only…

I agree with everything but your comment about Sharepoint. Nothing can ever make that painless.

After being responsible for a large SharePoint deployment at her company, my wife agrees with you.

But both of you have to admit that using SharePoint through Office sucks less.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#48

Post by kenjackson »

evilduck wrote: post #36
kenjackson wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the other more sensible response that mobile devices are one of the major growth segment in the industry. Why would you give up on that? But conspiracy theories work too.

What conspiracy theory? The vendor lock-in behavior of MS is practically advertised as a platform feature. To up and reverse their product lock-in policy would cast doubt on many (most?) of their other claims.

The conspiracy theory is that they want to lock you in for no other reason but to give you no other viable option. That's absurd. They want to sell you as much software as possible, of course, they're a company.

But the reason they will stay in the mobile space isn't to keep you from getting any other mobile device. But because there's money to be made in it and it fits into their core competency.

Re: Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond

#50

Post by rbanffy »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
rbanffy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which means it will bleed more and longer than any previous tech giant. I'll grab my popcorn and enjoy it thoroughly.

IBM has been bleeding for a long time and they still haven't died yet.

Sadly, IBM is far less entertaining to watch.
Post reply on HN