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How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

economist.com

411–420 of 487 posts

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#411
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluet…

wait.... i am not the only one whose image viewer takes like 10s of seconds to show up! It's so horribly slow that i instead open browser and then drag the image onto browser. I beat default 100% of time!

I changed the file in Windows 10 so that the old Photo Viewer app was kept active.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#412
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the stuff was in development during Jobs' time, including Airpods, the latest one. With Jony Ive gone, I doubt Apple has the prowess to continue that finesse. It would be akin to von Holzhausen leaving Tesla, imo.

I think it may be the other way around. In the Jony Ive post-Steve-Jobs era, we got the iPhones 6-11, and, in my opinion, all of them are considerably worse physical designs than the 5. Now Apple has (imminently) the 12 and 12 Mini, which are, IMO, the best designs from Apple in years.

I'm very excited about the 12 mini, after being blah on many before. iphone 1 was my first iphone so have been around for a while. Don't see the point of 5G, Jobs used to actually really delay introducing some of the new tech until it was ready, I'd have been fine if they'd waited a year on that but...

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No strong opinions on Cook but a Ballmer of the current era is Sundar Pichai. Google of the last few years is utterly rudderless, losing all the mojo and goodwill they once had. That shows in the Stock price, in (a lack of) successful new products, in Google’s loss of reputation as the “coolest company to be at”, in the bloated middle management occupied in turf wars, in essentially most of the things that matter.

That's extremely unfair to Ballmer- Ballmer made lots of bets and put a lot of effort into them. Some were given up on- the phone, but you can't critize Azure, among many. Microsoft has developed lots of products and can develop more. They did plenty under Ballmer. When they fail they try again, or invest more effort. Google has only one cash cow. They don't know how to develop products and how to win customers. I fe…

Google doesn't maintain anything.

I couldn't / can't get my work calendars to work on google home, but I can get my work calendars to work on Alexa - let that sink in! Been a top complaint for years - they just don't care - it's really all about the new stuff.

Apple - a lot of nice features that solve problems I had usually on new releases.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#414
post #53

If anyone here subscribes to Stratechery I strongly recommend the interview sent out yesterday with Microsofts head of gaming. There's chat there about how gaming shifted internally in part due to how Nadella rethought gaming as it's own strategy and a key future component of Azure, rather than just a part of Windows strategy. He particularly highlights how gaming is a key differentiator vs the other top tech compani…

What about the failure of Mixer?

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#415
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see "designed to fail" or any corresponding language on that page. There is concern about repairability there. I seem to recall that the UK was a member of a trans-national organization that recently passed tougher repairability legislation, and quit that organization to be rid of all that burdensome regulation. For the life of me, I can't understand why Apple wouldn't take the UK seriously…

Specifically, the EAC is keen to obtain information on what Apple is doing to enhance the operating life of its products ...

Failing to enhance the operating life of the products (or failing to talk about it to a parliamentary commission) != designing such products to fail.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#416
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree to this. They had a good going with windows 7. The freaking windows 10 photos app intermittently hangs forever when opening a simple image file. I was just using Videos and it crashed when opening settings. Skype is still a disaster years after swinching from skype classic. The abomination that replaced control panel is designed intentionally like a maze from which you cant get out. I dare you to find the bluet…

wait.... i am not the only one whose image viewer takes like 10s of seconds to show up! It's so horribly slow that i instead open browser and then drag the image onto browser. I beat default 100% of time!

Maybe it's trying to sign me in to some telemetry service and share my image with Cortana.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#417
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.

Steve Ballmer was a guy who restlessly milked two Microsoft cash cows (Windows and Office) to accommodate investors quarter after quarter. He didn't have a vision or courage to push Microsoft in some other direction, and my impression was that all good things that started under his regime (Azure, more openness) was either reactionary or he simply didn't care (most of early open source push was from his lieutenants).…

As someone who was at MS during those years, directly involved with Azure, OSS, Mobile/phone I can verify that Steve was a great biz guy but had very little sense for where the tech world was headed.

What Satya has done is incredibly impressive and will be much studied IMHO

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#418
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google hasn't had a major new product for a decade. Prior to 2010: Search, Doubleclick, Maps, Mail, GSuite, AppEngine (which was first serverless platform). All of which were category makers or category killers. Since 2010:

In fairness, Google Cloud Platform is a huge new product. GAE (which I love) was but a tiny drop compared to the vast ocean that is GCP today. And GCP is really a multitude of products. Android was launched in 2008, although I think it really deserves to be in the post-2010 category. Today's Android is a whole different beast. Google Home is a new product. And tied in with Home & Android is voice recognition, which i…

> Google Cloud Platform is a huge new product.

Does it define the category? Is Google Cloud 'the' cloud provider? "Just spin up a box on GCP" the default thing for people to do in tech?

> Today's Android is a whole different beast.

Is it? Android 4 (which was around that time) is pretty close to android as it is now.

> Google Home is a new product

And? Is it category defining like maps or Mail or GSuite, did it create something entirely new like GAE did for serverless? Is it the default home assistant? Do people outside tech even know the name 'Google Home'?

> hangouts video was a huge hit for a while

And now it's close to dead. Never reached the heights of Skype or Zoom.

None of these products are category defining.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " 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 lau…

They were always going to struggle to get app developers to port to Windows Mobile, so I'm not sure it was ill conceived to provide a single target for desktop and mobile, with the hope that more developers would take the time to support all form factors if they could use a single code base.

It was a gamble that enough native desktop apps would remain for this strategy to pay off, but they lost to web and electron apps.

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