How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around • Hacker News Board

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#461

Post by fakedang » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 6:16 AM UTC

indemnity wrote: post #440

fakedang wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I know a fair amount of devs who are forced to use Mac hardware because of Apple restricting dev and testing environments to the MacOS. Says a lot when a developer recommended me to use a Linux+Hackintosh (I'm not from a dev background). About your last point, it would be every designer's dream to work in a company with as powerful a brand as Apple, with as big a war chest and as global a reach for massive adopti…

I’m a developer, I use a Mac, it’s still the best Unix laptop out there. But I have a Ryzen 3950X desktop with a real GPU (RTX 2080) running Windows and Linux, for when I am not portable. Same dotfiles for all, any operating system these days has the terminal + browser story covered, if you then use VS Code and languages like Go or Rust, you don’t really need to care what the OS is. Getting religious over any one pla…

Well I use Windows and Linux currently, with a hackintosh for macOS after a bad spell with a Mac. I find the Linux OS to be the best for programming, since it just runs everything like a breeze. Windows is what I use for Office since macOS office is clunky and I'm locked in to the Windows shortcuts.

The issue with Macs for me is not the usability of the OS (apart from the lock in that Apple tried to do), but because of its irreparability. Spilt a few dropfuls water on your PC while using? Tough luck, gotta go to the Apple Care centre and wait till they fix it in a week or more. Meanwhile once I accidentally spilt water on my ThinkPad, I just disconnected everything, left it to dry for a day and voila! All of my data was preserved, no issues at all. Another time, I accidentally dropped the ThinkPad from my desk, yet it still works as good as new. Even if some issue were to happen to it, I can be assured of getting out-of-warranty support anywhere in the world - heck, I've had an old Dell repaired at the bloke's who runs a computer shop in my grandfather's village in rural India.

Another gripe I have is with Mac's updates. People complain about Windows updates, but it just takes an hour or two tops if it's a big one, and can be done on restart. Compare that to Mac - last year, Catalina took more than 10 hours on my Mac. Those are wasted hours of productivity, and it's always the same story with Mac every year.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#462

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 6:29 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #136

ProAm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it. I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hard…

So who is “innovating” more in electronics hardware? As far as the Macs, outside of the keyboard fiasco which has been rectified, the recent Macs are getting good reviews from people who were rightfully critical a few years ago. The ARM Macs will soon be as far ahead of equivalent PCs as the iPhones are Androids when it comes to processing power.

The ARM processors will not be "far ahead of" PCs. They will almost certainly give better battery life, but their performance will not trump what Intel and AMD are doing by a long shot. Don't buy into the hype

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#463

Post by stjohnswarts » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 6:37 AM UTC

novok wrote: post #290

criley2 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has? We're still on Facebook and Twitter and Youtube, using iPhones to play digital music. You say 2020, I say 2009. Wireless earbuds and smart watches I guess are the only "game changing" (they're not) inventions of note for the past decade? Web... phone... computer... they're just more refined versions of products we had in 2009.

Well VR is a thing now for $300. And there is tiktok and snapchat as far as social media goes. Companies are slowly marching to deliver AR as a product too. Consumer drones are another thing along with cheap digital large sensor cameras, and once something like waymo and boom delivers, those would be revolutions of their own. Also solar is cheaper than coal now as an energy source, and complete DNA sequencing now cos…

Am I the only that finds SM platforms like snapchat and tiktok infantile and vacuous? Say what you want about Facebook and Reddit, but in the right forums you can have thoughtful debates and discussions. I don't see TT and SC as anything but fads. TT is the same 10 or 15 takes on the same thing over and over and SC is just a 1 hit music star that somehow still lingers around.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#464

Post by j-pb » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

ogre_codes wrote: post #304

j-pb wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're a 40 person Design agency, that has been running on Mac hardware for almost 40 years now. Everybody of us used to be a huge apple fanboy, now every one of us hates them with a passion. They completely ignored their customers for the iPhone money grab. Their hardware and software used to be synonymous with quality, nowadays their shoddy quality has become a meme at work. "Oops reboot." - "What did you expect, it…

> I doubt that apple can keep its brand relevant without opinion leaders like design professionals. I know a fair number of developers and most of them still use Macs. Not because they are fan boys, but because MacOS still sucks less than Windows. For me and likely many, OS choice is a pragmatic thing and for the moment MacOS is the least bad option. It's going to be interesting seeing what happens with the new CPUs…

> but because MacOS still sucks less than Windows.

I completely agree that it's still less bad, but look at the language you're using. It's not that MacOS is a great platform, it's just less bad than the other options. It had a great starting position from which it declines. It's a lot worse than it used to be and it continues to decline, so the trend and outcome are clear.

> How many black aluminium iPhones would you design? Another 40 years worth?

EXACTLY!

The iPhone is now 14 years old. The iPod lasted 6 years until it got replaced with the iPhone.

Apples great advantage used to be that they competed with themselves. It was the Macintosh Team vs. the Rest of Apple for example. The Macintosh was allowed to completely cannibalise all other Machines, the iPhone was allowed to completely canibalise the iPod, the iMac replaced the Cube and was allowed to completely cannibalise most tower macs.

They didn't create a huge product portfolio trying to balance features so that they all sell equally well, crippling some for the survival of others (e.g. where's the iPad Pro with XCode, or a MacBook with LTE). They tried to make the best product that would revolutionise the markets, even if it would kill their other products. Because the Products were front and center, not the profits.

If apple was still apple, we wouldn't have Macbooks anymore. We'd all use iPad Pros with proper software and keyboards that can balance them on your laps.

We probably wouldn't use iPhones either, we'd simply have Airpods, an appleWatch, and an optional larger screen that you slide into your shirt pocket or your wallet, or carry as a pocket mirror. Doing 90% of interactions through Siri (which is also 8 years old now, ancient by computer standards, still worse than what it used to be, because apple wants to save money on compute).

Why would Ive leave if he had the power to shape that future.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#465

Post by dartharva » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 7:41 AM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #23

I'm using Windows 10 because I want to run modern programs, but I still don't see the usability of the operating system to be as good that it was with Windows 7. If I go to settings, or open the start menu, I have latencies measured in seconds, even though I have a fast gaming laptop. As a comparision on my iPad most of the settings windows have about 0.2s rendering latency (some shorter, some longer), but in reality…

Yeah you just have to give up on the "modern" UWP apps and change back to classic ones, even when they are third-party.

Use the Control Panel instead of settings, Everything for search, IrfanView for an image viewer... the list goes on. Just remove all UWP bloat and telemetry. You'll find many scripts on the internet to automate that.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#466

Post by dartharva » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

abhinav22 wrote: post #41

I don’t like Microsoft Windows or any of its newer products Windows 7 was the best version and Office before 365 was good too - now they just really milking everyone with subscription payments

Standalone Office releases are still available though. They're just don't have the bleeding edge updates and collaboration capabilities that O365 does, but it was never built for that anyway.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#467

Post by Tsarbomb » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 12:01 PM UTC

raunakdag wrote: post #218

hevelvarik wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If when people say big tech they exclude msft (and include Facebook), they are simply wrong. .net, sqlserver, power bi, hell office are the blood flowing through Government and industry. Gaming is also tech and azure will get there if they just keep at it. The startup world is only a slice of the pie, and not the largest or most important . If you don’t live on the coasts, and you want to invest in a stack that will…

No matter what technologies MSFT have, the number one thought in people’s minds these days when you say big tech is simply FB G Amazon and Apple. It’s no longer MSFT up there with them. Definitely a stigma thing.

The only tech company that my grandparents from the old country could name is Microsoft. I think there is definitely a skewed perception from the commentators living in USA/CAN.

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#468

Post by Terretta » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

zebra100 wrote: post #305

ogre_codes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another example of such uninspired CEO that keeps making good quarters but tarnishes his company advantages is Tim Cook. I can't wait for him to be replaced. Comments like this make zero sense to me. Apple might be better if Jobs was still alive. But without a time machine, and potentially better medicine, that's not an option. Under Cook Apple: - Increased profitability and market share massively. - Created the mo…

+1. I'm far from an Apple zealot, but Tim Cook added $1.7 Trillion to apple's market cap since taking over as chief executive. He certainly isn't the product visionary that Jobs was, but a rare few are. IMO Cook may have even been a better executer than Jobs, even if his decisions are more risk averse. And he has still taken a few notable ones – e.g. Apple's recent shift to services revenue (news, music, card, etc) w…

> shift to services revenue (news, music, card, etc) was a surprisingly smooth & fast success

After having purchased most every iPhone release since launch, with the prior model gifted to family, this year we switched to iPhone-as-a-Service subscription on the Apple Card.

Post shift, Apple moves me out of making a $1300 buying evaluation decision to simply ‘staying current’ for forty bucks a month for the flagship model.

This was available for a while, took a while to break through my sense I should “own” my device each year instead of subscribe to it, but the mental stress of buying new and reselling old, inevitably ending up with some in a drawer (iPhone 6s anyone?) ... the subscription is hassle free for me, recurring revenue for Tim, and shockingly well priced given the convenience.

Imagine what their numbers would look like to Wall Street if he could turn most of their hardware buyers into subscribers...

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#469

Post by Terretta » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #336

ogre_codes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another example of such uninspired CEO that keeps making good quarters but tarnishes his company advantages is Tim Cook. I can't wait for him to be replaced. Comments like this make zero sense to me. Apple might be better if Jobs was still alive. But without a time machine, and potentially better medicine, that's not an option. Under Cook Apple: - Increased profitability and market share massively. - Created the mo…

Apple under Tim enjoy short term gains and greed has blinded them. The company will soon start failing because of their anti-consumer and anti-environment culture. They create false image of themselves to be super friendly innovative brand for creative people, but the truth is far from this. Their products are designed to fail and to be only repairable by Apple. If your charging port dies on a new Mac, you cannot rep…

Effectively nobody (measured as a percentage of buyers) wants to repair it themselves.

Remember when TV and radio repair shops were a thing? RadioShack in the US or Tandy in Europe? Kids these days don’t...

Re: How Satya Nadella turned Microsoft around

#470

Post by chronofar » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

scudd wrote: post #252

typon wrote: 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…

POSIX interoperability isn't to be taken lightly. WSL is currently still pretty far imo from the native experience you get in Linux and Mac. Mac is also the only system that allows easy development of any platform, though of course that's primarily because of locking down development for their stuff.

Macs are popular dev machines because they couple the above with a very polished and stable widely compatible OS. The broad market appeal with the advantages of Unix like terminal and file system and a package manager. The screen isn't even that great, I'd take the XPS screen over the Macbook's.