Microsoft is Dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#51

Post by jim-in-austin » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:00 AM UTC

I no longer consult but if I had a small business or non-profit as a client today I would:

- Hook everyone up to a high speed connection.

- Not worry about OS or platform as long as they could run Firefox or IE

- Sign them up with Google Apps ( http://www.google.com/a/ )

- Sign them up with a web-based accounting system such as ACCPAC Online, ePeachtree, Oracle Small Business Suite, etc if they do in-house accounting

- Spend 45 minutes showing them how to admin the system via the web

- Present my bill

Of course Microsoft is dead.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#52

Post by randallsquared » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:03 AM UTC

zach wrote: post #46

randallsquared wrote: post #9

Microsoft is still an enormously profitable and powerful company in the real world, and you should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in your insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. More seriously, I mostly do business right now with small businesses (2-8 people), and some stupidly high proportion of these businesses run totally on Windows. When they go to buy the computer(s) they nee…

Come on, we're not talking about the homefront here, we're talking about the frontier. This is the startup news site; we're not here to talk about the current industry standard.

Well, the first part of my comment was a joke, and the second part was only asserting that Microsoft wasn't going to go away soon, because they're a de facto standard.

I'm not saying that I worry about them for my own projects, or that you should for yours. :)

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#53

Post by zach » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:08 AM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #52

zach wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, we're not talking about the homefront here, we're talking about the frontier. This is the startup news site; we're not here to talk about the current industry standard.

Well, the first part of my comment was a joke, and the second part was only asserting that Microsoft wasn't going to go away soon, because they're a de facto standard. I'm not saying that I worry about them for my own projects, or that you should for yours. :)

My apologies. I didn't get that "more seriously" indicated that the first part was completely tongue-in-cheek.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#54

Post by cweekly » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:13 AM UTC

"[E]ventually the open source world triumphed, in the form of Javascript libraries that grew over the brokenness of Explorer the way a tree grows over barbed wire."

${applause}

This is a beautiful simile, one I will repeat to others. Also (I'm 32) this feels like old news but hearing it put so succinctly by you, well, it puts a big ol grin on my face. =D

Thanks, Paul -- and keep it up!

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#55

Post by look » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:16 AM UTC

lak wrote: post #3

I guess I must be old now, because I find it hard to believe that a company that still has their software running on 95% of the world's computers is "dead". I just don't get this argument. I totally agree that there's this very small, very insular part of the world that thinks it's dead, but that part of the world is apparently not working in large companies, or trading files with professionals in any profession othe…

POTS is a good example. Despite the wording, I think Paul was saying that: Microsoft isn't interesting anymore. It's unavoidable, sure, but it's just more brain-damaged infrastructure to work around.

Microsoft is now a nuisance, not a competitor. They can make business painful, but they aren't scary anymore.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#56

Post by william42 » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:28 AM UTC

gknauth wrote: post #38

Is IBM dead? Maybe Microsoft is just another IBM. In 30 years, they may even be backing free software.

IBM basically did what PG says MS should do. They started concentrating on PCs.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#57

Post by ehabkost » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:35 AM UTC

far33d wrote: post #4

I can't decide whether etiquette requires you to allow the author of an article to post it if they are members (founders) of the site. Then again, etiquette doesn't help entrepreneurs much.

I read this comment multiple times, but I just couldn't understand what is it about.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#58

Post by celoyd » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:46 AM UTC

gabrielroth wrote: post #36

Wanted to point out a typo. You have: "Thanks to OSX, Apple has come back from the dead in a way that is extremely rare technology." I think that should be "extremely rare IN technology."

And s/OSX/OS X/

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#59

Post by pg » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:48 AM UTC

jmpeters wrote: post #31

I agree with the article in general, but you lost some credibility by equating Snipshot to Photoshop. I realize that you have an investment to promote, but please.

You missed the point. I was using it as an example of how the canonical application that's hard to make web-basd (and which I used as an example thereof in "The Other Road Ahead") can be made web-based. Adobe's making a web-based image editor themselves, but I can't link to that because the only trace of it so far are their FUD press releases.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#60

Post by nicodaemos » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:54 AM UTC

Just two days ago I wrote an article about web server stats and noticed that a) Microsoft is almost nonexistent amongst the geek programming community and b) that contrary to Netcraft's numbers, Microsoft servers are in a small minority of sites frequented by geeks like myself.

http://hitesh-jasani.blogspot.com/2007/04/web-server-stats.html