Microsoft is Dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#61

Post by Goladus » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 4:57 AM UTC

dawie wrote: post #6

I agree Paul, but Microsoft is still running that boring Enterprise Software that you always talk about. Also Microsoft's shitty software pays for my lunch,dinner, beer and women.

Microsoft has the corporate desktop, but it's ripe for the taking. Google and various startups are trying to get their foot in the door. Big corporations don't do anything fast and no one expects windows to be wiped out. There are still mainframes out there running ancient software. In some cases simple terminal emulator front ends still outperform newer, browser-based alternatives.

And microsoft will still probably come out with new useful and popular products, but they won't be the sort that cause shockwaves throughout the whole industry (well maybe the Game Industry but that wasn't the point).

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#62

Post by gibsonf1 » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:01 AM UTC

ph0rque wrote: post #24

gibsonf1 wrote: post #2

I agree, the shadow is gone - but for how long? As much as I am frustrated with having to use XP (My Autodesk BIM cad system only runs on it), I wouldn't underestimate MS's ability to bounce back from bad directions/decisions like they have in the past. If Gates radically changes his vision and business model to the new web world and gets Balmer to agree, they could dominate again. But can a company that has written…

Speaking of CAD software, how long until we will have an online version? (I would guess CAD software is on the same order of complexity as photoshop.) Are any perspective YCers working on it?

It's highly unlikely in the near term. The software my firm uses is Autodesk Revit's "Building Information Modeling", a highly evolved "intelligent" 3d modeling database system. The software uses every byte of ram, every hz of cpu, every byte & hertz of video interface on a users system - it takes serious horsepower to run a large model which is accessed over the network by multiple users. (Refreshing the model remotely via vpn over dsl can take 15 minutes) I don't see AJAX coming close to handling this kind of load for a long while. Also, the files can be huge, and in a web-hosted environment, the file storage would have to be absolutely massive and absolutely fast.

An interesting note is that Autodesk started out with Autocad, which they coded in lisp (eventually transformed into autolisp.) They took the MS model to software development and proceeded to make bigger and more complex versions with increasing quantities of bugs to the extent that multiple crashes per day were the norm. But they owned 80% of the world cad market, they became the 2nd largest software company in the world.

Revit was developed by a small company with an incredibly sound software architecture with a database at the core(without the massive bandaids that had piled up in Autocad and are still there today.) and developed a devoted cult following. Autodesk fought back with "Architectural Desktop", which I bought (before I knew about Revit). Their version: Cut a section through a building, wait 30 minutes. Revit, Cut a section through a building - instantly. Autodesk got very scared, then bought Revit. They saw the writing on the wall and undersood that Revit would be completely replacing Autocad in the next few years, which it is doing now.

So if MS can buy Google, they'll be all set :)

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#63

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:06 AM UTC

ehabkost wrote: post #57

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.

He's wondering if PG should have been the one to post this article, given that PG wrote it and also wrote this site.

And I dunno about news.YC, but Reddit at least doesn't work that way. I've written pieces that were picked up on Reddit and posted by other people. I found it rather flattering; it meant other folks thought it was interesting enough to post without my intervention.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#64

Post by jellerbee » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:17 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #23

schoudha wrote: post #16

Microsoft is still and will likely continue to be the world's most profitable software company. OS X will not reach 20% global marketshare by the end of the decade and Goldman Sachs IBankers will still be punching away on MS Excel for the foreseeable future. What does it mean to be dead then? What I think Paul Graham is saying, and this is underscored by the notion of "being dangerous," is that Microsoft is no longer…

Microsoft was never the place new ideas and true innovation came from. But they did once have the power to shut down people who had them. They no longer do; that's what's changed.

Can you explain the power Microsoft had to shut down people where "true innovation" came from? and who or what stopped them from doing this?

What is the difference between "true innovation" and -- I don't even know how to ask this exactly -- "untrue innovation"?

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#65

Post by gibsonf1 » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:20 AM UTC

hello_moto wrote: post #11

gibsonf1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think PG's point isn't that MS will vanish or is vanishing from the current installed user base point of view (mainly their OS), but that they no longer control the direction of software development. This is a major opening for us Entrepreneurs that, as PG pointed out, has never happened before. MS Office is clearly under serious attack now, and I'm sure the OS will follow in a few years unless MS takes a major tac…

May I know whom attacking MS Office? Last time I checked, none of the online web two point ooh software can open big documents. These web-apps only match probably 20% of MS Office features and it's simply not enough these days when people are more tech-savvy than in the past.

The point is not what Web 2.0 offers today, it's what Web 2.0 offers next year, and the year after. Whether you see it or not, the tide has turned.

Evolution:

-Mainframes as the computing platform (IBM)

--- PCs as the computing platform (Apple)

------- the OS as the computing platform (MS Windows) (Where Apple missed the boat by only offering their OS on proprietary hardware)

------------- the Internet as the computing platform (Google) (where MS will probably miss the boat)

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#66

Post by grauenwolf » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:28 AM UTC

erdos2 wrote: post #34

BobG wrote: post #32

Being nearly 50years old, what frightens me about MS is that they think they can sell an OS which they can remotely turn off without out a court warrant and then its up to you if your business hasn't gone bankrupt to sue them . This just shows complete and utter contempt for their customers.Which will do for them in the long run.My next box will be linux. Maybe the apple setup etc looks attractive to the younger gene…

I recently acquired a Mac Book Pro. There was precisely one Windows program I wanted to run on it (SuperMemo) under Parallels, which received good reviews. Rather than wait to purchase a copy of Windows from the local CompUSA, I used an OEM copy of Windows from a defenestrated a DELL box (I replaced Windows with Debian). After installing XP as a guest OS under Parallels, I activated XP online by purchasing a product…

Technically it isn't a legit copy of Windows. OEM versions are usually tied to the computer they are originally sold with.

Personally I don't think it is fair, but that's how licensing works under a monopoly.

Jonathan Allen

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#67

Post by grauenwolf » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:35 AM UTC

Have you taken a look at their developer toolkit?

ASP.NET is a really strong player in the web, and ATLAS has given them serious AJAX support. It is still pretty buggy now, but has the promise of the same easy drag and drop development that revolutionized Windows developement.

Or XNA? The next generation of game deveopers are already cutting their teeth on C# and XBox.

Or Robotics Studio? They are positioning themselves to corner the OS market for Robotics the same way they did for PCs back in the 80s.

As long as Microsoft has the hearts and minds of millions of developers, they aren't dead.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#68

Post by projectileboy » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:47 AM UTC

apansari wrote: post #47

Paul, excellent article. I have two additional reasons behind why Microsoft is "dead." Reason (5): Steve Ballmer took over from Bill Gates as CEO in Jan 2000. Chief Sales Guy takes over from Chief Egghead and the company stops building products for its real users. Reason (6): Web 1.0 hiring. Microsoft hired a huge number of people in 1998-2001, people who were too stupid or incompetent to get a job pretty much anywhe…

I agree strongly with reason (5) - whatever anyone thinks about Bill Gates, Microsoft was clearly a different company when Mr. Gates was at the helm.

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#69

Post by bartsimpson007 » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:51 AM UTC

Paul, I have great respect for you. But I think you contradit yourself a bit when you say this "..everyone can see the desktop is over. It now seems inevitable that applications will live on the webÂnot just email, but everything, right up to Photoshop". That by itself is a accuate and I can agree with. But you go on to rant about how Apple has put MS on the run and how you fund people that use Mac etc etc. Don't you consider Apple a desktop too??

Re: Microsoft is Dead

#70

Post by joeschmoe » Sat, Apr 07, 2007, 5:52 AM UTC

"Their victory is so complete that I'm now surprised when I come across a computer running Windows. Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops."

I love "essays" where someone has experience from the last few years and says stupid things like this. "I'm surprised" when I see people using laptops their companies buy...and they run windows? That's just naive and foolish to say. Yes, Apple is cool, but that's like me saying I'm surprised when I DON'T see a laptop running Linux. Hey, I go to little conferences too, and everyone is using a Linux laptop. See how dumb it sounds? Now think that Linux and Mac have close to the same market share.