Great article. Choosing a place where people appreciate honest criticism works for friendships as well. My biggest criteria for friends is that the person is cool with honesty, including telling them when they're wrong. Interesting point about how if you never fail, you're too conservative. The same idea applies to poker. Microsoft fails constantly and people accept it, yet every Google failure means they've lost the…
Microsoft fails constantly and people accept it? :) I would argue the exact opposite - Microsoft succeeds consistently in a lot of very measurable ways but isn't given enough credit for it (that a Google/Apple would get for doing the very same thing).
The general pattern I've seen with Microsoft is they mostly just copy other people's successes. Sometimes their copies do okay, or well enough. Sometimes they fail. But due to their huge install base and lock-in effects and user inertia and huge cash pile they have the ability to muddle onward. In some ways, Microsoft treats Apple as a sort of external UI R&D department, one with the wonderful quality that Microsoft doesn't have to pay the Apple folks anything, just copy whatever people seem to like. I do think they succeed enough, at the right things, that it keeps them shambling forward. But the same is true of a zombie.