Gates disappointed at Microsoft's performance in mobile computing, calls for change - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikon133 


And... monopoly was reached by nobody wanted them products?

Wouldn't that be neat

Not hard to do when a company do all it can to make sure there isn't another viable choice. IE browser was once a monopoly. That is until other browsers were allow to compete within the OS.

Back in the 80's and 90's, you could not buy a name brand PC without an MS OS (or IE) pre-installed. Whether you want it or not. (Not to mention the problems of finding drivers for the hardware. Which many depends on having an MS OS.) And these name brands could not sell a PC with anything other than an MS OS (or IE) pre-installed. Otherwise MS would cut off their MS OS license agreement. Don't mistaken wanting to use a product, to having no other choice but to use it.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasanman69 


Gates knew exactly what was coming, he knew years ago that smartphones and tablets would be the future of computing. MS squandered a golden opportunity and a big early lead by putting a crappy Windows CE on crappy hardware, and trying to put a desktop OS on tablets.

That's more the answer I think. Into perpetuity, Bill Gates will likely be remembered more for his philanthropic work, although being the founder of... you know, that company that made software, ah, Micro something will be difficult shake off.

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobM 

ohh - I'd forgotten about that. Nice catch.

I just still can't believe how ignorant, arrogant and stupid they are.

No disrespect meant for 1000s they've employed over the years, some very savvy smart people stifled by dumbass management. Pathetic.

 

Which way to the OS graveyard ?

Any way will get you there if you don't know where you're going.

I totally agree. no disrespect to MS employees, regardless of the PR stunt which most probably didn't support. 

The MS management is dire need of new blood. Like most large companies, any visionary wil be fired for speaking their mind rather than going with the status quo. 

Regardless of fanboy allegiances, MS brought affordable computing to the masses. The problem is that haven't revolutionized mass computing since Windows 95. 18 years with no real new vision. People complain the iOS is stale after 5 years but Windows is stale after 18 years. 

MS has 95% of worldwide OS share and hasn't bothered to massively change the way we interact with computers in 18 years. Where is the innovation? Windows 8? How long did that take after the IPad?  

MS, your money, power, and market share, improve the way we interact with technology 

Wrote a letter to Tim Cook, who passed it to a senior VP and who then responded. Wrote a letter to Steve Balmer and received one back saying 'we don't talk to strangers'. Says a lot to me lol.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Scrip 

Who knows... we'd probably still see Windows Mobile today if it wasn't for the iPhone and Android.

You mean if it wasn't for iPhone period. Android had NOTHING to do with the monumental paradigm shift that happened after January 2007 in mobile phone industry.

Android is nothing but a cheep-skate clone of iPhone and its depressing that people now compare it with iPhone like it was some kind of pear that deserves equal credit for the progress made today in the industry.

Just want to state my view on two points:

1) As long as Bill Gates is alive and on the board, Ballmer will stay CEO. The Microsoft board of directors is made up of two types of people: Microsoft stalwarts and former execs who are simply padding their already generous retirement checks. Nobody there is going to make any waves. Never.

2) Microsoft started out as a software company. As Windows became the world's dominant OS and no viable competitor was in sight, Gates became fixed on the idea of putting "Windows everywhere" -- on computers, on embedded devices, on tablets, cellphones, etc. On everything regardless if it fitted or not. (XBOX was a deviation, but MS has learned nothing from it) It is this philosophy that drives everything that Ballmer does. Everything he has done, is doing, and will do, makes sense from this point of view. Gates set the goal and Ballmer is determined to attain it with the same blind faith and fanaticism of a kamikaze pilot.

OMG, - Ballmer got something on Gates, and visa versa.  Just wondering how long they can continue this farce.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider 

Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates says the software giant hasn't been innovative enough with regard to the new era of mobile computing, saying the company's initial approach was "clearly a mistake."

And it's all your fault, Bill.  You're the one who kept promoting "Windows Everywhere."  You're the one who insisted, for a decade, that vanilla Windows, jammed nearly unchanged into a pad computer, was a good idea.  The world disagreed.  You didn't listen.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider 

"And there were a lot of amazing things that Steve's leadership got done with the company in the last year," Gates said listing the CEO's recent achievements. "Windows 8 is key to the future; the Surface computer; Bing, people are seeing as a better search product; Xbox."

Windows will always be Microsoft's key to the future.  Legacy desktop / laptop Windows plus Office, to be more precise.  Because Windows and Office are the two things that Microsoft cares about most.  Because they're the two-headed cash cow that Microsoft can never sacrifice, or even threaten in any way.  And Surface threatens Windows and Office revenue because Apple has trained the world to expect to pay less for pad computing software.  Especially the OS.

If the second-greatest miracle in tech (guess the first) happens, and Surface RT + Pro begin to sell in more than roundoff-error volumes, then Microsoft's average selling price for all flavors of Windows will drop.  More realistically, Surface RT + Pro sales will remain "moderate," the division will never make money, and iPad will continue to dominate throughout the entire post-PC era, however long that era will be.  The net result: Microsoft loses either way.  They lose if Surface succeeds.  They lose if Surface fails.  They've painted themselves into a corner in mobile.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider 

"Is it enough?" the Microsoft chairman continued, "No, he and I are not satisfied that in terms of, you know, breakthrough things, that we're doing everything possible."

 

What he said: "...we're doing everything possible."

What he meant: "...we're doing everything possible to make everyone think we're actually trying in mobile."

Originally Posted by AppleInsider 

"We didn't miss cell phones," Gates conceded, "but the way that we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership. So it's clearly a mistake."

 

Good for you, Bill.  You're saying what Ballmer is afraid to say.

Gates: "So it's clearly a mistake."

Ballmer: "Sales are moderate."

Originally Posted by AppleInsider 

Gates went on to discuss the assorted philanthropic efforts he and his wife have engaged in over the past several years.

 

You're doing great work, helping the world, improving people's lives.

Thank you for that, Bill.  History will remember you as a hero.

If only the other billionaires of the world (ahem, Larry Ellison) were so humanitarian.

As has been mentioned, talk of MS being slow to respond or a bit late to innovate or failing to capitalize on an early lead are wildly off the mark.  The fact is, the iPhone might have well as been a completely different product category from Windows phones of the day (or Palm, for that matter, despite claims from fans of same).

It wasn't a matter of just adopting touch screens, or making things somewhat easier to use, or reducing the number of buttons.  It was a matter of rethinking the entire "smartphone" experience from the ground up-- what it was for, what it could potentially do, how where and when it might be used, and most of all how people might best interact with a small, ubiquitously connected device.

It's sort of Apple's curse:  once they've utterly transformed a market, their innovations are so quickly adopted industry wide, and are so quickly acknowledged as right and reasonable, that it becomes difficult to imagine a world where said innovations were in fact non-existent, unimagined, and possibly suspect.

The iPhone didn't "get there first" with some tech that was being slowly rolled out by others.  It came out of nowhere and completely changed the landscape.  It did that, not by applying some new stuff to the existing idea (which is all MS was every going to be able to do), but by fundamentally re-imagining what might be possible.  Smartphones went, overnight, from being fussy business tools to the enablers of a changed social landscape, for good or ill. 

I know it gets cited all the time, but it might be worth it to take another look at the famous "Ballmer laughs at the iPhone" video.

He dismisses the iPhone because it's too expensive and doesn't have a keyboard (so it's not "a good business machine").  He expresses satisfaction with, specifically, the Motorola Q, which is "$99 on contract, it's a very capable machine, it'll do music, it'll do internet, it'll do email, it'll do instant messaging, so I kinda look at that and I say, well, I like our strategy, I like it a lot."

He meant this, of course:

Which gives you a sense of how clueless Microsoft/Ballmer was, even after they had been shown the future.  Price, hardware keyboards, and "functionality", without any acknowledgement or even apparent awareness that those very features had remained business ghetto niches because they could only be accessed via fussy little directional pads, PC like menu structures, and opaque, inconsistent hardware buttons. I'm sure the iPhone struck him as a gimmicky luxury item, nice for what it was but no match for the "capable machines" that represented Microsoft's "strategy."

That's not being somewhat late to innovate or slow to incorporate new tech, that's a fundamental inability to understand why to innovate, which is to make devices that are more satisfying to use.  MS expects its customers to learn how to use their stuff so they can take advantage of all the great features MS has crammed in there.  Apple is interested in figuring out what people might like to do and how to make that easy as possible. 

Obviously, once the iPhone and its Android follow-on had made it clear that any phone that didn't follow the iPhone template would have no chance whatsoever in the market, MS was obliged to change it up and try to at least appear consumer friendly with their mobile offerings.  To their credit, they elected to do something different than just copy the iPhone, although it's not entirely clear that their choices make their devices any easier to use.  But I suspect that nothing really has changed, and that without an Apple to show them what needs to happen, they'll continue approach every problem as matter of "strategy" and "capable machines" and "features", instead of thinking about how people live, what they want, and how you might go about giving them that.

M$ was early to the party.  That is typically the only way they can get their foot into the door.

Look at tablets, m$ had been trying to push them on to the general public, on and off, for 20 years.

m$ didn't have the lead with phones that they did with tablets, but they are masters of the missed opportunity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael Scrip 

As a result... Microsoft was not only late to the party... they were also ill-equipped to deal with change.

It took them 3 years to come up with their next OS... when they should have begun scrapping Windows Mobile years before.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratsg 

M$ was early to the party.  That is typically the only way they can get their foot into the door.

 

Look at tablets, m$ had been trying to push them on to the general public, on and off, for 20 years.

 

m$ didn't have the lead with phones that they did with tablets, but they are masters of the missed opportunity.

 

 

Again, I think it's a bit of a red herring to even imagine that MS was in these markets.  They made some devices that get called by the same names, but for all practical purposes the things they sold as, for instance, tablets and the iPad are completely different products, with completely different reasons for being.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ruel24 

As a Linux user, and future Mac user, I hope Ballmer keeps running the company for a long time to come...

I think its awesome that monkey boy continues to entertain us as his ship slowly sinks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilBoogie 


While looking at their BoD, I stumbled upon this - LOL

They have a CPO - Chief People Officer. Never heard that one before; it it the successor to a HR manager?

Possibly the most important person there: if they can change the mindset at MS instead of all this hierarchy they would come up with a real innovative product. Not that they don't innovate, but they also don't make a dent in the universe either.

Completely off topic, but I worked for a division of Sprint during the dotcom boom.  Sprint enterprise network services to be specific.  And we had a "Director of Fun"

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasanman69 


A ruthless businessman does not a bad man make.

Why?  Is business somehow exempt from questions of morality?

Still don't understand why "business" is some special provenance of human activity that apparently gets a pass if you **** people over.  "Dog eat dog" is an expedient phrase to normalize this idea, it's not some fundamental principal or moral philosophy.

Capitalism as currently practiced by corporations has chosen, for obviously self serving reasons, this idea of winning at all costs as being somehow right and good, in some deliberately vague social Darwinian sense, but we know better, or should. 

As far as Gates goes specifically, if he was pig in business he's a pig.  You don't get a special pass just because you invoke the holy Marketplace.  It's a sphere of human activity like any other.  You wouldn't argue that a man that beats his wife is otherwise a pretty good dude so you shouldn't judge him too harshly; wife beating is a grave failing in and of itself and not somehow exonerated by, say, volunteering at the orphanage.

"Ruthlessness" is, in every walk of life outside of "business" generally understood to be fairly loathsome, in that it suggests a person that will stop at nothing to achieve their aims.  We further understand that "stopping at nothing" generally involves making the lives of others materially worse, which is the very definition of "immoral."

But as I say, because of our very convoluted relationship to "the marketplace" we somehow decide that ruthlessness in that instance is acceptable, even admirable, as if it were a gladiatorial arena and slaying your foes the only possible metric of success.  I don't think you can even make a case for this kind of unbridled competition having better outcomes for society at large, since the mechanisms for "competing" generally involve a great deal more, and a great deal more destructive strategies than just having a better product or service. 

So in the case of Gates, why should I admire his manipulations if it resulted in a manifestly worse computing environment, as in the case of the long, terrible reign of IE? 

Quote:

Originally Posted by dasanman69 


Because people like diamonds have facets. You're not the same person to everyone, you a husband to your wife, a father to your kids, a son to your parents, etc. I'm not giving him a pass, I'm just not going paint him completely a despicable human being because of his business ethics, nor am I commending him for them.

Fair enough, I would just say that certain behaviors are sufficiently odious as to swamp out redeeming qualities.  A murderer is generally known as a murder, parenting skills notwithstanding.

I'm not saying Gates is anything as reprehensible as a murderer, of course, just that when we're judging people's facets we're obliged to give weight to particularly notable characteristics, for good or ill.

Again, it sort of depends on the magnitude of the behavior.  If I was somewhat callow and lacked empathy 15 years ago and life has taught me compassion, then sure, I would hate to be held to that.  OTOH, if 15 years ago I was into violent street crime, then I would have to expect there would be a lingering stain.  I wouldn't want to forever be treated as a criminal if I had amended my ways, but I would need to understand if people were slow to trust me.