Of course what Gates & Ballmer doesn't or refuses to see is that Microsoft has never really learned how to build a product that is both a) genuinely desired by the customer and b) profitable. All of Microsoft's giant successes i.e. DOS/Windows and Office relied on the sturdy protective walls of monopoly.
From the Chairman to the CEO down to the lowest level of management, no one at Microsoft knows how to run a company in an environment of very intense competition where you have to fight for every sale you make by offering the best value to the customer. NO ONE. The only skill they possess is that of twisting their suppliers and 'partners' arms to extract extremely favorable contractual terms and ramming their lousy products down the throats of customers who had no other choice. Those days are soon, if not already, gone.
The only way that MS could truly change their culture would be to create a separate, probably secret startup, helmed by a person with some vision.
They've had several groups like that. The most recent was Pioneer Studios, who came up with the Courier tablet project that had everyone excited.(*)
Unfortunately, Gates reportedly said no to it because it didn't mesh into the whole Windows universe, and the group was dissolved. A loss that shouldn't have happened.
As for Windows CE and Windows Mobile, they started back when handheld technology was young, and carried a lot of legacy baggage because of that. It's why Apple was able to jump ahead... they had no legacy devices to stay compatible with at the time. Now Apple does, and they're in the same boat of being unable to make too radical a change in display sizes or UI.
(*) Some of the software that the Courier project started with is available for free download from Microsoft Labs. MS publishes a lot of neat research.
They've had several groups like that. The most recent was Pioneer Studios, who came up with the Courier tablet project that had everyone excited.(*)
Unfortunately, Gates reportedly said no to it because it didn't mesh into the whole Windows universe, and the group was dissolved. A loss that shouldn't have happened.
As for Windows CE and Windows Mobile, they started back when handheld technology was young, and carried a lot of legacy baggage because of that. It's why Apple was able to jump ahead... they had no legacy devices to stay compatible with at the time. Now Apple does, and they're in the same boat of being unable to make too radical a change in display sizes or UI.
(*) Some of the software that the Courier project started with is available for free download from Microsoft Labs. MS publishes a lot of neat research.
MS has alienated the most creative and imaginative engineers and designers. They all left long ago for Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Even if they wanted to change course now, they do not have the people to do it. All they have left are crack bureaucratic infighters who have no equal in the art of defending your corporate turf but have no clue about how to design and build a product that appeals to the customer.
Adding salt to a festering wound, anyone who does a little digging will find material that describes how bureaucratic and political the work environment at Microsoft is. Which means the best engineers coming out of college or grad school, the ones who can pick and choose which job offer to take, will avoid Microsoft like the plague. And they will keep on doing this as long as the guy on top remains the guy on top.
Thats what happens to companies that get too big, they become a bureaucracy, people become lazy and uninspired. But Microsoft was really never much of an innovator either. They pretty much copied or stole everything, and most often very poorly, with the exception of the Office Suite, which is way over priced, and the X Box. If they didn't have the intellectual capability to compete they simply bought them out or used their power to squash any perceived completion. It seems Bill has turned into a pretty decent guy since he left, but for the recent failures from Microsoft you can only blame one person, Ballmer. If Microsoft wants to stay relevant Ballmer has to go. I think you will hear this very soon, but in keeping with the Microsoft culture this is something that should have happened years ago.
You are strongly opinionated, but you don't bring much arguments to the table.
Who would MS bring in? Random Leo Apoteker kind of CEO? Funny as he is, Balmer is at least home-bred. He is to Gates what Cook is to Jobs. When he is gone, I hope MS will have new inhouse person to take over. Bringing outsider is likely to make more damage than to help.
In addition. Most stagnation (Win CE, XP, Not-enough-Vista) was done during Gates' last years. While I still respect him in general, I think his mind wasn't in the right place in his last MS years. Maybe he was already more involved in his charity than leading MS. Under Balmer, new good products started coming out. CE got scrapped.
Innovation? Do yourself a favour and google around. Granted, not all MS innovations are consumer-oriented. But saying MS does not/did not innovate is a bit short-sighted.
MS has alienated the most creative and imaginative engineers and designers. They all left long ago for Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Even if they wanted to change course now, they do not have the people to do it. All they have left are crack bureaucratic infighters who have no equal in the art of defending your corporate turf but have no clue about how to design and build a product that appeals to the customer.
All of them? Care to share a list? We might try to fetch some, if they are available.
Please don't reply with "Everyone knows... (random rabble)". I'd like to see some names, beside Sinofsky and handful other management figures.
Of course what Gates & Ballmer doesn't or refuses to see is that Microsoft has never really learned how to build a product that is both a) genuinely desired by the customer and b) profitable. All of Microsoft's giant successes i.e. DOS/Windows and Office relied on the sturdy protective walls of monopoly.
From the Chairman to the CEO down to the lowest level of management, no one at Microsoft knows how to run a company in an environment of very intense competition where you have to fight for every sale you make by offering the best value to the customer. NO ONE. The only skill they possess is that of twisting their suppliers and 'partners' arms to extract extremely favorable contractual terms and ramming their lousy products down the throats of customers who had no other choice. Those days are soon, if not already, gone.
And... monopoly was reached by nobody wanted them products?
I hope MS will have new in-house person to take over.
If someone is going to save Microsoft, it won't be someone currently in-house. The only people left there are bureaucrats, more concerned with protecting their corporate turf than making great product. No, Microsoft's savior, if such exists, will be someone who left the company years ago out of frustration when Gates/Ballmer killed any and every product idea that did not hew to the "Windows/Office is King" company line.
It doesn't take much of a quarterback to point out on Monday all the mistakes that lost the game on Sunday. I have no confidence that either Gates or Balmer can lead the team to a victory in the markets referenced.
All of them? Care to share a list? We might try to fetch some, if they are available.
Please don't reply with "Everyone knows... (random rabble)". I'd like to see some names, beside Sinofsky and handful other management figures.
Oh I'll start with the people who were working on courier. I don't know anymore names, but it's just all the blogs and news items I've been reading the last 7-10 years of people leaving Microsoft to go to Google, Facebook, etc. You can find them posting all over the net pouring their souls and frustrations out about how badly things are run at Microsoft. If you just dismiss them as disgruntled ex-employees, then you must ask yourself why are there so many disgruntled Microsoft ex-employees and why are they so vocal? I certainly don't see that many disgruntled Apple ex-employees blogging about how badly things are run at Apple.
Or the internal emails of Microsoft (revealed in the course of some lawsuit) that had one exec (it might even have been Gates) complaining why can't Microsoft build a product like OS-X? Remember those?
And Sinofsky isn't my example of a great product designer. He was a supremely sharp-elbowed infighter, he was among the people who stifled creativity in Microsoft when he jealously protected Windows and killed anything and everything that threatened it. I look at him as the main reason the first MS tablet failed, back in what, 2005? (when Gates first proclaimed that the tablet was Microsoft's future). Sinofsky undermined the efforts of the tablet team when he saw that it was straying from the "Windows/Office is King" company line. Can you believe that? Your CEO tells the world the tablet is Microsoft's next frontier and you directly sabotage that project? And could you believe what Gates did after that? You are the Chairman/CEO, your underling undermines your publicly declared company goal, and you just let him get away with it?
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.
Agreed! It doesn't take Nostradamus to figure out that touch screen mobile computing was going to be huge, and absolutely essential for MS to retain it's market share crown.
The problem I believe MS had/has is optimisation.
Once mobile processors became fast enough, whoever was capable of fitting a full OS into a mobile device won the show (a bit overly simplistic sure, as there were many factors). Apple had a massive head start in this department by incorporating UNIX.
This is precisely why I decided to become a Cocoa Developer in 2002.
...and it's only just begun, frankly, Microsoft are screwed. Traditional computers will become a niche market, and even that niche (MS's traditional stranglehold ) will get eaten up by Apple and Google due to lack of interoperability with the dominant mobile platforms which MS stands almost zero chance of catching up in.
Gates is wrong that MS had the opportunity. They still don't have the opportunity. They clearly have neither the culture nor the talent to implement competitive systems. A company, like an individual, must first be prepared to take advantage of opportunities that might present itself. MS was and is not so prepared.
It's as silly to say MS had the opportunity to get into this market, as to say that a high school dropout missed his opportunity to apply for the neurosurgery fellowship at Johns Hopkins.
I don't think any company has done more with less impressive products in the history of the world. When Steve Jobs said they have no class, not meaning it in a small way but a big way, I cheered. Decades relying on cash cows and not even innovating on those products. That would make anyone lazy. That's why they missed the internet and mobile computing.
Anyone remember using that thing once called a file system, how quaint. I remember even in late 2015 still be forced to locate files 10 levels buried within a hierachical filing system. Yeah grandpa, you will never get it, hey my kids still get a kick out of me saying I still prefer to use my voice. We took the kids down to the computer museum to see one of those old relics called a "desktop computers" which people at the time swore by. Funny how it was replaced by the 2st gen ARM chip in the 2010's. My kids tell me I'm old fashioned fuddy duddy insisting on not have a chip implanted in the back of my skull. I'm so uncool, I just can't figure out how to telepathically use these new fangled interfaces nowadays. I prefer to use my voice to send a message. My kids tell me the telepathic interface developed in the late 50's is 1000's of times faster. What was left of microsoft was bought by Telesoft over 20 years ago as an act of mercy , a drop in the bucket in terms of the capitalization.
Fast forward 10 years - I can't see windows being there. I can see MacOS/iOS ( although they're likely to be indistinguishable from each other), I can see Linux distros some of which will develop immensely sometime soon into something joe Blow can use. Android - well god knows what will happen there (could turn into a total shit fight) but likely to be there under a different incarnation.
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.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eriamjh
Gates continues to let Ballmer suck from his teet.
Eww. And his teet is now apparently dry.
From the Chairman to the CEO down to the lowest level of management, no one at Microsoft knows how to run a company in an environment of very intense competition where you have to fight for every sale you make by offering the best value to the customer. NO ONE. The only skill they possess is that of twisting their suppliers and 'partners' arms to extract extremely favorable contractual terms and ramming their lousy products down the throats of customers who had no other choice. Those days are soon, if not already, gone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WelshDog
The only way that MS could truly change their culture would be to create a separate, probably secret startup, helmed by a person with some vision.
They've had several groups like that. The most recent was Pioneer Studios, who came up with the Courier tablet project that had everyone excited.(*)
Unfortunately, Gates reportedly said no to it because it didn't mesh into the whole Windows universe, and the group was dissolved. A loss that shouldn't have happened.
As for Windows CE and Windows Mobile, they started back when handheld technology was young, and carried a lot of legacy baggage because of that. It's why Apple was able to jump ahead... they had no legacy devices to stay compatible with at the time. Now Apple does, and they're in the same boat of being unable to make too radical a change in display sizes or UI.
(*) Some of the software that the Courier project started with is available for free download from Microsoft Labs. MS publishes a lot of neat research.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KDarling
They've had several groups like that. The most recent was Pioneer Studios, who came up with the Courier tablet project that had everyone excited.(*)
Unfortunately, Gates reportedly said no to it because it didn't mesh into the whole Windows universe, and the group was dissolved. A loss that shouldn't have happened.
As for Windows CE and Windows Mobile, they started back when handheld technology was young, and carried a lot of legacy baggage because of that. It's why Apple was able to jump ahead... they had no legacy devices to stay compatible with at the time. Now Apple does, and they're in the same boat of being unable to make too radical a change in display sizes or UI.
(*) Some of the software that the Courier project started with is available for free download from Microsoft Labs. MS publishes a lot of neat research.
MS has alienated the most creative and imaginative engineers and designers. They all left long ago for Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Even if they wanted to change course now, they do not have the people to do it. All they have left are crack bureaucratic infighters who have no equal in the art of defending your corporate turf but have no clue about how to design and build a product that appeals to the customer.
Adding salt to a festering wound, anyone who does a little digging will find material that describes how bureaucratic and political the work environment at Microsoft is. Which means the best engineers coming out of college or grad school, the ones who can pick and choose which job offer to take, will avoid Microsoft like the plague. And they will keep on doing this as long as the guy on top remains the guy on top.
You are strongly opinionated, but you don't bring much arguments to the table.
Who would MS bring in? Random Leo Apoteker kind of CEO? Funny as he is, Balmer is at least home-bred. He is to Gates what Cook is to Jobs. When he is gone, I hope MS will have new inhouse person to take over. Bringing outsider is likely to make more damage than to help.
In addition. Most stagnation (Win CE, XP, Not-enough-Vista) was done during Gates' last years. While I still respect him in general, I think his mind wasn't in the right place in his last MS years. Maybe he was already more involved in his charity than leading MS. Under Balmer, new good products started coming out. CE got scrapped.
Innovation? Do yourself a favour and google around. Granted, not all MS innovations are consumer-oriented. But saying MS does not/did not innovate is a bit short-sighted.
All of them? Care to share a list? We might try to fetch some, if they are available.
Please don't reply with "Everyone knows... (random rabble)". I'd like to see some names, beside Sinofsky and handful other management figures.
And... monopoly was reached by nobody wanted them products?
Wouldn't that be neat
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
I hope MS will have new in-house person to take over.
If someone is going to save Microsoft, it won't be someone currently in-house. The only people left there are bureaucrats, more concerned with protecting their corporate turf than making great product. No, Microsoft's savior, if such exists, will be someone who left the company years ago out of frustration when Gates/Ballmer killed any and every product idea that did not hew to the "Windows/Office is King" company line.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
And... monopoly was reached by nobody wanted them products?
Wouldn't that be neat
Please edit so I can understand what you mean and respond accordingly. BTW in real life, are you really Steve Ballmer?
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
All of them? Care to share a list? We might try to fetch some, if they are available.
Please don't reply with "Everyone knows... (random rabble)". I'd like to see some names, beside Sinofsky and handful other management figures.
Oh I'll start with the people who were working on courier. I don't know anymore names, but it's just all the blogs and news items I've been reading the last 7-10 years of people leaving Microsoft to go to Google, Facebook, etc. You can find them posting all over the net pouring their souls and frustrations out about how badly things are run at Microsoft. If you just dismiss them as disgruntled ex-employees, then you must ask yourself why are there so many disgruntled Microsoft ex-employees and why are they so vocal? I certainly don't see that many disgruntled Apple ex-employees blogging about how badly things are run at Apple.
Or the internal emails of Microsoft (revealed in the course of some lawsuit) that had one exec (it might even have been Gates) complaining why can't Microsoft build a product like OS-X? Remember those?
And Sinofsky isn't my example of a great product designer. He was a supremely sharp-elbowed infighter, he was among the people who stifled creativity in Microsoft when he jealously protected Windows and killed anything and everything that threatened it. I look at him as the main reason the first MS tablet failed, back in what, 2005? (when Gates first proclaimed that the tablet was Microsoft's future). Sinofsky undermined the efforts of the tablet team when he saw that it was straying from the "Windows/Office is King" company line. Can you believe that? Your CEO tells the world the tablet is Microsoft's next frontier and you directly sabotage that project? And could you believe what Gates did after that? You are the Chairman/CEO, your underling undermines your publicly declared company goal, and you just let him get away with 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.
Agreed! It doesn't take Nostradamus to figure out that touch screen mobile computing was going to be huge, and absolutely essential for MS to retain it's market share crown.
The problem I believe MS had/has is optimisation.
Once mobile processors became fast enough, whoever was capable of fitting a full OS into a mobile device won the show (a bit overly simplistic sure, as there were many factors). Apple had a massive head start in this department by incorporating UNIX.
This is precisely why I decided to become a Cocoa Developer in 2002.
...and it's only just begun, frankly, Microsoft are screwed. Traditional computers will become a niche market, and even that niche (MS's traditional stranglehold ) will get eaten up by Apple and Google due to lack of interoperability with the dominant mobile platforms which MS stands almost zero chance of catching up in.
It's as silly to say MS had the opportunity to get into this market, as to say that a high school dropout missed his opportunity to apply for the neurosurgery fellowship at Johns Hopkins.
Anyone remember that MS mock funeral for the iPhone in 2010 when MS had Windows 7 phone release to Master party?
How's that working for them now?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-windows-phone-7-rtm-with-funeral-parade-for/
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spacepower
Anyone remember that MS mock funeral for the iPhone in 2010 when MS had Windows 7 phone release to Master party?
How's that working for them now?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-windows-phone-7-rtm-with-funeral-parade-for/
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 don't think any company has done more with less impressive products in the history of the world. When Steve Jobs said they have no class, not meaning it in a small way but a big way, I cheered. Decades relying on cash cows and not even innovating on those products. That would make anyone lazy. That's why they missed the internet and mobile computing.
Anyone remember using that thing once called a file system, how quaint. I remember even in late 2015 still be forced to locate files 10 levels buried within a hierachical filing system. Yeah grandpa, you will never get it, hey my kids still get a kick out of me saying I still prefer to use my voice. We took the kids down to the computer museum to see one of those old relics called a "desktop computers" which people at the time swore by. Funny how it was replaced by the 2st gen ARM chip in the 2010's. My kids tell me I'm old fashioned fuddy duddy insisting on not have a chip implanted in the back of my skull. I'm so uncool, I just can't figure out how to telepathically use these new fangled interfaces nowadays. I prefer to use my voice to send a message. My kids tell me the telepathic interface developed in the late 50's is 1000's of times faster. What was left of microsoft was bought by Telesoft over 20 years ago as an act of mercy , a drop in the bucket in terms of the capitalization.
Never mind hardware developments.
Fast forward 10 years - I can't see windows being there. I can see MacOS/iOS ( although they're likely to be indistinguishable from each other), I can see Linux distros some of which will develop immensely sometime soon into something joe Blow can use. Android - well god knows what will happen there (could turn into a total shit fight) but likely to be there under a different incarnation.
Sunset for Windows.
imo only of course.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul94544
What was left of microsoft was bought by Telesoft over 20 years ago as a tax write off.
tftfy
The rest of your post is prophetic - jeez who knows?
cheers
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.