Could Steve Jobs transform Microsoft?
Hypothetically speaking, COULD a 35 year old Steve Jobs clone (identical in every meaningful way) - if jettisoned from the Apple fold and allowed to pursue his own "Cube-ic" interests - be persuaded to take over Microsoft from Gates and Ballmer, rescue it from the travesty it is gradually succumbing to (much as he did Apple) - and by the sheer force of his personna (his Reality Distortion Field) - transform it into a model of cutting-edge innovation and productivity?
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Apple and Microsoft would just share the profits. I'm sure it would sell more than Vista and it would make all new systems unix compliant. I'm almost certain it would reduce the Linux user base considerably too.
Microsoft don't deserve that though, they deserve to die out painfully. Apple has the software to do it but the hardware model will always hold them back.
Microsoft don't deserve that though, they deserve to die out painfully.
Amen.
2. Microsoft is an entirely different beast than Apple. For all we know, they intend to suck. They certainly aren't losing money as a result.
1. Jobs isn't God
2. Microsoft is an entirely different beast than Apple. For all we know, they intend to suck. They certainly aren't losing money as a result.
I love that...
its true too!
1. Jobs isn't God
2. Microsoft is an entirely different beast than Apple. For all we know, they intend to suck. They certainly aren't losing money as a result.
Alright, true enough. Jobs isn't God, nor is he Bill Gates or any number of people one might care to name.
And MicroSoft is certainly a different company than Apple, or General Motors, or any number of corporations one might care to name.
That MicroSoft intends to suck is an interesting comment, because the essence of "sucking" is entirely within one's frame of reference. Certainly, on one hand, given the profit motive of most rational organizations engaged in enterprise, it might be assumed that MicroSoft, like all other capitalized entities, is driven by its ownership scheme to do whatever is necessary to ensure long-term monetary gains.
One might assume, given this rationale, that although Microsoft isn't "losing money," neither is it positioning itself to make future returns on investment that investors would likely demand. This might be thought akin to a blind man who, wired for sound, jumps from the top of the Empire State Building without a well thought out plan to ensure long term survival. As he plummets, his equally blind friends are assured by him through radio that, though unusually windy today, everything appears to be alright. "So far - so good" as the old joke goes.
On the other hand, perhaps MicroSoft isn't in some sort of "free fall" at all and , although worrisome to minor investors such as me, the corporate cognoscienti know exactly what it is doing and it is doing it well. Perhaps, given its size and intellectual property trove, this is all a behemoth like MS is capable of - no matter who runs it.
As an small investor, I get corporate updates from Redmond and am always interested to find that, despite the nature of the mailing, whether it comes from their board, accounting, or public relations department, a certain "cheeriness" and "tally-ho" is always evinced. I am a small investor in other large corporations, and never find such a generalized treatment of "bully-rag" uniformly presented across all publications sent by these other behemoths.
One might say that Microsoft is certainly sold on its own hyperbole, as I imagine the mantra of righteousness and jingo of success breeding success is constantly being reverberated through those corporate halls. My problem is that I have been a small investor with them for a very long time and have developed an outsider's sense of change in the company over the years. I sense a sea change of difference between Microsoft 15 years ago and now - and the change is not predicated on size, but rather the people who run it.
I watched when Steve Ballmer came on board and have had occasion to watch him over the years at stockholders' meetings. He always struck me as an opportunist who quickly latched onto Mr. Gates and the void left with the exodus of Nathan Myrvold from the MicroSoft fold. Not one of the original "drivers" in the company, Ballmer came in as is typical of corporate execs who parachute from one Fortune 500 to another, and insinuated himself somehow into Mr. Gate's corporate embrace. You can well imagine that he is just as stunned as anyone else that Lady Luck has smiled on him to the tune of many billions of dollars - for his being there at the right time as much as anuthing else.
What is puzzling is that Mr. Ballmer used to appear to be much more reserved than the unimaginable buffoonery he exhibits today. Perhaps, as you suggest, it is all by design, but my instincts tell me that MicroSoft is not benefitted by it. The same personality resonates within those Redmond halls as it does onstage. Shareholder meetings are not conventions of respectability for Mr. Ballmer, nor is there an assurance among the conversational groups that gather at these meetings that MicroSoft hasn't lost its way - despite what you or I may think released figures show.
Given all of this, and in consideration of what Steve Jobs was able to accomplish at Apple when it lost its way, one might let one's imagination run wild and imagine what it might be like if a Steve Jobs clone did overtake the Redmond machine, what would he do?
Would he scrap the evolution of Dave Cutler's NT for the apparently successful model utilized by Apple - whether a GNU/Linux - Open SOurce with a customized GUI, or would he opt to resurrect a BeOS or buy Pink or Taligent from Apple much like he did when Apple bought NextStep from Next.
What truly killer apps could MicroSoft come out with if only we had someone like Steve Jobs at the helm to say not only "NO" but "HELL NO!" to engineers who design a product to only perform at a level sufficient to make its users eager to buy the next upgrade.
Would he fire Ballmer and install a superset of his famous reality distortion field, or would he make these guys fall in line. Could he work with Mr. Gates - or, with the various corporate changes and overturns that would inevitably happen - would he end up with a 51% share of MicroSoft (a la Disney) when all is said and done.
Is Mr. Jobs the greatest corporate takeover artist the world has ever seen? Surely the thought "so many opportunities - so little time" has occurred to him on a frequent basis.
And all for a $1.00 a year. Or could MicroSoft afford $2.00?
Here's an anecdote. . .
As recent as two years ago, many of the brightest CS graduates would go to work for MS for a very decent starting salary. Despite having the best young minds in the industry, they have never been able to produce good software -- a characteristic that is not simply undesirable, but one that exposes inadequacies in the entire operation. Then, Google came along and starting sucking up the same applicant pool that Microsoft was used to taking. Microsoft no longer is the place were bright, young (and risk-averse) CS graduates go to work. Well see if this makes a difference, although I'm not sure that it will. These kids were/are underutilized.
Anyway, to "fix" Microsoft Ballmer would need to go, their operations model would have to be rewritten, and most of their project managers would have to be replaced. It's a big, landfall change that would be required. You have here a company that has been successful at doing things the wrong way for so long, that nothing short of a total restructuring will yield any improvement.
On the other hand, there's no indication that MS is going to be in financial concern anytime soon, so what's the point? Even so, in an age where CEOs are often measured by their ability to instill confidence among shareholders, I wouldn't put bets on Ballmer's longevity at the company.
I think they are doing just fine.
http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnin...rel_q3_07.mspx
Steve Jobs is good for Apple. Apple knows they are a niche and they will never be %80 of the overall computing market. Apple is about design and function intersecting. They control the "whole widget" and while they do a good job you'd think they would be much farther ahead of Wintel with that obvious advantage.
Jobs is wrong for Microsoft. Microsoft is about doing enough to make the sale. They are far more agressive than Apple is as a company. Jobs' love of design would have been a weakness rather than a strength.
Jobs is not a God.
If you think back to the PC beginings, Apple were making good computers and had the market-share. But Microsoft and IBM appealed to the buisness world as stable and consistent rather than flashy and cool--That made them (or at least MS) way, way, way rich.
At the very begining of their buisness; cool, flashy, inovative and all those other adjectives which we like to ascribe to Apple would have been seen as a negative for the market MS was going after.
By saying they intended to suck it by no means implies that they are failing, it is just a clever way of saying that what was valued for their buisness model over the years is not what Jobs is about.
I imagine that if Jobs somehow became head of MS one or the other would implode--I do not see it working.
Really Microsoft is a two app company. They have the Operating System and Office. All else feeds off of the tremendous amount of revenue these two areas generate.
Apple has an OS that is consistently better than Microsoft but note that Apple has nothing with the power to enmesh like Office and any attempts to encroach on this area is rebuffed with vigor by Microsoft.
I thought the point of the "For all we know, they intend to suck. They certainly aren't losing money as a result." comment was that their buisness model doesn't need for them to create cool, awesome, software for them to rake in the cash.
I appologize. I figured the "They made more money than ever" comment meant that there are millions of people out there that don't think they suck.
Having the opinion that M$ sucks does not mean the rest of the world has this same opinion...sorry to break that news to you but there are tons of M$ fanboys out there.
I don't happen to be one, but I know lots of them.
If Microsoft has one advantage over Apple it is knowing how to make yourself indispensable.
Really Microsoft is a two app company. They have the Operating System and Office. All else feeds off of the tremendous amount of revenue these two areas generate.
Apple has an OS that is consistently better than Microsoft but note that Apple has nothing with the power to enmesh like Office and any attempts to encroach on this area is rebuffed with vigor by Microsoft.
Also, lets not forget their "Services" group. M$ has a massive group that offer services to large companies. I have friends that work in the M$ services group. It's hard to grasp the amount of money they are making in this field. Hell thats where the real money is these days anyway (IBM anyone?)
But Microsoft and IBM appealed to the buisness world as stable and consistent rather than flashy and cool--That made them (or at least MS) way, way, way rich.
At the very begining of their buisness; cool, flashy, inovative and all those other adjectives which we like to ascribe to Apple would have been seen as a negative for the market MS was going after.
IBM was already in the business world. IBM's already established market was pretty much "given" to MS by IBM. That is the reason and only reason that MS is what it is today. MS did nothing back then and still does nothing today. MS is a parasite.
1) If Steve Jobs was obviously right for Apple when he returned, was it because he was by his very nature, "cool and hip" and therefore necessary to the revitalization of Apple? (and if so - why was he forced out in the first place)? And did Steve Jobs reinvigorate Apple because he brought back the "cool" with him - or would Jobs have "morphed" into whatever was needed within the limitations of the company to enable it?
2) if not Steve Jobs, then who? It is all well and good to look at "revenues" and, given that one snapshot, ask what one is "smoking" if the number appears good to the observor. It is quite another to look at history, at the long litany of companies like IBM (who once ruled computing) or CompuServe and Maury Cox (who once ruled online services) and who all had insanely great "revenues" only to find that there had indeed been a handwriting on the wall which ultimately spelled their decline. "Revenues" often do not reflect winnowing assets, which in turn does not necessarily reflect cash attrition, etc.
Assuming for the sake of what some of us may be "smoking" that a drastic change may be needed at MicroSoft - "revenues" notwithstanding – what would you, as a theoretical Apple apologist and MicroSoft basher, LEAST like to see happen at MicroSoft?
Would it be someone who could kick ass and demand, like Jobs, that a product be polished before it is released? Forgetting that it would be fantasy for the moment, what would it mean if a new dynamic leader came on board, and quietly over the next few years, worked madly on a project to produce a rock solid, polished advanced operating system that did everything OS X did - only better?
What would it mean to Apple's success if they no longer had the best operating system - but merely a very good second best one? What would it mean if Office were produced and PowerPoint blew Keynote away - instead of vice-versa?
One of the attractions I find with Apple and the "Mac experience" is that it somehow reassures me of a certain stability in an unstable world. I depend upon my computer to do certain things that stretches the performance limit available on many typical PC configurations. I have a Mac for the same reason I drive a certain brand of car. I have no doubt that, given enough time and perspiration, a good grease monkey could "Smokey Yunick" his way into assembling a vehicle out of hodge-podge parts that would edge mine in the performance categories. But I don't care - it's not readily available without a great deal of effort and I wish to spend my energies on other matters. Plain and simple.
I am even on these boards because I have a certain fascination with others who I feel have tapped into the same realization channel I have - be it computers or investing or whatever. I perceive the majority of my interests to be far from the "madding crowd" - and perhaps it is as much a rejection of that madding crowd as it is an embrace of the 'cognoscienti" that I find myself here - anxious to hear what other similarly vested individuals think about matters that appear on these boards.
In other words, I extend a certain degree of credit to a mac user simply because they are a mac user; likewise, a certain liability accrues to a PC person - either because they do not know what else is out there - or they know, but have always let their "more knowledgeable" neighbors always do their thinking for them.
Upon reflection, given the light of day (it is dawning toward morning here), I fully realize this is not a justifiable sentiment- but it is nevertheless a pretty good approximation of what I think I feel deep down about the matter.
I just wish I could extend a similar buoy of shared computer interest to a PC person - without feeling sorry for them in much the same manner that I would feel sorry for a weakened and disadvantaged child.
It is no extra comfort that I share a few coins of swag bound up with their champions - like Steve Ballmer.
I still am intrigued with the idea of someone else taking over MicroSoft. Perhaps Terry Semel (CEO of Yahoo!) could do the right thing and reform MicroSoft.
Microsoft will never make desirable software until the day when the general public demands desirable software. Obviously the managers at Microsoft don't attempt to make good software now. I doubt they are all going to just get out of the way and hand their jobs over to other people that know how to. Once a company is like Microsoft, there is no way they will change until they hit rockbottom, which means losing money.
There's nothing wrong with Microsoft right now. Their goal is simply to make as much money as possible and they are doing it.
Erm. . .
1. They aren't making the money they could have been making if they hadn't been sitting on the can the whole time while PDF became the de-facto standard.
2. They aren't making the money they could have been making if they hadn't totally spaced and let Google into the market.
3. By keeping their enterprise products behind the curve, they let Linux come in and rape the bulk of their enterprise market.
4. Oracle and Java continue to dominate MS SQLServer and .NET
4. They lost something like a billion dollars on the XBox 1.
5. They are losing money on the XBox360.
6. They are losing money on the Zune.
The only produsts that MS makes money on are Office and Windows. Everything else is a bust, an attempt to set up a Windows or Office sale, or an attempt to squash a competitor. But guess what, they aren't squashing anyone these days. User confidence is at an all time low. People only use Microsoft products because the costs to switch are so high.
At this point, MS is like English standard measurement. It's poorly conceived and unintuitive, but it continues to be used because the big markets are too lazy to switch to metric. Of course, at the end of the day, it's inevitable that the big markets as we know them today will switch to metric. Experts say 2030-39. Unless there are sweeping changes before then, MS will die probably around the same time.
There's nothing wrong with Microsoft right now. Their goal is simply to make as much money as possible and they are doing it. You know when you go into the supermarket and they have those no name frozen dinners that look like they would be awful even when they are cooked? Would you say there is something wrong with that company? No, they just sell a product that someone is willing to buy to make money.
Microsoft will never make desirable software until the day when the general public demands desirable software. Obviously the managers at Microsoft don't attempt to make good software now. I doubt they are all going to just get out of the way and hand their jobs over to other people that know how to. Once a company is like Microsoft, there is no way they will change until they hit rockbottom, which means losing money.
Good point about the frozen dinners... bleah.
Microsoft has what's called the "first mover advantage", and they are so entrenched in the computers of our age, they will not, in the biggest of fantasy scenarios, simply be replaced over time by the Mac OS. They are here to stay for our lifetimes, I'm sorry to say.
Having seen behind the curtain a little bit at MicroSoft, I'm not at all sure that MicrosSoft is even aware of their true position in the market pantheon.
Again I say, "78th floor and all is well. Over"