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Microsoft's Forgotten Mistakes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the 99-percent-perspiration dept.

seattlenerd writes "In light of all of the hype about how much cash Microsoft is sitting on, it's good to be reminded that they do fail. A lot. This piece in Seattle Weekly points out some of the many failures -- from ActiMates Barney to Microsoft at Work to pending disasters in smartphones and interactive TV (despite recent PR-worthy announcements). But like most litter, the failures are swept under the rug in the hopes people don't remember that many 'new' Microsoft ideas are recycled from its own history." Of course, like any big company, Microsoft is not a monolith.

8 of 700 comments (clear)

  1. Nice flamebait! by MisterFancypants · · Score: 4, Informative
    According to CIOs and studies such as the one the Peopleware book is based on the *majority* of started software projects fail. Why should we expect Microsoft to buck the norm here?

    in the hopes people don't remember that many 'new' Microsoft ideas are recycled from its own history."

    Microsoft's try-try-again philosophy and focused determination are why it is at the top of the heap of software companies and why they are sitting on the 45 billion in cash now.

    This being Slashdot, people will say that the reason Microsoft is so big is because of its monopoly position, but that is a (rather silly) chicken and egg argument. They'd have no monopoly if they weren't big to begin with -- they certainly weren't a government granted monopoly like AT&T once was.

  2. Re:Well, there IS the XBox.... by Troed · · Score: 3, Informative

    Check again. According to MS, the Xbox had sold 9.4M on the 30:th of June. On the 30:th of March Nintendo had sold 9.55M Gamecubes.

    So, even with a LOT of Xboxes only being sold since they can be modchipped (Gamecubes cannot) and run pirated games aswell as functioning as media-servers or emulator-hosts - AND is being subsidized by Microsoft (latest figures I've seen place that around $100 per unit) - it still fails to sell as good as the Gamecube.

    The Gamecube, being good at ... games. It's not hacked. It doesn't play DVDs. It doesn't function as a home entertainment unit capable of playing DivX, mp3 etc. ... it's "only" got the best games.

    --
    it's in my head
  3. Re:MS Failures... by El+Cubano · · Score: 4, Informative

    UI design isnt about putting important stuff in order, it's about making important stuff easily accessible and putting unimportant stuff out of the way.

    How about the crap that MS pulled by placing the minimize/maximize right next to the close button (whereas in previous UIs the close button had been on the left so that it would be nearly impossible to exit an app accidentally while trying to minimize)? I would hardly consider that an improvement in ordering and accessibility.

  4. Bob... by Superfreaker · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://toastytech.com/guis/bob2.html

    Glad it failed...


  5. Monopoly by Camel+Pilot · · Score: 4, Informative

    And it takes a monopoly to be able to survive such stunning blunders like missing the emergence of something as powerful as the internet.

    Without MS monopolistic cash income stream they would have suffered serious blows screwing up like they have. That is why I wish that part of the settlement MS would have been prevented them from buying technology but force them to "innovate" from scratch and compete.

  6. Re:MS Failures... by VGR · · Score: 3, Informative
    People may not move their mouse to the top left and then along the title bar, but they do move their eyes to the top left and then along the title bar (assuming they natively speak a language with that orientation). They may not consciously think of it as looking at the end of the title bar, but it's still the end of the title bar, and that makes it slightly less easily accessible. After they've looked at thousands of windows, that "slightly" adds up to hours and even days of wasted time.

    The eyes of people who read top-to-bottom, left-to-right will naturally gravitate first to the top left corner of a rectangular object containing text. Check out some usability studies to see what I mean.

    --
    The Internet is full. Go away.
  7. Re:Abe Lincoln: failed at being President too... by TheIzzy · · Score: 3, Informative
    He failed to reach a non-military solution

    Abe didn't fail at reaching the non-military solution, the generations that came before him that created the problems failed. When he was elected president, he did not declare war on the South, but the South declared war on him (Ft. Sumter). Lincoln was not responsible for the lives lost during the Civil War. Every man in the United States (North and South) had an opportunity to fix the rising tensions between the two sides with their ballot and their attitude. They did not, Lincoln fixed their mistakes and restored the union.

    Sherman gave ample warning to towns before buldozing them. And sadly, war does involve restless boys who desrie to rape people, but that cannot be considered the leader's fault.

    Now I understand that even the greatest men have their flaws (and Abe certainly wasn't the perfect leader), but our nation needs more men willing to fight for justice, and I'm damn proud when I look on the Lincoln memorial.

  8. Re:MS Failures... by schwanerhill · · Score: 4, Informative

    OS X's close and minimize (and zoom) buttons are all separated by several pixels, so you're much less likely to hit one when you mean to hit another. Windows, on the other hand, has no separation between the buttons, so if you miss the maximize button by one pixel, you close the window.

    Consequently, I have accidently closed windows in Windows numerous times (even though I use Windows rarely), while I have essentially never done so in OS X (which I use all the time).