Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Forgotten Mistakes
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.
But seriously, everybody knows experimentation and failure cannot be avoided. Most businesses just don't have the luxury of failing with no penalty.
and 3 of them ask "What about Microsoft Bob?"
The article says:
"More than 100 products were launched in rapid succession over 18 months, from childhood creativity (Fine Artist) to a cartoony "social interface" to make Windows appear friendlier to the pathologically computer phobic (1995's Microsoft Bob, a much-maligned happy face with geek glasses)."
I know this can be misconstrued as karma whoring, but I think it's more of a Geraldo-style expose on why RTFAing is necessary.
Now, why would failures "be swept under the rug"? Failures are abandoned projects, never-finished products, non-sellers, etc... They are simply left behind, not hidden.
There's a famous cliche that says "If you never fail, you are not taking enough risks." As a business person and someone who has failed several times before getting it right, I can tell you the saying is true. If you dislike failure, then go into business.
In other words, what the hell is your point?
The nerve of Microsoft to want people to not think about their failures and only focus on success'. After all, so many other companies have been perfect in all their products. And who wants innovation anyway (yeah, I know, M$ doesn't really "innovate" anyway). Better to stay tried and true and realize that it's better to limp along with mediocrity than to go out on a limb and fail.
/.'ers need to go out and get a life and gain some perspective.
Actually, I think the topic is intersting, as in genuinly interesting to see the things that they've tried and failed at. Those things they tried and failed and tried and failed and eventually succeeded (with Windows being the most obvious example). And obviously some attempts were quite humerous, but to turn this into a "gee see how much M$ really sucks" is just lame and shows how much some
Like all business they made mistakes when tyring something new. However on their core business they have provided a wide spread, realtivly easy to use concurrent platform with Office + Windows. If you look at all OSS office sweets etc they all at least try to read/write M$ Office as it is a standard. Not saying its a good one but its a standard
Bob in Marketing can send Maggie in Accounts a spreadsheet and be able to read it. Thats gotta count for something
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
What's the point of the original poster? Do ./ readers find Microsoft such a despicable entity that they need to post such articles to remind people that they also fail? May be it was meant as a joke, but still, very poor taste.
For those who hate them so much (they're a business, they are supposed to make money), don't you think one minute any other company in their shoes would have acted differently, including the envious Sun and over zealous Oracle.
The Gates foundation is today the biggest charitable contributer, funded by the founder himself. Sure, it's a tax relief for him, but he didn't have to do it to help researchers in financial terms in finding vaccin to the most common diseases affecting the 3rd world in the first place. Thats $10 bill available for worthy causes.
Instead, it's hotter nerdy news to point out the failures of Microsoft as a company. Since when did we become so negative about the good things that's happening in this world?
You mean Microsoft may actually be working to skew news coverage and public opinion towards the things they've been successful at? And away from technical and marketing blunders?
What an outrage! I'm going to write to my representatives right now and demand a new law that forces companies to educate consumers about both their strengths and weaknesses, and that requires them to spend an equal amount on publicizing past failures as they do on promoting new initiatives.
I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you. What a failure of the market! What an unconscionable series of dirty tricks from Microsoft! How dare they! Hey, does anyone know what the school assembly is about today?
Cheers
-b
I do actually have a copy of the Microsoft Wine Guide sitting on my desk.
I did a double-take when I saw it at the library.
(It's not on Microsoft's site anymore, but the first Google hit was a review of it).
char sig[120] = "\0"
Let us not forget the iLoo, Microsoft's crappiest idea yet.
One tidbit of Microsoft trivia which seems to be left out everytime there's a discussion about Microsoft Bob. Who was the product manager? Melinda French. Where is she now and what's she doing? She's Mrs. Gates.
Yeah, it was a huge blunder for MS to do all the R&D for KDE and Gnome to copy and give away free.
Just like it was a huge bluder for UC to do tons of research on networking and implement a TCP stack for MS to take it and charge everyone for it?
DOS and IE were initially products purchased from another company. Of the components that make up Office, I believe that PowerPoint was purchased from another company (and not sure, but want to say the same thing about Excel). WMP is given away for free (if you bought Windows). MSN takes in money, but I believe it is not profitable. Ditto for XBox. Visual Studio is probably profitable, but they don't sell a lot of copies relative to the market for Windows and Office.
If I were an investor, I would be concerned that the most successful software company in the world has so few successful products, and that even fewer of those were initially developed internally.
Yes this IS a troll. 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. Why put the minimze button on the left next to the menus when it will just lead to accedental minimizing. Also people dont think of it as looking at the end of the title bar, its just the top right. It takes just as much effort to click on something thats at the top left as it does to click something on the top right. Do you move your mouse to the top left and along the title bar and finally to the right to click minimize?
Good article up to the last paragraph. Microsoft should strive to be much more like IBM, but it has waited far to long to start. IBM has a huge patent portfolio which they have been a lot more judicious in enforcing than SCO for example. They are also better diversified into the "service" sector. Microsoft has a consulting division, but they are only geared toward helping to sell Microsoft solutions, they quickly show themselves to be nothing more than technical sales reps.
Microsoft has put it's name on mice and keyboards. Very clever, but they don't make anything. Behind IBM's outsourced hardware is a still viable manufacturing and fabrication operation (again, more fundamental research going on here). You might think of IBM as Microsoft, Dell, and Intel all rolled into one. Each of these companies can succeed or fail based on one or two key product lines. IBM became a true corporation a long time ago. Dell and Microsoft are still the product of individuals, with all the strengths and weaknesses of that approach.
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.
No, they were an IBM-granted monopoly.
The "chicken-and-egg" problem isn't a problem, because they got to be a monopoly by exploiting the hobbyist nature of the beginning of the personal computer revolution. Microsoft was there from the beginning; and from the beginning, they used other people's code (BASIC for the Altair, for example, which was ported from available sources; the only thing neat and original about that is the way in which it was ported, and Paul Allen was the one doing the heavy lifting).
Before the IBM PC (and their Charley Chaplin ads), the Apple ][ was making inroads into corporate culture, though mostly through the back door. Apple did not have much legitimacy in the corporate culture of the time. So, IBM decided (on a lark, essentially) to create a hobbyist computer of their own, only geared toward corporate culture.
Mr. Gates' mother was on the (Red Cross?) board of directors with one of the top execs of IBM. This connection was Microsoft's major break. As IBM did not take this project too seriously, they met with Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who sold them a CP/M-like operating system they had "developed" for the 8086. (In fact, they had done no such thing.)
Once they sold IBM on the idea, they scampered back to Seattle and purchased outright the proto-DOS from a small Seattle company. Selling price: $10k. The Seattle company knew nothing about the IBM deal. Mr. Gates screwed this company, instead of dealing fairly with them (which would have involved giving him or his company a small stake in all sales of DOS).
(At this point, a bunch of you are screaming, "But they made the deal! It was all fair!" To which I reply, no fucking way was it fair. It was exploitation, and preyed on ignorance, which is about as moral as taking sexual advantage of a mentally handicapped person. Businesses can make money without fucking over people at every possible opportunity.)
So, with IBM's legitimacy, and Microsoft's ownership of of MS-DOS and a deal to ship this DOS with every PC, Microsoft began its PC life with the monopoly on desktop operating systems.
When the first clones came out, Compaq should have also cloned the OS; ironically, though they weren't willing to pay royalties on the IBM BIOS, they were willing to pay for the OS.
Those in control of Microsoft have made very cunning deals. But, yes, they *did* start off in a monopoly position of a very small market, and grew as the market grew.
But, *completely* off-topic, let me pose this question: if Microsoft has proven it will not play fairly with other businesses (that Seattle company wasn't even a competitor at the time, but a potential partner), why should we expect them to play fairly with their customers if they don't have to?
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.
Hardly. Their willingness to fuck over anyone and everyone in pursuit of market dominance is the reason they are at the top of the software heap.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I remember the first (and last) time I saw MS Bob. It was running on a computer at CompUSA. Really annoying.. I asked the nearest sales guy what he thought of if. "Damned annoying. We can't get it to stop."
I uninstalled it.. He thanked me..
End of line..