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Is Microsoft Money Crushing Microsoft?
JoshuaDFranklin writes "The latest Seattle Weekly has an article by a former Microsoft project manager titled Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow. It argues that Microsoft, addicted to its Windows and Office revenue, is stifling innovation within the company: 'new, better ideas that would take business away from Windows or Office don't really have a chance at Microsoft.' Apple, in contrast, has embraced Open Source and is delivering a better consumer experience." Update: 06/06 21:24 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a dupe.
Can I get paid to be a Slashdot editor? I'll only dupe half as much as the others and I come cheap!
Microsoft never innovated BEFORE they had money. They don't innovate NOW. They just don't innovate. It's not part of their corporate culture. They wait for other people to (1) invent things and (2) prove them to be profitable, and then they move in and sell them. Sometimes they look for people who might potentially be a threat later (Netscape) and they throw money at putting them out of business. But this is all they have ever done. Talking about their Windows/Office revenue streams "stifling" innovation is silly; there's nothing there to stifle.
... and a pretty badly written, incoherent, biased, and decidedly uninformed story too, to be honest.
The guy may well have worked at MS once, but it didn't take long for him to become a Born Again Mac User.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Yes, but will you be smart enough to dupe only the articles that make Microsoft look bad?
It's the bias that pays.
Yeah, but I didn't get around to reading the comments after I read the original article, so thanks slashdot!
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
the fact that apple delivers a better costumer experience has much more to do with vertical integration (hardware + OS + drivers + application) rather than the fact that they embrace open source.
what open source did for apple was that they could provide a whole bunch of services in a compatible, attractive fashion that would have been very costly to develop. M$ doesn't really need that, they have their own services (web server, file server, databases etc) already.
....at least this iteration of the article had a catchier headline. We'll see how next week's will stack up.
Yes, Darwin as a UNIX platform is open-sourced. But honestly, can you really say that Apple has "embraced open-source" anything without cracking a smile?
Last I checked, they were the one of the largest proponents of proprietary software/hardware. Granted, they have let up a little bit in releasing development tools for packages like iTunes. But all the same, that's a long ways from embracing free and open source code.
Also, Apple tends to lean HARD on Microsoft for office tools. In that vein, can you really say Apple has diverged from the path Microsoft set? I'd argue no.
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"Oh no, the way is blocked..."
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-- n
Microsoft never innovates or popularizes a single idea!
Hang on while I go install KDE with a taskbar, start menu, integrated filesystem/net browser, Mono, etc....
"Sufferin' succotash."
Publically owned companies are often judged by their profits, as a percentage. Windows and Office have massive profit margins, thanks to their now-minimal upkeep costs. New ventures, on the other hand, would decrease profits because they would have a high investment cost. It's irrelevant that in the long run they will increase profits, because investors are a bunch of gullible sheep who lack the ability to think in the long-term.
Microsoft was not the first to either invent or implement the start menu, the integrated file system / net browser, or the safety-checked bytecode-based API. In fact with all of these they were literally years and years behind other commercially successful implementations.
Now that you mention it, Microsoft may well have been the first to use the task bar window switching concept. Well, bravo Microsoft! Too bad it isn't a terribly good concept. And come to think of it, it isn't one that many linux/unix GUIs actually use.
The fact that KDE was even later with some concepts than Microsoft does not make Microsoft creative. Last I checked KDE was a very small-scale project struggling just to stay alive. I don't see anyone promoting them as harbringers of innovation, making your attack on them really something of a straw man.
Recall in recent memory how IBM held on to the mainframe business (S/360 derived products) in the face of small systems products nearly sinking the company.
... From lightbulb to number 200 on the Fortune 500, to out of business in 30 years!
My own former employer, Amdahl, held on, right along with the IBM company to that same cash cow model. Amdahl was not as resilient as IBM and now is gone.
I got mine. You get yours.
Apple, in contrast, has embraced Open Source and is delivering a better consumer experience."
What is up with you people and Apple?!!
My God! Give it a rest.... Please. You're killing us here!
I can't get away from the Apple worship even if I block apple stories. It's everyway.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Apple. But Apple is just another Corporation who's goal, as with all other corporations is to, *gasp*, maximize profits for its shareholders.
Ironically Sun ( http://sunsource.net ) and IBM has done orders of magnitude more for Open source than Apple. And at least Sun gets beaten up everyday here. Apple though is worshipped to the point that it is frickin' nauseating to the rest of us.
Come on guys, fanboys just aint cool.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
This makes a lot of sense. Microsoft hasn't innovated anything for years, if at all. After crushing its competitors (Netscape, WordPerfect, etc.), Microsoft hasn't really made any viable updates to its software. Take Windows for example. The first few versions of Windows were bad and it didn't take until Windows 3.0 until Microsoft finally made it usable enough for developers to develop on it. Windows 95 was probably at Windows's peak. It's interface was very usable, didn't really get in the way, and had a lot of developers.
But then, Windows's quality deteriorated beginning with Windows 98, when Microsoft integrated Internet Explorer as a means to kill Netscape (and when Windows now had a 95% market share). However, as many people on this board know, integrating a browser to an operating system causes all sorts of problems, and Windows has gone downhill ever since. Windows XP, for example, is more stable than Windows 95/98, but it suffers from more worms than those operating systems, it's "eye candy" (if that's what you call it) is really an eye sore, and the interface gets in the way (compare the Find dialog in Windows 95/98 to the Find command in Windows XP, you'll see a difference). Ditto for Office, last time I checked, Clippy is still there. Microsoft Word has a lot of other annoyances (ever tried outlining there? It's a pain).
Now, look at Apple. Apple has made a lot of innovations within its whole lifetime. It was the first to bring the graphical user interface to the secretary's desk (Apple Lisa and Apple Macintosh). Apple has made a lot of innovations that make many processes very easy (for example, in the old days, all you needed to do to network two Macs together was to connect a printer cable to each other, and then use Chooser to share files. No network configuration or anything. Try that on an old PC.). Finally, Apple took UNIX and fused the Mac OS with UNIX to make, after a long process that includes NeXT and Rhapsody, to create Mac OS X. Mac OS X is the only UNIX-based operating system where it is so easy for a non-geek to use without much difficulty, yet the UNIX pro could access the core using a few mouse clicks.
Apple could be considered one of the masters of usability. The operating system never gets in the way of your work, you control the computer. This is different from the Microsoft approach, which is the computer controls what you do. This is exactly why Apple hasn't came out with something annoying like Clippy or that dog in the Find box in Windows XP.
Microsoft needs to do something drastic with Windows and Office. Microsoft needs to start innovating, make Windows and Office user-friendly again, and finally make a stable version of Windows. Windows doesn't need a UNIX core (Microsoft spent tons of money on NT; besides, Microsoft adopting a UNIX core wouldn't be innovation), but Windows should be stable enough to use on a regular basis without any problems. Microsoft should also fix many of its other applications, such as the rapidly deteriorating and antiquated Internet Explorer, and not integrate the browser with the operating system. Isn't it about time that Microsoft should learn that integrating a browser with an operating system causes instability within the operating system? It's like, whenever Microsoft finally takes control of something, they sit on their couches, raise the prices, and the quality of their applications deteriorate with each and every new release. Microsoft needs to innovate fast here, and improve its products.
Linux started off with a fairly conservative goal: implement the UNIX syscall interface. I'm not saying this is easy, I'm just saying that it is not particularly innovative from a technical perspective. (The open source model and development methodology were a bit more innovative, but not unique.) And Linux succeeded for the same reason that MS succeeds -- it let other companies take the risk of figuring out what should and shouldn't be in the kernel, and leveraged the GNU suite of apps to create a complete, usable system. The time was right and there was very little risk.
At present, Linux is a bit more innovative; people use it as a platform for research, and that research (when it works out) finds its way back into the kernel. But again there is little risk-taking because nobody really wants there to be -- nobody wants to break the world. As a result, you can still use your first edition of "The UNIX Programming Environment" (circa Seventh Edition) as a useful reference to programming on Linux. I don't expect that to ever change.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Microsoft was not the first to either invent or implement the start menu, the integrated file system / net browser, or the safety-checked bytecode-based API. In fact with all of these they were literally years and years behind other commercially successful implementations.
That might be true, but lately I'm actually starting to see some signs of innovation and creative thinking coming from MS. The new "pop-up blocking" technology in Internet Explorer is a very good example.
We can't judge a company by only one of the things it does. MacOS X is not licensed under a license approved by the Open Source Initiative. Parts of that operating system are proprietary. Darwin may entirely be licensed under an open source license, but the convenience and features people associate with MacOS X are not found in Darwin.
Furthermore, it's no accident that Apple has "embraced open source" because the open source movement's philosophy and criteria for license acceptance was crafted to cater to business.
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