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Strategy Shift In The Air For Microsoft
mrdaveb writes "In the face of a declining market for MS Windows and MS Office, Microsoft's recent statements and acquisitions point to a future in which .NET is a key driver behind a strategy which will see Windows CE devices taking the limelight. This article explores the problems which Microsoft face in maintaining their stranglehold, and their likely route to keeping Windows on top."
I disagree. They're a big corporation, and although they've done bad (and even some stupid) things, their goal is still to make money for their shareholders. If that goal requires that they be 'clever' and try and change their business model/strategy, I'm guessing they're going to do something. It might take them some time (more time than others), but I'm sure that Microsoft is not going to disappear. They're going to adapt to whatever market conditions present.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
What makes the article's author think that alternative Operating Systems are putting a stranglehold on Microsoft? Seriously, could someone give a link to these numbers, because I didn't see any in the article, and without it I have a bit of trouble believing the assertion.
This sig is o Unfunny o Funny
I've been wondering about this for awhile. Microsoft's overall strategy has always been to be the mediator between your computer/data and you. At the beginning this was DOS, then it became Windows on top of DOS. Then Office to get to your business data, etc; Netscape was a major threat because they could usurp that position and allow you to get to your data through the web browser on a PC without needing a MS product. .NET is the ultimate implementation of this strategy. If they can really make it run anywhere: PCs running Windows, OSX or Linux on various hardware flavors AND on palms, consumer electronics devices, etc; Then they'll have succeeded in making a standardized "glue" layer between you and the hardware.
.NET and you have practically the same scenario as you have today except now Windows(.NET) runs anywhere.
.NET license...
Next port Office to
Linux? OSX? Windows? Bah, who cares, so long as you're running a
Perhaps millions of Americans, but it's a big world, and a lot of third-world countries are modernizing on open-source software. I think Microsoft is destined to be an America-only thing, like football.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
MS has screwed up so many times in the handheld arena, but now the technology is getting to the point where maybe they can get their bloatware to work: i. mobile devices are getting powerful enough and cheap enough; ii. 3G and effective wireless netweorking are getting to the stage where they are reasonable as mobile data carriers.
MS has been losing money in mobile for many years. This might give them an edge in the future.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'm in the middle of learning to create a program on a windows CE device. Since it's going to be used to aquire data I figured it would be nice to install some form of DB on it. Sure enough there is SQL 200 CE for the ce .net devices. So Here I am thinking this is great I'll install that and away we go. 1 day later I'm still working on that install.
.Net installed and I really can't complain about it. Best IDE I've ever used hands down.
.Net on CE devices may work nicely but the hours of hoops to jump through just to get started is a real pain in the ass. By far the best part of this exercise has been visual studio. I added the necessary parts as a reference and away it goes.
First I already have visual studio
Second I know that I need SQL server to replicate the DB's with so I head off to MSDN and grab it.
500 or so meg later and I burn it to a CD(my media versions of the subscription haven't arrived yet) and start the install. Installation doesn't appear to do anything. After messing with it for a bit I remove it. Remove the desktop edition, and remove the old sql client tools. run the install again and it works. Fine I can live with that.
So I install sql 2000 CE It tells me that I need sql 2000 SP1 installed. I assumed that the newest version on MSDN would have the service pack installed already but I would be wrong.
So 430 meg later I have downloaded SP2 (sp1 is rolled into it) and another 120 or so meg and I have SP3. Install those. Reinstall sql CE. I get further but I now need to install IIS so that the two can comunicate. It didn't come preinstalled on this XP pro SP2 PC so I get to track the program down, set it up then get the database installed then I can get back to the 20 minute tutorial I was following.
Deploying programs to the device is trivial. If all the rest of the software was at the same level as visual studio I wouldn't be using linux as my desktop at home.
Basically, they bought VirtualPC so their future customers, running on some non-x86 processor, can run legacy x86 Windows programs along side their .NET-based programs. The detail being that of course, the .NET-based apps are running in a ( licensed ) Microsoft operating system environment. As an added bonus, the OS used in VPC is yet another licensed MS operating system! Even _more_ software sales for M$!!
It's just the M$ way of _not_ betting the farm on x86... which is the true point of .NET, at least according to this guy.
Hey, they're not stupid at M$, they just like *MONEY*!!!
Nice troll, but I'll bite.
The consumer is wiling to pay for the Plasma TV that has a specific lifespan because the technology doesn't exist to make a plasma TV that lasts longer. Also, hardware (whether TV, Radio, computer, whatever) often is obsolete before it wears out.
There is no reason to buy software with an expiration date. You mention Open Source and Freeware as influences that prevent major software makers from ganging up, but that's bogus. Other than Office and Windows, there's sufficient competition in most products that keep the market open. And Office and Windows are stymied mostly by corporate buyers willing to sit on older versions rather than give in to a subsription model of liscencing.
Frankly, I think the linked article is rather bogus. Microsoft has a way of ensuring that software wears out. They simply release new versions and slowly quit fixing older versions. Combine that with added features such that older versions of Office can't open documents created with current versions and new features for Windows forcing consumers to buy current versions to run the latest software. Microsoft isn't hurting by any stretch of the imagination. There is no "declining market for Windows and Office."
Mod parent and article down as Flamebait -1.
bance.net
.NET has been around for a while, but it finally might be beginning to pick up. The w3schools stats for February* have included .NET as an OS platform, with a small, but rising share. Perhaps MS are looking for the same (initially slow) take up of IE6 or XP.
Of course, the real news is that Firefox has hit 20%, with other non-IE taking the total to over 25%. Yeah, I know, "lies, damn lies and statistics, and all that", but it should mean the end of IE only sites, when it can be shown that they are turning away 1 out every 4 site visitors.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
About Longhorn. It was supposed to be the Great Leap Forward for Microsoft and yet most of the cool features have either been pulled for future releases or being backported to XP. This will probably be the first version of Windows where there is very little incentive to upgrade from the previous version for most of Microsoft's users.
The absolute worst thing that could happen to Microsoft would be for Windows to lag in sales. So much of their company rides on the success of Windows and Office that if one of those gets badly damaged it would have very damaging results for the entire company.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
If I had two identically priced and featured products and one was running on .Net and the other JME, I would not even think twice about selecting latter.
.net. It seems that .net is for the little guy's who are too cheap to spend the money on an enterprise product.
There are many in the world who have had enough of the instabilities and insecurity of microsoft software who will do just the same. Just look at the ratio of enterprise applications running on java vs
Time to buy those Options on Microsoft Stocks.
JsD
[karma=(moz+nix+ooo)-ms]
Read about it here
OCO is Loco
A natural monopoly is an industry where the most efficient production is through a monopoly. This means Municipal water supply, electricity distribution, local telephone service, public postal services, etc.
Microsoft's monopoly came about mostly by their exclusive contracts with hardware vendors, agressive bundling, and buying up competitors. This is the antithesis of a natural monopoly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Also, if Microsoft carries out their software patent threats, that will make Microsoft a coercive monopoly as well. Hell, I guess breaking your competitor's legs is just another way of trying to make their product more attractive than the next guys.
This is just another PT Barnam special; it'll put more immature code onto the streets, require we buy new, bigger, faster computers, and still have viruses (or purchase of the latest companies would be meaningless) and it'll be the same old thing.
Sure, it's pretty, and sure parts of it (like printing services) work very well. But it's still that same old plantation on which we all have lived. And those of us without courage to fight it will live there until they close, and beyond.
Guys, don't think for a MOMENT this is the promised land we were promised ever since Win3.1, it's not.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
...may be just to lobby in Washington DC to "bend" and create laws in their favor. Why fight for control when you can have the government help you at the expense of your tax dollars.
Life is not for the lazy.
yes, but I think the point is that Microsoft sees that embedded electronics are taking off at a rapid pace. if home automation/convergence ever takes off, the embedded OS market will be HUGE.
consumers only have one pc (usually. maybe two)
however, I've also got a
cell phone
music player (iPod)
radio
router
stereo
gaming console
tv
coffee maker
fridge + other kitchen appliances
digital camera
You see, even if Microsoft charges $5 per license to run CE on some embedded device which has a $10 microcontroller, they're still making the same profit per person as they would otherwise be making. sure, the profit per product is lower, but their total revenue stays positive.
the real question is if hardware developers will want to pay the $5 to gain access to all of the nice APIs CE will provide them with. By not having to write firmware code from scratch, companies save a bundle on R&D. Advanced chips for embedded devices have been available for quite some time now at a not-unreasonable cost (especially considering the tiny demand) -- the big problem is spending the R&D money to actually develop software for these chips.
my wireless router has more processing power than my PC did 5 years ago -- it runs embedded linux. and I can guarruntee that the CPU didn't make up a huge portion of the router's $50 MSRP pricetag.
really the only big tech company that ISN'T jumping on the embedded bandwagon is Apple. They seem pretty focused upon turning the PC into a 'true' multimedia hub, and they've been doing a damn amazing job at it. even embedded linux has a huge following -- I can almost promise however, that CE is easier to develop for than linux, as CE was designed for tiny underpowered machines and has the appropriate APIs to deal with that.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
People resent being treated that way.
Well, sure, but they only resent it if they know about it. Obviously if software had started out as a subscription, it would be easier for people to accept that business model (although it's hard to imagine other companies wouldn't compete by coming up with the idea of buying the software once and -- dare I say it? -- owning it). But I don't think you can really compare software and a TV. A computer and a TV would be a little more analogous, and it's obvious that people spend $3000 for a top of the line computer that they won't be using in 3 years.
However, for the sake of argument, I think the biggest difference here is that software is not a status symbol, whereas something like a plasma TV is, and status symbols are all about being impractical. If and when plasma TVs are sold at a price where everyone can afford them, people will be paying 5 grand for something else (note I didn't say something better, just something else).
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I'm still thinking it's far more likely that they did it so have a support path for people with DOS and win3/9x apps, then drop problematic legacy support in their current OS. VirtualPC does give them security against changing from x86 too though, so there's no penalty anyway.
As a side note, the NT 4 kernel also ran on Alpha, and I recall it could emulate x86 WinNT apps already.
The underlying story in that analysis, unaffected by its predictive likelihood, is that the WinTel cartel might be broken. The article makes much of the rise of the Cell CPU (IBM/Sony/Toshiba), and the ability of MS to produce new SW for it, rather than new Intel CPUs. .NET's CLR and some recent PPC cross-execution MS acquisitions all position MS to produce code that can run elsewhere, a direction MS hasn't moved since the NT/Alpha project was folded years ago.
.NET is already more interoperable on, say, Linux with, say, Mono, that kind of HW/SW lockin might be diappearing for good. The simple arrival of a Mac as preferred development platform for (PPC) Xbox shows that the hegemony game has changed. Next we await an escalating move from Intel, like a Linux (-only) kernel patch that actually lets us use our x86 hosts in massively parallel arrays across the Internet, preempting both the Cell PR and the .NET PR to that effect in this article and elsewhere. We might have followed the Force through the darkness, and into the light, after all.
All that follows Intel's growth in the Linux market. Linux runs on many CPUs that aren't Intel, but most Linux installs are on Intel, thereby displacing copies of Windows and the rest of its lockin environment. The WinTel alliance, that for years fed each company on the other's monopoly, might be dysfunctional already past the point of no return. That in itself was such a powerful anticompetitive setup, that its loss might represent the greatest opportunity for Linux and other OS'es. Since Microsoft's strategy so far seems to be a cross-platform approach, and since
--
make install -not war
OK, about the fridge:
I've got a Kenmore that I paid about $1400 for, in the year 2001. It's warmed up to room temperature requiring an after-hours service call exactly three times, and it also used to inexplicably dump water all over the floor. What a piece of shit it is.
One failure was a circuit board that controlled a flapper thingy that opened between the freezer and the cooler to let air in. It senses temperature and opens when it's too warm. Old fashioned fridges used to use a mechanical device to prop it open at varying angles, letting more or less cold air into the cooler compartment from the freezer compartment. That system never broke. My new electronic one did break, and needed a $300 part to fix.
The coils on the fridge are on the bottom, which means that a fan is needed to blow air over them. Well, the fucking fan broke, and fried a bunch of shit down there. That was the reason for *one* of the times the fridge dumped water on the floor. The fucking water lines are plastic not copper, and when the coils got too hot because the fan broke, the fucking water line broke too. Fucking $500, and it was an after-hours service call, on Thanksgiving day 11 PM. Goddamn nearly lost the turkey leftovers goddamn it to hell. Old fashioned fridges had the coils on the back, and they didn't need a fan. And the water lines were fucking copper.
Oh for fucks sake, I could go on and on and on with this, and it's just my fridge. Don't even get me started on all the times that my garbage disposal and the dish washer have filled my kitchen with water. Fuck me, if it happens again I'm going to, ummmmm, actually, nothing because nobody makes good shit any more. Maybe I'll just bitch about it. Yea, that's it.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The article states, as a central premise:
.Net architecture seems like a sensible (more generality) and well-executed improvement over Java ideas.
"What Microsoft really needs is some way of ensuring that software wears out at a similar speed to hardware. Unfortunately for them, although fortunately for the consumer, it is quite hard to build planned obsolescence into software."
WTF? That is utter nonsense. The Windows security model dates from before ubiquitous internet. It was not designed for a modern threat level and has NOT been adequately updated to deal with it. It does not get any more worn out than that.
The article makes it out that Microsoft's problem is that there is no market for innovation in operating systems. Bullshit. There is a huge market for innovation. Just look at all the features Apple is adding to MacOS (quartz extreme, spotlight..) and look at how the Linux Kernel continues to improve (real time support, reentrent kernel, massive multi-CPU scaling and clustering, constant time scheduler, ever more platforms). Microsoft's real problem is that their Windows development operation has become so bloated and inept that they can not supply timely improvements. They have not kept up with the competition or with the hackers, and are only falling further behind. And most of the "innovative" features announced in Longhorn seem to be inspired by OS X.
This does not seem to be a problem with Microsoft generally. They do execute well in other areas. IMHO Halo and the Xbox are good products, whatever their profitability. The
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
My father used to work for Inglis - an appliance maker. One of the problems Inglis saw was that people weren't buying new appliances as the old "versions" were working perfectly fine for the past 10-20 years. Why buy a new one if the old one ain't broke? Now Inglis manufactures things like washing machines such as one part inside is _designed_ to fail _after_ the warranty period and the whole product is only designed to last for at most 5 years. Also the whole cost cutting approach(trying to use plastic, cheaper parts, etc) is making appliances crappier day by day. What I'm trying to say, hardware makers design their machines to fail after x amount of time.