Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft 'under attack' On All Fronts
khujifig writes "The Beeb are carrying a story looking at the challenges facing Microsoft in the next few years.
This includes a brief description of the M.Home (sans Clippy) which the Beeb describes as "a far cry from real life", and a discussion of the next few years competition for Microsoft. They go on to highlight Linux, OpenOffice.org, the GIMP and Firefox (which Gates himself has used: "I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"), and look Apple in relation to Longhorn. Not as bad a read as I was expecting. Their summary: Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to innovate or die. "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?."" It should be said, tho', that articles like this have been written about MSFT for a long time - and there's still billions in their war-chest.
Quite the pro OSS piece... To answer the question posed in the summary, "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?" Because there is more to the world than just the web and e-mail.
Which Microsoft product "The Gimp" is supposed to attack? Paintbrush?
I thought The Gimp was Adobe Photoshop concurrent, and AFAIK, Adobe has not yet been bought by MS.
Most of the small businesses out there want support for a product even if they never use it. They want to know it's there. They also want to know that it's going to be supported by the same people for a long time. Think of it as security.
This isn't about which is the better product... it's about which one will get the project done AND be supported if shit hits the fan.
Support does NOT mean Forums or RTFM. They want real people. The fact is most people are not IT people. They just want it to work and forget about it. If it breaks they want someone to call to get it working again.
The same is for large companies except in the fact that they want support of future innovations. You are institituting a large scale database project... you are using My-SQL... something goes wrong... what do you do? Post in a forum, email a friend...
Same situation you are using MS-SQL, you can call tech support and bam get an answer or at least a much more educated idea.
I'm dissing open source. It's awesome and I think it keeps innovation alive and is always an alternative. But without the support... you aren't going to get the backing you might want.
Google GMail doesn't seem like a serious threat to Exchange. Postfix, yes, but a third-party service which reads your email...no.
Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to inovate or die.
Microsoft is about likely to go under as IBM, they may take a hit now and again, they they always come out fighting.. Look atthe X-Box, they had no real console based experenice before, yet they managed to give Sony a good fight, even debuting a year after Sony... I expect that the new version of IE will have everything that FF has, and more...it's just how MS does things...
I have always looked at MS as a big mean dog...you really don't want to mess with them, and you really really don't want to back them in a corner..
Please don't talk this as pro-MS, it's more of a pro-reality statement
Because of corporate image. Microsoft realizes that Firefox is at least a worthy competitor to IE, but it would look absolutely terrible for the company if their very famous captain came out and said 'Well, what do ya know...our competitor's product IS better.'
there is more to the world than just the web and e-mail
Not to the vast majority of computer users. Most people I know think that the Web and the Internet are the same thing.
The computer using experience for most is: email, web surfing (this includes shopping on eBay) and gaming.
Digital photography is starting to push into that list more and more, but let's face it, Picassa is a great app and the price is right!
Mr Gates told me, and challenged my assertion that Firefox's 'market share' is growing rapidly.
"So much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" he argued.
And I have to say that software gets [forcefully] purchased all the time as well. Heck, I can remember buying dozens of computers -- ranging from desktops made into back-office quasi-servers to full blown workgroup type servers. To get each and every one of those machines the Windows tax had to be paid (at the time). I'm sure those machines are counted in Microsoft's totals for market share as well.
They still run Linux to this day.
Heck, I can count now HUNDREDS of computers that I'm responsible for that all originally legally ran Windows. Care to guess which Linux distro I used on them? Sad -- but a lot of those installs showed up as only one (1) [bittorrent] download...
Mr. Gate's arguments don't and won't fly for too much longer. Microsoft days are numbers -- and yes, I am ready to sell-short their stock when the day(s) come. Might as well make money on their misery -- they certainly have on mine.
(oh, and i have no real problem with slashdot rendering in Firefox)
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Name a company that can seriously put all of there resources together and pose a serious threat to Microsoft?
The problem with Microsoft is that they've become too big and they have way too many products.
There's not a single company who can fight with Microsoft. But all of them are fighting with them: Sony, Nintendo (xbox), Linux, mac os x, solaris (windows), mysql, postgresql, oracle, IBM DB2 (ms sql), firefox, opera (ie), google, yahoo (search engine, MSN), openoffice (office)
Microsoft just can't win. After having 95%+ of market share in desktops they need to search a way to grow even more to satisfy the stock buyers, so they fight in every market. And they can fight against a single or a few companies, but not against the whole IT industry
More along the lines of: GIMP::Photoshop New Military Technology::Tired old civilian technology Photoshop is ok, but GIMP is better. Have you ever even used it? The interface is a bit rough around the edges, less so these days than the past, but it has an enourmous amount of power behind it.
How do you figure?
Photoshop is the compilation of years of work, hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, and -- most importantly -- over 15 years of industry feedback and exposure. Adobe has crafted Photoshop to fit real world needs, based on input from people who actually use it in a professional setting.
Indeed, at this point, it's impossible to say which has more influence: industry over Photoshop, or Photoshop over industry.
The GIMP, while an admirable effort -- and certainly one worth continuing -- is nowhere NEAR ready to take a place on the professional stage. Just the lack of native CMYK support alone is enough to render it useless for pretty much every company, individual graphic designer, and photographer I can think of.
Saying that the GIMP's interface "is a bit rough around the edges" exposes you as an enthusiast, but probably not a professional user (that is, one who earns his living off of graphic design). The difference between a good, familiar interface and a rough, unfamiliar interface can translate into massive ammounts of lost time. At this point, after 15 years, the Photoshop interface has become something of a standard; when you open a graphic design program you expect certain hotkeys to do certain things, certain menus to be in certain places, and certain tools to work certain ways. Everything that deviates from those expectations translates into lost time. The GIMP is rife with breaks from the "standard" interface.
I know that slashdot is hardly the place for Adobe users, but uninformed "our OSS product is better because it's free" thinking is bad for all of us. I'd love to be able to replace Photoshop with the GIMP some day, and maybe I will. But if people really believe that the GIMP is a viable replacement for Photoshop today, I fear that day will never come.
-F.
student of animation and the fine arts
Microsoft has real problems and here is why - they approach the market reactively, "innovating" by relying on surveys, focus groups, market analysis, whatever you want to call it. To sum it up -
if (no complaint)
stick to status quo
else
fix complaint
The problem is that complaints are usually symptoms of larger problems, and by tacking on simple fixes, Microsoft usually just ends up with a convoluted framework for whatever product they happen to be fixing.
Your average joe doesn't understand the potential of new technology, he is just reacting to the new-fangled features you just put in. This is why technology design by survey fails miserably. You need someone who fully understands what is at the edge of current technology, and who can creatively apply it in ways that enhance the average joe's life. I don't get the impression that Ballmer gets this idea. In fact, I have heard through the grapevine that the problem is ingrained in Microsoft company culture, and no one challenges it, because the company is conservatively micro-managed from the top.
Microsoft gets away with this model because the average joe is unaware of innovative concepts while they are new, before Microsoft has copied them. But the software remains clunky, akin to cars of the old days, where you cranked the thing up by hand and put up with the smell, noise, and the breakdowns - because there was still a tangible benefit. People thought this was the nature of cars back then, and accepted it because they couldn't see any better. Better engineering will eventually make computer systems easier to use and more reliable, analagous to what the Japanese did to the auto industry. Aside from good design the Japanese automakers popularized the use of statistics to test their components to make sure the performed reliably, carefully revising materials and design based on what worked, rather than going with the what was most available on the market. The computer industry could use that same sense of perfection, followed through with design by people who understand both people and the techonology, and of course lots of unit testing.
Microsoft hasn't re-invented itself as management would like shareholders to think, it has only re-hashed itself into something superficially better in order to avoid any more slip. Until the old guard leaves, that isn't likely to happen. This can be witnessed in the company's financials - growth continues, but is slowing in a growing market, despite a monopoly. If you want to make some dough, invest in some Apple stock and watch Microsoft sink in the long run - since it is pretty clear that they will be sticking to their guns with Ballmer. I've never owned a Mac but I've used a few and I see them as the next best thing, especially with the affordable mini model out, a good architecture to boot, and style that drops Microsoft right on its ass.