Microsoft's Unique Innovation

Anonymous Coward writes "The way John Carroll sees it, Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for all the technology it invents. The company's understanding of the marketplace, argues Carroll, has proved fertile ground for many of the inventions, however incremental, that Microsoft produces on a regular basis. That awareness is that all software markets, however "unrelated" they may seem, have linkages to each other. And it's an awareness that open source will have a hard time matching. Another reason many fail to appreciate Microsoft inventiveness, continues Carroll, is because most inventions are pieces of larger puzzles."

Comments

MS keeps innovating in their spin

[yagu]

This guy is pretty amazing in his energy applied to convincing the world (and himself) Microsoft is an inventing kind of company. He even uses a bizarre example:

It's akin to the argument that a Ford Escort preceded a Formula One racer, and therefore the engineers on that Formula One racer didn't really invent anything because all they are doing is making a car.

Wow! I'm not sure in this universe what comparison is being made. But I infer he is saying Microsoft is getting accused of being non-innovative because they're making the Formula One racers. I'm not sure this is a metaphor I can accept for the stuff I've seen coming from Microsoft, unless a Formula One racer:

• weighs about 6,000 to 7,000 lbs.
• gets about .0001 miles per gallone
• has a whole bunch of extra, unwieldly, unnecessary, undecipherable, and just plain weird instrumentation that never gets used
• has none of the critical and necessary instrumentation available or if it is, it's under the seat.
• has to have the tires upgraded every lap
• shuts itself down if you: don't pay a fee, or if you seem to be doing something suspicious

I would however cede their metaphor in these regards:

• Almost noone knows how to maintain a Formula One racer properly
• Formula One racers are outrageously expensive
• they really do get crappy mileage
• they really do go through tires
• they break down a lot.

There are also some specious arguments and claims:

• Microsoft is the only one who "gets it" about how technology is an interrelated puzzle.
• there should be a consistency across technology, from remote controls, to cell phones, to laptops, to desktops, ad nauseum (there shouldn't -- just what is the argument for this?
• there is no comparable technology "out there" to Microsoft's COM model (just plain wrong).

Regardless, it's kind of fun to see the periodic article pushing yet again to tell the world Microsoft is innovative. In Microsoft's case, it is actually possible saying so makes it so.

Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin

[Apreche]

It's an especially bad analogy because he has it completely backwards. What usually happens is the Formula 1 race engineers are the ones who invent new motor vehicle technologies. Then after many years those technologies are gradually adopted by "normal" cars. See the linear paddle shifting transmission as the prime example. See various braking, suspension and aerodynamic systems for the rest.

Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin

[LeonGeeste]

I agree with you, just as long as you don't start applying this to the "spin-offs" of the space program to ridicule people who oppose it. I mean, yeah, it's great all the advances of the space program, but what was the space program? It was basically a program where the government said:

"Hey, all you entrepreneurs working on technologies to satisfy actual human desires: STOP. Give us money so we can show the Ruskies where it's it."

Then later:

"Hey, some of what we did can, coincidentally, satisfy human desires outside of getting to the moon. Hey consumers! Look at all the goodies we produced for you. Please TOTALLY IGNORE what the entrepreneurs, who were trying to directly satisfy your desires, rather than satisfying them by mere coincidence, accomplished. Just focus on what we did, not what could have happened."

Then later, their court intellectuals say:

"If you opposed the space program, you must oppose insulated lunchboxes. Luddite."

Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin

[ciroknight]

So you're willing to admit that Race technology its put into cars, but unwilling to admit that Space (or for that matter, Wartime) technologies get put into everything.

Apparently, you need to go back to the 40s. If you will remember, World War II was the advent of a lot of technologies. It's doubtful we'd have weather tracking RADAR systems if it wasn't for the advent of Brittish scientists playing with radio waves. It's likely we wouldn't have satellite communications if it weren't for the German's V2. And while you may argue that all of the things that got spun off from the different space agencies may have been invented anyways, it's likely they wouldn't have been advented nearly as quickly, and wouldn't have gotten any government money to do it.

NASA has given back to the Americans plenty of things we all take for granted, but it seems there is a larger and larger group of Slashdot readers who are revisionist historians and want to forget that WWII is what caused the Cold War, and thus, what caused technologies to explode into what they've become today. America is the country we are today because of War, and because of the spoils that war has brought to us. Hell, it can be argued that its the reason that Innovation has slowed down so much here in America; we haven't had a real need to. Our government no longer feels the need to compete with any other world governments.

Let's stop being ignorant and realize that Space technologies have been relatively safe (in comparison to every other industry, ever), that they've generated billions of dollars in jobs, technologies, and pathways for science. And no, I won't list them here (these are all things you should have learned in high school, and a simple google will catch you up to speed). There's simply too much that NASA and the US Military has been involved in coming together for us to simply turn our heads on militaristic and aerospace innovation.

Oh, and if it weren't for NASA's supersonic experiments, cars probably wouldn't be as fast as they are now either; Carbon Fiber, high heat resistant materials, metal alloys, aerodynamic profiles, and more, came from strenous testing and retesting at the hands of engineers using technology adapted from NASA.

You'd better bet if the government needed some awesome software to defeat cyberterrorists or something, there'd be a boom in the market ;).

Haha

[sulli]

In the media realm, they have their DRM solution, their media formats (both video and audio), tools for generating that media, server and client software, management tools, etc., etc., etc. It's an integrated end to end solution that simply is not matched by anyone else. David Berlind talks about the "unstoppable Microsoft Media Juggernaut."

... which is getting its lunch eaten by Apple.

Hey Look...

[thebdj]

Another AC with an e-mail address (really people, think a little). Oooh and another inflammatory story from zdnet blogs. Yo slashdot, just save us the trouble, stop accepting blogs as news. All you do is drive up ad revenue for these sites that often are filled with jibberish and anything that resembles news worthy material...

What has Microsoft ever invented?

[ivanmarsh]

I'm just curious.

I know a very long list of technologies that MS claims to have invented... but buying a company that invented something and inventing something isn't the same thing.

And the basis of his arguments are?

[vigyanik]

Anyone can sit and fantasize about what the motives of an XYZ company are in doing what they do. Much like critquing a work of literature: many times the author himself doesn't know why he wrote what he did and many times his intentions are much more basic than how others interpret them.

Yeahgoodluck....

[Otter]

Granted, there are movements to make things consistent, such as the LAMP set of technologies for Linux, or the Linux Standard Base project.

Given that there still isn't a consensus as to what the P in LAMP stands for, I don't know if I'd hold my breath on that happening. Not that I'm so optimistic about the LSB either, but at least they know what it stands for!

Anyway, Microsoft -- the place where they excel is this: They make something that isn't very good. They make a version 2 that's better, but still not good. 3 isn't bad, and by 4 it's 90% there.

Their competitors (Sun is a perfect example) can frequently make a better version 1, but then Microsoft is still there and competing with them, they get bored and go on to something else. The open-source projects have trouble doing the boring 30% that gets you up to 90%, and start adding translucent menus and XML feeds instead.

Oh, and that's why I'm a Mac user, given the choice...

Re:Article Summary

[eno2001]

OK I finished reading the rest of his tragic blog posting. It sounds like his eventual conclusion is that Microsoft innovated mediocrity. Which is probably OK considering that VHS (mediocre technology) beat out Betamax (superior technology). And IDE (mediocre technology) beat out SCSI (superior technology) on the desktop. for people who don't want to deal with mediocre software solutions, Microsoft still isn't the answer. Having a consistent technology backend that becomes the "de facto standard" is never a good thing when you are looking for the BEST solution. Usually you are making some compromises, at best, if you go with a solution like that. Witness the dismal quality of commercial software today. Everyone and his brother is a coder due to the logic this guy is suggesting (a desktop developer could also develop for handhelds). That's NOT a good thing. While the guy might write excellent apps on the desktop, do you really want him implementing things that he CAN implement on a handheld but probably shouldn't? And you know he will implenet them because he's never worked with handhelds before. This is NOT a good thing.

Just think about all the people out there who call themselves "web masters" and "publish" their sites with Microsoft Word on Windows 95 with Personal Web Server and you'll see where I'm coming from. Sometimes it's better to leave things to people who actually were trained within the problem domain. Trying to make them spread their reach may not be a good thing in every case.

The Rules of Slashdot

[popo]

Apparently some of you have forgotten the Golden Rules of Slashdot.

Here they are:

Rule 1: If you're discussing a problem with Windows:

Blame the monopolistic, capitalist monstrosity which is the root cause of this problem. If Microsoft weren't a bunch of money-grubbing, back-stabbing pigs your problem would never have occured.

Rule 2: If you're discussing a problem with OSX:

It isn't Apple's fault. Maybe its your fault. Or maybe its that third party software you're using. Most likely your problem is the result of incompatibilities with MS Office (see rule 1). Apple doesn't make mistakes. Apple loves you.

Rule 3: If you're discussing a problem with Linux:

Agree that there *is* a problem. Then state that the hardworking heroes of the opensource community are hard at work making this problem go away. The message has to be that "We're on it". Remember, one shining day in the future these problems won't plague our people any more. It doesn't matter that your system is losing data, we proudly wear the banner of responsibility in this matter, and we are slavishly addressing your problem.

Any questions? ...apparently there was some confusion.

----------

judge a man by his wallet

MSFT information value

[mulcher]

At the risk of being flamed... does linux innovate? does open source innovate?
And I mean besides being open-source alone which is pretty innovative... It
marginalizes existing industries and makes software cheaper + it provides jobs and opportunities without having to shell out $$$ for official certification programs.

A lot of what we like is *NIX apps and utilities... linux is not entirely innovative in this way. Sun with Java? Is a JVM innovative? I can say that in
academia there were previous VMs around.. Apple with Aqua? perhaps... but seriously... most people take what works and make it a little bit better and in many cases a little bit cheaper (or expensive by adding/increasing value). Apple
did this with OS X. It makes *NIX more valuable. DirectX? Is that innovative or a complete smash up of OpenGL? Visual Studio? Visio? SQL Server? MSFT buys good tech... SQL Server may get slammed by many here, but for a small-medium business that needs advanced data analytics to query financial data and export it to XLS/PPT for the executives to make decisions I think it works pretty well and is way cheaper than the alternatives. Big companies use Big Iron and Oracle. MSFT has largely been medium user to end-user desktop based. That is because there is a lot of money in those areas. Follow the money and
you will find MSFT.

For businesses that don't need that, such as web2.0 companies there is little incentive to go with MSFT on the backend since it is pure cost than value. Plus you can tweak and extend your linux implementation freely. Linux is more customizable and that helps in many instances and it is cheap for building a server farm. But for data analytics, for integrating information, and providing information value for cheap MSFT is the way to go. They own the corporate information pipeline. That is where value is. Information is valuable. Making it easy to create, get, and use information. Open source hasn't done that yet, except in limited cases where programming gurus go off and start there own companies (Yahoo,Google) etc... and even then they scale to large company size and then will buy Oracle and other large-scale data analytics (or write there own). Google makes then NET valuable. Ebay makes garage sales valuable.

I think open-source will continue to marginalize infastructure, but as long as MSFT keeps providing information value it will always have the lead. Here information value is provided by the solution and not necessarily the product.

Re:What the.....

[Blakey Rat]

I just finished reading a few entries in a blog about the new interface for Office 12, and I was really, really impressed at the level of thinking that's gone into the new interface and, more importantly, the level and amount of usability tests. There's some exciting stuff there, and I bet we'll be seeing that MiniBar concept in applications for years and years to come.

(The blog is here if you're interested: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/default.aspx)

I don't know how others feel, but my impression of Microsoft is that they're always *trying* to innovate, whether or not they happen to succeed.

big bang?

[rnd()]

A lot of people fail to understand what real innovation is. Sure every now and then there is an invention that abruptly changes the world. Some people consider the Segway scooter an example of such a thing. I do not.

Microsoft has made a lot of very small innovations (often called "soft innovations"). Whether it's the ease of use of VB or the elegance of C# or the xml grammars used in the speech SDK. They are not huge, "big bang" style innovations, but they are not insignificant.

Microsoft slowly advances the state of the art and we're all better off as a result. Sure it's not flasy like the industrial design of an iPod or the first space walk or the Polio vaccine, but added up they are a huge force of progress.

Re:What the.....

[eric76]

In some cases, the idea is clearly to make the software comfortable to people to make it easier for them to migrate to it.

bullshit

[idlake]

Open source developers don't usually copy Windows features because they think they are good, they copy them in order to make it easer for Windows users to switch. OpenOffice, for example, could be a much better office suite if it weren't constrained by the shitty Microsoft application it is trying to replace.

And many of the features you may think of as open source copying from Windows weren't actually invented at Microsoft at all--a Microsoft product is simply the first time you happen to have seen them.

Re:What the.....

[birge]

Just because not all OS apps are copies of MS programs doesn't mean that most MS programs don't get copied by OS apps. I agree with the GP. Just look at GNOME. It's practically got a fucking start menu. And if tabbed browsing is an example of innovation in OSS, then I'd say the GP's point is nearly proven. Apache isn't innovative so much as a really nice job on an existing idea. (Though not stolen from MS, granted.)

In the standard litany of why OSS is great (most of which I agree with) timely innovation is not often mentioned. And as an example I give you OS X. It beats the hell out of anything in the linux or freebsd camps, and it didn't take them very long. The underpinnings (openstep, freebsd) have always been there for the taking by anybody in the OSS community yet it took Apple to produce what I think (and many others do, too) is the first decent version of UNIX for the desktop.

Anyway, it's funny that this kind of thing is even debated. There was a time before the brainwashing when it was considered patently obvious that you get better product when you pay people to build it. Thank god the OSS true believers haven't turned their attention to civil engineering. Hasn't anybody else noticed that the slope of progress on linux is far less than for Mac OS X, or even Windows? Even if Microsoft gets Longhorn out in 2008, it will still beat linux. And by that point Apple will be selling something that makes both look like a Speak 'n' Spell.

Re:What the.....

[falsified]

Don't be a dick. They're not stupid. vi + latex is harder than Word. Probably twice as hard. That is an objective statement. Even the geekiest of the geeks can appreciate that Word "just works". (Yes, I realize it's an Apple slogan.) Are Word's results not quite as good? That can be debated. But if I'm writing a paper, I want to be able to just write the paper and go. The connection between my brain and the paper should be seamless - I don't want to do, and I sure as hell shouldn't have to do, "computer stuff". It would be stupid to pick the harder of the two options for no benefit whatsoever.
For the record, I use Abiword.

The Registry(TM)

[theolein]

Microsoft certainly innovated that POS. If there was ever a piece of software so central to an operating system, yet so fragile, vastly overburdened and insecure with a tendency to break if you just look at it, then it's the Windows Registry. I don't know how often in all the years that I've used Windows just been dumbstruck at what a braindead idea it was to make the registry so central to the OS.

The irony is that the Registry reflects Microsoft's company structure, i.e centralised, as compared to any OSS OS where there are hundreds of competing config files in different formats which ensure that the OS won't become unusable if one of them goes down. And that is probably why OSS is inherently stronger than Microsoft. No matter what Microsoft does, Linux is simply too broadly based to die. Microsoft will pay one idiot like John Carrol thousands per month to blog about how he loves Microsoft (he's been developing for 11 year and that's why he *knows* Microsoft is better than OSS or anything else, according to him. He doesn't realise that there are people who have been coding on other platforms for over 20 years and have the exact same opinion about their favourite OS for the same reason).

Still, his zealotry paid off in that he got a well paid job to troll about Microsoft, even if he has become more defensive about it over the years, which makes me laugh, to be honest. The guy's like a little kid trying to win a fight by shouting the loudest.