Slashdot Mirror
The Soul of A New Microsoft
BusinessWeek Online is running a front page story today about the new future of Microsoft. By 'looking beyond Windows', the company is utilizing fresh blood to come up with new products like the Zune, the Xbox 360, and various online sites. While the Zune probably isn't getting off to as successful a start as they might have liked, the article argues it's a positive sign that they're at least making the attempt. From the article: "The point is that Microsoft needs to find its un-Vista. Several of them, in fact. The software giant is entering perhaps the greatest upheaval in its 30-year history. New business models are emerging--from low-cost "open-source" software to advertising-supported Web services--that threaten Microsoft's core business like never before. For investors to care about the company, it needs to find new growth markets. Its $44.3 billion in annual sales are puttering along at an 11% growth pace. Its shares, which soared 9,560% throughout the 1990s, sunk 63% in 2000 when the Internet bubble burst, and they have yet to fully recover."
The thesis is Microsoft needs to find their un-Vista? Hardly! Microsoft needs to find their heart. Or grow one.
Their 30-year path is strewn with castoff competitors, and wannabe partners. Microsoft has sown nothing but ill-will for the duration of their tenure. I would welcome the change that shows Microsoft wants to be a good-citizen member of the IT community and market but the evidence isn't there, in fact there isn't even a glimmer of evidence, contrary to the article's these that things like "Zune" and "X-box" are starts in the right direction.
Consider only the most recent step to re-invent, the Novell/Linux debacle. What many considered worth waiting for on good faith to be a positive step took only days to be revealed for what it was, more steps to stamp out any competition. As long as executives with the hubris of a Steve Ballmer control the direction of Microsoft, nothing positive will happen, period.
And, what of the collaboration with Samsung, Creative and others? To what end other than wasted time and money for Microsoft's "partners"? Bah!
An interesting quote from the article (Allard's response to bad words from Apple re: their Zune, and how Microsoft doesn't "get it"):
This only demonstrates how much Microsoft doesn't "get it". Microsoft benchmarks everything it does against perceived outside competition -- it'd be nice to see them invent their own cool stuff. Interestingly (to me), they had a chance to do just that with Zune, and completely blew it by trying to measure themselves against the ipod.
I'm not saying Microsoft doesn't have the right to be a good tough business to make good products and good profits, but Microsoft has mostly been about making products barely clearing the bar while making usurious profits with (what eventually was ruled by DOJ, and the EU) illegal monopolistic leveraging.
I know it's an old saw, but I've been waiting more than 20 years for market forces to take hold and allow technology to evolve in a marketplace that encourages competition, i.e., one that diminishes the Microsoft effect (how many company's do you know of whose business model included a goal or contingency to be bought out by Microsoft?). Microsoft may now reap what they've sown.
Yup, and I just heard M$ is planning on changing their logo to a genetically-modified apple. Kinda doubt it will work....
Wow, never thought I'd see Microsoft among the debris alongside the road to hell (you know, the one paved with good intentions).
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Imitating Apple is hardly a radical new direction for Microsoft. You can say they're adding their own innovations or whatever but at its heart there's no more reason for Microsoft to be making a music player than there is for them to be starting an online book store. Apple saw a potential growth market and seized it. Microsoft compulsively followed.
as black as the old one?
How we know is more important than what we know.
"The software giant is entering perhaps the greatest upheaval in its 30-year history."
.NET, and the upheaval when they decided this Internet thing was really important and reorganized themselves top-to-bottom to take advantage of it, and the upheaval in 1995 when Bill Gates said that the "social interface" was the future of computing and introduced the all-new revolutionary Microsoft BOB.
Yeah, right. Like the upheaval when they announced a top-to-bottom-all-new-strategy named
(Social interface? Come to think of it, where have I heard something like that out of Microsoft just recently...)
Microsoft is always talking about upheavals, but meanwhile what they actually do is keep cranking out big bloated monolithic versions of Windows with badly-copied slightly-distorted features in other operating systems, and strong-arming PC vendors into preloading them.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Thing is, their success with Windows was being at the right place at the right time, utilizing ruthless business tactics and just being plain lucky.
They could get away for a decade worth of half-assed technical side and marketing because of their monopoly. Thing is, whenever they tried to enter another market, it raised the question why. When looking at their attempts, many people drew the conclusion, that they wanted to compete at any price and that's why they threw their sometimes failing products out there. In retrospect I think we can say that they tried to perform their usual strategy, but without the backing of the monopoly they fell flat on their face. Of course, the notable exception is the Xbox 360. It might be luck, or that the Xbox division independent enough from the core MS that it can make itself work.
Microsoft is not reinventing itself, at least not yet. Zune is an utter failure and I can't think of any single successful product apart from Xbox 360, Windows and Office that was a success. The last two wells are drying up.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Microsoft ponders acquisition of a Soul
This really belongs on Fark.
yes, but does satan have to pay for the license of this one too? or is it a free update for him?
With more close to a billion Windows machines out there, ranging from hand-helds to desktops, to laptops and servers, Microsoft should advertise on the desktops themselves. It should be done this way:
Whenever any of these systems accesses the internet, an update to which advertisers get to the desktop interface is done. It should be in relation to what is done on the internet and where the device is. Everything should be transparent to the user.
I can see advertisers lining up to pay big bucks. How about that?
...last week, due to Sony and Nintendo's failures, and uh, if Microsoft had been a console developer and had none of this other baggage, I'm pretty sure we'd be giving them much more love than we do here on Slashdot.
This is pretty much just a diversion until I can find a PS3/Wii, but, it's not been as terrible as I had convinced myself to expect.
What kind of an excuse is that? Why do we want Microsoft entering new markets that it is not good at? And how is this something new? Microsoft have always tried to embrace and extend themselves into new areas they suck at. It's what they've always done, and it's pathetic. How about actuallly focusing on users and existing products for once?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Tip to Microsoft, Sony and the media industry: Stop trying to control things absolutely and bullying anyone who doesn't play ball. These are actions of spoiled children and do everything to alienate the customer. The fact you still have customers is a testiment that many people don't realise how badly you are screwing them. The companies that end up getting the most support are those who have good balance of trying to be successful and appealing to the customers interests. Respect is earned not inforced.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Factoid: Microsoft owns the domains www. anti zune.com / net / org. But they do not own www.zune.com.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They've been trying to look "beyond Windows" for years. This is nothing new. The problem is that all their ventures get C-minuses. Did they finally grow business lobes this time, and if so, where is the proof?
If it was not for their monopoly manipulation, they would be eaten alive. Based on their track record, I would not buy stock in MS if it did not have same bully power. It only won the DOS deal because CPM was playing hooky in his airplane.
Table-ized A.I.
I would think the Zune, which requires the use of its own piss poor (and proprietary) music format, it's crapload of DRM, and it's incompatability with EVERYTHING that came before it would indicate they are going in the exact same direction as always. The major problem with Ipod is DRM which doesn't allow me to do stuff I should legally have the right to do. Is Microsoft getting rusty and not even able to know WHAT to copy anymore. Anyway, I guess Zune is bed with the so-called "Music Industry" anyway, automatically meaning it is a product that faces backward and not forward.
To summarize a very long story, an employee at Seattle Computer Products (SCP) cloned (i.e., ripped off) CP/M, which Kildall developed. Bill Gates, the young founder of Microsoft, licensed an OS to IBM, but this OS was not yet under the control of Gates. In other words, Gates sold a product that he did not actually have. After inking the deal with IBM, Gates then bought a permanent liftime license to SCP's OS. That OS morphed over a two decades into the infamous line of Windows OSes.
As for Kildall, he understandably became very bitter. Kildall was financially well off, but he never achieved either the fame or the wealth that Gates achieved. If Gates had gotten the billion-dollar wealth but Kildall had gotten the fame (for his work on OSes), then Kildall would probably have accepted the outcome. However, Kildall achieved neither the fame nor the wealth. The bitterness drove Kildall to essentially commit suicide by drinking himself to death. He died in a bar.
I understand Kildall's feelings. Someone had screwed me in the same way that Gates screwed Kildall.
It's a concept someone found a way to profit off of. It can exist just fine without business, so MS are pretty much screwed if they try competing with it.
Apple.
Seriously, in 1997 Apple was on the brink of extermination. It had a stale product line, and abortive OS update (Copland) begun in 1994 which was eventually canned, it's replacement to appear a massive 7 years later as OS X. And you think MS's handling of Vista was bad...
Them boom! Jobs is back, the iMac appears, OS X appears, the iPod appears, switches to Intel, Apple reinvents itself again - successfully. You could argue that Jobs is pretty much the heart and soul of Apple.
Microsoft don't have anyone like that. You could argue that Bill Gates is, but most of the projects he's personally championed have been niche markets. Sure, they've had their successful market areas; Windows Mobile, Xbox, Windows Mediacenter, Auto PCs, but you kind of wish they'd look again at what people want.
Apple get it; get a person iTunes, an iPod and a Mac and they're sorted for most of their entertainment needs. Want it around the house? Get an Airtunes adaptor.
Sony don't get it; PSP speaks to PS3, and um... ATRAC? Minidisc? Er... Memory Stick slots? Their idea of a digital home doesn't incorporate other vendors and isn't feature-complete. On its own, Sony stuff doesn't make you go 'wow'.
Microsoft desperately need to get it and the thing they have going in their favour is - ironically - interoperability. Apple and Sony are stuck in lock-in land - our kit, our standards, our profit. If Microsoft took their head out of the sand for a moment and realised this, bit their lip and went with something a bit more open-minded, then they could really make a difference. However, like Sony and Apple, I think they'll be putting their bottom line/market share first, and what consumers want second. It's nice that we're seeing a change though and that they're having a shot at trying new stuff with the Xbox 360 (definitely a great console, no matter how you cut it) and Zune (average first try), but they need to try a bit harder...
"Allard works on an Apple G5 computer, next to an obviously less frequently used pc."
So, Microsoft's new hope uses a Mac... That caught me off guard.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
But up until now, nobody cared to even look beyond the Window.
So Microsoft's stock flies to Mars in the 90's and then comes back to the moon in 2000 after the .com bubble? Someone wanna tell me why Microsoft should take its eyes off the OS market? Sounds like they're not the uber juggernaut they once were, but they're not exactly going to declare bankruptcy anytime soon.
At least a) Bryan Valentine abandoned ship recently, and b) Jim Allchin is leaving soon. The company is struggling (unsuccesfully) to deal with the mounting complexity of modern software projects, and these guys were not helping at all. A little fresh blood can only improve the situation.
.NET = SAA
Vista = OS/2
Proving the computer industry is like a Saturday afternoon matinee...if you hang around long enough, things start repeating themselves.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Since when did evil have a soul?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I remember reading a book by Bill Gates called "The Road Ahead"
(or something like that). In this book I remember him writing about
'Wang Computers' and how advanced they were for the times and then
how they declined because of a series bad choices in focus.
Microsoft is the latest Wang Computers. Many will follow.
The problem with Microsoft is an unwillingness to let go
of the past (ie: Balmer should have retired WITH Gates).
In order to have new ideas you need new blood. You need
young people on the ground floor making decisions about product,
not people in the ivory tower from 3 generations ago.
If Microsoft wants new product they need to loosen the
reins and invite ingenuity and creativity. Linear
thinking is tantamount to extinction.
My 2 bits...
The Fruit Fucker 2000.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
..how far off the cover presentation of the article is from the content of the article. J Allard, the edgy thinker at Microsoft? He couldn't save the Zune launch, he's had his chance. Getting rid of guys like him, and the kinds of binds that Sony has trouble shaking is gonna be the baseline requirement for Microsoft to find its way. They can't engineer their way out of anti-consumer corporate shackles.
...one minor detail about Apple's amazing comeback. In 1997, Microsoft gave Apple 150 million dollars in return for...well, not much. I'm sure that nice hunk of cash helped out Apple quite a bit.
Them boom! Jobs is back, the iMac appears, OS X appears, the iPod appears, switches to Intel, Apple reinvents itself again - successfully. You could argue that Jobs is pretty much the heart and soul of Apple.
Which goes to show how good Apple's marketing really is. Apple has exactly one undebatably successful product: the iPod. The Mac's marketshare is (still) microscopic and irrelevent, and not even growing significantly (in fact, I think marketshare may have fallen, but I'm not up on recent stats). You could possibly argue iTunes is a success, but again, their marketshare of music in general is nothing.
Jobs' real genius is in -- I hate to say it -- lying. He can twist facts around to convince people of nearly the opposite (this is infamously called the "reality distortion field" by the employees, though to be fair, his salesmanship can also be inspiring as well). He's basically a high-level slick used-car salesman.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You complain, "Apple and Sony are stuck in lock-in land - our kit, our standards, our profit," and then go on to laud Microsoft for the coming up with the Zune, which is Microsoft doing the lock-in thing a la iPod/iTunes.
I also question your assertion that Microsoft has interoperability going for it. Interoperability with other Microsoft products, maybe, but people like myself who have to deal with getting and keeping non-Microsoft systems talking to a Microsoft-based world see it differently.
~Philly
God Be Gone
> "The point is that Microsoft needs to find its un-Vista."
Or, said differently, Microsoft needs to find its Apple.
Not gonna happen any time soon. ;-)
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Well, that's a minor point. Much worse is the menu that pops up when you click the "start" button. In Windows the menu tree is weird, to play a game I must click on the "Electronic Arts" submenu, WTF? I don't think playing games is an "art", that submenu should be for painting, drawing, composing music, etc. And then another game appeared under a "Firaxis" submenu. What the hell is a "firaxis"?
OTOH, on the Linux K-menu, once you get over the fact that the menu is labeled "K" instead of "Start", everything is pretty much intuitive. The submenus are labeled "Development", "Games", "Office", "Science and Math", "Internet", "Multimedia", "Graphics", "System Settings", etc. Following those submenus, let's say for instance the "Internet", one gets items labeled "Web Browser", "eMail", "Download Manager", "3d Planet Viewer (Google Earth)", etc.
Oh, wait, now I get it. You say Windows is "intuitive" in the same sense that you click the "start" button to stop the computer, right? Words have the opposite meaning in Windows, I see.
...and this post doesn't have a body
Finally, something a little more objective.
As far as Windows goes, if MS wants to make real progress they'd break binary compatibility (san virtualization per "Classic"), get rid of legacy hardware support and depreciate/destroy old APIs. 'Course my theory is that Microsoft isn't interested in progress. That said, I'm bit jealous of Picasa and the Filmstrip view.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Just innovative ways of making a loss?
Deleted
While the Zune hardware is not bad, the execution of the whole package lays bare the heart of Microsoft.
Having DRM I can deal with because I can choose to not purchase music from their store. I can obtain it elsewhere. But the fact they send money to Universal Music just from selling the hardware exposes whose side they are on. Even if I never buy from the RIAA they get their pound of flesh. Buyers are forced to pay the "music thief" tax.
Buy a Zune and send money to the people who will sue you or some old lady next year.
I also find it astounding people fall for their "point" scheme. Buy points now and leave a few dozen on the table each time you buy music. They make interest from all those points and mock you with it. It's anti-consumer like 10 hotdogs in a package versus 8 buns in a pack. It forces you to buy more than you want.
The faux-cool of the "it's got wifi and it's not an iPod" crowd astounds me. They are so eager to be "so cool they can't sell out by owning an iPod" are the very same people causing money to go to the RIAA and buying into the very vender who will enslave their music and hardware later.
Make no mistake. The reason MS sends money to Universal Music is to make it harder for all of the other hardware venders to avoid it. It sets up MS as the only people who will be able to do this. To borrow a bad line, "in the future all MP3 players are Microsoft".
BTW, and who thought of the "squirting music" to a Brown Zune bit? Probably the same one who thought "Welcome to the Social" was as sophisticated as the Dr Scholls "I'm Gelli'n, are you Gelli'n" ads. Ecch.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.
Microsoft Home & Entertainment has lost over $5 billion dollars from 2002-2005. That's not thinking different, that's spending your competition into the ground.
Now, as a strategy, they're bribing content providers by allocating product revenue to those providers [MS is giving a record company a cut of Zune hardware revenues].
How is that competition? Only a monopoly with large cross-subsidies could afford to do anything like that.
If MS H&E were a private comapny, they'd be six feet under years ago.
In order for MS to grow and for its stock to grow it has to create the equivalent of a Fortune 200 company every year. This is simply not feasible via internal organic growth. So MS has to do both of the following: it has to acquire companies ASAP and it has to grow into new markets. The problem with acquisition is that MS is a victim of their own success. There aren't that many companies left to buy. With 90% of the market, who is there left to vanquish? The problem with new markets is that it places them in the same crap shoot as everyone else. They have to be willing to bet a lot of money on projects that have a high likelihood of failure.
See "The Soul of A New Microsoft", come here and search for Funny, and there is none. What gives?
Seriously, microsoft represents the opposite of what made the internet a civilization-wide revolution as of now : Cooperation, Collaboration, Coexistence, Friendly Competition, Sharing, Curiousity, Modesty.
No surprise, considering the roots of this company was formed by 3-4 fledgling young geeks back at 1970s, when the above concepts were in decline since the 60s and materialism&yuppieness&personal achievement and wealth was on the rise into the 80s. These were youngsters then who wanted to hit it big, and hit it good. And due to the nature of the times they have matured in, they have become kinda yuppie geeks, people of the 80es themselves.
1-2 among them, you know who, were much more willing on treading this path and also easy in mind about scratching anything that proved to be a burden, and they scratched their friends/colleagues who they started on the road with. Geekdom was rising then, tech was coming, i.t. was forming, so they got an advantage, they formed juicy business deals while following the path of 'scratch all, hit it big, 'im a material girl'. they crushed and stamped out many competition back then, with the same philosopyh that provided scratching of friends/colleagues. (dos'es era). after some time, when 'deal them, tie them, bring them in the darkness and bind them' policies succeeded with the advent of windows and office, they became real big. ms pWnEd all pcs round the world by then, seemingly. computer meant 'windows' in some countries' non-techie slang.
then the internet came. due to the nature of it, which is a carrier of information, its nature formed on the philosophical properties of 'information' (information in the sense of knowledge, news) - seeking of free flow, no-bars, easy sharing, non-ownership as much as possible, common to all and so on.
microsoft did not realize what the hell this was going to be later. after all, they owned pcs around the world, and it ran on them. more the internet propagated, more pcs would be needed, they calculated probably. they were right it happened as such and also it helped windows sales.
but after all, in all cases of knowledge/information being present, sharing occured, and with the sharing information/knowledge redoubled itself with every passing instant. internet grew huge.
once you set the roots of something, then build a community/company/society around it, it recruits people of similar kind to itself, and bonds with societies/companies/communities of similar kind to it. so, when microsoft woke up to internet, it naturally responded according to its own personality - tried to stamp out competition. we all know netscape/ie thing. they were successful in this too. maybe the last time they succeeded in this. after some time they crushed netscape, internet has grown to a place that was a community/nation by itself and at that time it/(we) have developed a trans-internet society/culture with experience, preference, knowledge, lore, even politics about anything going on in i.t. and internet. at THAT point microsoft stopped winning.
then came the google. it was just compliant with the philosophy over the net - simple, no-evil (as much as possible), up-to-point, non-aggressive, not limiting, cooperative and such. people embraced, and it grew huge.
they mocked google and other companies that followed the new non-yuppie, non-'hit it big' thing, as they were locked in suits of the 80es still. they mocked, but mocks or laughs or bravado are pitiful when the majority of human civilization (as much as the percentage on the internet, which is something huge itself) is going some way and you are not.
so what happened ? they couldnt fit the times, they were not able to fit the people on the net and give them what they needed, some other people did that, the first laughed at them, then belittled them, then mocked them, then announced 'challenge' against them, then tried to imitate them, and then when failed, they started trying to 'diversify'.
they will reach NO
Read radical news here
"Success" doesn't mean "stomping out the competition". "Success" means "sell at a profit".
iTunes is a success in that it is part of what sells iPods. No iTunes and the iPod would have failed.
The cake is a pie
The Mac's marketshare is (still) microscopic and irrelevent, and not even growing significantly (in fact, I think marketshare may have fallen, but I'm not up on recent stats).
Would you take 2% of 2 billion dollars? Well, the computer market is a hell of a lot bigger than 2 billion dollars. The arguments about market share are and always have been just another red herring. Apple is still making lots of money.
Exhibit A: Brown Zune
QED.
an ill wind that blows no good
Wow, totally wrong. Microsoft is always focused on the Windows platform. What the hell do you think the Zune and the XBox 360 exist for? The Zune only runs on Windows and uses Windows audio formats, and the XBox 360 runs Windows and uses DirectX.
This author is arguing that Microsoft is going outside of Windows with these devices, when Microsoft is actually using them to drive even more dependency on Windows and its related technologies. Every single thing Microsoft does can be viewed through the prism of preserving or extending their platform in some way. The Zune is a response to the iPod's Windows-independent digital media, and the XBox was a response to the Playstation's gobbling up of the PC gaming market,
"Sufferin' succotash."
If anybody should feel bitter by Microsoft's dealings during the beginning of the DOS era, its Tim Paterson, who actually wrote QDos, ported it to IBM PC, and from whom Microsoft concealed the entire IBM deal, buying the license to QDos for a mere $50,000. As for Gary Kildall, he shot himself in the foot, repeatedly.
That's funny I think the PSP is the most used media player that doesn't force DRM on you. I can play more non-DRM music and video on the PSP than any other mobile device of those mentioned companies. If you're going to bitch about vendor lock-in you choose a poor example. Do you really have lie just to bring a slashdot whooping boy into your 'argument'? =)
What? Everyone knows Microsoft doesn't have a soul.
make windows open-source and sell support for it, the user-base is already there, the software support is there and contrary to what alot of /. thinks, there are good ideas and features of Windows that could be further developed by the inclusion of a wider development audience. this may not be the cash cow that Microsoft is used to, but its better than dying off from a lack of creativity and vision. and maybe, just maybe, they'd get some of their more elusive projects out of the door (WinFS anyone?)
Did you know that you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
If Zune is the best they could come up with against the iPod - and this is the prime example of 'new fresh blood' - they are screwed.
#1 Zune is Clunky - the very opposite of the iPod smooth design.
#2 Zune is incompatible with basically every file type that came before for windows. Why kill your existing user base?
#3 Zune Underdelivers - compared to the abilities of the Zen Vision W or the iPod, there is no comparison.
#4 Pocket Dish TV beats them all.
Apple just has to release that Full Screen Touch Screen iPod, and Zune will get Zoomed.
But Dish Network already has the iPod beaten down.
We're the ones that are funding all of Microsoft's foray into console development and digital music players. We pay the Windows tax which gets funnelled into these worthless products of theirs. Not much of what Microsoft does is innovative. XBox? Zune? They do nothing for the advancement of technology. At least with Sony, they innovate somewhat. From the Cell to Blu-ray, at least that's new. Microsoft just takes a market segment and uses it's Windows monopoly to dominate.
Boycott the Zune and the XBox - get them to do something innovative for once.
As we all know, IBM made a crucial mistake when they licenced DOS for the PC instead of bought it, giving Bill Gates a license to print money. Right now, they're working on Vista, but Vista's biggest competators are XP, 2000, NT, 98, etc, etc, meaning the installed base that doesn't see the value in the new one.
The Zune? That follows the iPod. The XBox, etc? Follows the PS2, etc. There are some neat things, but none of them are a printing license like the IBM license deal was.
I don't know that another such license exists. If I did, I'd be grabbing for it, not posting it here. And I'm sure I wouldn't want to give one to MS.
They should try ergonomic peripherals.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
For those who don't know, the article's title is a reference to the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder, which tracks the development of the Data General Eagle microcomputer (VAX competitor). It should be required reading in university computer science/engineering programs.
Why is this listed in games.slashdot.org? I know it mentions the development teams that worked on the XBOX 360, but that really isn't the focus.
P.S.,
This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
I've been waiting more than 20 years for market forces to take hold and allow technology to evolve in a marketplace that encourages competition, i.e., one that diminishes the Microsoft effect.
If the BW article is correct about J Allard running the "new direction", the change you seek will not come from within M$. Allard is the worst of the old M$ and represents a promotion of the most predatory attitude. Even from a business perspective, he looks like poop. The market is going to get away from M$ because M$ is self destructing - that's about as close as they will get to actually competing.
First, let's look at where Allard comes from and what he's done:
Wow, how many radioactive words concepts can you fit into a single paragraph with a straight face? M$ holds a minority job fair and then hires the only white guy who shows up. It only took him three years to understand how the company worked and coin "Embrace, extend, extinguish." Microsoft has been on the same track forever. It's not how good they can be, it's how bad they can be to everone else.
The only nice thing is that it's not working. M$ has, thankfully, failed to conquer the internet. Xbox has yet to earn a profit and won't, thanks to being completely outclassed by the competition - three cores, ha ha how cute. Zune stands to be the biggest flop ever. Media center? bad joke. Vista .... going down. Microsoft has been floundering for five years and has produced stuff that's outclassed before it's available. That's what happens when you spend too much of your time screwing your competition instead of making your product better.
It's too late for them to find a heart. Their core product has been and will remain a bad attitude. Market failure does not change that, it only makes them worse. The sooner they are gone, the better off we will all be.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Let me get this straight. Ripping off other peoples' ideas now qualifies as a positive sign for Microsoft? They've been doing this for decades now. What the fuck do these business guys smoke?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"They can't engineer their way out of anti-consumer corporate shackles."
And yet here I am using a new MS mouse after my Logitech died.
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
People don't like Microsoft. We get it. What is surprising is how many people love Apple/Google/Novell/Redhat/Mozilla/etc considering their intent or methods will eventually prove to be no purer. At least Microsoft is a known quantity. The biggest barn is the easiest target I suppose.
Now I'm no economist, but isn't $44.3 billion per year WITH an ELEVEN PERCENT growth rate, like..... amazingly-fucking-good? Someone clue me in on how it possibly isn't, please.
-Jeff
Property is theft.
Microsoft products are made with fresh blood!! I knew it, I knew it! No wonder they have no soul!
I thought that the undead and constructs didn't have souls to find, anyhow?
Recently we have seen many examples of unethical business behavior from Microsoft Corp. Readers of this website respond like they are surprised.
Microsoft is just another company with an obligation to its shareholders to continually increase profits. The tactics it has used to do so have hardly been ethical, but the company is financially successful. What would you do in an authoritative position in Microsoft? Open Office's document format? Issue a press release to all major PC manufacturers that they are freely allowed to install other operating systems? Of course you wouldn't. You would use your authoritative position to make decisions that maximize profits. Just because none of you would ever enter such a position due to your beliefs does not matter.
What did you expect? Stop sitting around hoping that Microsoft will behave ethically and change its ways. It will not. The only way out is for a competitive (powerful, robust, and cost-effective) alternative to exist. Slashdot enjoys an educated readership. If you want to see this company's market share shrink for the benefit of the computing world, make a contribution of time and effort to Microsoft Windows' most cost-effective competitor. Join the Ubuntu Linux community.
So "twitter", how much are they paying these days for a good astroturf session on Slashdot?
"Utilizing fresh blood" to produce new products? Or, pulling the same old crap to copy everything that's on the market until they have a monopoly?
Don't be fooled into thinking they've changed, they do this "new Microsoft" crap every few years. Boycott the xbox and zune.
you can't have a 40% growth every year.they are as big as big can get.
and how much profit are linux companies making...close to zero.
as for web services it's the other companies that need to worry.the new software oportunities in visual studio 2005 are really quite literally allready kicking ass.i have to say i'm seriously thinking of dumping php and perl alltogether.
and as far as zune is conserned...you can bet i'll buy that before i go for an opensource media player.
"Everything with Allard is about velocity. He drives a Ferrari 360 and a Porsche 911"
Presumably he does not drive them at the same time -snigger-
This article is little more than an attempt at macho hagiography of some MS hyperclone who they want us to think is the James Bond of Software.
Everything about him is about velocity - like an XP box running at two miles an hour 'cos it is filled with spyware. This article is completely corporate horseshit. Buckets of steaming quadraped manure.
Allard - One Car and Two Hats.
I think your comment is a little unfair towards Bill Gates. CP/M was a very limited operating system, compared to MS-DOS 2.0 and later versions...and Windows NT has nothing to do with CP/M!
Lots of people are bitter towards Bill Gates, but the fact is that he was the one that saw the business opportunities and therefore got a chance to shape the future...
The Mac's marketshare is (still) microscopic and irrelevent
It's small, true, but not irrelevant. Why are Windows users all so keen to see Vista? Because it lets them catch up a but with OS X. If it weren't for Apple, you'd still be using 3.1 and liking it.
in fact, I think marketshare may have fallen, but I'm not up on recent stat)Well your wrong. The last reliable stats I can find are for Q2 2006 which have Mac shipments rising from 655,000 to 760,000 year-over-year for the second quarter. Apple's U.S. market jumped from 4.4 percent in 2005 to 4.8 percent in 2006. Now that certainly isn't enormous but it is pretty good.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
MS started in an Industrial-age Economy of take take no prisoners and pillage the village battles. MS won by adapting to oppositions' positions, supporting oppositions' file formats and application requirements in DOS/Win*. MS appears to have observed that economics and business models are rapidly changing. Maybe they are trying to avoid the (Ford, GM, Lockheed, IBM ... many others business) whoops-IFUAgain by refusing to change and meet customer needs/wants.
... will go. MS the OEM of entertainment/game hardware/software, and/or MS the Virtual-TeleBell, a/o MS the media and broadcast giant a/o .... MS may believe that they can go head2head with OSS products, Open-business models ..., if they have more than just software revenue on which to rely. MS will probably never "OpenSource" software product code, if they can sustain a battle with "Open*" until all L/FOSS opposition is terminated. Other sources of revenue would sustain MS in such a war, but L/FOSS may win by the forever maturing GPL*, and eventually MS moving into a more profitable hardware/services market sector.
... other MS-stuff may be MS in (just in case) transition or positioning to more seriously compete with L/FOSS products globally. So, watch out, I suspect, MS subversive (less overt insults) tactics will be more subtle and obscured ... the old Greek bearing gifts of Trojan horses.
Perhaps MS is hedging their business bets, because few are sure which direction business-models, IPR Laws, competitors like OSS companies
So, Xbox, Zune, msnTV2
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I hate J Allard. Almost as much as I hate "Cliffy B." It's really pathetic that technology companies are trying to market their products with vain attempts at selling the executives who are in charge of major products. Programmers and business men aren't rock stars, and no matter what designer clothes they wear or how they style their hair, they're still not cool. J Allard isn't hip because he mountain bikes and wears Ecko 24/7 (I suspect he has some deal with Ecko). The reason Microsoft doesn't "get it" is because they think that "it" is image or some other stupid ass shit. Steve Jobs is successful because he understands that every product needs to have some form of utility for a common person. You don't create a market by throwing all sorts of random technology in a box and then marketing it as a must have device. A product will be successful if it functions in a way that will be useful to a large market. That's why iPod doesn't have wireless song sharing, FM tuner, a large screen, and isn't focused on video content. The "features" of the Zune just make it heavier, which makes it more difficult to carry around. There's a reason that the Nano is the top selling iPod.
I also find it strange people keep calling the 360 a success. The 360 isn't a success and neither was the original XBox. Lots of companies could spend millions/billions to gain marketshare where they previously had none, but that marketshare doesn't matter if it doesn't make any money. The Xbox division is nothing but more negative growth for Microsoft. People think that it stands a chance at knocking out the PS3, but that doesn't matter. Nintnedo's console competes more directly with the 360 than the PS3 does and it's poised to completely dominate the video game market this generation. I'm not saying the 360 won't be a success, but it's far to early to make a call one way or the other.
Personally, I think it's sad that people think that Zune and Xbox move away from the Windows market when they're really just deceptive ways of imposing Windows on people who couldn't care less about computers. I boycott these products because of their affiliation with Windows (sure, mark me troll, that doesn't make monopoly abuse right). I think the question no one asks themselves before they buy an XBox is this: If Microsoft had Sony's lead in the console market, would they abuse it worse? Most Sony gripes have to do with other sectors of the company, which are only loosely connected to the game division. Microsoft doesn't work that way, "interoperability," aka "if you use one of our products you have to use all of them," is the way Microsoft works. In the end, Microsoft hopes to bail out of the XBox market and just sell XNA to various console manufacturers so all consoles are compatible with one another. They've stated this publicly yet no one cares. If you become outraged by their blatent intent on monopolizing and abusing another market, you're a troll. Talk about how much GOOD Sony has done for video games (only console manufacturer to consistantly make strides towards merging video games and art), and you're a troll. I guess Microsoft's PR is doing a good job. There's a reason they pay psychologists millions of dollars to dress J Allard and tell him what to say.
What ever happened to consumer awareness? I believe you shouldn't just consider what you can get when purchasing a product, but who you're getting it from. Perhaps Marx was right, morality and capitalism blend like water and oil.
Its shares, which soared 9,560% throughout the 1990s, sunk 63% in 2000 when the Internet bubble burst, and they have yet to fully recover."
That's because once people got online they found out there are alternatives to Microsoft products.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
From everything I've seen, their development processes and product lines both could use a serious ground-up redesign, and both Microsoft and their customer base would benefit from such a move.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
25% of laptops sold is "irrelevant"? Mkay.
What are you babbling about? According to this article, Laptop marketshare was 12%, which was a spike from 6%. I expect it to fall back down, but we'll see.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
They really do... spin off the O/S company and let it die so they can, like everyone else, focus on cheap consumer electronics that are designed by slave labor in India and manufactured by slave labor in China, then sold for a pittance in America to former software engineers who now work at McDonalds flipping burgers for the CEOs who put everyone in their respective situations.
Apple market share is #5 in the list of Computer manufacturers and closing on the #4 spot. Market share said to be as high as 6% and growing fast. To say it has fallen is stupid/troll-like. Silly to call Jobs a liar without calling Gates and Ballmer the same. Actually your post is irrelevant - why am I replying to it?
If you buy a Zune, you are supporting the Recording Industry(?) and its belief that all music listeners are thieves. Microsoft also believes this because they pay a tax to Universal Music Group that acknowledges that some recompense is due to Universal for stolen music. M$ will NEVER change, they hate all consumers, they hate anyone who isnt a M$ clone/supporter thing. They will eventually be exposed and destroyed, but it will be too late - Gates and Ballmer and the rest of the ugly bunch have run off with the cash. Defend yourselves - soon they will be licensing the air - they already have the land , the water, etc.
Wow ... no-ones ever thought of an mp3 player or a games console before ! way to go microsoft.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
How is deciding to enter consumer electronics after other players have already created the market niche innovative?
XBox360 competes with Nintendo and Sony who had already come to dominate the market (pushing earlier competitors like Atari to focus on software, not gaming consoles).
The Zune is yet another competitor to the iPod (like many others).
If this is any indication of the effects of the "fresh new blood" at Microsoft, I'd be worried if I were an executive there........
To be fair though, Microsoft has never been a first-mover and prefers to let others create the market before it enters and attempts to overpower.....
Another case of history attempting to repeat itself?
microsoft is not where it is because it is good, but rather having ripped the right people and companies at the right time, has good lawyers. but is bug ridden bloatware that has held back innovation and is a bottleneck to new ideas. p.s. don't forget the microsoft tax on every new machine sold - what a rip-off. - they will probably go into partnership or buy up that time bomb go-ogle.