Is Microsoft An Innovator? - The Winer-Scoble Debate

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Bloggers Robert Scoble (a former Microsoft 'technical evangelist') and Dave Winer (longtime Microsoft critic) debate whether Microsoft is driving innovation or playing catch-up, in an email conversation published on WSJ.com. Winer writes, 'Microsoft isn't an innovator, and never was. They are always playing catch-up, by design. That's their M.O. They describe their development approach as "chasing tail lights." They aren't interested in markets until they're worth billions, so they let others develop the markets, and have been content to catch-up.' Scoble responds that Microsoft's innovation can be found in the little things: 'I remember when they improved the error messages you get in Internet Explorer, or when they improved fonts in Windows with ClearType technology. That improved our lives in a very tiny way. Not one that you usually read about, or probably even notice. Is Microsoft done innovating in those small ways? Absolutely not. Office 2007 lets me do some things (like cool looking charts) in seconds that used to take many minutes, maybe even hours for some people to do.'"

Comments

Give me a break

[gentimjs]

Stuff like UI-isms (paperclips, ribbons, hiding the file menu, etc) isnt "innovation" .... Stuff like Dtrace , TCP/IP, xml, .. THAT is innovation. Lets have MS give us some real innovation, you know - stuff that wont just change "the way things are done" inside of thier own software ecosystem.

Impressive Rebuttal

[PingSpike]

...Scoble responds that Microsoft's innovation can be found in the little things: 'I remember when they improved the error messages you get in Internet Explorer, or when they improved fonts in Windows with ClearType technology. That improved our lives in a very tiny way. Not one that you usually read about, or probably even notice. Is Microsoft done innovating in those small ways? Absolutely not. Office 2007 lets me do some things (like cool looking charts) in seconds that used to take many minutes, maybe even hours for some people to do.'"
Wow. Improved error messages in Internet Explorer. Which side of the argument is this guy on again?

ClearType

[KiloByte]

'I remember when they improved the error messages you get in Internet Explorer, or when they improved fonts in Windows with ClearType technology.

Improving error messages can't really be called a new invention. ClearType is nothing but a marketing name for sub-pixel antialiasing, something that has been done before. So, if their examples for Microsoft's innovations are in fact counterexamples, this is quite telling.

um

[rucs_hack]

we are supposed to all shout NO!. But they innovated in one critical way. When the Unix wars were in full swing, they came up with a remarkable new business model that utterly crushed all competition and set them as the worlds main desktop and office OS.

Is that innovation? You may argue not, was it nice, nope, but they managed it, and business was so desperate for someone to get of their fat corporate arse and solve their newborn IT problem, that they loved everything microsoft did.

If only it hadn't been them that did it /sigh...

Re:um

[swillden]

Not only that, the business model itself was also perfected by IBM in the 70s. No innovation here, just a tried and true strategy, executed very, very well.

Re:um

[rucs_hack]

yes indeed, don't you see that was my point? There were already operating systems, tens of the buggers. The problem was they lacked focus, chasing after each other and trying to trap customers. Go read about the Unix wars, you're history knowledge needs improving.

Vendor lock in was what the Unix wars were all about. Microsoft didn't invent that, they just said 'hey, we have new stuff that's cheaper, and it runs on any pc' They never claimed that other software makers could do better, that didn't make sense back then, co-operation was for losers..

Before microsoft you would buy your computing solution, the software would be custom written for that hardware only, and you were locked completelly to one vendor for both hardware and software, they could and did charge what they liked, and if the software was crap? tough. Microsofts greatest hit was not being tied to a specific hardware set, they could sell their stuff to any computer manufacturer they pleased.

Yes microsoft has software vendor lock in. They emerged in an era where this was an improvement. Besides, all businesses cared about was that it worked, and would be compatible with what other companies were using. This was another problem in the unix wars.

You're making the mistake of taking current events and extrapolating back 20 years, that doesn't work. Yes microsoft aren't so nice now, but have you had a look at what IBM used to get up to? They make microsoft look soft, I'm telling you.

News?.. not really

[Sassinak]

Lets see... MS took an existing Operating system, repackaged it, and sold it to IBM. And thus an empire was born.

MS innovates in their marketing and licensing schemes, but is that really what you want from a TECHNOLOGY firm?.. Sure, their lawyers are smart.. ("Lets see how we can gouge you today, AND not have you realize until your bleeding").

Everything else they have done as been, as many have pointed out, been based on someone else's work, that they have taken to market with their leverage. Again, nothing I can respect from a TECHNOLOGY firm. Microsoft should just cut the crap and call themselves what they are. a Terriffic marketing firm. They are NOT and have never been a technology firm.

Re:Out of proportion

[epiphani]

Thank you Microsoft, for improving the error messages you get in Internet Explorer. Now my QA team always gives "Cannot find server or DNS error" as the error message, leaving me with very little to work with.

Bucketing all errors to prompt one page is not improvement - its obfuscation, its stupidity, its annoyance. It makes troubleshooting a problem exponentially harder.

If thats what microsoft thinks is innovation, they should have their product development team strung up by their short and curleys.

I feel bad for MS apologists...

[AslanTheMentat]

Wow... Where do I begin...

And the viruses and malware problem is significantly less since Windows XP Service Pack 2. Huh... I seem to remember seeing an article purporting that at least half of the spam-zombies perpetuating these stock pump-and-dump schemes are Win XP SP2 boxen...

Apple will come out with iTV next year, after Microsoft has been doing Media Center for more than two years. I bet Apple will get credit for their "innovation" first, though, cause it's not fun to give Microsoft credit for innovation. Maybe that's because Apple did more than cobble together a rank-ass Media Center version of Windows and slap a nice TV-video card in a tower enclosure. I mean seriously, where the hell are you supposed to put M$'s media center PC that will make it suitable as a Media Center AND a workstation? They completely missed the boat. Apple will most likely do it better, smaller, cheaper, faster, and with more quality. (I'm not a Mac fanboi so much as a MS Loather...)

[Winer]: You have to create things they don't teach in school. If you can take a college class about it, it ain't innovation. True dat, BUT they really should be teaching security more these days. I can't say it really ever came up in my classes way back when, but then, it was a different day and age. PC's didn't get "mugged" the minute they stepped onto the internet then either.

Ahh, have you ever played Halo? That's from Microsoft too. And here we have the crux of the problem... I believe Bungie had been working on Halo before Microsoft devoured them... In fact, it was Bungie who made many wonderful games for the Mac. Pathways out of Darkness? Marathon? Hello? Then suddenly, MS pwned them, and now they make crappy back ports to their "original" OS... *sigh* More importantly though, how is Bungie's Halo a Microsoft innovation again?

Yes, and there's always room for a company that innovates through acquisitions. Forgive me, but being innovative does not involve buying other people's work and calling it your own, and furthermore not giving credit where credit's due, as above. That's called evil.

Would YouTube have gotten purchased for more than a billion if Microsoft wasn't threatening Google? I doubt it. Isn't that the other way around? I mean, MS is kinda king-of-the-hill. Seems like Google poses more of a threat to MS... Where is Microsoft's innovative "video site"? Oh yeah, they are playing catch-up trying to cobble together their own...

No... most of MS's innovation is sadly in their relatively nasty and harmful business practices like "Embrace and Extend". Honestly, this is the kind of innovation we wish they would just shelve somewhere....

Mr Scrooge, May I Please Have A Lump of Coal?

[Doc Ruby]

That improved our lives in a very tiny way. Not one that you usually read about, or probably even notice. Is Microsoft done innovating in those small ways? Absolutely not. Office 2007 lets me do some things (like cool looking charts) in seconds that used to take many minutes, maybe even hours for some people to do.

Yeah, they improved on Microsoft's bad old way by copying someone else's good new way.

That clown Scoble's head is so far up Microsoft's monopoly that he thinks "innovation" means "new to Microsoft", even when they're copying tech from elsewhere. That the standard of comparison is the other people damned to working entirely inside MS monopoly so that they can't even tell something exists until MS gives it to them. Until which time they're crippled, though the rest of the world is stepping large and laughing easy.

Only the Wall Street Journal (and its fascist ilk) could pretend that such a debate is "fair and balanced": reason balanced by retarded corporatism.