How Microsoft Has Changed Without Bill Gates

mightysquirrel writes "It's been a year since Bill Gates left Microsoft in his official capacity. At the time many speculated his departure would spark a significant shift in Redmond. But how much has really changed during Microsoft's first year without Gates?"

Comments

How soon we forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, yeah, I know, I'll be lynched for saying that Bill "I am Satan" Gates should be on par with RMS, ESR and Linus, but think about this for a second.

Bill founded what is now the largest software company in the world, and wether or not you agree with him, he has made a important contribution to the computing industry: Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user.

Now, be honest. How many of us had our first computer experience with MS-DOS or Windows 3.1? Do you think that if computers still consisted on thin-client-server models based on huge VAX mainframes, that Joe and Jane Smith would be able to dial-in to AOL and connect to thousands of people around the world? Would the Internet have blossomed into the vast information network it is today without the aid of easy-to-use software from Microsoft? How about Grandma who wants to set up a webcam so she can chat with her grandchildren? She doesn't want to have to sit and hack kernels for hours. She wants Plug-and-Play, baby.

Look, disagree all you like, but thanks to things like Windows, Office, and MSN, modern computing has been made easy and affordable to everyone, thanks to pioneers like Bill Gates.

Re:How soon we forget

[Darkness404]

Sure, back before the mid '90s Microsoft was an ok company. Sure, most of their software was unstable, but it kinda got the job done. But you are forgetting the browser wars, you forgot the end product of them which was IE6, the browser that made the web effectively unchanged for many years. The browser that opened the world up to every sort of malware out there. Or what about the pain of Windows 9X that bluescreened for no reason? MS in its early days did a lot to help out the computer industry in some ways, however, they also hurt a lot of computer industries. Today, they are very little helpful and a whole lot more harmful.

Re:How soon we forget

[ubersoldat2k7]

All this things you mention are a simple evolutionary step of all the technologies, Personal Computers offered. Don't think that if Bill died at his birth we wouldn't have computers as we have them today. Different of course, but many technologies Microsoft have used were created by someone else. No great invention have come out from Redmond in long time.

Re:How soon we forget

[keeboo]

Now, be honest. How many of us had our first computer experience with MS-DOS or Windows 3.1?

I didn't. My first computer was a 8-bit machine.

Do you think that if computers still consisted on thin-client-server models based on huge VAX mainframes, that Joe and Jane Smith would be able to dial-in to AOL and connect to thousands of people around the world?(...)

There was Amigas, Macs and other easy-to-use personal computers before Windows even existed.

Re:How soon we forget

[Dishevel]

and before that the great inventions coming out of redmond were purchased.

Re:How soon we forget

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user."

Yet another "M$ is an innovator" myth. Before MS-DOS,there was the Commodore VIC-20, C-64, and Amiga. Before MS-DOS there was the Apple I, II, IIc,IIe, and III. Also there was the Kaypro luggables, etc. Microsoft has yet to innovate anything, ever. I challenge anyone to cite an innovation from M$, but be 100% prepared to discover that someone was doing it first and you just didn'tknow about it. Every single "Microsoft Innovation" involved M$ acquiring innovative companies and technologies who got there first, simply stealing the idea outright, or perpetuating non-truths (you'd be surprised howmany people think Gates/M$ invented the Internet. M$ probably didn't start the rumour, but they sure in the hell aren't going out of their way to stop it.)

"Would the Internet have blossomed into the vast information network it is today without the aid of easy-to-use software from Microsoft?"

It not only has, it did. (It is a retromyth that Windows is/was easy to use) If a car crashed constantly you wouldn't say it is easy to use would you?

Re:How soon we forget

[gbjbaanb]

I can see where you're coming from - that the 'standard' of Windows was required in order to move the business world of desktop computing forward to the point where it is today. Fair enough on that, I won't argue.

I will argue that Microsoft has been a force for good in the world past the point where Windows seemed to have a monopoly. The browser wars, bad. Office, bad (yes, there was Wordperfect and Lotus 123 well before Word and Excel came along and was 'aggressively' marketed and enforced on us by using Windows as leverage to gain customers), and all the others - I'd be here all day typing if I had to list every dodgy practice Microsoft has done.

In short then, MS was good for us in the beginning, once it started to get big I think it should have come to the attention of the authorities (oh it did!) and be broken up into NanoSofts (well, they had the chance) which would have continued the benefits of ubiquitous desktop computing without most of the predatory and abusive business practices the big MS engaged in.

(as for Grandma, if she just wants her webcam to 'just work', she will be disappointed when she installs Vista and finds that drivers are no longer available for that model - unless she wants to spend $$$ on a brand new one. Or install modern Linux which does just work with more hardware than Windows nowadays!)

PS. I started computing with an Acorn Atom, moved to an Amstrad than an Amiga while I used the mainframe and Sun Unix workstations at university. PCs running Windows in those days were considered toys. It was NT4 that made the big difference, before that, Windows was a joke.

Re:How soon we forget

[crontabminusell]

I had a TI-99/4A, then moved to a Commodore 128, then an Amiga 500. It wasn't until I was probably 12 years old before I got my hands on my first IBM-compatible PC (a 4.77MHz machine with a turbo button that cranked it up to 10MHz), and it was a huge step back. HUGE step back. I went from (with the Amiga) a nice GUI interface, great sound and (for the time) great graphics, and moved to a machine that beeped and booped and gave me a text prompt in up to 4 colors. Come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure why I did that...

Re:How soon we forget

[pauljlucas]

Bill founded what is now the largest software company in the world, and wether [sic] or not you agree with him, he has made a important contribution to the computing industry: Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user.

No, companies like Apple and Commodore did that since they actually manufactured cheap computers. VisiCalc (the first killer-app, and not from MS) ran on the Apple ][. MS-DOS was more-or-less a repacked CP/M that Bill was lucky enough to license to IBM. Windows stagnated for many years with the infamous Blue Screens of Death while *nix showed that you could have operating systems without crashes. Then it was Apple with the introduction of Mac OS X that forced MS to finally get off their asses and release Vista -- and we all know how that turned out.

MS retarded the entire computer industry by about a decade. Apple doesn't get a free pass here either since Mac OS 1-9 was crash-prone too. But MS, being the 800 lb gorilla, could have done so much more with their resources to propel the industry forward.

Re:How soon we forget

[TheRaven64]

Pretty much anyone in the UK my age had their first computing experience with a BBC Model B or similar. Anyone a few years younger is likely to have first come across the 32-bit Acorn RiscOS machines like the A3000, which were popular in schools. When I was growing up, I was the only person I knew with an IBM-compatible at home, and that was only because my father ran a software company and I got it when they were upgrading. Everyone else had Ataris or Amigas. Perhaps the grandparent meant 'anyone under 18'.

Re:How soon we forget

[Insanity Defense]

Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user.

I have to disagree there. Apple brought desktop computing to the home user. IBM brought it to the business user and took Microsoft along for the ride.

Apple lost the home with the Mac which was a totally closed system where the Apple II was an open system. IBM on the other hand brought an OPEN system to businesses along with the IBM name, people introduced to the computer at work then bought the same for home use. Microsoft just rode into the home on the back of IBM when IBM replaced Apple in the home.

My first access to a microcomputer was to a Heathkit H11 that I helped build.

Re:How soon we forget

[mcgrew]

Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user.

No, it did not. If IBM had opted for a different OS than DOS you would have never heard of Microsoft.

How many of us had our first computer experience with MS-DOS or Windows 3.1?

I had a TS-1000, then a TRS-80. The IBM-PC was office-use only, as the damned things cost about five grand (and money was worth more then). There were many home computers before IBM's expensive dinasaur; the Commodore PET was out before 1980, the TS-1000 and many others were out before IBM decided to get into the PC business.

If Bill gates had never been born we would still have PCs, and it's possible they might even follow standards.

How about Grandma who wants to set up a webcam so she can chat with her grandchildren? She doesn't want to have to sit and hack kernels for hours. She wants Plug-and-Play, baby.

Your ignorance is astounding.

Re:How soon we forget

[TheJodster]

I see the point you are trying to make, but the home computer market existed long before Microsoft. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. There was the Atari 1200XL that was pretty popular too. The schools had TRS-80s. My first "real computer" with a tape drive and everything was a Commodore 64. I miss that machine. [SIGH]... what was I saying? Oh yeah. I never heard of Microsoft or Windows until I was in college and one of my classmates asked me if I had seen that new "Windows" thing that was out. I saw it in one of the labs and wondered what the hell you would ever need that mouse and all that junk for when you had a perfectly good keyboard and command prompt. All the first IBM home computer did, in my opinion, was kill the TRS and the Amiga.

What I am trying to say is that Microsoft did the same thing to the home computer market that they did to the browser market when Netscape was king. They saw a burgeoning market and destroyed it by reshaping it into a tool that would make them masters of the universe. You can have a computer in any flavor you want as long as it runs windows.

For all you Apple fans, I know the IIe was humming along beautifully in the same era before MS destroyed the wonderfully varied marketplace, but I couldn't afford one and never got into them.

I'm not convinced that Bill's dominance in business is a phenomenon to be treasured in the annals of computer history. I'm not usually an MS hater, but I think they have done as much harm as they have good.

Oh yeah... I almost forgot... "Get off my lawn!"

Re:How soon we forget

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know your Vic-20 used Commodore Basic which was based on 6502 Microsoft Basic right?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_BASIC

Re:How soon we forget

[Opportunist]

What great invention has come out of Redmond, anyway? As far as I can see, their big invention was to hoover up whatever someone invented, brand it and market it.

Re:How soon we forget

[Big Hairy Ian]

Having to press the "Start" button in order to shutdown your PC was surely M$'s only great innovation :)

Re:How soon we forget

[rezalas]

Windows crashing constantly is yet another myth. As well, Microsoft shouldn't be forced to state they didn't invent the internet as it happens to be fairly obvious. In fact I've never met anyone who thought they did (insert Al Gore reference). You can demonize Microsoft if you want to but the reason people think Microsoft did it first and did it best is because everyone else who faded into the history books of vague references and foot notes did so because they failed. They failed to market themselves, or they failed to meet volume, or they simply failed to find financial backing. In the end, Microsoft makes things easy for people to use and makes tools that people like because they do all of those things VERY well. If someone comes up with a great idea that Microsoft finds amazing, they buy it and run with it. There isn't anything wrong with that, hell every company on earth does this (including Apple, IBM, etc). Demonizing a company for having business savvy owners is pointless. As well, saying it isn't easy to use is not only an opinion, but also hard to back up these days. I haven't yet found anything I wanted to use that wasn't plug and play, and not a single person I've made computers for has ever had an issue "installing" their own new hardware and getting it to work with windows. *Installing is in quotes because the idea of calling a USB device "installed" drives me nuts. Linux however, not so accepting of the USB goodness...

Re:How soon we forget

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Indeed. Bill Gates had a vision; A computer in every home, and his companies software running on them. Moreover, a major part of his vision was that people were going to pay for that software. Remember that letter?.

It sounds silly now, but back in 1976, the idea that people were going to pay for the software on their home PCs was not a settled issue. If GNU programs, warez, freeware, we applications, and the Linuz kernel have shown one thing, it's that this is still not a settled issue. Software is not viewed in the same way as hardware. When it's so cheap and easy to copy bits, its understandable that people pay so little heed to their supposed worth.

Nevertheless, Bill Gates built an empire, probably the largest and most influential company in history, entirely around the concept of selling numbers to people with computers. You may not like the way he did it, but the fact is that his long term goals and ambitions have shaped the computer industry and indeed the world for the last 30 years. We would not have had a usable, cheap and pervasive home desktop OS in the 90s without Microsoft. We paid the price in security woes and lock in, but we got our desktops.

People talk about the internet, but people needed computers in their homes before they could go online. And that's where Bill Gates and Microsoft came in. Unfortunately, that's not where they intend to bow out.

Re:How soon we forget

[dmarcov]

I didn't. My first computer was a 8-bit machine.

My first computer didn't even have 8-bits. It had 2, but you couldn't use both at the same time. You had to go up 7 floors to get the other bit and then swap them out.

Re:How soon we forget

[Blakey Rat]

IE6 remained unchanged because all of Microsoft's competitors gave up. It's the same reason that, for example, PowerPoint has been so stagnant in the last few years-- Microsoft doesn't bother committing resources to products that have no competition. (Indeed, why should they?)

If you want good Microsoft software, *compete* with them.

Re:How soon we forget

[interval1066]

Gate's & Allen's "innovation" was to (practically) steal an operating system (DOS) from a not very worldly programmer named Tim Patterson, which happened to be appropriate to run on IBM's new (at that time) PC computer. IBM, not being very worldly either, looked toward a bright future selling tons of hardware not realizing that Asia would soon undercut ANYONE making hardware and that the platform was the OS.

The killer app soon followed, Lotus 1-2-3. One showing of this app to anyone in business made DOS so valuable that pc's became as ubiquitous as water. Everyone started making PC's that could run DOS & Lotus 1-2-3. The price of hardware then drops like a rock as everyone started making it and ultimately farming that work out to Asia driving prices down further. Apple never appealed to business, the needs of which really drive innovation. You can appreciate a personal computer as you would a Stradivarius, but that's not a need. Business had a real need for an electronic spreadsheet.

TODAY: IBM is for all intents and purposes out of the hardware business, which has moved to Singapore and S. Korea, and Paul Allen and Bill Gates are two of the richest people in the world. If Microsoft has done anything (aside from swindle people and stomped on innovation as much as possible), its made a platform that Business trusts enough to continue to invest in and employ millions of people that only do work on PC's. Jobs, always a dreamer, never really did care about the needs of Business, and instead appealed to people's vanity, which is why Apple never really took off like it might have.

Redmond's real strength lies in showing people how to be a ruthless company. Innovation is great, but people respect power and those who wield it.

Re:How soon we forget

[Idaho]

Windows crashing constantly is yet another myth.

For any version prior to Windows 2000, this is absolutely not a myth.

Re:How soon we forget

[Runaway1956]

It isn't theory, my friend. Mac, Linux, Unix, Solaris - ALL computers are quite happy to store files, whether they be mail, binary files, source files, or whatever. As a malicious act, I can download every worm, virus, trojan or whatever else I might imagine, and store them on a *nix server, in places where Windows users can find them. I can change the names of those files to "betty_gets_nekkid" or whatever I wish, to invite attention to them. There is no theory behind the idea that any system can harbor malware.

In theory, that malware isn't going to harm the Mac, or the *nix box. But, in reality, it is possible for that malware to damage any of them, if given the proper permissions. A buddy recently managed to make his Mac barf while running a virtual machine. I only heard the details second hand, but it involved overly generous permissions, and intentional download of a "hacked" executable. The result was two days of work to fix the damage on the host Mac machine.

Re:How soon we forget

[paintswithcolour]

Yeah! This being Slashdot it made me think how ludicrous the situation is in the car world. I mean why should I shell out for insurance ever year? I mean, if everyone else is insured where's the problem if I skip out.

Re:How soon we forget

[Thing 1]

OT: I think your sig would be a lot more amusing if the lines were swapped. :)

Re:How soon we forget

[Yvanhoe]

I'll consider through the eye of a SF reader : before the 80s computers worked. "Every computer glitch as a human origin" HAL taught us. (spoiler) it took a politician to make its perfect logic go amok. To say it in a nutshell, computers were deterministic.

Now fast-forward a few years. Cyberpunk. Computers fail, a skillful hacker can enter any system. Bugs cause catastrophes, virus take epic proportions. Microsoft changed the IT landscape and I think it made it lose at least 10 years (I would say 20). Now IT specialists waste their times reinventing the wheel for every version of Windows, correct the same problems over and over, put hacked patches on security holes that should not exist. Microsoft did not bring the desktop into the home. Apple did. Internet blossomed despite Microsoft attempts at controlling it (The first plans for MSN, "Microsoft Network" was to concurrence Internet itself, to be a separate network). Plug and play's most common nickname was "plug and pray" because when it didn't work (50% of the time) you had no way to make it work, even if you were an IT engineer. The long sessions of kernel hacking that were necessary a few years ago (try Ubuntu if you think this is still the case) to make a webcam work was mostly due to the culture of proprietary drivers that Microsoft helped foster. Linux drivers were written from reverse-engineered information. The fact that it could work was by itself a miracle that happened despite Microsoft efforts.

Honestly, we don't call Microsoft evil out of spite for its wealth, we have technical reasons for this. And Google did not choose "Don't be evil" as a motto without thinking of a certain Redmond company and the damages they did to the IT world.

Re:How soon we forget

[je ne sais quoi]

Huh, interesting, color me surprised. However, one point: you have to install the pirated version of the software to get the trojan and give it an administrator's password before it can pwn the machine, i.e., it's not a virus. Also, I can't click on a web-link and get infected, or open a document that somebody sends me, I have to install the software and run it as root. There's an easy solution to this particular trojan: don't pirate software, or if you do, be suspicious of any software installer on OS X that requires root privileges and check the md5sums of the packages you download against a trusted source.

Most applications on the mac can simply be dragged onto the applications directory and don't require an administrator's password, so that's a red-flag right there. I'll be snarky here and attribute the lax attitude to administrator privileges to microsoft too, since they are the ones that practically made their old OSes force you to run as root to be able to do anything. To be fair though, this is currently a problem not necessarily because of Microsoft, but some programmers still write their code in such a way to require administrator privileges for installation.

Re:How soon we forget

[MightyMartian]

I wouldn't go that far. He did write MS-BASIC, which became probably for near a decade the most prevalent development platform in the PC world.

Re:How soon we forget

[je ne sais quoi]

I mean, if everyone else is insured where's the problem if I skip out.

That assumes that all cars are created equal. If it were the mid-1980s and I owned a toyota or honda, you're saying I'd have to pay to insure the repairs of faulty parts on Fords and GMs, or even a Chevy "unsafe at any speed" Corvair: you choose to buy a car that is completely unsafe and unreliable, and you're forcing me to help subsidize the cost of repair and accidents caused by faulty design, even though I myself am a very conscientious auto buyer.

One could make the argument that as long as unsafe cars are on the road, everyone must pay the extra price to insure themselves, but as far as I know, insurance companies do actually look at types of car when considering your insurance premium, and of course there's the "safe driver" discount, so I guess this effect is somewhat mitigated.

Re:How soon we forget

[MickyTheIdiot]

I think IE6 is more evil for this reason: it pulled a significant part of the web away from being software/OS agnostic and made Windows a requirement. Like Windows or not this has made the web *significantly* less universal and has slowed it down. The web is still a powerful force, but if web pages (and web aps) would actually run anywhere, it would be *even more* significant to our day to day computing than it is now.

IE8 proves the point... Microsoft really tries to comply with standards and everything breaks. IE6 and non-compliance with standards is going to be a significant negative chapter in Microsoft history and we'll still be feeling the effects a decade from now at least.

Re:How soon we forget

[GigsVT]

The macs here in our prepress got a virus once, years ago. They get lots of customer provided files though.

It's rare but possible.

Re:How soon we forget

[GigsVT]

You are forgetting that Novell is like 100 times better than what MS replaced it with.

Everyone mostly forgets that one.

Re:How soon we forget

[generic.individual]

MS is a huge innovator, just not in the sense your are thinking. MS innovates in the way it brings emerging technologies together and markets them to consumers.

Ford didn't invent the automobile, but it was sure and innovator of the automotive industry.

Re:How soon we forget

[bledri]

The web was where the productivity turned out to be.

Yup, that's were all my productivity went.

Re:How soon we forget

[denis-The-menace]

RE: but some programmers still write their code in such a way to require administrator privileges for installation.

I'll go one further:
some programmers still write their code in such a way to require administrator privileges for running the program and it only works for the user account that installed it!

Re:How soon we forget

[jcr]

Microsoft brought desktop computing to the home user.

That's a major contender for the overstatement of the decade. Desktop computing came to the home user from Apple, Atari, Commodore, IBM, Texas Instruments, Tandy, HP, and many, many other vendors. Microsoft was the OS vendor left standing after the big shakeout, and they gained their current position by catching IBM's fumble. Crediting them with creating the market is a bit of a stretch.

-jcr

Re:How soon we forget

[jcr]

I use Keynote. It saved my life. If I'd had to do one more WWDC presentation with Powerpoint, I'd have shot myself.

-jcr

Re:How soon we forget

[interval1066]

"Errr...you might want to look up IBM's hardware business..."; I have. One of my best friends in the business worked for IBM Canada, he lost his sales job 3 years ago due to cutbacks in IBM's hardware business. That was 3 years ago, not recently. His comment: "It was a bloodbath." Sure, IBM's still in the hardware business. But take a look at IBM's business breakdown then and now; you'll see a big difference. Your comment as I read it seems to say that these things happen in the blink of an eye. Its been a long, slow decline. IBM didn't lose the hardware business overnight. But nor did they hold on to the large slice of the pie they used to have. Their continued grasp of their big iron products until way too late in the game says volumes about their failed philosophy.

Didn't go into the deep philosophical issues of Microsoft's mindset, and I don't care. As light dusting of the topic I think I'm on point. I'll leave it to you to look at the company with a lens.

Re:How soon we forget

[swillden]

MS in its early days did a lot to help out the computer industry in some ways

I disagree.

I remember in 1991, I purchased a NeXTstation. It had a beautiful, usable GUI layered over a powerful multitasking Unix operating system, with development tools that were not rivaled on any platform until at least a decade later. Meanwhile, at work I used Windows for Workgroups 3.11, an ugly, unstable DOS shell. My employer considered NeXTs (and did buy a few), but based on Microsoft's promises for the upcoming OS/2 decided to stick with Windows.

Then there was the OS/2 debacle. IBM and MS were jointly building a great (for the time) OS, but MS bailed and then killed OS/2 with its promises of "Cairo". What they actually delivered was Windows 95, which was hugely better than WfW, but still fell far, far short of what OS/2 delivered, much less what Cairo promised. None of which held a candle to NeXTstep, of course.

Along the way, MS stomped lots of innovative products from other companies. Consider DR-DOS, Quarterdesk, Stacker, etc.. There were dozens of small companies doing interesting things that MS squashed or bought, and then shelved their work.

While at it, Microsoft produced essentially ZERO innovation of their own. Their modus operandi was to wait for others to do interesting things and then buy or copy them. That's fine, but they earned a reputation for playing hardball and forcing unfair, one-sided deals that left the actual innovators out in the cold. I know personally of several potential startups with innovative ideas who decided not to create their products because the potential founders were sure MS would just squash them before they could make a profit. I'm sure that story was repeated hundreds or thousands of times, and the net effect seriously retarded the progress of the software industry.

Contrast that with Google, or IBM, or any of the other large players. Heck, a common Silicon Valley *business plan* is to create a web startup, develop it to prove out the ideas, then sell out to Google and walk away millionaires (or billionaires). That encourages innovation, because Google makes fair offers for the companies it buys.

Above all, Microsoft has for years trained users to accept buggy, insecure, crash-prone software as the norm, and acceptable. They have gotten much better of late, and Microsoft's R&D department has produced some great stuff in the last few years, but it will take a long time before they can do enough good to compensate for all of the damage they did in the past. If ever.

Re:How soon we forget

[Anubis IV]

Saying that IBM wasn't very "worldly" seems a bit naive. They had been around for decades at that point and moving into PCs was the natural place for them to go right then, just as it was natural for them to vacate that market when they did. IBM has always been about serving enterprise customer needs. At that time, PCs were an enterprise need. Once PCs became commoditised , PCs were no longer considered primarily an enterprise need. Instead, they were consumer needs. At that point, IBM sold off its remaining PC line (ThinkPad) to Lenovo and refocused on its core business: enterprise needs.

And to say that IBM is out of the hardware business is rather ill-informed as well. Just look at things like Blue Gene/L or Blue Gene/P, Cell, Roadrunner, Blade, or their other hardware technologies and products that they have to offer to high-end enterprise needs. Just because the average person may no longer be aware of IBM's products does not make them irrelevant or dead to the hardware business. It just means that they're out of your price range by a few hundred thousand or million of your favorite local currency.

As for Jobs, ever heard of VisiCalc? Even Microsoft Excel ran on Macs first, as did plenty of other software back then. Apple was doing fine in the early 80s, and then he was kicked out, as you'll recall. So, to pin Apple's lack of success on him is a bit iffy. Jobs is definitely a dreamer, but he's always been about shaking things up and changing the world (look up his famous quote when he was trying to recruit John Sculley, who worked at Pepsi at the time), not just appealing to people's aesthetics (though that does play a role, obviously). And if you want to see how Jobs is as a person, just look at what he did after he got kicked out of Apple: he started NeXT and made innovative computers that were aimed at businesses. He may not have been a huge success with NeXT, but to suggest that he doesn't care about business at all is just ignoring the facts of his history.

Re:How soon we forget

[rcamans]

Windows support is job security for a whole lot of poor, unfortunate people. Bill created a whole new industry there.

Re:How soon we forget

[recoiledsnake]

MS in its early days did a lot to help out the computer industry in some ways

I disagree.

I remember in 1991, I purchased a NeXTstation. It had a beautiful, usable GUI layered over a powerful multitasking Unix operating system, with development tools that were not rivaled on any platform until at least a decade later. Meanwhile, at work I used Windows for Workgroups 3.11, an ugly, unstable DOS shell. My employer considered NeXTs (and did buy a few), but based on Microsoft's promises for the upcoming OS/2 decided to stick with Windows.

The NeXTstation was $5000. The x86 competition was a lot cheaper. If your company and every other company got NeXTstationsm, today we would still have one vendor selling maybe $2000 computers and computing and internet wouldn't have had taken off like they did. Today Apple buys CPUs from Intel and GPUs from Nvidia and ATI alternatively and gets hardware for less. Would those companies even have existed if MS didn't license DOS to Compaq first and the rest later? I doubt it. Open competition in the hardware market would've been squished and computers would have been super expensive.

Re:How soon we forget

[phoenix321]

Maybe that's the real point where Microsoft is to blame: setting a world-wide standard for low quality software, damaging expectations well beyond the OS market up to the point where no customer is allowed to expect software that works flawlessly. It's in every software-for-hire contract, in every EULA, everywhere: software cannot be expected to work without occasionally but serious bugs. The problem is not that the software industry states that, but that all customers accept that without a second thought, because they never experienced software that did not crash sometimes. Because of this, we have grown accustomed to paying for software at a quality level we would sue the pants and cry havoc, pitchfork and torches for every other manufacturer in every other trade. But for software, even catastrophic blunders, we simply breathe deeply, reboot and curse silently. There were games that on a vanilla standard Windows installation did nothing but crash until a month and well over five emergency patches. Sure, people were clamoring in every forum for a fix, but almost no one returned the product as utterly defective, reclaiming money and compensation for efforts. There are games that NEVER worked but people still tried for months to fix them, producing unofficial patches or similar. No one would ever bother for any other stuff defective from-the-factory and I think that's party the fault of Microsoft.

Re:How soon we forget

[Zero__Kelvin]

"If it crashed continually, then only retards would have been buying software that reboots infinitely."

Wow! Even I wouldn't be that harsh on you for being an admitted Windows user! Don't be so hard on yourself. You're not a retard, you are just going way out of your way to stay grossly misinformed (and far too proud and eager to let it be known to the world.)

"If you want to blame someone for 9x crashing then perhaps you should blame the fucking dumbasses who kept buying it and programming for it instead of supporting something else. :)"

We already do blame you, but thanks for the suggestion ...

Re:How soon we forget

[MikeBabcock]

... there was the OS/2 debacle. IBM and MS were jointly building a great (for the time) OS, but MS bailed and then killed OS/2 with its promises of "Cairo". What they actually delivered was Windows 95, which was hugely better than WfW, but still fell far, far short of what OS/2 delivered, much less what Cairo promised. None of which held a candle to NeXTstep, of course.

This shouldn't remind anyone of Vista, or the promises of Windows 7 or the database driven file-system that doesn't exist yet, or what .NET represents. Not at all :-).

Along the way, MS stomped lots of innovative products from other companies. Consider DR-DOS, Quarterdesk, Stacker, etc.. There were dozens of small companies doing interesting things that MS squashed or bought, and then shelved their work.

When people ask me why I dislike Microsoft, the above sums it up -- Microsoft took perfectly good innovations that were designed to work alongside their own products, and quashed them (often illegally or under false pretences). By the time the court system got around to proving this true (such in Caldera's case), it was way too late in this fast-moving industry.

Re:How soon we forget

[Whelkman]

If IBM had opted for a different OS than DOS you would have never heard of Microsoft.

I doubt that. Contrary to popular myth, which seems to think Paul Allen and Bill Gates were running business out of a garage and DOS was their first product, Microsoft was already a successful company with its BASIC and XENIX products. In addition to providing DOS to IBM, Microsoft hedged their bets and produced flavors for nearly everything. So, whichever hardware vendor won out, Microsoft fully intended to be the software provider for that platform. One could argue this wouldn't be the case, but Microsoft was one of the few strong software companies of the era. I'd even argue they were the only strong software company of the era, which is what enabled them to grow as large as they did as fast as they did.

Re:How soon we forget

[swillden]

I wasn't arguing that we'd have been better off if NeXT had ruled the world. I was arguing that we'd have been better off if Microsoft hadn't dominated it, teaching everyone to expect crappy software.

Re:How soon we forget

[ThousandStars]

I remember in 1991, I purchased a NeXTstation. It had a beautiful, usable GUI layered over a powerful multitasking Unix operating system, with development tools that were not rivaled on any platform until at least a decade later.

And that workstation cost vastly more than generic Windows boxes, which is why generic Windows boxes took over and Next's great ideas fizzled until they became OS X a decade later. Part of Microsoft's genius is realizing that normal people can't or won't pay $10,000 for a computer.

Re:How soon we forget

[swillden]

And that workstation cost vastly more than generic Windows boxes, which is why generic Windows boxes took over and Next's great ideas fizzled until they became OS X a decade later.

Actually, my NeXTstation cost roughly the same as a comparable 486 at the time. That was with an education discount, granted, but it wouldn't have been hugely more expensive even without that. As I recall, I got the machine and a laser printer for $3300. I think I could have gotten a comparable 486 for around $3100 -- but without the printer.

Part of Microsoft's genius is realizing that normal people can't or won't pay $10,000 for a computer.

You mean IBM's genius, right? Or, more accurately, Compaq's, since they started the clone wave. Microsoft had nothing to do with that; they just rode the wave -- and convinced everyone that there were going to produce some great software Real Soon Now, so that everyone would stick with them rather than looking into the much-superior alternatives.

Re:How soon we forget

[DittoBox]

If you share large portions of your host drive with the virtual machine, and then you infect the virtual machine, and that infection just goes around maliciously fucking up all your files-including those in shares-then yes, a Windows virus/malware infection is going to make your system barf.

Re:How soon we forget

[croddy]

The killer app soon followed, Lotus 1-2-3. One showing of this app to anyone in business made DOS so valuable that pc's became as ubiquitous as water. Everyone started making PC's that could run DOS & Lotus 1-2-3. The price of hardware then drops like a rock as everyone started making it and ultimately farming that work out to Asia driving prices down further. Apple never appealed to business, the needs of which really drive innovation. You can appreciate a personal computer as you would a Stradivarius, but that's not a need. Business had a real need for an electronic spreadsheet.

And now, sadly, we know exactly what happens to an economy when its businessmen make their decisions based on the output of those unsound spreadsheets.

Re:How soon we forget

[chthon]

I had enough problems in the first half of the 90's due to viruses from the sneakernet. The internet was never needed to propagate malware, it helped only to propagate it faster.

No Mention of Bing or Natal?

[eldavojohn]

I found this assessment to be adequate when looking at Microsoft as a marketing company that makes the operating system. But what about Bing and Natal? These have been two very important developments to different worlds following the departure of Gates. I read an article from ITPro UK that I think did a better job describing change (or lack thereof) and there's certainly others with their own 1-year-on take.

Personally, it's the small things that Microsoft has done differently that I see as real change. The recent ECMA standardization and community promise surrounding CLI and C# for one. While not perfect, it's an important step. Supporting more community standards (albeit questionable) in IE8 has also been a tremendous step in my mind. I'm not embracing IE8 yet out of sheer caution but these are certainly progressive moves however small. Has Ballmer toned down his wild intensity now that he heads Microsoft and is the unquestionable leader? I don't think so in the operating system world but maybe in smaller subsections of software development. The pricing and marketing strategies they've used for their OS have been just as questionable and (in the case of the OLPC) as ridiculous as ever.

I hate to say it as I thought it was the end of the world when Ballmer took over Microsoft and that everything was going to grind to a halt around them but things don't look so bad. Honestly, I'm more concerned with other companies buying up everyone and everything around them in their quest to own a full stack of software or dominate one cash cow field--Google included. Two or three years ago, had I rubbed--to have everything in the world that was made by them blink out of existence. Now, I'd probably have better things to spend that wish on. I hate to sound like an apologist because I still despise a lot of their marketing tactics and things they do. But I'm glad they're starting to show some improvement and at least a little bit of innovation. I think things had really stagnated under Gates and though Ballmer looked like the big bad wolf, he's obviously taking more risks now that he's in charge.

Re:No Mention of Bing or Natal?

[guruevi]

- Bing is just a rename of MSN Search or Live Search or whatever it was called before. Microsoft products have gone through name changes just for the sake of it under BG too.
- Natal can be seen as an extension or spinoff of the Surface project. It's similar technology. Microsoft has their fingers in all types of technology and will develop some type of interface for developers to it. If you've ever been subscribed to MSDN (back when they used to send you a package of all possible CD's) you should know that it's not unusual for Microsoft to start something way out there that eventually never gets finished.
- Microsoft is forced to open their standards both from the market as well as court orders. They have to satisfy the demands of courts all over the world. If they could, they wouldn't open up the way they are. There are still clauses in a lot of their promises related to patents (they keep the possibility open to sue over use of their related patents and commercial use of their technologies and most of their promises are not compatible with GPL) and a lot of caveats in the technologies that they open (eg. they opened C# but didn't open the majority of libraries that make their .NET Framework, they opened DOCX but didn't open the implementations you need to implement DOCX)
- Microsoft has been stagnant for so long that they're actually on the verge of dying (they've been stagnant ever since XP came on the market). Their operating system is losing market fast, Internet Explorer is losing market even faster, their steps into the Internet have been nothing but disaster and even Office is losing out against their own older products. They're probably going to stay around but not as a large monopolist - they will remain as a software development company and that was inevitable whether it was Ballmer or Gates at the wheel. They're so big, diverse and filled with management level-types that nobody can really take control of the company in the way eg. Apple's CEO is in control.

Re:No Mention of Bing or Natal?

[VGPowerlord]

Bing is just a rename of MSN Search or Live Search or whatever it was called before. Microsoft products have gone through name changes just for the sake of it under BG too.

No they haven't! Now, stop distracting me; I'm trying to finish this month's budget in Multiplan!

Not much...

[Ringthane]

Judging by the pricing of Windows 7 Ultimate, it's business as usual at Microsoft.

No not really

[Darkness404]

No, I don't think MS has changed, but the world has. The iPhone has changed the smartphone market to where even with the best hardware Windows Mobile just isn't wanted much anymore. The 360 is still falling behind the Wii despite MS's attempts to beat it with the "New Xbox Experience" and with the development of the Natal controller. MS though has finally realized that unless Windows 7 is a hit, Linux/OS X/Now ChromeOS is going to kill them in the OS market. Office has stagnated and has had a popular revolt going on because of the "ribbon" UI that a lot of people hate, and I don't see a new version remedying that in the future. MS as a whole has remained the same, however the world is changing and they don't seem to realize that.

Re:No not really

[Opportunist]

What would you like to change? Windows XP was essentially what most of their users wanted. A nice looking interface (ok, with a teletubby standard background, but that's the least worry), good stability, good support for pretty much any hardware they had. Nothing they could be missing or hoping for in the next gen OS. And that's why Vista failed, basically. It's not the "must have" all the other MS OSs before were. Win95 was a must have, if anything ever was. It was the next best thing. Win98 was Win95 on crack, it was so much more stable, with far better support for internet and all the other new "must have" things.

(we'll politely ignore ME here now. Instead, we present some fluffy kitties to distract you)

Then, 2k. Stability of NT meets usability and compatibility of 98. IMO still one of their diamonds, and maybe the biggest leap they took in their stride. It was THE "must have" system, even "more must have" than 95 maybe was.

XP already had a harder time getting a "must have" badge. What does XP have that 2k doesn't? Out of the box WiFi support. Ok. You could install a driver for that. It's not really much more stable than 2k. It's also not really any more user friendly than 2k. There isn't really anything that I could put my finger on that the average user would want out of XP compared to 2k. But at least it was a bit more pleasing to the eye than the rather sterile 2k (a look that I loved, but I'm weird).

Vista was the first system that caused more of a "why the fuck should I?" rather than a "must have". While XP was eventually more than just "nice to have", Vista still doesn't convince. There's no compelling reason to switch (other than artificially introduced incompatibilities like the refusal to offer DirectX 10 on a system before Vista, which in turn led developers to cling to DX9 so they don't lose the XP user market). The system sells with new machines, ok, but mainly because of a lack of alternatives (since XP is no longer offered, and if, at higher price). If XP was offered at the same or lower price of Vista, the sales would look even more grim than they do.

And people using XP do not storm the stores and buy the upgrade, something that hasn't happened before. All the other upgrades were a hot seller, Vista upgrades sit like lead on the shelves.

So where should they develop to? Windows is "as good as it gets". What should they include in the system to have another "must have" seller? I can't see anything the average user could want.

Re:No not really

[Darkness404]

Yay, is it the year of Linux again/already!?

In case you didn't notice, the failure of Vista lead almost every major computer manufacturer to put Linux in some form on one or more of their products. This would have been unheard of back in the days of XP.

Its safe to say that if 7 turns out to be another Vista sized failure, more companies will put more machines out running Linux.

Yes, the WII is so much more powerful than the XBOX. That's why all the newest, latest, greatest games only come out for the Wii.

Games are a matter of opinion, but there are more Wii consoles sold than 360 consoles. Plus Wii consoles make Nintendo a sizable $50 profit for each one sold. Any company would want their product to be in such high demand that it constantly was sold out of stock for not one but two Christmas seasons.

Never heard of any complaints about the "ribbon UI" before, but I'm sure if MS was changing it you'd be the first they'd notify.

You obviously don't work in an office where they use Office 2007. Where everyone has to get retrained and such.

Office has stagnated and people hate it because of the new UI? Doesn't that kind of contradict itself?

Firefox has not stagnated in the least, yet the UI is about the same as in previous versions of Firefox.

Re:No not really

[ShadowRangerRIT]

No offense (really), but this sounds like projecting a whole lot of your own biases on to the population at large. The iPhone found a base in the consumer market, where smartphones hadn't been strong to begin with. To my knowledge, it's stayed there. iPhone won, but Windows Mobile didn't exactly lose either (except in *potential* profit, which no one but the RIAA considers legitimate).

The 360 is doing substantially better than the PS3 (which is the closest direct competition), while trying to lure in a few Wii enthusiasts. Until Natal launches, we have no idea how it will do. I'm a semi-hardcore gamer who owns both a Wii and a 360, and while I like the Wii's controls (when well executed) and low power draw, the games available fall into roughly three categories:

1. First party releases
2. Okami (okay, and maybe 3 others)
3. Crap

The 360 has far more variety of games available, a much better online multiplayer experience, etc. The attach rate is also higher: Fewer 360 consoles are sold, but the players buy more games (and given the thin margins on consoles, attach rate is much more important in measuring success).

Vista, while admittedly a resource hog, is not nearly the dog of an OS people make it out to be. It's not the best thing since sliced bread, but it's not the worst thing since Hitler either. They rewrote the core of the OS, and that caused a lot of problems (poorly tested drivers causing blue screens and the like), but with the drivers now stable, and the new focus on speed, Windows 7 may be received far more readily; again, don't (dis)count chickens before they hatch. They actually listened to consumer customer complaints and acted on them, which is fairly new to them.

As for the ribbon UI, it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. It's new, and people need to relearn their habits, and it even provides a window where people might switch from Office to Office 2003-esque clones, but that doesn't seem to be happening at present. People complained about the endlessly cascading menus, and MS came up with a way to reduce the problem. There's a short learning curve, that's all.

In summary: The world != you, so don't assume that your disagreements mean that MS is ignoring changes in "the world."

Re:No not really

[ShadowRangerRIT]

I'd argue that the substantially lower hardware costs were at least as much to "blame" for adding Linux to lineups. If the OS costs x, and the hardware costs 10x, then people don't notice the OS cost. When the hardware gets down to 2x, the OS becomes a much larger part of the cost, and "free" looks more attractive.

Re:No not really

[oahazmatt]

The iPhone has changed the smartphone market to where even with the best hardware Windows Mobile just isn't wanted much anymore.

I'm as much of a brand-loving consumer whore as the next person, but I just don't believe that. While the iPhone is extremely popular (despite the development of phones from HTC that had similar functions) it offered the casual customer base a smart phone alternative to the Blackberry and the like. To say Windows Mobile phones aren't wanted (or needed) is a great assumption. There is still a lot of enterprise level software that will only work with Windows Mobile components, and Blackberries are still quite popular in the business world.

The 360 is still falling behind the Wii despite MS's attempts to beat it with the "New Xbox Experience" and with the development of the Natal controller.

I seem to recall an interview from a Microsoft employee that admitted the Wii and 360 were too different to be competing against each other. As for falling behind, I don't see it as such. Every Christmas season my local stores are out of Wiis and 360s, but the PS3s are plentiful. The NXE is a vast improvement from the old Blade system, now that I've had quite a bit of time to get used to it. As far as the controller, motion controllers have been around for quite some time with Mattel's Power Glove and Broderbund's U-Force.

MS though has finally realized that unless Windows 7 is a hit, Linux/OS X/Now ChromeOS is going to kill them in the OS market.

No, they haven't, because that simply isn't true. Microsoft's OS is too deeply-rooted in the business world for that to happen due to one or two versions of their OS not taking off to the general public's liking. I've heard from many first-hand who were disappointed when their new PC shipped with Vista and later discovered that they did not despise it as much as they believed they would once they customized it to their liking. Mac OS X is not going to kill Microsoft in the near future unless Apple works out what they believe to be an amicable licensing agreement for their software, as gaining that market share with their own PCs plus their OS is likely to end in an anti-trust hearing. As for Linux/Chrome, there are too many options within that category itself for any of them to become truly successful. You might explain Linux to a novice as if it's just another operating system, but once you get into the different distributions you'll scare casual users away.

Office has stagnated and has had a popular revolt going on because of the "ribbon" UI that a lot of people hate, and I don't see a new version remedying that in the future.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it won't happen. Consequently, just because you see it happening doesn't mean it is. When I had my corporate training for Office 2007 I was quite confused by the ribbons. After playing around with it a bit I believed I could get the hang of them if I had a solid week to try it out on some serious work. It's different, it's not as compact, and is confusing as Hell at first, but that can be remedied if the next edition of Office has a "switch to classic menus" option.

MS as a whole has remained the same, however the world is changing and they don't seem to realize that.

You can say it's the same company that created Bob, Me, Vista, the first X-Box controller, proprietery document formats and the Blue Screen of Death, sure. You can also say it's the company that made it possible for PCs to become a part of our everyday lives, streamline tedious work-related processes, and communicate with people on the other side of the globe.

Microsoft has changed, before and after Bill. Whether good ideas or not, Microsoft has tried new products or solutions that meet with various degrees of success. They may not always be the first to the party (some may argue that they never have been) but if they hadn't changed to keep up with the world it would be far more evident than a few users online griping about Windows Vista.

Re:No not really

[mcgrew]

You obviously don't work in an office where they use Office 2007. Where everyone has to get retrained and such.

That's my number one gripe about Microsoft; they think they have to move all the menu items around and change everything so you'll think the $$$ you spent on the upgrade is worth it.

Ten or fifteen years ago they used Quattro in our office, and decided to change to Excel. Being completely unfamiliar with Excel, I took a three day class in it. A few weeks later as I was finally getting comfortable with it, they upgraded to the newer Excel and my employer had wasted the money he spent on that class, as everything I'd learned was obsolete. Fortunately, the new Excel was more like the old Quattro than the old Excel so I didn't need retraining.

"Options" in IE over the years has been under File, Edit, View, and now is in tools. Why in the hell can't they keep menu items in the same place from one release to the next?

Re:No not really

[Blakey Rat]

The iPhone has changed the smartphone market to where even with the best hardware Windows Mobile just isn't wanted much anymore.

Simply untrue. It is true that the iPhone has springboarded into the corporate market extremely quickly, adding in full Exchange compatibility is pretty much the best strategic move they've ever made. However, both Blackberry and Windows Mobile are still doing quite well on their own. It is true, however, that Apple's influence has gotten both RIM and Microsoft to crash-course some new features.

For the home market, you might have a stronger argument, but Windows Mobile was never huge in that space in the first place.

The 360 is still falling behind the Wii despite MS's attempts to beat it with the "New Xbox Experience" and with the development of the Natal controller.

The Natal controller isn't even available yet.

Hardware sales, the 360 fell behind the Wii ages ago and nothing's changed. What's really important for the Xbox 360 is its:
1) Extremely high attach-rate. Xbox 360 players play their consoles a *lot* and buy a *lot* of games. Impressively and surprisingly so, in fact.
2) Its ability to go head-to-head against the Playstation 3 and make an extremely good showing. (I'm not going to fall into the trap of saying one company "wins" the market, but even the most rabid fan has to admit the Xbox 360 is doing much better against the Sony behemoth than anybody expected.)

Office has stagnated and has had a popular revolt going on because of the "ribbon" UI that a lot of people hate, and I don't see a new version remedying that in the future.

"Popular revolt?" Seriously? What fantasy-world are you writing this post from? You gotta back this one up, buddy... I've seen *nothing* resembling a "popular revolt" anywhere except Slashdot, and Slashdot would have "revolted" no matter how good the product is, simply because it's from Microsoft.

MS as a whole has remained the same, however the world is changing and they don't seem to realize that.

The ribbon in Office 2007 *is* realizing that. The new standard-compliance of IE8 *is* realizing that. The quality of Bing's search results *is* realizing that.

The only real problem here is that you're so irrationally biased against Microsoft, you can't even think clearly enough to judge.

Re:No not really

[gad_zuki!]

Every month or so someone writes up a post like yours on the imminent failure of MS, and it never happens.

I dont see the 360 doing poorly, in fact, its cleaning the PS3s clock. Office 2007 isnt the failure you want it to be and as someone with an interest in UIs its a shame so many geeks are afraid of change. Imagine if Apple was still using OS9's UI today. Or if we were using Win3.11 UI in Vista. Ugh.

Vista, for all its faults, sells and is in used by millions. SP1 Vista is comparable to XP, at least to me. The complaints Im seeing nowadays are of 3rd party software like Zone Alarm and Trend Micro breaking things.

Conversely, we're seeing a lot of returns on linux netbooks because people simply dont understand what it means when a computer doesnt come with windows. We're seeing Firefox lag behind on splitting tabs into processes. We're seeing Chrome barely make a dent in the web. We're seeing stronger offerings from MS with Server 2008. etc etc. But we are also seeing more Linux in homes and embedded devices. We're seeing an acceptance of OSS in corporate that seems stronger than in the past.

The point here is that you cant just look at all these markets and niches and come to one conclusion. In some places MS is doing well and in other places its doing poorly. Its still damn profitable and geeks should really understand that despite the hype, MS is still a 800lbs gorilla we need to be careful around. If anything, all this competition is forcing MS to up its game, which is good for everyone.

Re:No not really

[gad_zuki!]

>Everywhere on the web, from /. to Lifehacker to chat rooms to DeviantArt

When was the last time you heard anything positive from the cacophony of bloggers and chronic forum posters? The culture of the web is the culture of complaints because people who are happy or content with someone dont run to tell everyone. People who are pissed are motivated to say something, so if youre using the web as a litmus test youre pretty much asking for a negative outcome.

More mature?

[Cryophallion]

Well, let's see, the OpenXML was definitely in the pipeline before Bill left, and the take no prisoners tactics that he loves is what got it pushed through the standards committee.

Next is ODF translators... which don't work, and in fact delete formulas. Not to mention there Smear Campaign. So we are saying maturity is going back to their ruthless kill-them-subversively methods that got them in trouble in the EU?

Oh, wait, maturity is killing declining products... which Bill did often

Sorry, I don't see a real change listed in at least that section

Furniture positions?

[Skiron]

I guess a few chairs have been moved around a bit...

Stuff like this under Bill's watch?

[MikeRT]

Fuggedaboutit! Never in a million years would Gates have had made peace with such a potentially damaging open source group.

"More mature attitude. . .

[RazorSharp]

with products such as Open XML." That was enough to convince me this article was full of shit. It also reminded me how those asshole haven't changed a bit.

The real changes haven't been in the past year.

[koreaman]

Has anyone else realized that since about the beginning of this decade, Microsoft has slowly begun a transition to competing on quality, rather than simply leveraging their monopoly and sitting on their laurels? Take a look at some improvements in Microsoft products over the past few years:
  * Windows XP. There is simply no comparing XP to previous "home" versions of Windows in terms of quality. Yes, I know it's largely Windows 2000 with a new skin, but the important thing here is that they discontinued their crufty, broken, DOS-based line that didn't even have true multitasking and replaced it with something stable and mature (in comparison).
  * Visual Studio: As for the IDE itself, I never used versions prior to 2003, but I loved 2003 and have seen it getting nicer and nicer since. As for programming languages, their current implementation of C++ is actually quite close to standards-compliant, on the level of G++. They've got a ways to go with C, but it's less of a priority for them. The biggest change is in their flagship RAD offerings. C# and VB.NET are now mature object-oriented languages in the tradition of Java. No comparison with VB6.
  * Internet Explorer: 6 was simply a joke, the laughingstock of the web. No tabs, an extremely buggy rendering engine, not extensible, unpredictable for web developers, and largely at odds with every published standard ever. IE7 was a big step in the right direction, and IE8 has entered the playing field as a serious competitor.
  * Search: MSN search was useless abandonware; now they are really trying with Bing.
  * User interface: Vista brought in a modern, powerful shell complete with modern, powerful command-line utilities. No comparison to the shell (with bundled terminal emulator) that has been outdated since it was released as part of DOS 1.0. Windows 7 has made several improvements on the GUI side.

Yes they're still behind, but they've covered a huge amount of ground. Yes I'd much prefer coding in Emacs using GNU Screen and XMonad for window management than in Visual Studio on Windows 7. Yes I'd much rather use Firefox, Opera, or Chrome than IE8, when given the choice. Yes, Apple has hands down the best GUI of all. But in, say, 2000, who'd have thought Microsoft would have come so far? I'm excited to see where their products will go and whether someday they will be as good as what comes from Apple, Google, and open-source hackers. I don't know whether they will, but it'll certainly be interesting.

Re:The real changes haven't been in the past year.

[digitalhermit]

:)

Windows XP. There is simply no comparing XP to previous "home" versions of Windows in terms of quality.

Looks like they stopped there. Vista is a piece of crap and the frustration experience is as bad as WindowsME. Sure, it's much better than WindowsME, but so are the alternatives. Sometimes it's not Vista's fault. For example, when I play Fallout3 the game will crash if anything pops up on the desktop. I can't save screenshots in Vista. On Vista64, I can't get VMWare Server to work properly. Just last month I finally got drivers for my printer after waiting months.

But more often it is a Vista problem. My wireless network connection drops all the time because of some brain dead power management. Vista doesn't resume from hibernation properly. If I boot with my Sigmatel USB 3G card, 1/5 times it will bluescreen when it resumes. Sometimes the system will resume but the display never turns back on. If it was just one Vista system I'd suspect hardware, but this is happening on three machines.

So yeah.. I went and pre-ordered Windows7 like a good monkey because Vista is so damn unusable. Maybe that's their business model. Offer crap then the new version seems so much better.

Re:The real changes haven't been in the past year.

[sootman]

Has anyone else realized that since about the beginning of this decade, Microsoft has slowly begun a transition to competing on quality, rather than simply leveraging their monopoly and sitting on their laurels?

No.

Windows XP. There is simply no comparing XP to previous "home" versions of Windows in terms of quality. Yes, I know it's largely Windows 2000 with a new skin, but the important thing here is that they discontinued their crufty, broken, DOS-based line that didn't even have true multitasking and replaced it with something stable and mature (in comparison).

Right. And they were largely done with that in mid-2000. Like you said, XP was just 2000 with some polish. Some better features, some worse (*cough*Control Panel*cough*) so I'd say they broke even overall. Then, they followed it up with Vista (eventually), which has some under the hood improvements but the UI blows. And requires tons of hardware for no reason.

Visual Studio

Doesn't matter. Most of the world doesn't write apps.

Internet Explorer: 6 was simply a joke, the laughingstock of the web... IE7 was a big step in the right direction

Again, the only people who disliked IE6 were certain kinds of web coders. IE7 might have had under-the-hood improvements but they REMOVED THE MENUS and otherwise dicked around with the UI for NO GOOD REASON. I literally don't know a single person who uses IE8. I don't represent the whole world but here's what I see: 1) corporate users who use whatever the company dictates. Usually WinXP/IE6. Many companies are moving to Firefox. 2) Power users who abandoned IE years ago. They fix their families' computers and they've moved everyone to FF as well. 3) Home users who don't know or care about what browser they're using BUT they also never run software updates so they've still got 6 or 7 too.

Search: MSN search was useless abandonware; now they are really trying with Bing.

And they were "really trying" with previous attempts, too. Bing has not yet taken over the world, and it has very little chance of doing so. The only people who ever have or ever will use Bing are IE users who don't know to go to Google. I've never met someone in person who intentionally did searches from the location bar in IE. If they type in "yahoo" and it takes them to a search results page with "www.yahoo.com" as the first match and they click on that, I wouldn't really use that as an example of Microsoft doing great work.

User interface: Vista brought in a modern, powerful shell complete with modern, powerful command-line utilities.

I don't get what you're saying here. When you say "shell" do you mean the Explorer? Vista's "shell" is no better than XP's overall--maybe a couple improvements, but just as many steps back. If you're referring to the CLI tools, again... no one outside of Slashdot gives a fuck.

Windows 7 has made several improvements on the GUI side.

And that's your supporting argument for "Look how much great work MS has done in the past decade"--"several improvements" to an OS that isn't out yet, nine-and-a-half years into the decade we're discussing?

But in, say, 2000, who'd have thought Microsoft would have come so far?

I'm sure I'm not the typical user, but for me, the best Windows box I ever had ran Windows 2000 and Office 97--smooth, stable, ran like a Swiss watch.

Gates built MS empire, Ballmer can't grow it

[javacowboy]

Under Gates, Microsoft grew to the empire that it is today. Gates strategic moves were critical to the success of the company:

1) The DOS deal with IBM.
2) The MS Office deal with Apple, and using that contract to gain GUI engineering knowledge from Apple.
3) Porting MS Office to DOS and using it to sell WIndows (ex: buy Excel and get Windows for free)
4) Outsmarting IBM in the OS/2 deal while continuing development of Windows/Promising Windows 95 vapourware to fend off OS/2 Warp, which was superior.
5) Pricing Windows MS Office ridiculously cheaply, pushing out Word Perfect, Lotus 123, etc that were trying to come up with Windows 95 versions.
6) Windows NT to push out Novell in the enterprise.
7) MS Exchange which is still the back-end collaboration framework of choice
8) The sneaky deal with Sun over licensing Java
9) InternetExplorer + ISS + ASP to gain a foothold on the internet despite starting late

Ballmer hasn't had nearly the same impact. So far MSN hasn't really gone anywhere, the high-end console wars are a draw with the Wii way on top at the low-end, Windows server hasn't unseated Linux, .NET has its niche but isn't unseating Java, Google is still dominating search, and Windows Mobile is losing ground.

MSFT has no original ideas

[cheap.computer]

In an interview Steve Jobs said of msft, that msft is a company with no original ideas. I think it is the same even today, but there is one difference. We had Bill Gate who always looks calm and composed, although in reality he is supposed to be really annoying person, and we have SteveO who runs up and down a stage screaming, and had to have throat surgery after screaming "developers developers developers", he is really on some kind of crack. I think in few years msft will turn into a litigation house, like sco they will go down as a technology company that puts out more law suites than any new technology. msft under gates was a marketing company with a very strong arm & huge muscles. Under steveO it will soon turn into a law firm with huge muscles & small a d***.

Re:MSFT has no original ideas

[pauljlucas]

In an interview Steve Jobs said of msft, that msft is a company with no original ideas.

This is the interview to which you refer.

Re:MSFT has no original ideas

[Slothrup]

I wouldn't be surprised if Steve Jobs actually believes that Apple invented GUIs, MP3 players and smart phones. In general, no big company has truly original ideas -- or if they do, it's in a research arm like PARC or MSR and the ideas are never properly monetized.

Re:MSFT has no original ideas

[alen]

What did Apple invent? i like my iphone but it's nothing that didn't exist in cell phones before it came out. some features have been around for a decade. the only thing the iphone did is take the features and put them in one unit rather than have them split across 10 different cell phones. Blackberries had app stores for years before the iphone came out, only difference you had to hunt around different stores for your app.

OS X is just FreeBSD with a better GUI. I remember a few years ago Steve Jobs hyping the new spaces feature like it was the greatest thing ever when ^nix and Winders both had it for years under different names.

and the Apple/Google fanboys seem to forget that Apple and Google both license ActiveSync from Microsoft for their online/cloud products. Steve dumped homegrown .Mac in favor of MS based MobileMe

Re:MSFT has no original ideas

[mario_grgic]

OS X is not free BSD with better GUI, not even close. And MobileMe is not based on ActiveSync in any way either. As part of MobileMe apple has licensed ActiveSync so that its devices could sync with Exchange server (because reverse engineering proprietary Microsoft protocols is not reliable or legal probably). You really need to research things a bit before posting.

Microsoft Corporate Headquarters

[actionbastard]

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious."

I doubt Gates mattered after 2000

[gtall]

I got the general impression that MS got so big and unwieldy that it is difficult to assign direction to Gates or Ballmer. They seem to have spent most of the time since 2000 reacting, not leading. Gates didn't so much leave as he simply faded into insignificance. If he'd stayed, it wouldn't have changed the company which seems to lurch into markets solely because growth in their mature markets has stopped. They aren't leading advances in their mature markets either. They have nothing seemingly to offer to new markets, namely because the old strategy of letting others develop them before marching in and stealing customers won't work in the current environment. The new markets are fast moving, by the time MS decides to jump, the market isn't where they thought it was. If Gates had been on the ball from 2000 onward, he still didn't have the organization that could move quickly, decisively, and accurately with a product that could capture the market.

Apple would be in a similar position had they not the current management which is looking to define new markets or show how a staid market can be rejuvenated with a sharp line of products. The U.S. based auto industry lapsed into similar unconsciousness.

Windows 7

[VGPowerlord]

Like it or not, Windows 7 is just Vista with a new Taskbar, a major video display bugfix, a few new control panel applets (at least one of which (ClearType Tuner) used to be a Windows XP PowerToy), some new fonts and the first upgrade to the Font Control Panel Applet in 15 years, and some other misc bugfixes.

Seriously, you're still using the same Vista you all decided to hate on before; you've just fallen victim to the marketing hype.

I really hate to join this...

[WED Fan]

I really hate to join this, but my first computer was a kit. 1976. No display, except for LED's. My first programming class had timeshare on computer across town. I programmed on a teletype with acoustic couplers, and saved my program to paper tape.

From there it was wiring my own serial S100 card from a magazine article. Yes, I used BASIC once it became available. Moved to a TRS80 model I and had a friend take me to task for wasting the money on 16k because I should be able to do everything in 4k. Moved to an Apple II, Sharp MZ80K with Pascal, Kaypro II, and eventually my first "IBM Compatible".

Microsoft was a common thread through most of that. Love 'em or hate 'em, they shaped the time.

As for their competitors, what most forget is that in the heat of battle, what allowed MS to win was usually serious mistakes by their competitors.

Word was inferior to WordPerfect, and possibly WordStar, but both companies shot themselves in the head, and allowed Word to take the lead.

Lotus 123 was THE spreadsheet for business, Lotus screwed themselves and Excel took the lead.

Netscape was the end-all-be-all for browsers, but they decided to shift focus and took on stuff that wasn't their core. Where are they now?

Yes, MS acquires a lot, sometimes by ruthlessly. But, most of the time, their competitors simply screw up and give the advantage to MS.

Killed off flight simulator

[syousef]

Bill Gates was a champion of MS Flight Simulator - a franchise that ran for decades. The last version FSX was complete ass and took 3 goes to get right....which culuminated in the sacking of the entire programming staff at Aces Studios (the guys that wrote the sim).

FS2004 included a kiosk mode so any library or museum could demonstrate a flight simulation of an existing or historic plane. FSX killed that feature and tried to sell a monstrosity of a commerical system called ESP for big dollars to do the same. FSX also added activation and all it's headaches.

Bill Gates was a nasty piece of work but under his leadership there was some good stuff done. Now there's nothing.

Believing what you want to believe

[westlake]

MS though has finally realized that unless Windows 7 is a hit, Linux/OS X/Now ChromeOS is going to kill them in the OS market. Office has stagnated and has had a popular revolt going on because of the "ribbon" UI that a lot of people hate

Amazon Best Sellers in Software Updated hourly.

1 Win 7 Premium Upgrade
2 Win 7 Professional Upgrade
3 MS Office Home and Student 2007
5 MS Office Home and Student 2008 - Mac
12 Outlook 2007
17 Street & Trips 2009
18 Win 7 Ultimate Upgrade
30 XP Home Full Version
31 MS Office Standard 2007 Full Version
35 Street & Trips with GPS 2009
36 MS Office Small Business 2007 Upgrade
38 XP Pro SP3 System Builders
40 MS Office Small Business 2007 Full Version
41 MS Office Pro 2007 Full Version
45 MS Works 9.0
50 Windows Live One Care
56 Windows XP Pro SP2 Full Version
79 MS Vista Premium Full Version
95 XP Home SP2 Upgrade
97 Vista Home Premium Upgrade
98 Publisher 2007
99 Access 2007

At any given moment about 1 in 4 of the software bestsellers in software will be Microsoft products for the Windows market. Office 2007/8 has had an extraordinarily successful run.

OS Platform Statistics For June

XP 67%
Vista 18%
Mac 6%
Linux 4%
W2003 2%
Win 7 2%
W2K 1%

The OS stats are from a pro's development-oriented site that shows a 50% share for Firefox. It is not preposterous to imagine Win 7 overtaking Linux before its official launch in October.

Re:Don't teach the myth; Learn the truth

[rezalas]

go ahead and think that, but I never had issues with 95 beyond rigging it up so I could use the upgrade edition to install instead of the full edition. Manually creating empty files with the appropriate names and folder structure allowed you to trick it into thinking you had windows 3.11 and it would then delete them and install as a full version. But keep your illusion I'm sure it feels good to assume everything about people.

balkanizing modularity

[epine]

I was arguing that we'd have been better off if Microsoft hadn't dominated it, teaching everyone to expect crappy software.

Interesting, if not particularly insightful. And potentially naive.

It's quite possible that during the exponential phase of the PC revolution, that "race to the bottom" was the dominant economic paradigm, and the winner, whoever it turned out to be, was the corporation to first or most deeply grasp this central economic fact.

To make this discussion concrete, IMO the exponential adoption phase concerns the period of time from the early 386 through to a low-end Athlon running Windows 2000.

Prior to the 386, people bought PCs more on potential than reality. It was a skill you wanted to have to stay in business a year or two down the road, but in fact it probably cost more than it returned in productivity bonuses. In fact, it took a very long time before the PC made an unambiguous impact on productivity figures (mostly due to the economists not knowing how to best update their models).

After you hit 512MB of RAM, 1GHz, a 30GB disk drive, and a couple of 19" monitors it wasn't so much your PC holding you back as your own lack of anything to contribute. The driving urge to replace your crap PC every two years began to fade, and PC Magazine soon resembled Ally McBeal. The internet might have also contributed, but not as much as generally presumed. The two effects overlapped.

The formula for success during this era was to buy cheap and buy often. It's a direct consequence of exponential growth over short time frames (i.e. tax law amortization schedules).

There were three kinds of machines sold during this era: niche machines, elitist machines (Sun, N!XT, some Macs), and Wintel boxes. Of the elitist machines, the N!XT machine was the most orthographically challenged (and presciently ungoogleable). As great as the Amiga is purported to have been, it was never going to be all things to all people. As great as any of the other machines might have been, they were never going to be cheap enough to be all things to all people. The network effect takes over when you succeed at being all things to all people, excluding only the snobs, who don't wish to network with their inferiors in the first place.

Many of Microsoft's worst false steps were all about backward compatibility, which is legendary on the PC, but largely taken for granted. Sure it's easy to find counter examples out of a pool of 20,000 popular applications. If you're the kind of person that thinks one terrific counter example amounts to an argument, I bet every PC you've owned has come from the elitist camp. Those of us with elitist tendencies would have preferred Windows to be *less* compatible with the crap of yesteryore.

I have trouble faulting Microsoft for optimizing themselves to fit the niche which lead to their incredible commercial success, so far as they stayed within unbending legal parameters. (Unbending was not in the MS competitive lexicon at any point during Bill's reign of terror.)

There was one idea along the way that Microsoft regarded as particularly toxic to their vision of future success: the ability to roll-back or replicate a stable system configuration. Horrors! This could lead to resurrecting software whose license had since expired, or otherwise controlling the components in a fleet wide deployment image, with the potential exclusion of Microsoft's flavour of the day technology. Double horrors!

Microsoft has always practised forced bundling so that every person who upgrades their PC automatically gets the new MS crap, so they can then brag about their dominant install base, which gets the hardware vendors on side, etc.

The Windows registry was never about simplifying computer management. It was always about making custom installation images so difficult you needed an enterprise scale IT department to pull it off. This is a scale where the problem can be solved by political means: expensive lunches for pow