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How Infighting Hampers Innovation At Microsoft
Garabito writes "Dick Brass, former vice-president at Microsoft, published an op-ed in The New York Times, where he states that 'Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator' and how 'it has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones.' He attributes this situation to the lack of a true system for innovation at Microsoft. Some former employees argue that Microsoft has a system to thwart innovation. He tells how promising and innovative technologies like ClearType and the original TabletPC concept become crippled and sabotaged internally, by groups and divisions that felt threatened by them."
OK, they had a good compiler and toolchain in the '70s
I don't recall their compilers and tools ever being more than mediocre.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I would guess it goes something like this:
Programmer: "Oh Hi, Mr. Balmer! Hey, I thought you might like this cool innovation we're working on for the next Windows!"
Balmer: "rrRrRRRRAAARRRRRRR!" (throws chair)
You'd be surprised how many people say that, and yet when the software gets to see their dynamic signature (as points in time, not just an image), it easily finds the things that make their signature unique and clearly distinguishes it from anyone else's.
Good God!! You guys couldn't even get the DHCP in Vista to keep from knocking out my router. And you think someone would be stupid enough to buy a device that uses advanced signature recognition software to access it? I could just imagine forever losing access to my data because some stupid signature recognition algorithm had a bug.
Just admit that Microsoft has very poor technical talent and poor innovation. While you were bitching and moaning about styluses, Apple realized people hate using a stylus and brought us touch screen interfaces.
the isolated Pocket PC was almost completely useless.
An isolated Pocket PC may have been completely useless, but try telling that to Palm. You know, the company that pioneered the PDA category that Microsoft was forced to play catch-up in? The company that made "PalmPilot" a household word and the butt of many yuppie jokes, even long after they changed the name of the actual product? The problem with Palm, of course, is that it basically sat down and stopped innovating when it was on top. These days, the most widely-known Palm handset is the Treo, and Palm didn't even create those itself. But I'd rather be a has-been like Palm than a never-was like Microsoft.
P.S. But it's sort of true; one reason I loved my Palm so much is that I could use it with a Ricochet wireless modem in my area.
Breakfast served all day!
OpenOffice doesn't implement the .doc format for people to actually use, since it's a terrible, underdocumented and messy standard, but it is provided so people can get in and out of OO into the hegemon MS Word.
OK, but as a guy who uses a word processor professionally pretty much every day, I can tell you that I don't stick with Word because of lock-in. I use it because OpenOffice is totally unacceptable to me, while Word is a really slick, full-featured word processor. If OpenOffice were as innovative as Word, I would use it, file formats be damned. Most of what I write could be saved in plain text, or at the very least HTML, without losing much. It's the tool itself that I prefer.
Being the only glazier in town doesn't mean you can go around breaking windows and calling it "innovation."
I don't understand the meaning of your statement in this context. Microsoft isn't breaking OpenOffice's windows. The closer analogy would be that Microsoft sells windows made of glass, and OpenOffice sells windows made of plastic. OpenOffice can demonstrate that its windows are technically superior -- they don't break, they don't rattle as much in the wind, they provide better insulation, and they're infused with a chemical that blocks UV radiation so the color doesn't fade on your framed antique Parisian theatre posters. And yet for some reason people still seem to want glass windows. In fact, almost everybody prefers to go with glass -- even though, on face value, plastic windows are the more modern, innovative product. So OpenOffice grudgingly agrees to sell glass windows, too. But selling glass windows is a real pain in the ass for OpenOffice, because the equipment used to make plastic windows is no good at all for working with glass, and Microsoft won't give OpenOffice a tour of its glassworks. And the whole thing is a real shame, because if they could both agree to just sell the same kind of windows it would be great... except for the small point that Microsoft is in the business of (no pun intended) selling windows, and it doesn't make sense for it to show its competitors all its tricks. So OpenOffice gets all mad and says, "But this is terrible for the people! In fifty years' time, at least half the windows people are buying now will be broken, because they're made of glass, and if they only bought plastic windows we could save countless billions on windows over the course of 50 years, and we wouldn't have to worry about how our windows will be preserved, and the world would be a much better place!" And Microsoft says, "People prefer glass windows." So, OK. Solve that problem for me.
And, back to the original point ... why on Earth would people prefer this technology that's hundreds, if not thousands of years old? If Microsoft has just been sitting on its fat ass this whole time, doling out the same, old, boring glass windows, why are people such suckers? Economists will tell you that innovation is one of the main forces driving any market. And yet if, as people seem to be claiming, there has been no innovation in Microsoft's markets whatsoever, or Microsoft has been intentionally stifling innovation, how does the market keep growing?
Breakfast served all day!