Ray Ozzie's Departing Memo a Warning To Microsoft

itwbennett writes "In a parting memo to Microsoft, Ray Ozzie urges Microsoft to 'really, truly, seriously start thinking beyond the PC,' writes blogger Chris Nurney. Nurney suspects that 'Ozzie has been making these points internally for some time,' and that the memo 'could be his way of putting it in the public record.' Some of the memo's juicy bits: 'It's important that all of us do precisely what our competitors and customers will ultimately do: close our eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look like, if it were to ever truly occur. ... Today's PCs, phones & pads are just the very beginning; we'll see decades to come of incredible innovation from which will emerge all sorts of "connected companions" that we'll wear, we'll carry, we'll use on our desks & walls and the environment all around us.'"

Comments

Re:MS is doing that

[Anonymous Coward]

To say that Curtiss Wright "[makes] valves for hydraulic systems" is a gross over simplification of their current product line. While I agree that they could be much more than they are, I also knew you were going to downplay them unfairly when I had seen you couldn't even be bothered to spell their name correctly.

Re:MS is doing that

[Geoffrey.landis]

The phrase "survival of the fittest" actually came from a mistake that was made when Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was translated into German. The correct phrase, and concept, is "Survival of the most adaptable".

Since the phrase was first used by Herbert Spencer in 1864, writing in English, I don't think so. Darwin himself used the phrase "natural selection" and not "survival of the fittest," but in 1869 he did quote the "survival of the fittest" phrase (correctly attributing the quote to Spencer); and did it in English (not translating it into German).

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/340400.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

Re:MS is doing that

[Archangel Michael]

Linux is a kernel, not a complete OS. The bits on top of the Kernel are Android OS. Lots of devices run the kernel, but have limited OS capabilities because it is easy to do and highly modularized. Android is more like Gnome or KDE (not exact though)

Windows is much much more monolithic.

Re:MS is doing that

[s4m7]

Apple is not just Macs any more, and that is a big reason they are the new Microsoft, and #2 in Market Cap, possibly getting to #1 next year sometime.

Apple surpassed Microsoft's market cap in May, and remains second highest mcap in the S&P 500 to exxonmobil. MS is third. There is a pretty big gap between exxonmobil and apple, still. Unlikely to close in the next year. But I'm guessing you weren't taking petro companies into consideration in your rankings.

Not quite

[acomj]

> they're not looking for 'superior' so much as they are looking to lock users into their
> App stores.
Actually not quite right.

This would make sense if....
the app store was launched with the iphone. But it was in fact an afterthought.

Originally Apple wanted everyone to get "Apps" which were web based (javascript/ html) things online. Developers wanted to write more persistant application that would run without an internet connection, thus one year later the App Store and the SDK.

Sometimes you make a device and the market shows up.

Re:MS is doing that

[bonch]

Fitness in the context of evolution doesn't refer to physical fitness.

Re:MS is doing that

[alc6379]

Have you really been paying attention to the latest Windows OS's? Server 2008 isn't "monolithic"-- if you look at Server Core, there's not even an "explorer" to run. There's just a command shell, sitting on top of the Windows kernel.

I'm not a fanboi, but I do give credit where credit is due-- It's been a long time since Windows was as monolithic as you are suggesting. It is just as modular as any other OS now-- they just don't provide the users the opportunity to change the shell or other components. In this sense, it's perfectly reasonable to say that there's a modified Windows kernel, and WP7 just has a different interface to that kernel, same as iOS, or Android.