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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.'"
I think someone has missed Windows Phone 7 and the tablets Microsoft will be releasing shortly. Hell, Microsoft Courier looked like the only tablet I wanted. Screw iPad, Courier was cool.
But the truth also is that Microsoft has a huge dominance on computer market and that isn't going anywhere. They are truly dominating it. I don't think it's a warning as such to Microsoft, just a suggestion for if they want to grow. And interestingly, that is what Microsoft is and has been doing for many years already. Xbox360 is a truly fantastic product too.
Just bring me something that Courier was supposed to be. I want it, I need it! Combine that with environment like Windows where everyone can freely develop their software and include things like XNA and Xbox Live and you have a wonderful product on your hands!
"Sent from my iPad"
The future of the PC is not immediately viewable from the window. One must step out and look around.
For the love of all that is good, I sincerely hope Ray Ozzie's choice of the term "Connected Companions" was solely so that this message could be interpreted by the buzzword-based PHBs at Microsoft, and not a hint that he wants to turn the next company he goes to into the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
A lot further ahead! Better computer security, fewer viral plagues, faster software, more open standards, better interoperability, cheaper software and support. Microsoft is just a drain on the economy that we can't afford in this economic climate, just ask the London Stock Exchange.
Among video game consoles sold in North America, Xbox 360 is the only one that officially allows game development by prosumers. It's not perfect, but it's better than what Sony and Nintendo offer.
That "memo" runs more than 3500 words. If that counts as a typical memo over at Microsoft, I think they've got another problem beyond the one Ozzie's term paper discusses.
#DeleteChrome
Steve the plumber!
The great fallacy nowadays is that everything should be designed for the Apple consumer.
did you forget to take your meds?
To: Executive Staff and direct reports
Date: October 28, 2010
From: Ray Ozzie
As wireless internet access becomes even more robust, the first company that can deliver a solution to keep a user's "state" consistent across all of their devices is going to be the winner. It's a problem that the industry has been working on since the dark days of syncing your contacts up through a USB1 connection to a palm pilot. I imagine it's why Apple is building their enormous data center - they are about to make manual data management a thing of the past. A slick interface could yield some badass results for stepping your data to a network volume if it's unusually large, and then streaming backups during off-peak hours to iBackup or whatever you want to call it. Otherwise, every time you start to edit a doc, the filesystem is intelligently streaming the backup directly to their data center. If your laptop gets nicked, then you log in to your me.com account, destroy the encrypted volume if they connect it to the internet, and grab another laptop and a few hours later you are back up and running.
Computers are going to disappear - your information will be always available from any device with an internet connection. You'll just have a variety of interfaces to it, from your phone, to your media viewer (iPad) to your netbook (I mean MacBook Air, Steve!) and your desktop. They will all sync intelligently, and store larger, non-streamable information locally on SSD drives. Only video creators will be forced to continue managing physical volumes until 4g goes nationwide and uncapped.
It's a good idea, and a fucking bummer that Apple is the only company doing it.
Or all of the above?
I sometimes wonder if MS senior management isn't full of guys making good money, looking at how much time they have until retirement is a real option and thinking "If we can just string this Windows/PC model along for a couple more years, I'll be set. Retire in my late 50s. Second home (or boat or ....) paid for. Enough savings to live off until 401k money kicks in."
I can see where it could almost become a cultural mindset, coupled with a financial analysis that says the "real money" comes from Windows, Office, Exchange & SQL. Everything else (phone, tables, hardware, software, etc) is a half-assed feint to keep Wall St. quiet, keep key industry experts locked into long employment contracts and out of the hands of competitors, and occasionally hit the lottery when something sticks to the wall.
Or is it the actual management model? Keep the Windows/Office core profit engine running, fuck around on the margin and assume you can manipulate the market enough to keep your dominance forever?
I've already purchased my last Apple, Nintendo and Sony products for my lifetime.
You'll find a lot of geeks who agree with you, but the majority does not. The majority "can live with the restrictions without really owning anything". And the majority spends more money on products than the geek subculture: less per person but far more people. That's why video games targeted at the majority come out on consoles, not PCs. How should we as geeks try to convince the public that consoles' restrictions aren't worth the loss of an end user's right to do what he wants with what he owns?
Windows Phone 7 : Too Late to the party ...
Or perhaps it saw that the party was being held on a Sunday night, knew it had work to go to the next day and decided not to go.
:-/
Meanwhile, Apple (which had a great time and was the life of the party) turned up at work late, badly hungover and looking like death. After failing the drugs test, it was finally let go by the Company, around the (same time that Microsoft was given that promotion) and went into a sad decline, never able to move on from its college partying days and accept that its popularity with the cool college kids didn't mean long term success.
Err... to be honest, that sounds like there should be a metaphor in there, but on reflection I doubt it. It was just my extrapolation of one colloquial expression to the point of drivel. Sorry folks
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
> 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.
...the reality of the Kin fit in with your fantasy view of Microsoft?
"LOL WUT?" The smartphone market has run its course? You are kidding, right? Smart phones are going to continue to sell strong as ever. While they may not grow a ton, people have to stop pretending like growth is all that matters. It smacks of wet behind the ears stock investors who have no sense of scale or history.
Smart phones are going to be a huge market until, well, someone figures out something to replace the phone. I haven't even heard of any ideas along those lines much less products. So I think it is safe to say the market has decades, or more, of life.
Also you might notice that in terms of OS the battle has not been won, nor may it ever be won. Symbian didn't win (it was by far the largest), BlackBerry OS didn't win, iOS hasn't won, Android hasn't won. The fight is on going, and it may well go on forever. Given the locked down nature of phones and carriers, there may not be the push for a single platform like there was with PCs. There people wanted software portability, but you don't get that on phones anyhow.
Also you might note that MS is and was in the mobile market. Windows CE smart phones have been around for a long time and while not huge weren't trivial either. This is a (needed) revamp/update, not a new entrance in to a market.
"We’ve seen agile innovation playing out before a backdrop in which many dramatic changes have occurred across all aspects of our industry’s core infrastructure."
It's a boring sentence trapped in a boring, verbose memo, so I found it a new home in a Philip K Dick story:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. I watched agile innovation playing out before a backdrop in which many dramatic changes have occurred. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. [pause] Time to die."
Computers are going to disappear - your information will be always available from any device with an internet connection ... It's a good idea, and a fucking bummer that Apple is the only company doing it.
I absolutely agree with most of what you say here -- the company that does transparent "cloud" sync/storage best will win the game. Unlike you, my take is that Apple is actually way behind in this area, while Google has a convincing, if not insurmountable lead. This isn't about Android, though you can see it a little bit in the way that Android devices instantly populate themselves via the 'net using only a Google ID. By contrast an Apple iDevice won't even turn on until you plug them into a desktop via USB. You can also see it in the piece of crap that is Apple's current .Mac offering ($99/year for, basically, stuff you can get for free elsewhere, with minimal device integration --- yes, I pay for it and I'm ashamed).
But mostly you don't see Google's advantage, because it manifests primarily in the unglamorous, invisible stuff like cloud infrastructure. Google has an order of magnitude more server capacity than most competitors, and absolutely crushes Apple in terms of the user data it holds, not to mention its (still nascent, but growing) customer base for services like Mail, Docs, Maps and Apps.
Apple may show up to the party one of these days --- maybe they'll get 'net-based activation by iPhone 5. But what people fail to understand is that moving from a device business to a cloud business is a not a natural transition, and so far Apple has demonstrated no real instinct for it. To give a silly analogy: at the moment Apple is building the grandest, prettiest castles in town, while Google is buying up all the roads and sewers. One day I fear that Apple will realize how badly they need that infrastructure in order to keep building, and Google will be the only one who can provide it.
Compare and contrast Ray Ozzie's farewell with that of another recent high-level departure, J. Allard. These men, at the heart of technology for all their adult lives, were in positions of the highest influence at Microsoft. They're obviously both brilliant, and not needing to cash a paycheck. They see a change coming - a huge change - and they want to be a part of it. They don't see that happening while they work in Redmond. So they go. But on the way out they look back at the poor souls they leave behind and they tell them in their farewell: "You too can be a part of this new world. You just have to think different." The door swings shut with a click and the obvious conclusion remains unsaid: "but you won't."
Help stamp out iliturcy.