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Microsoft's Lost Decade
Kurt Eichenwald has written a lengthy article about Microsoft's slow decline over the past 10 years, cataloging their missteps and showing how consistent, poor decision-making from management crippled the tech titan in several important industries.
"By the dawn of the millennium, the hallways at Microsoft were no longer home to barefoot programmers in Hawaiian shirts working through nights and weekends toward a common goal of excellence; instead, life behind the thick corporate walls had become staid and brutish. Fiefdoms had taken root, and a mastery of internal politics emerged as key to career success. In those years Microsoft had stepped up its efforts to cripple competitors, but—because of a series of astonishingly foolish management decisions—the competitors being crippled were often co-workers at Microsoft, instead of other companies. Staffers were rewarded not just for doing well but for making sure that their colleagues failed. As a result, the company was consumed by an endless series of internal knife fights. Potential market-busting businesses—such as e-book and smartphone technology—were killed, derailed, or delayed amid bickering and power plays. That is the portrait of Microsoft depicted in interviews with dozens of current and former executives, as well as in thousands of pages of internal documents and legal records."
We discussed a teaser for this piece earlier in the month — the full article has all the unpleasant details.
The problem is Ballmer. Always has been.
Seems like XP and 7 did quite well.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It did a pretty good job of laying out why MS has failed to keep up with the leading edge of the industry, and why they will need radical cultural change to ever catch up. In particular, the article avoided overblown hystrionics, for example not claiming MS is dead, but pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I stopped reading partway through - it read like a hit piece. Let's go ahead and ignore the success of Windows 7, XBOX 360, Office, SharePoint, Lync, etc just to make an outrageous claim in order to sell magazines. Is the internal culture of Microsoft bad? Maybe..but they're still churning out good software, and with the exception of a one-time write-down from a failed acquisition, they are still one of the most consistently profitable companies in the world. Like all large companies, they have had product failures, but if you're going to ignore the wins, why bother even writing the article?
MBAs can't run businesses. It's that simple. When Bill ran it, everything was great. When Steve took over, everything went downhill. The same happened in Apple: When Steve was in charge, Apple grew. When Steve was fired, downhill. When Steve was brought back, more growth. The same with HP. Moral: don't let MBAs run your company, it'll tank.
Don't stop where the ink does.
So doubling your revenues and net income is now considered a "lost decade"?
In any organization I've ever seen or worked for.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You know right away the article is BS.
Because during the last 10 years many MS products have finally become as usable as they should have been 10 years ago.
Microsoft failed to conquer a number of new markets over that past decade. Social networking, tablets/smart phones, etc. -- Microsoft is just not winning, and their old strategies of monopoly abuse are not going to help them.
Palm trees and 8
This article is a microcosm for what's happening in the entire United States.
Among others a reply from Frank Shaw (MSFT):
http://www.neowin.net/news/what-the-hell-is-microsofts-lost-decade
It did a pretty good job of laying out why MS has failed to keep up with the leading edge of the industry, and why they will need radical cultural change to ever catch up. In particular, the article avoided overblown hystrionics, for example not claiming MS is dead, but pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
I haven't had time to read the whole article yet. However, if the summary is accurate (ha ha), it's certainly not the first time that MS's internal politicking and entrenched interests since the late 90s have been pinpointed as a major obstacle to innovation and their continued success in a changing market.
Some time back I commented on (and cherry-picked) a similar article, which wasn't new even then- it dated back to early 2010. Still very informative though.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Microsoft have always been about coming late to a party someone else started and then trying to steal the limelight. That's not always a bad thing (eg. cheap and nasty workstations and servers that were just good enough made a lot of things possible) and it has worked for them on many occasions, however recently they don't seem to have been able to dominate a niche that they've come into late.
Note that Apple have been doing that as well, mp3 players, smartphones and tablets were mature before they got involved but they managed to get up to speed quickly enough to dominate those markets
To sum up, I don't see the last decade as anything different with Microsoft in that area, and I recall articles about toxic office politics at Microsoft (and moreso Apple) well over a decade ago anyway.
Well the article points out that the iPhone sells more than all of Microsoft sales combined. But I feel sorry from Nokia. From number 1 to number none, all because they hired a failed Microsoft executive as their CEO.
You cant seriously call Xbox a success without using a fair bit of progressive counting. To date XBOX still a bit to go before all the investments are returned. And its still not anywhere near a market leader position. This while it has eaten up much of the PC gaming space, cannibalizing another MS business end.
Windows 7 is by no means a success since total share of Windows has fallen since its introduction, not risen. Only reason its a success is because of the monopoly. Without it, W7 would have failed utterly. Just look at how "well" WP7 is doing for reference of how things work out for MS without their monopoly benefits.
Sharepoint a success? Where? And Lync a success, in what reality? Outside the "Microsoft or nothing" sphere nobody knows about it even. And therein lies the real problem, the "MS or nothing" sphere is shrinking fast.
Microsofts only products they manage to make money off of is Office and Windows thanks to their monopoly. Everything else is complete and utter failure.
Windows and office are just the extensions of successes that date back to the 90s and before.
Sharepoint? Not much to write home about.
XBox is more interesting but still mainly something that leverages Microsoft's platform dominance with MS-DOS and derivatives.
So all in all you've basically got what boils down to MS-DOS and friends. Microsoft can only coast on that so long.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's not a hit piece. It's just that Microsoft is not 'leader of the pack' anymore.
Microsoft is the new IBM.
And IBM is still profitable isn't it?
Btw, were are those 'outrageous' claims made in the article? It states that Microsoft is still making a reasonable profit, doesn't it?
Group think has set in such that slowly politics has created an environment where the top management do not hear dissenting voices, so somehow they can do no wrong.
It is natures great recycler.
I was waiting for my daily "Microsoft-is-failing" article. That's always a sign of a quality tech site.
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Sharepoint? Not much to write home about.
I wouldn't say that. It *does* have that traditional Microsoft "catastrophically bad and yet my boss bought it" feel. Their OS and even things like Exchange kind of work nowadays.
The only thing about Windows 7 that can be counted as success is, it is not Vista.
On Apple's OS:
'E-mails flew around Microsoft, expressing dismay about the quality of Tiger. To executives’ disbelief, it contained functional equivalents of Avalon and WinFS. “It was fucking amazing,” wrote Lenn Pryor, part of the Longhorn team. “It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.”'
"“It was a bloated mishmash of folks,” said Johann Garcia, a former Microsoft product manager who worked on the Bing project. “They had two or three times the number of people they needed. There were just so many layers of people.”"
etc etc.
You may not see it, but MS exces can see it, I can see it, WallStreet can see it. Yet you can't see it. Are you Ballmer?
>"Fiefdoms had taken root, and a mastery of internal politics emerged as key to career success. In those years Microsoft had stepped up its efforts to cripple competitors"
Welcome to life at a huge, fat monopoly. At least it seems like they hit an ace with UEFI, further stifling competition and removing consumer freedom and choice.
Looks like Apple is falling into the same trap in their niche markets where they were also a near monopoly (tablets/phones).... instead of opening up, offering product choices, lowering prices, they are spending all their effort trying to sue everyone into submission.
Microsoft's server revenue was $4.5b last quarter growing at 14% year over year. Yes sharepoint, SQL Server, Dynamics... are something to write home about.
So Xbox is not a success? Look at the state of the competition!
true, but sharepoint is a success (got help us all) in corporates that run Office everywhere, suddenly they have this totally crap bit of 'office on the intranet' that can be used to store documents and the like (and, if you're willing to spend the time, add crappy forms for stuff like expense reports and meetings).
So it is a success from a business and Microsoft-lockin PoV, But it is a nightmare in all other respects.
and I understand Lync is becoming a success simply because its an 'internal network' chat client, so the boss can read what you've been saying as it seamlessly integrates with Outlook and sharepoint and all that guff.
There are still a lot of people who use this crap, so it still has to be considered even though it is shrinking, slowly.
My favourite part is how he states that iPhone brings in more revenue than all of MS's business as if this is not true for any other tech company out there. The fact that Apple are so successful does not mean that MS failed so badly and definitely does not mean that they are worse than everyone else in the industry. While Apple is obviously on top I wouldn't say that MS failed compared to Google or Facebook.
This while it has eaten up much of the PC gaming space, cannibalizing another MS business end.
Aside from the OS a machine runs, MS has precious little at stake when it comes to PC gaming. And I don't know of a single Xbox user who isn't using Windows and every one of them own PCs. MS lost nothing to the gaming crowd with the Xbox.
The Xbox lost $4 billion and came in a distant seccond.
The Xbox 360 has lost $3 billion, after a few quarters in the black the division is now in the red again, and the 360 is currently tied for second.
That's not what any rational person would call success.
XP wasn't Vista either. Why didn't they just push out SP4? Oh, right. Money. The answer to any question that begins with "Why" is "Money".
IBM, Microsoft, Apple. The HNIC loses something sitting at the top looking down that the up & climbers still have. Why yes, the en does stand for nerd.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
But they failed to innovate with phones. They had a huge market that is now zero, Kin was a joke, buying Nokia hasn't helped at all.
The Xbox is loosing money
They have never made money on line
AQuatative as making a pile of cash before MS killed it, they really could have rivalled googles ads with that, but didn't have a clue how to popularise it along with BIng.
They're cruising along on Windows and Office and they're cruising in de'nile! Badum Tish!
What idiot modded this troll? It was right on point.
Windows and Office are cash cows, yes, but other than Ballmer's incompetence they're the biggest part of the problem-- everyone at Microsoft is afraid of doing something that might threaten Windows or Office. That's why Microsoft spent years trying to stuff bloated desktop Windows into tablets and phones-- and why they were made to like complete asses by Apple.
And XBox? Pfft. They bought their way into the video game market, plain and simple. IIRC they haven't yet reached the break-even point because of the billions they pissed away at the start. XBox is the last time you'll ever see them be able to pull that move, too. No more showing up late with a mediocre product and coming out on top only because they can outspend their competitors.
And Sharepoint is just another product designed to increase corporate IT inertia and maintain Windows' dominance on enterprise desktops.
~Philly
Not the coach, veterans, a philosophy, or a legacy breeds "chemistry" as fast as winning. Sometimes it'll even shut your wide receiver up.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Xbox has been a huge success. 67 million units sold, 19 million kinects, Microsoft Games is highly profitable; enough so to offset the losses from Windows Phone 7 in their entertainment division. All that aside, Xbox is a huge success for one simple reason: They broke the console sales trend. In all previous consoles by year 4 sales begin to decline, sharply. The 360 is the first that accelerated sales (rather dramatically) in year 5.
This is the same phenomenon that destroys all large corporations slowly from the inside.
There may be one product, but different departments responsible for different parts of that product are given competing and incompatible goals by upper management, the theory being that this will create the cheapest, highest quality solution - when the exact opposite is true.
Exactly. The X-Box, like practically every other Microsoft product, is an all-or-nothing strategy to corner a market, THEN turn a profit. Only Windows and Office have succeeded at this.
I RTFA the whole article... but IMO, it has forgot one or two things....
M$ vs DOJ: If you have read daily technology news back in 90s, you might remember how narrowly M$ escaped from a major anti-trust case. Since then, M$ had to play nice with DOJ to avoid getting the worm can re-opened. So it is somewhat obvious M$ didn't work aggressively in taking over other markets in last decade. All the new players, they do not have to answer DOJ for any anti-trust violations. So... new players are very lucky when it comes to approaching new markets.. be it search, consumer media, social networking etc.
At the very heart of the DOJ case...M$ was accused of "locking-in" customers for their products. And now, fast forward to 2012... Apple is literally locking in consumers behind their gardened walls with a plethora of their own hardware and software, Google & FB literally collecting private details from its consumers. Playing the devil's advocate here, I wonder how come they are not scrutinised intensely ?
M$ massive hiring spree: Though I can't exactly remember the figures and fact, I believe M$'s staff count has gone up by few folds since the turn of the century. Though I am not sure what's the reason behind this; but I am pretty sure this is the real reason why wheels started getting off. More staff means more HR to handle them. My best guess for this 'staff head count inflation' is, having lot of cash in bank.
But my overall conclusion is... markets are wide open only for a brief period of time. One can concur that market only during that brief moment. Late comers will always have to play "do or die" battle before totally convert the market to their camp, or die an early shameful death. M$'s biggest issue it seems, not discovering wide open markets to concur like the rest.
Having said all that, during last decade, M$ consumer products have become more stable and secure than in 90s. That's something worth noting.
Also, I would like to see Steven Sinofsky to head the Redmond camp after Ballmer... looking at his track record, I believe he can stop this plunging boat from drowning.
p.s
I have to agree that 'management style' in M$ is somewhat deleterious. My software house has this ghastly 6-month review cycle despite being a SMB. In the most recent review, I was accused of not having any initiatives during work by the reviewing HR boss. My sad situation is, my technical boss disagrees with my initiatives. To avoid annoying him too much, and get the team working on one direction; I have learnt to suspend my ideas and just to be a "yes-boss" guy. But would the HR boss understand my situation fully? Personally, I put lot of hours in writing well-polished reliable code. In return, both my bosses are nit-picking on me. IMO, these reviews are good for "failing" employees.. but the rest, why bother.. just throw them free candy or coffee.
... for example not claiming MS is dead, but pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
Heh - I was just telling my brother who works at Microsoft that they are the new IBM. I sort of meant it as a compliment. Big companies can rarely continue innovating and winning in new spaces, so you might as well hunker down in the trenches and set yourself up for the long haul.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
In times past Microsoft would find a nice add-in product for their software and then bundle a cloned version of it for free. Remember Stac Electronics? The disk compression Microsoft put in the next version of MSDOS was not better than Stac's, but it was free. Stac only won some money in a lawsuit, but was essentially destroyed. I think to this day developers are still mindful of this predilection. Now this same thing is happening to the cash cows of Microsoft: Windows and Office. Linux and LibreOffice are the nemesis of Microsoft's flagship products. Another product for the server world is Exchange. Exchange virtually forces the use of Outlook. No other Windows or Linux client can properly work with it. This is a strategy MS uses to delay the inevitable. Don't you think /. is read by MS employees? They can read the signs of the times. They just can't show their strategy to carry them through this. This lost decade is the decade of dealing with free alternatives. Microsoft is reaping what they have sown. You can't perpetuate the monopoly on Windows and Office alone anymore. I'll say it again:
It's hard to argue with free.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Considering how much money Microsoft has poured in to the XBox, can you really call it a success? They bought market position, to be sure, but that investment has yet to pay for itself.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Until you look at how much Microsoft has spent.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
While xbox is a household name, profit wise it isn't stellar. It also has had an interesting effect of moving the attention of Windows game developers onto consoles. The problem being this actually seems to weaken MS lockin, migrating userbase from a mindset where microsoft unquestionably dominates the market to one where MS is just one of three big names. While this in the short term has boosted MS offering in the market, it also has made these studios get over their desktop fixation and get accustomed to supporting Sony and to some extent nintendo.
So far, not critical, but it does potentially pave the way for the big game companies to completely torpedo the desktop and xbox gaming market. At the same time as getting developers in the mindset of multi-platform support, it starts pushing it's first-party app store as well as a bizarre model for desktop usage. Between the improved view on multiplatform development and threatening digital distribution channels that particularly valve has become accustomed to it, they are paving the way for a company like Valve to completely undermine MS' desktop and console gaming market.
There are a large number of factors external to MS facilitating this scenario, but MS strategy has done it's part to explicitly fuel thisto some extent.
A very real scenario seems to be:
MS effectively forfeits the desktop market due to lack of interest on their part. It's a boring market where they cannot grow and today's business philosophy seems to dismiss sustainability without exponential growth (growth is always indicated as a percentage, the raw dollar values are de-emphasized). Companies are still using XP by and large, which might have been ok except MS is simultaneously pushing the market to develop software that doesn't work with XP, so XP usage might be characeterized as 'limping along' with increased difficulty over time. Between OSX and Linux (though the 'front and center' Linux DEs have also lost their way), some enterprises are seeing viable MS alternatives. On the homefront, erosion comes more easily, mostly at the hands of IOS, Android, and to a lesser extent OSX and Linux, share-wise (consumer desktop/laptop market is increasingly driven by 'enthusiasts' as the casual user base moves on to tablets and phones).
Casual game development on Android paves the way to support Ouya on the low end (XBLA competitor) and on the high end, Valve makes a go of it with a game console, a stronger, diverse name in gaming and digital distribution of games than MS. I see this as highly disruptive to Sony, Nintendo, and MS, but I don't think Valve would've had such an easy time of it if MS hadn't paved the way with xBox.
Phone/tablet is easy enough to see. MS has no appreciable share. To those saying 'but WP7 users always rave about it', that would be a natural consequence of a small user base. The only people there are naturally going to be fanboys. Just like WebOS had exceedingly high satisfaction among its very small userbase (I liked WebOS, but it really lacked a lot). IOS and Android seem to be carving up the market handily.
Basically, MS is screwed. They are trying to compete with google using Bing to dubious result. They are pushing Azure to comete with EC2 and are diluting their vision because it just isn't working. They are throwing their desktop market (the only market they securely held) under the bus to try to prop up metro which has been a market failure on phones today.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Ballmer sucks. Bad.
That is because Corporations are the Modern Version of Fiefdoms (http://bit.ly/MSfvml) with a fatal obsession for "Metrics and Productivity" (http://bit.ly/tB6o8I) both which can be easily gamed. Furthermore their supposed focus on shareholder value makes them susceptible to short-termism (http://bit.ly/McEkgs) as the reward system is rather dystopic (http://bit.ly/LYEke4).
From the perspective of Microsoft's core markets, last decade wasn't really "lost". You could more accurately say there was a lost half-decade from 2004 to 2009. But Microsoft's bread and butter is the business/power-user desktop, and Windows 7 is the best desktop OS ever produced. As for Office, I know this will be controversial to say, but the Ribbon actually was a welcome change – once you get used to it (which doesn't really take that long), it's a lot more user-friendly than the old nested menus.
Microsoft is losing its way now, chasing the chimera of Apple-sized smartphone and tablet profits, while forgetting the core customers who count on them to provide the tools to do serious work (or, in some cases, serious gaming). Windows 8 is shaping up to be another Vista-sized flop, and we can only hope it will end with Ballmer out on the street and Microsoft returning to its senses.
The article's author seems to think that Microsoft should have conquered those new markets. But what about the opposite approach: don't even try to enter those markets. Why should a company always try to become bigger even in areas that are not its strength?
In particular, why should Microsoft be in the smart phone business? It's not like smart phones will replace PCs. They are behind Apple and Google in terms of features, mind share and available 3rd party applications; to succeed they must either do the same thing much better (like Apple with the iPod) or do something different to make their platform stand out. If they don't have the ideas for that, it's better in my opinion to stay out of the market altogether rather than make a "me too" product.
While much of your MS history is accurate, the conspiracy theories are not reasonable. Microsoft is not the Illuminati. This kind of speculation is not helpful.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
I think when Paul Allen cashed out that hurt MS. In many ways I feel that of the 3 that started Microsoft he was the best. Ballmer is in my opinion a major negative and the cultural problems at Microsoft stem from his leadership.
So, MS has become what it said it would never do....it has become a "suit & tie" corporation. It's a BUSINESS, not a frat house.
I believe the main reason for the popularity of X-Box is the insanity at Sony. Once Sega dropped out of the market it's like Sony forgot how to compete.
It could be just 10 years in human life, but in dog years it is 70 and in cyber dog year it is (2^10 - 1) that is 1023 years.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_game_consoles), Nintendo Wii sold more units than both Xbox and Xbox 360. While Xbox 360 outsold Sony Playstation 3 by a few million units, combined sales of all Playstation models are several times higher than sales of both Xbox models. So what makes you say that Microsoft is the number one console manufacturer?
Moreover, unlike sales of smartphones and tablets, sales of game consoles are stagnating already. So it's pointless to argue whether Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony is the No. 1 or coolest console manufacturer.
Actually a lot of people used to run Windows just to play games. A huge number. Most of those are now using consoles instead. Many of these now use no computer at all but a tablet or phone for what internet usage they have. I've had little problem moving people to Linux since when I ask them if they use the computer for gaming they almost always reply that they have a Wii or X-Box or Playstation for that (in some cases all three!)
His point is that MS didn't enter the console market to make money in the short term but to take it over and then bend their customers over once they have a monopoly......just like their OS business. Thus in their view things are looking good.
Sharepoint is a success, it locks you into IE, Windows desktop, Windows server, IIS, SQL server, Exchange, Office, and probably a few products I have forgotten about.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Well, CEO is just the CEO. What do we know about Windows project team leaders, key developers, etc? Decisions on that level must have also had a meaningful impact to awesomeness of Windows 7, suckiness of Windows 8, and other things.
I picked up a paper copy of it yesterday by chance and quit reading after the first page or so. The article was effusive about the great creative years of Microsoft. I think they became rich by exploiting a monopoly that they inherited from IBM and imitating existing products in ways that precluded interoperation. I quit reading the article because I thought the author understood neither the history nor the technology.
Perhaps not, but Sony and Nintendo are both losing money right now as well. Console gaming is in a curious position at this point.
Still, I would say that building the brand is incredibly important, and that if they had allowed Sony to dominate the living room, it could have opened the door for significant inroads against the PC in the home.
Will they now share the IBM motto "Where technology goes to die"?
counting on next generation to be the generation to bring the money in by truckloads is progressive counting..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The MS or nothing is shrinking even faster than that with all the android and ios in the executives pockets demanding equal rights to company resources.
Just look for the court docs regarding Microsoft's Java dealings to see where developers would get kicked in the mouth for trying to be the best software. These were the days where Bill Gates was in command and the desktop OS was king and they owned the King's throne.
IMHO, they have been stagnating because they used the desktop OS market position to kill off the competition by bloating that OS time and time again. Look at how they were willing to spread the IE code throughout the OS DLLs just to show in court it was part of the OS. So they really have not been able to take a bloated mess of an OS with a monopoly position and take that to other sectors like PDAs, media players, phones, and tablets. Without a mains power connection that kind of software can't compete with those who are willing, and have the know how, to build efficient software for the sake of competition. Using the word "competition" in the sense of an open market where faster, better, cheaper is what customers get and become long term customers. I've been seeing many desktop Windows users purchasing Mac hardware after experiencing the iPod, iPhone, etc hardware and getting sick of the issues common to Microsoft software.
They've rode their monopoly for a long time but their inability to really create something which can compete in an open market is showing how long a ride that's been. Too long a ride without anything to fund the beast into the future. Their management has been pointing them as an anti-competition company for decades instead of a super tech innovator through the 1990s so it's really not just the past decade. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
The success of the xbox? Wii raced right pasted it and the despite launching a year later and a boat load of bad PR the PS3 has caught up to it by a few million. So it's effectively tied for last place with the PS3 and way behind the Wii.
It did well enough but I wouldn't call it a great sucess. It's not that popular outside of North America so if America turns its back on the next xbox it's pretty much dead.
Market cap is to company's real worth as photoshopped magazine covers are to original models' beauty: a somewhat good reference but not really that reliable.
That is very true, Apple's market cap remains substantially depressed compared to other companies.
In the decade that Microsoft simply continued to sell the same thing they always had, Apple herded the music market unwillingly to digital sales, totally took over portable music players, forced a massive shift in the smartphone market, and then to top it off proceeded to be the company that led the inevitable shift in the computing market to tablets despite Microsoft trying and failing to do sofor almost ten years.
I'd say the "lost decade" description for Microsoft is utterly apt, for all sorts of reasons... the way that Microsoft killed off better technologies as they rose against Microsoft for many years was a loss of around a decade of computer advancements for real people as Microsoft kept the status quo.
But just like keeping the lid shut on a pressure cooker, eventually something much blow - and Apple was the company that forced the issue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The state of the competition is both the Wii (and DS) sold a fuckton more than the 360 and the PS3 is only like 3 million units behind it and that's after launching 1 year later, a significantly more expensive system, and a bunch of bad PR. A lot of people just don't want to be part of the xbox experience because it's expensive and offers nothing new.
If you go by share price, sure, Microsoft has been stagnant the last decade. Share price has little or nothing to do with the day to day operations of the business, though. The actual business is consistently posting record revenues and profits throughout most of this past decade. That is what matters.
However, as soon as you account for the fact that there was an incredible tech bubble that popped around.. a decade ago.. they have actually done pretty well growing into that massive valuation again. Furthermore they pay dividends now! Microsoft is a huge and mature company - not a high growth speculation at this point.
Secondly, they may have floundered around with Vista but I think everyone has to admit that Windows 7 was a nice recovery.
Microsoft continues to invest heavily in R&D and we can quibble about the results but I'll just say it is nice that a company is actually doing this at all!
In the past decade they have massively increased their server applications business, the Dynamics/NAV business, Sharepoint is a billion + a year business with nice lock in for Microsoft.. Xbox is a huge success --- sure there is a sunk cost in getting going that they may still be recovering from but Xbox Live is a solid revenue stream for Microsoft every month and the Xbox has become more and more a centerpiece for more than games.
Microsoft is not just a Windows / Office company any longer. Windows & Office is still the engine of Microsoft at the moment but the company has diversified and continues to do so..
That all being said, Microsoft is entering into a crucial time. They are bringing out all their major products new revisions in a 6 month span and they need them to all be solid. All these releases and the integration between them is crucial to get right or they will really run the risk of fading away.
Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, Surface, Server 2012 etc. all need to be strong and that is a big bite to chew with them all coming up shortly.. ambitious but risky.
Yes they have. Every new product that is not office or a desktop OS that they released has failed miserably. That sure is failing to me.
-- Cheers!
The infighting and competition between teams is the worst and Silverlight & XNA are the two most recent victims. C# and Silverlight are the two main reasons I chose to be a Windows developer. Without those I'm free to head to other pastures.
A lot of people just don't want to be part of the xbox experience because it's expensive and offers nothing new.
Funny thing. After all these years, I was finally considering buying an XBox 360, because the indie games sounded appealing. Then I sat down with one for the first time in a while and experienced their new UI for the first time. Utterly disastrous. Where the hell did all the GAMES go, and how do I navigate past all the ads to get to them?!
So, yeah, I won't be buying a 360, ever.
An MBA degree program is not what you think. An MBA is not like other Master's Degrees where you become more of an expert in a particular field. An MBA makes you generally knowledgeable of all the parts of an organization, not just the one you are currently experienced in. An MBA is an add-on to whatever degree you already have. An MBA does not make you an accountant, it does not make you a manager, it does not make you an executive. It helps one become a better manager or executive because you now have an understanding of other fields beyond your own, you can understand other people's perspectives a little more.
... but that is not what they were trained to do. It is much like computer science where a person is trained to write well designed, reliable and maintainable code in school and then when they get a job they just slap together crap as fast as they can to generate the illusion of performance rather than create good products.
30% of my MBA class were engineers, they left with the same technical perspective they came in with. However they could now more effectively communicate their perspective with people from other fields and they could more effectively persuade these people because they had some understanding of the perspectives of their respective fields. These are good skills.
That said. In an MBA program you really are taught to do the "right" thing. Manage for the long term, have some flexibility with people (there is no one way of doing things, different people may be more efficient/productive taking different approaches), marketing and new product development is based on careful study of consumer wants and needs and projections are based on careful modeling of the market (I was shocked by the amount of advanced math we used, pleasantly surprised by the scientific and mathematical approach), etc. However an individual person may be taught these things but not put them into practice in the real world. MBAs may manage for the quarterly results, have one size fits all approaches, pull numbers out of the air
Microsoft's original strategy with the xbox was to make it an extension of the PC and the APIs that Microsoft already had in place there because of it's dominant position.
Citing "xbox 360" seems like an obvious attempt to gloss over all of that.
The first xbox was basically a PC.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'll buy that familiarity with the technology is a factor, but it's also about the thrill of technology as a motivator. Business types don't have it. Everybody knows what their SOLE motivation in life is ... How can we rake in the bucks and rip off the people?
Few engineers know the reality of business and MBAs - been there, done that, I am guilty - just as few business types understand the reality of engineering and other technical disciplines. When I eventually attended business school I thoroughly enjoyed it for two reasons. (1) Learning new and different things. (2) Laughing at myself, laughing at how ignorant and misinformed I had been about business, marketing, etc. Here's a clue: the professors in business school love Dilbert as much as any geek.
To avoid redundancy here is the reality of MBA degrees: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3010671&cid=40801865
The short story: Its just an add-on to your current degree and experience, it gives you an overview of all the pieces of a business/organization. They actually do teach you to do the "right thing", whether you do as you were taught is something else.
It isn't the MBA that makes the boss a bad manager. It's the forgetting of where money comes from. An MBA is content to run the company quarter to quarter, taking action solely based on the profits generated, and forgetting that a company does not just print money like a factory. A company makes money by making something valuable that people want to trade their money for. In a small company, this is obvious, because you are making those valuable things yourself and observing the process firsthand. Once you have MBAs on board, you no longer do. You stop thinking about the company and what it makes. You start thinking of it as a money printing press. Good products can keep this going for a while, but the MBAs who care about profits rather than the value that generates them will destroy it as surely as they will sell the ship's engine to bolster this quarter's bottom line only to go bankrupt in the next one.
it makes it sound like microsoft was ever a company that made great innovate products.
in the 1990s it flourished becuase of a demand for computers and NO competition. They were probably more hated then than now. Their software was far less reliable then, than now.
They were far more overreaching in their rhetoric and legal prowess to cover up their inability to make good products then, than now. They were far more evil then than now.
They have competition now, and if they tried what they did then, now, they would be sink.
Agree - but this can be simplified. There's a rule.
Managers are of two types.
There are managers who believe that management itself is a profession that stands outside of any other profession or industry; that is, that a manager only manages people. It doesn't matter what those people do. Nor does it matter what the manager knows about the business he/she manages. A good manager will deliver goodness, regardless.
Then there are managers who believe that they'd best excel at the specifics of the industry they find themselves in. Because one should understand the 'why' of making decisions, outside of the people involved.
The first type are MBAs. The second type are filthy rich.
Funny, but wrong. I'm a somewhat recent MBA grad and we were definitely taught that understanding your product, your market, your industry, the economic forces that effect your industry, etc was critical. About 1/3 of my class were engineers and scientist.
To avoid redundancy see: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3010671&cid=40801865
Check the enterprises spend on Microsoft, that will show how Windows 7, Exchange, Sharepoint, Office, Lync are a success. They earn tons of money, so able to run longer in loss making divisions like Xbox or Live services. We do IT services for large organizations, and Microsoft still retains healthy share in IT spending. It is good that competition is challenging them, thats the only thing that makes them bring innovation. On your point of losing share in Windows, when you are at top only way is down. Talking about WP7, its share seems to be the same level as Linux on desktops right? And just as Linux, people who use it just love it (96% of actual users lover WP7, probably just as Linux on desktop). So the organization challenges, it is a typical trend. When the size is small, the politics is less but eventually they all get messed up like IBM. Every large organization ends up in politics, unless its controlled by single person like Steve Jobs.
MBAs are taught finance.
Wrong. An MBA program is not about accounting and finance. An MBA program actually is an overview of all the pieces of a company/organization. Accounting and finance is just one piece. To avoid redundancy see: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3010671&cid=40801865
Xbox is not cannibalizing Windows, you are correct. Some games/simulator only works with Windows and probably continue to do so. Every home seems to have Windows, very few have 100% Apple or Linux environments.
Well IBM is still going very strong in Ai though, Microsoft hasn't been cutting edge since NT (ok, winPhone7 was nice for a bit but that's it).
-- no sig today
So 700 million copies and growing is not a success? Then how do you define success?
That's the bean counter way of looking at it, and IIRC the article says that's one of the problems at Microsoft.
What you should ask yourself is, will Microsoft ever make money from this? Is the direction the Xbox heading going to make them lots of money, and will the Xbox team be able to pull it off?
To me there's a chance that they might succeed with the Xbox - it doesn't seem as crap as their other "new" products. Apple might enter the market of course (they already have the casual gaming market).
Their "stack" stupidity is the main thing that is hurting them. You don't fire people based on a simple algorithm like that. And if you really did you should fire Ballmer - since of his team, he's clearly the under-performer.
Let the bosses decide which of their subordinates is underperforming enough to get rid of. Sometimes underperformers are still useful enough to the team to keep around (at least till you finally get a better replacement). Let managers manage. And why do they need so many frigging managers if they are just going use some stupid algorithm?
AFAIK windows was never sold at an impartially distinguishable loss. MS DOS had made it into practically any PC in the 80s (which came to be the norm by the brilliant sale to IBM who payed them 5$/PC to equip every one of the machines they manufactured with a DOS os which they had bought for around 75k) which meant the GUI oriented next gen OS from Microsoft had had it's share cut before the first line of code.
-- no sig today
I second that.
After Sony made their 2nd hit console with the PS2 (IIRC the most successful console in history) they lost drive and determination and became just a bureaucracy temple. They managed to bring out a (IMO) legendary console but have missed the point by letting a lot of exclusivity slip, not keeping their word about reverse compatibility, raising the barrier to entry for indies and having a very complicated HW architecture..
-- no sig today
Exactly. The X-Box, like practically every other Microsoft product, is an all-or-nothing strategy to corner a market
The problem with that is that gamers are a fickle bunch. There is a generational turn around; all the big players in the industry have spent time on the top and the bottom.
Microsoft's domination on corporate desktops is not going away any time soon, despite the idiots on here who think everything can be run in a browser these days.
If it was just the XBox you could see it, but Microsoft has blown a lot of money trying to buy market share in the web portal/search game (how many iterations of MSN are we up to now) and the mobile business. Having deep pockets and the will to outspend your competitors doesn't guarantee success. If it did, everyone would be talking on Windows Mobile phones as they searched with Live/Bing.
The fact of the matter is that Microsoft's vast fortunes were built on its OEM sales to PC endors and corporate Exchange-Office volume licensing. Virtually nothing else they do makes money.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You think they wouldn't have sold as many copies of XP as they have Windows 7 if they hadn't bothered to release a new version of Windows?
It's not people go out to the store and say 'oh, a new versions of Windows, I'll have that', they buy PCs and use whatever version of Windows comes with them. They would still be buying Windows 98 if XP hadn't come along.
You have to weigh how the main MS cash cows are pulling in the $$$.
The Windows/server division is 80% wholesale margin. Office/automation is 80% margin. A product that is "only" in the black is an abject waste of resources unless it is going to position the company for another 10 years. Xbox is probably a Win! because they gained a good position. But the company can't SURVIVE on Xbox division profits with the way they are burning cash.
In comparison, Apple priced iPhone, and iPad from DAY ONE at price points where they would make their investments back if the product had even mild success. Apple doesn't enter a market unless they can figure out how they will get their money back.
Microsoft is still banging the drum of everything for free, until they can figure out where the money is at and corner those companies into big up front payments.
The whole problem is that Wall Street really doesn't reward companies that cash out that 80% margin to INVESTORS. Investors would rather see the company attempt to corner another market than take the cash in hand. That leads to Microsoft's managemt chasing every shiny car down the street, badly.
Well by not being put in the same group as MS Bob and MS ME and universally hated. I think that would be a good way.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
With the exception of halo. Because halo is awesome. But they bought bungi an apple software company to get it.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Xbox is clearly winning on PLAY VALUE right now. While everybody HAS a Wii and it made Nintendo bank because they positioned it to be per-unit profitable, many homes have multiple Xbox 360s and have replaced them how many times? From profitability, it's abject failure because MS is having to sell homes MULTIPLE loss leader units. But from mindshare, Xbox 360 is what all the kids have and share with their friends, at least in the high school college group it's the default (if mommy and daddy aren't paying)
I know there is a habit here at Slashdot to only read and comment on the summary. Trust me, this article (though long) is worth the read. Very insightful. I did not know about the stack ranking system at Microsoft. What an amazingly stupid and suicidal system. Again, if you only read the summary, go read the article. It's worth your time.
Well IBM is still going very strong in Ai though, Microsoft hasn't been cutting edge since NT (ok, winPhone7 was nice for a bit but that's it).
Microsoft hires SHITTON of very smart AI/ML people (often snatching them even before they finish uni). They just dont know how/have no intention of using them for something that would sell.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Those are 80% margin... Where is all that money GOING? They should have had enough cash on hand to easily write down that $6b loss and had profit to spare.
People are starting to realize Microsoft is not MANAGED very well. Sure, they have buckets of money, but when you add up the metrics they are PISSING AWAY almost 50% of their GROSS margin on money-losing units. They have carefully shuffled their divisions so they each make 10-15% yearly but looking at even the public books they are hiding MASSIVE bleeding losses.
Add to that, that have run the CULTURE of the company into the ground. Micromanaging each unit under extreme "Decimation" principles. They are just coasting on their name to fill the mill with new grads. Average programmers with experience and some respect for themselves wont work there anymore. Their culture has more uncommon with game companies than Professional Business organizations they are trying to sell to.
Um, they STOPPED SELLING any alternatives? Any product can be a best seller when you just stop selling the others. That's a move right out of the *aa play book.
Said product is 80% PROFIT. Where's all that bacon? It also took SEVEN YEARS to properly replace their flagship product with something consumers actually would buy. SEVEN YEARS milking a cash cow! The issue is NOT the raw numbers, but how they went SO LONG without improving themselves.
Here's how the X-Box got fucked up -- Microsoft had this glorious Direct X, including 3D, for Windows.
"Hey! Let's build a console that uses it. Then PC game makers can push a button and basically generate binaries for it [b]and[/b] the PC!" Instant titles, titles, titles! That's what kills consoles, lack of titles!
And...nobody on the PC wants to play, on the PC, console-style titles. Just ask the Duke Nukem Forever or DC Universe Online devs.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Even as I formulate this thought I know I will get downmodded, but it's reminiscent of the government-Internet vs. private enterprise thing.
Microsoft can, or could anyway (see Google's $50 billion and Apple's $100 billion in cash) just force something into existence and keep it's heart beating by brute force, long after other, smaller inventors and investors would have given up.
So, too, with government and the early Internet, or NASA for that matter. For the former, they kept it's heart alive for 20 years before industry found a real use for it. Valuable service? Vital service?
How's it lookin' when a private corporation hemorrhages cash for years doing the same thing? Valuable? Vital to anything?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Microsoft has not done badly for itself. I think the expectations put on many tech companies are unrealistic. Some tech companies have come from nowhere to mega enterprises. There are those that will think a company has not done well if they no longer sustain their early growth rate. Of course these expectations are arithmetically absurd. A small company can become a global force. Then where do they go? Take over the galaxy? This is also happening to Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and others. To be sure, Microsoft does have some challenges ahead of them. The sudden turn Microsoft made when they suddenly discovered the Internet is almost happening again with the rise of mobile computing. Whether they succeed this time again will have to be seen.
I don't think they are stupid, evil, or lost people. I like Windows 7 just fine. I don't like Windows 8. I wouldn't even bother with MS Office 2010 if I did not have to run Outlook because of Exchange.
We're seeing some huge paradigm shifts in the tech world as well as company consolidations. I still say Microsoft is moving towards becoming just like Apple. But I think people's expectations on them are always high. They can hardly win a a good press analysis lately.
I also still prefer Linux as a desktop, mobile and server platform. I don't feel as controlled or constrained by it. There are also lofty expectations imposed on Linux and there will be more. Sometimes I think that Microsoft by their aggressive behavior has invited these expectations on themselves too. That for sure will probably continue.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
While xbox is a household name, profit wise it isn't stellar. It also has had an interesting effect of moving the attention of Windows game developers onto consoles.
Agreed, the success of Xbox has come at the expense of devaluing Microsoft's main product; a high-end Windows PC.
I also question the real value of Xbox as a "household name". There's millions of satisfied Xbox customers, virtually none of whom bought a Zune or a Windows Phone or any other MS consumer initiative. Despite all the Xboxes hooked-up to TV screens, Microsoft's entire media center strategy has been a disaster, especially compared to Apple's. Do gamers even care about the Microsoft brand-name here, or is it just the cheapest way to play Call of Duty?
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Big companies can rarely continue innovating and winning in new spaces
once you get big it's more about recognizing innovation, and buying it (which is what IBM does a lot of) rather than leading the innovation yourself. That's probably why MS had a small stake in facebook and has a fairly large research arm. You need to know where the innovations are happening to be able to capitalize on them, and occasionally you might discover something useful on your own.
Failing that, you can always just copy other peoples innovation, and as long as you have the cash to support it you can get to market before they can, or more polished, or combined with other tech they can't afford and so on. I suspect this is why Apple has such a strong culture of secrecy; they don't want MS (and Google) to know quite what they're up to until after they've done it. MS on the other hand can't really hide anything major because they rely on all of their downstream partners for so much.
You're right about the revisionist history. Bill made their bed and now they are lying in it. But he didn't have to leave. Despite his negative charisma and the brutality of his methods, his leadership was better than what followed. I don't even think he was personally hated so much as the fruits of his reign were hated. I personally don't hate Bill. Hitchens describes some dictatorship (Romania?) where it was said that the fear was so thick you could not just cut it, but actually eat it. My contempt for what His Billness stands for is so thick I could eat it, but I don't actually hate the man.
Slow decline? That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard since Windows Me, a brisk decline by any rational standard. In a Warner Brothers cartoon, Windows Me would be represented as a piano in free fall attached to a coil of rope rapidly unwinding. The rope is attached to a cotter pin in the trellis work supporting a Saturn V rocket ship, which threatens to tip over and launch sideways into a colossal machine works with a 50,000 tonne Alcoa press hard at work stamping out giant Fabrige ostrich eggs.
I've got Amis's The War Against Cliche on hold at my local library. If I had written Harry Potter, anyone describing the arc of Microsoft as "slow decline" would be at risk of having the owls arrive to carry off their beards and toupees, or any other device of attire designed to conceal the bare chin wattles or shiny pate of thoughtless word selection. Instead of Muggles, there would be Paters: universal objects of titters and ridicule. Instead of Defence Against the Dark Arts, cautious use of hair-stealing adjectives would prevail among the cognoscenti.
But even if Microsoft doesn't develop Xbox, Sony and Nintendo would produce consoles, so the studios would still produce console games.
Glad someone pointed it out. Xbox has been a disaster of unmitigated proportions.
I stopped reading partway through - it read like a hit piece. Let's go ahead and ignore the success of Windows 7, XBOX 360, Office, SharePoint, Lync, etc just to make an outrageous claim in order to sell magazines. Is the internal culture of Microsoft bad? Maybe..but they're still churning out good software, and with the exception of a one-time write-down from a failed acquisition, they are still one of the most consistently profitable companies in the world. Like all large companies, they have had product failures, but if you're going to ignore the wins, why bother even writing the article?
Maybe you should of read the article, then you wouldn't come off looking so stupid.
And weird, how someone with your low ID would only shrill for MS's recent accomplishments (if you want to call them that), and then ignore the facts.
Windows 7 is a decent OS, but they've already dumped it for Windows 8, which they are betting the farm on, with Windows 8, and of course, the Xbox 8. And speaking of Xbox, success story? Sort of.
First MS took a loss on the hardware sold. Then they took it up the butt because the hardware was failing. So, finally, 4 years after they introduced the Xbox 360, they got a version that doesn't overheat. Not sure where you are from, but I do NOT call that a success. No other console had to go thru so many updates to fix hardware problems, most consoles go thru hardware updates to make them cheaper and smaller.
Xbox Live is where MS makes their money, and in that, they have been successful. Except lately it's become very ad centric, so lets see how that goes.
But since you are too stupid to read the article (maybe because you are so old and need new glasses?), you would of seen it was about how MS has fucked up and lost the lead and innovation they once had. The article isn't about their successes, but namely, what they did wrong.
Just like you did wrong, by not reading the article and deciding to post.
Be seeing you...
In the Lost Decade narrative, there has been much said about Microsoft's unprofitable investments and purchases. But in the last decade there have also risen to prominence competitors that were previously non-existent or irrelevant. I can name Google, Apple for a couple. But there are many more. Microsoft is playing a game with them all to win. Now back to those unprofitable purchases. I liked playing the board game of Monopoly with my family for years. Often times I would buy something I knew I couldn't make money on just to deny it to another player. This made it harder for them to win. It also occasionally made my wife or kids made at me. I think to a great degree this is what Microsoft has been doing with some of those purchases. Even if I did win it all, I survived.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Seriously? Most (if not all) the AAA games we get now on PC are ports from consoles anyway. Guess which port we always end up getting it from? The 360 codebase, of course.
I wonder if game companies would even bother releasing cross platform games on PC anymore had the architecture not been so easy to switch between. They pretty much have a seething disdain for the PC market these days.
If anyone other than Apple priced their products the way Apple does in this industry, I have my doubts anyone but the curious few would be buying. Apple can get away with that pricing because they have a huge cultural following to back them up. With Steve gone after having been so intimately involved with pretty much everything Apple does, I'm genuinely curious how long that's going to last.
mod this as funny better yet sarcasm
How is this different than any other big bureaucratic organization where Dilbertian Culture rules? Is there a magic formula for getting rid of Dilbertian Culture? My org needs it BADLY!
Table-ized A.I.
Well for 2011 your 80% is right
Took in $70b
$15.5b expense labor (I'm assuming consulting, help desk, implementation....)
They spent additionally:
$9b R&D
$14b sales and marketing
$4.2b admin
$5b taxes
leaving $23b in profits
What, we're not putting them in a line to be marched off somewhere?
About Windows 7 ...
3 years after Windows 7 went RC it should own 80% of the market or more. Not barely hitting 50% according to g.statcounter.com and even less with netappliances statistics!
Employers still prefer old XP and many are refusing to upgrade.
Slashdotters stuck on Windows may love it but it is not a smashing success either. Windows 7 should have MUCH higher share by now in 2012.
http://saveie6.com/
XP wasn't Vista either. Why didn't they just push out SP4? Oh, right. Money. The answer to any question that begins with "Why" is "Money".
Of course money. They are a business. It costs money to make service packs and newer versions of Windows offer the features anyway and of course people buying them support the costs for maintance and security.
The fact that you prefer XP in my opinion is a failure of Microsoft. In 10 years of development time they should show you something that makes you look at your ancient XP setup and say WTF its time to move on.
Still Windows 7 is a much more secure and up to date system and strongly encourage you to upgrade. Instant search, speed up on newer machines with quad cores, sata, and ssds alone. However, I do admit compared to MacOSX there is not much more innovation. Mountain Lion has tons of more features than 10.1 if you dig down and use it as a comparison. MS has a problem
http://saveie6.com/
Whatever people think of the Wii doesn't really matter because it's all based on things they hear others repeat. For example everyone says no one plays their Wii. If you calculate out the attach rate with the hardware and software numbers from Nintendo's financial reports, the Wii attach rate is more or less the same as the 360. So I suspect most Wiis aren't just sitting in a closet otherwise that means the minority of gamers buy an insane amount of Wii games.
But compared to the PS3 in the US that's probably right given that's really Microsoft's only strong market but I'd also say there's growing annoyance with Microsoft since it's trying to market itself towards more people than gamers and between the advertisements and games getting pushed to the side, I think they need to be careful with how they move on from the 360.
The complaints about the 360 becoming an entertainment system and less of a game system have been growing. I know my 360 spends most of its time collecting dust. I definitely feel like it doesn't want to be a gaming machine.
Sharepoint is a success, it locks you into IE, Windows desktop, Windows server, IIS, SQL server, Exchange, Office, and probably a few products I have forgotten about.
That my friend is a failure that is now biting them in the ass. IE 6 is so proprietary it can't be replaced. If you have an intranet system where you have 300 use cases on it, vbscript that does god knows what to a SQL server (obsolete proprietary version that is incompatible with newer one), that also uses some VBA macros for Office 97/2000 that is not compatible with anything newer than 2003 you got a problem!
Worse, Office 2013 requires Exchange 2013. Now your solution also uses Excahnge 2003 which wont work with the newest. Your apis are not compatible with Windows 7 so now what?
The answer is stick with XP, IE 6, Office 2000, and do not pay MS money and sit on it with your thumb up your ass until 2014 then worry. This hurts Microsoft's revenues. ... fyi newer sharepoint is compatible with all browsers, and IE 9 is standards compliant and a decent browser now. Problem is it is so decent it can't follow quirky IE 6 standards. MS did this hoping it would encourage people to upgrade but instead created more lockin and a fear of change to upgrade. WOW.
It is time they reaped what they sowed and yes that is part of the lost decade for MS. Windows 7 is ble in terms of marketshare for an OS that iwll be turning 3 soon. Windows XP, and Windows 95 and 98 grew much more in 3 years and took over the whole Windows market!
http://saveie6.com/
Personally I think Microsoft had the keys to the castle in their hands, with Windows. Even I loved the concept, when it came about! It was the bees knees!
The issue was, they didn't enhance it fast enough to really be anything more than a "bug fix" kinda thing. I mean, any advancements were fought tooth and nail. The OS/2 battles were the only thing I could see that made them move away from their little island of 16-bit Windows with 32-bit dll extensions and an 8-bit OS holding it.
It was the reason I jumped on Linux when it was invented, like the only hot girl in school.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The state of the competition is good, not sure what you're talking about.
Playstation 3 is phenomenal, and Wii is hitting it's next incarnation. The thing is, the people doing Wii would never do XBox. Playstation 3 is the main competition.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Heck, I was in a small company of around 50 employees, and there were 3 departments. Each of them actively fucked each other over in order to look good and get better bonuses than the other departments. Large corporations just magnify the problem, as the other departments you're fighting might be on the other side of the country or even in another country. As long as the top 3 or 4 guys had good profits, they didn't care about all of the mess going on beneath them.
I'll admit, I originally started replying to this, but there is no way this guy is being genuine.
Sony made many mistakes with the PS3. While the PS2 indeed had backwards compatibility and was known to be easy to develop for the PS3 is the opposite. One reason why the Sega Saturn failed was the lousy development tools. Instead of Sony learning from its competitors mistakes they did the same crap again.
pointing out that MS has become like IBM in how it operates.
I agree the article was good, but I don't think saying Microsoft has become like IBM goes far enough. Yes, it has IBM's bad tendencies, but they have some even WORSE ones! For example, I don't see IBM trying to enter every new tech category that comes along. Yet Microsoft does, even when they are years late and have no strategy that will make their late entering product superior.
For an example of how bad this really is, ignore their late entry into smartphones, tablets, Internet search, and standards compliant browsers. It's worse and more widespread than that. They are even trying to get into things like network load balancing and authentication devices. Why? They aren't a company that specializes in that. As an example, take their Unified Access Gateway (UAG) product line (which many have never heard of, but one of the things it does is unified authentication and access control at the edge of the network). It gets blown away by F5's Access Policy Manager in performance, customizability, ease of use and feature set. Microsoft is a software company... why are they trying to compete with a company like F5 Networks, a company that specializes in advanced network devices like load balancers, Layer 7 firewalls, load balancing between data centers, and access policy management?
By trying to be first in everything Microsoft is starting to fall behind in everything. Even IBM wasn't that stupid, and they've sold off things like PCs/Laptops once they saw the writing on the wall. It's time for Microsoft to do the same. If they focused on the core areas they are really good at, which are Windows, Office, Enterprise Software (Exchange, SharePoint), Servers, and Development Tools, and dumped all the other stuff (Bing, Music, Consumer Electronics), they'd be insanely profitable and hopefully become even better and more focused in the core competencies. And they wouldn't even have to face Apple or Google for the most part... they play in different areas.
I know some would say that if Microsoft loses it's dominance in consumer devices it will lose the enterprise, but it doesn't have to be that way. We're still waiting for the year of the Linux desktop, but that hasn't kept Linux from being a smash hit in the datacenter.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
> The mobile PC (iPad) replaces the PC just like the mobile phone replaces the landline phone.
> The landline phone is now an alternate kind of phone, and the mobile phone is the "real"
> phone. That is why you see the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display is designed very much
> for the classic Mac customer who is a creative workstation user, running video editing or audio
> editing or photo editing or software development all day long, every day. It's less of a PC than
> any of the Intel Macs. iPad is for PC users, now. The Mac is back to being a creative power tool.
So you reply to a terrible article with a terrible post? If you had claimed the the MacBook as a PC replacement, you would at least had some possible argument. The IPAD is *NOT* a PC replacement. It's an overgrown IPHONE targeted at viewing/listening/reading. For output, it's only suitable for short messages like texting/chat/twitter/Fecesbook-status-updates/etc.
Try doing any serious photo/audio/text editing, long emails, or even taking notes at a meeting, and you'll see why. And don't give me any BS about buying a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. You've essentially converted the IPAD into a laptop or desktop.
Tablets (IPAD and Android) fill a large market for dumbed-down PC's. They do not come close to replacing the desktop. And Apple prices are a joke here in Canada (Toronto to be specific). E.g. desktop Apple (Mac Pro). The "low end " (Quad-Core Intel, 6 gigs of ram, 1 TB drive) is $2,549.00 !?!?! http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro A similar ASUS (Quad-Core Intel, 6 gigs of ram, 1 TB drive) is $999, http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=042214 and I can get something similar built for less.
For notebooks MacBook "Air" and "Pro" *START* at $1029 and $1229 respectively http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro Regular notebooks can be had for under $500 http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?item_id=046492
IPADS *START* at $419. Android tablets are a lot lower. See http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?cPath=710_375 BTW, the 11.6" notebook I mentioned above is competitive with the IPAD, and it actually has keyboard and mousepad.
Apple has chosen to go for the more-money-than-brains market, like Mercedes/Cadillac/Lamborgini/RollsRoyce/etc. That can be a profitable niche, but I'm not part of that market.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
PC's weren't really that graphics/GUI focused at that time and there wasn't much to compete for. Everything was text based (40x25, 80x45, 132x50) resolutions. Using pixel based graphics was only needed for viewing pie-charts and bar graphs.
While Atari ST, Amiga and Apple computers had windows based GUI's, PC applications were still in the DOS prompt era. You were lucky if any application supported a mouse let alone audio.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
A lot of microsofts success can be attributed to great timing, motivated and empowered people and just plain luck. When the mood in a company goes from optimistic to negative it's really hard to turn it around. The cause of this shift can be anything, and you will see it in any company sooner or later. After that things start to go down hill. Sometimes a turnaround can be accomplished, sometimes it can't. People have studied this for a long time and came up with all sorts of theories, often not more than an analysis of a handful of cases where things worked out. Unfortunately the methods are not universally applicable, but at least it gives room for more management books to be written.
In other words: there are many companies with the keys to the castle in their hands. Only some of them will actually go on to use them. It's hard to tell which ones will. Ask any stock analyst. Social mood waxes and wanes but the turning points are only clear in hindsight.
Mark.
Please login to access my lawn
Fuck off.
~Philly
It is not wrong.
You could replace "Microsoft" with "Nokia" on that article. Both have great basic understanding of their field. They have lots of fundamental technology under their grasp - even patent, like it or not.
But both are failing for simple reasons:
- Too many meetings, not enough innovation and basic research done without interruptions. Everyone wanting to be "manager of something".
- Red tape all over the place, teams competing with each other inside the company.
- Management has lack of perspective.
Yes, I'm oversimplifying things and Microsoft is not as of yet failing, but they might be if they do not get other cash-cows than Windows and Office, and so far they have not been very successful at that.
Sorry but it is wrong regarding MBAs, which is all I commented upon. MBAs are not taught "that a manager only manages people. It doesn't matter what those people do. Nor does it matter what the manager knows about the business he/she manages." They are taught quite the opposite. Whether they follow what they are taught is a different matter. Much like computer science majors are taught to write well designed, reliable and maintainable code but often do something else on the job.
The point was prior to xbox, many more companies were PC exclusive. With xbox, a lot of those companies took that as a cue to start doing console development in earnest.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Console gaming is over. Gaming has moved onto mobile systems.
No, gaming has *expanded* onto mobile systems. Even taking your statement at face value, that IOS devices outnumber consoles, that doesn't mean much. Cell phones have long outnumbered consoles and could technically play little games. Console market is only marginally more threatened by ubiquitous cell phone gaming than makers of 60 inch televesions, and no one is claiming phones are going to displace that market. Now the DS and Vita type offerings are certainly at significant risk, but even they retain a sufficient market thanks to some distinct ergonomic advantages to not being a phone.
AppleTV outsells Xbox
Even if true, so have DVD players. Apple TV without jailbreak can't play games. This is comparing apples and oranges.
In a couple of years, iPad will have more GPU than the console games.
Probably not of the consoles that would be a contemporary of that iPad. Signs are pointing to 2013 refreshes of Sony and MS offerings. Historically, we are talking about systems that might be willing to draw ~250W at launch, far more than the iPad would ever be willing to do. I'm not even sure they could really match the GPU performance of the current PS3/xbox360 in the power envelope they'd want in that timeframe.
In short, big-screen, high-def, low latency network gaming I see as continuing to be a valid market. I just suspect/hope that Valve and Ouya platforms on top of linux will have a significant disruptive effect on the market for the better, and that MS is not going to be able to play.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.