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Break Microsoft Up
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Tom Worstall writes in Forbes that the only way to get around the entrenched culture that has made Microsoft a graveyard for the kind of big ideas that have inspired companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon is to split the company up so as to remove conflicts between new and old products. With Ballmer's departure, instead of finding someone new to run the company, bring in experts to handle the legal side and find suitable CEOs for the new companies. 'The underlying problem for Microsoft is that the computing market has rapidly left behind the company's basic strategy of controlling the machines that people use with operating-system software,' says Erik Sherman. 'The combination of mobile devices that broke Microsoft's grip on the client end, and cloud computing that didn't necessarily need the company in data centers, shattered this form of control.' Anyone can see how easily you could split off the gaming folks, business division, retail stores, and hardware division says John Dvorak. Each entity would have agreements in place for long-term supply of software and services. 'This sort of shake up would ferret out all the empire builders and allow for new and more creative structures to emerge. And since everyone will have to be in a semi-startup mode, the dead wood will be eliminated by actual hard work.'"
classic old-school, google gets praise for the chromecast, for having an OS, for being in mobile, being in search, being in social networks.. and that's all good. Apple ditto.. but not acceptable for MS. Microsoft needs a good shaking but there are some strong elements in there that need to be supported and accelerated. They have as much right to push for the unified vision as anyone
I think the problem is that their unified vision is anything but unified. Hell, they can't even make up their minds about what Windows 8 is supposed to be.
One of the most successful companies of all time, which is still doing billions in business, and everyone can't wait to tell them how they are fucking it up...
Why don't all these brilliant analysts go make billions if they are so smart?
Well, while Windows Mobile used to be the best option for a smartphone out there, and shows that MS were at least trying to be in that market a long time ago.. the fact remains that they haven't come up with anything good on their own for a long time. They try to muscle their way in on everything, rather than making people want their devices. Look at all that shit with the Xbone. Xbox Live had started turning a profit, but they weren't happy with that, and kept trying to push ways to squeeze even more money out of their subscribers. If they focused on creating good products that people love, rather than thinking "how can we take a piece of this emerging market?", they'd be a lot better off.
which is totally what she said
FTFA :- "Anyone can see how easily you could split off the gaming folks, business division, retail stores, and hardware division says John Dvorak."
Agreed. Each of those areas could be self-contained, if it isn't already.
"Each entity would have agreements in place for long-term supply of software and services. 'This sort of shake up would ferret out all the empire builders and allow for new and more creative structures to emerge."
Why? There will always be empire builders. And why would "new and more creative structures" emerge? If the existing divisions are lagely self-contained, what stops that now? I have witnessed companies down-sizing and splitting up - management become obsessed with it as an end in itself, like "well we shut down that department, what can we shut down next?". They stop thinking about the product. "Creative" groups are the first up against the wall.
On a much smaller scale, I saw a company of about 30 people reduced to about 5 because the new owner, a devout Thatcherite, just thought "The smaller the better". It ended up with the craftsman in the workshop keep having to stop making stuff to go and answer the phone; that was not efficient.
I don't think anybody is saying Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to continue as a single entity with their current strategy. They're saying it's not proving to be a very good strategy, and that the entity known as Microsoft might be more profitable if it was broken into several things.
See, Apple and Google seem to be able to execute on their strategies. But Microsoft is so concerned about cutting into sales off Office or their desktop OSes that some of their other offerings aren't doing so well.
Yes, but has it been working for them? Because, arguably, the Windows Phone and the Windows tablets aren't selling overly well, Windows 8 itself is proving a little lackluster, and Microsoft has generally been stuck doing "me too" for years.
So, either they need to start making different decisions (like allowing one division to do stuff that isn't dictated by another), start dropping products which are underperforming ... or split into multiple divisions so that they can be separate businesses and actually try to thrive.
But I think it's hard to not come to the conclusion that something about how Microsoft is doing their strategy is causing some of their products to be selling terribly.
The "lose money on everything but make it up on volume" works when you're a hugely rich company, but it's still a terrible strategy.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
No one recognized the Year of Linux having come and possibly passed, because it was in the pocket, not the desktop.
Back in 1999, this breakup may have been a good idea, comply with the Court monopolistic findings and make 2 much more agile companies.
But what is the point now? The techscape is very different and Microsoft's woes is mostly the result of internal bureacracy that built up complying with that now obsolete order. Get rid of the bureaucracy, not split the company. At worst, it goes to court and I find it very hard that MS will lose.
What MS needs is leadership that's more adventurous than "Look! Me too!" and backed by MS's considerable but ever slowly dwindling resources. In the last 15 years, all they added for themselves on top of the OS and Office was Xbox. The problem long term for MS is that the desktop is now old hat and it has no share in mobile. On top of that, for most users, Operating Systems will be given ever less importance to the end user. Already, I have friends who do their Quickbooks and Intuit taxes online with just a browser. Something they couldn't do 15 years back. They use one of the free office softwares and edit pics with another free program that's better than 90% of the pay programs. Their OS at this point couldn't matter less and that's how they like it. All that matters is their data and being able to manipulate it. 15 years ago, it was unfathomable to get on in the world with anything but Windows. Now you can get along with minimum 3 OSes.
MS's OS (and it's wealth) comes at considerable cost to others. License fees ratchet up every so often and what now. If other industries/companies can do away with a cost, they will. And that means eventually dumping Microsoft. Especially when this expensive commodity can be replaced for free. With Chromebook, this is creeping in. 15 years ago, this was unfathomable and crap like Lindows was a joke from a 3rd tier company no one heard of. Because Ballmer was right - it's about the applications, stupid. Developers and all that.
Ironically, that's exactly what MS now lacks in the mobile arena. They lost at their own game. They're suffering the same problem Linux had on the desktop - marketshare. With the Microsoft Zune, they skated to where the puck was, not where it was going. Taste that, friends, because that's just sweet. Now that OS agnostic world is on the horizon, Windows becoming a niche among professionals and gamers but no longer synonymous with computing, or even desktop computing.
Who knew? The Year of Linux on the Desktop will probably come when the OS couldn't matter one bit anymore and for that very reason.
they haven't come up with anything good on their own for a long time
I'd say that they at least deserved credit for Kinect. While it was obviously released in response to the unforeseen success of the original Wii and its novel control methods, the fact remains that it went beyond being just a "me too" product and was genuinely innovative in its own right.
That said, it was arguably the exception rather than the rule, probably because it came from the XBox division and wasn't a threat to the entrenched interests and politics of the main Windows and Office divisions that have crushed so much potential innovation within MS.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The moment someone uses John Dvorak to support an argument, I stop taking them seriously.
Imagine if the Apple Mac department had blocked the iPhone and/or iPad because it could eat into the Mac market share (which I'm sure it did). I guess Apple would by far not be as profitable as it is now.
Well, they bought the Kinect ... so if the extent of Microsoft's 'innovation' is technology they buy, then yes. But in terms of a single really ground breaking piece of technology Microsoft developed in-house, it's much harder to think of recent examples.
Yes, the Kinect is a pretty good system, but let's not lose sight of the fact that it was purchased technology. All this means is Microsoft is still rich enough and occasionally observant enough to pick up technology other people have created.
In terms of their own creation of products from scratch -- I don't think their recent track record is all that impressive. Sure, they've got bazillions of dollars and can keep buying stuff, but as an innovative technology company goes, they've proven a little stagnant recently. Their tablets, phones, Windows 8 ... none of those are doing anywhere near as well as a company the size of Microsoft would expect, and Microsoft s bordering on being a bit player in the mobile market.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, there will be people who say the iPod was nothing special (I'm not one of them) because of mp3 players existing before then. But both of you are forgetting about the iPad - first real successful tablet in that form.
But I think the problem is that technology levels make some items inevitable and we're really waiting for technology to advance for the next big idea to manifest. Not so much the next big idea itself. Unless they can replace our eyeballs with an attractive replacement that also acts as a phone, camera, and HUD... convergence technology is pretty limited right now to what we have - a phone, tape recorder, gps, browser, camera, etc in our pockets.
Everything from there will be an evolution until that eyeball form factor is feasible.
Otherwise it's like waiting for the next big idea on the desktop in 1985 (when the 386 was released). Milestones (integrated soundcard, etc) came and went but the next big revolutionary idea never came. Evolution came. We went far since then. Looking back, home computing seems like a revolution. But it's one revolution, lots of little evolutions.
The next big idea (www and internet for the common man) did, but it was not strictly a desktop thing imo. But again, www is the revolution. Lots of evolutions since then to make the web page of 1993 look antique.
Nope.
The problem is that there's people running Microsoft who still think the way to sell more Windows 8 isn't to listen to customers and fix Windows 8's problems, it's to make (eg.) the next release of Direct3D Windows-8-only thereby "forcing" people to upgrade (LOL!)
No sig today...
I think the problem is that their unified vision is anything but unified. Hell, they can't even make up their minds about what Windows 8 is supposed to be.
By contrast, their development and cloud products are getting more synced up as each month passes. Their work on Azure is probably the best example of MS unifying a bunch of teams to a common goal.
I think breaking up Microsoft would be for the better.... and the same with Apple, Google, and a whole bunch of other megacorporations. At some point that "unified vision" becomes a straightjacket preventing the various divisions from innovating and responding to the market, and all three of those are past that.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I probably was at one time. Before iOS and Android came along, there wasn't much in the way of smart phones. The first gen iPhone didn't come out until 2007, and Windows mobile had been released since 2000. There really wasn't much out in the smartphone market at that time. Their problem was their failure to innovate and stay current. Similar to IE6. Most people forget that when IE6 came out, it was a really good browser. The problem is that they didn't change it for 10 years, even when there was clear evidence that it was being left behind by better competition.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Sorry - but that is not 100% correct. Being a former MS employee, they were working in their research division on Project Natal in the 90's, which became the backbone of the Kinect. I saw it at many research fairs at the Redmond campus.
Imagine if the Apple Mac department had blocked the iPhone and/or iPad because it could eat into the Mac market share (which I'm sure it did). I guess Apple would by far not be as profitable as it is now.
The iPhone is indeed killing iPod sales. The iPad is destroying all growth in Mac sales. And Apple is quite happy with that. Steve Jobs himself said (and I'm quite sure he quoted someone else) that "if you don't cannibalise your products, someone else will".
iOS (iPad and iPhone) is the walled garden.
Mac runs any FOSS applications you want, so yes Mac is great for free and open software users.
I used Linux exclusively for many years. When I was given a Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM, two $400 graphics cards, etc. I decided to try it out. In 18 months of use, I've not found any OSS applications that don't run nicely on the Mac.
Splitting Microsoft along business/consumer lines:
MicrosoftBusiness:
*WindowsDesktop (Profitable)
*WindowsServer (Profitable)
*WindowsServerApplications (Profitable)
*WindowsCloud (Profitable)
*WindowsMouseAndKeyboardWhatnots (Profitable)
MicorsoftConsumer:
*Bing (Lossy)
*Xbox (BreakEvens)
*WindowsPhone (Lossy)
*WindowsTablets (Lossy)
I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.
Bullshit because all that would do is make one company with bad management into a bunch of companies with bad management, it wouldn't solve a damned thing. Frankly the whole TFA is full of shit, if it were true why not break up Apple? Why not Google? After all they too have products that don't really go together as far as an overarching strategy yet they are doing just fine aren't they?
No what has caused MSFT to go off the rails and what any CEO with a brain, hell what ANY person with a brain should do in that situation is simple....LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS! How so many large companies can totally screw up in something so damned simple is beyond me, but that is exactly what happened with MSFT. Ballmer had his head so far up Wall Street and Cupertino's collective asses all he could do was go "ZOMFG apps apps apps MOBILE!" while he not ONCE, not a single time, actually bothered to sit down with the grunts in the field and go "What does the folks want to buy?"
You look at the moves MSFT has made in the past few years and one thing becomes crystal clear...every new feature, and starting with Win 8 every new OS, its all been designed to give MICROSOFT more advantages, not a damned thing for the user. Its like the entire system is designed by Dilbert's PHB! I mean how hard is it to picture Ballmer and his lackeys sitting at the big table going "Well what do we need...well selling a new OS every 5 years is great for the user and the ecosystem but we have to make those quarterly earnings projections, so we'll just ship them out the door ASAP. What do you mean they'll be half baked? That's good, that means it'll screw up quicker and they'll have to buy new hardware which means new license sales! Okay wall street is jerking off to ARM so we'll make WOA, of course i know all the software won't run, that's the point dumbass, we'll have the appstore market all to ourselves! Oh yeah they say tablets and smartphones are hot so we'll make Windows not run worth a shit without touch, that will make people shell out Apple prices for these tablets, oh who gives a fuck if most PCs won't run it, did you see the Financial Times? Its all about corporate control and apps so the fact that most PCs and software won't run well just means we corner the market again!"
So it does NOT need breaking up, what it needs is NOT a CEO but instead a LEADER, one that will get his head out of the Financial Times and stop coming up with more ideas to make the products better for MSFT and instead be making damned sure they know what the CUSTOMERS want, because all they did under Ballmer was toss away good will and burn bridges to try to out Apple Apple while ignoring that if their customers would have wanted an Apple they'd have bought one!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No what has caused MSFT to go off the rails and what any CEO with a brain, hell what ANY person with a brain should do in that situation is simple....LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS!
Clarification: Listen to your customers, and figure out how to make them _want_ to give you their money and come back for more, instead of figuring out how to take their money away from them.
:) Microsoft was. So _listening_ to people has its dangers as well.
When you talk about out-Apple Apple, I have the impression that Surface is what all the fanboys asked Apple to do with MacOS X, and what they predicted Apple do to, and Apple just wasn't stupid enough to do it
So the basic argument is that if Microsoft hadn't appealed in 2000 and had just abided by Judge Jackson's ruling, they wouldn't be in the mess they are in today?
So the company's no better off for all that extra legal wrangling, but in the meantime a lot of lawyers and investors made a mint.
Yup. It seems to me that Microsoft still has the idea lodged in their collective heads that they're in a position to say, "Fuck you if you don't like our product. You have to buy it anyway." Unfortunately, they are still kind of in that position, but their position is increasingly tenuous.
In terms of their own creation of products from scratch
That's a pretty high bar you've set. It seems like for you, to qualify as an innovation you have to single handedly build every component within the device at the company internally from first principles (aka "scratch"). The Kinect was as much an innovation as the iPod... it was an evolution of technology, built on existing technology but packaged in a way that brought widespread consumer adoption.
Can you point to any device from any company that is built fully in-house from scratch? Just looking at the companies listed by TFA as innovative, I can't think of one. Amazon's Kindle Fire? Built on top of Android and chasing the sucess of the iPad. Google's Android? Bought. Google's self driving car? They bought the talent from the DARPA challenges. Google Glass? Under the same principles you will not call the Kinect innovative Google Glass is not innovative - built on the technology others have created. What about the original iPad? Every piece of functioning technolgoy within was purchased from another company. So maybe the OS is all in-house.... but iOS is based on OSX which is based on BSD, so I guess they call short of your bar as well.
Sorry, ALL technology today is built off the technology others have created. The Kinect used Primesense's sensor to create an innovative gaming device the same way the iPad used someone elses's touch screen technology to create an innovative tablet. Give credit where it is due.
Microsoft has been trying to cash in on software *usage* ever since the ads in Active Desktop, circa 1998. They've never veered from that path. MS has gradually acclimated their customers to a restrictive product that is locked to a single piece of hardware. The clear plan with Windows 8 is to convert their millions of existing Windows customers into subscription cloud customers by herding them through the narrow gate of Metro, like so many cattle on their way to slaughter. The failure is not in their clarity of vision but rather in the execution. Microsoft always seem to depend on exploiting their monopoly to increase profits, to the extent that they neglect the product itself. (Who wants to live in the Microsoft cloud, after all? It has nothing to offer.) Their second failing, if it could be called that, is that they don't have a charismatic Steve "P.T.Barnum" Jobs character to head up the marketing. Their advertising is confusing, at best. (Remember the soccer mom in the stuffed butterfly suit? What the...?)
I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.
Pretty sure that's what's already happened internally.
Which is the whole problem.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Ballmer was a successful CEO. At wringing out profits. Which is what Wall Street wanted. But doesn't drive the company forwards.
From here:
http://stratechery.com/2013/if-steve-ballmer-ran-apple/
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Why did it take them 15-20 years to get it out of the research labs?!!?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You could also argue that Ballmer brought a failure culture into MSFT too.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/stack_ranking_steve_ballmer_s_employee_evaluation_system_and_microsoft_s.html
'Surround yourself with idiots so you don't get fired' doesn't seem like a very good way to have a successful company.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I think that's on the back of their business cards, in very small print.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It should have been fine this iteration. The required fixes aren't major* and there was no shortage of people telling them what's wrong with it.
* Mostly just to add a start button and optional boot-to-desktop (for all those desktop machines, duh!)
No sig today...
It's not about the OS anymore. And applications that are tied to an unpopular OS will eventually be left behind, which spells difficulty with a Microsoft applications division. Just the act of creating hardship for the users, which had worked so well in the past, is now only helping the competition. If Apple has a sheltered garden, Microsoft had a prison camp. But they can't keep the gate closed anymore.
Windows 8's biggest competition is Windows 7. This illustrates a fundamental problem with the business plan.
Perhaps the best strategy would be for a hypothetical OS division to adopt "OS as an application", and work on easily enabling legacy applications running on today's platforms, and recognize that this is only an interim business solution. There has been a lot of work in this area, but it tends to be something only geeks can do. Make something that my mom could install on a non-Windows box and run her old copy of Office, and you'd really have something. This will eventually happen anyway; rather than get soundly beaten, and have the OS division be a millstone around the other products' necks, Microsoft might as well participate.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They only need to first create the universe.
ALl the hard ware and parts of the Kinect that make it the Kinect where bought.
the iPod was built in house. Yes, it was a clever assembly of things, most of which already existed. But it was design in house. MS bought all the key Kinect tech after years of failing to be able to do it themselves.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Do you honestly think that windows 8 is going to cause a mass migration to osx or linux?" - Probably not but clearly a lot of people have switched to OSX. The bigger problem for MS is android. The audience on /. is technical but most people are not technical. They want something simple and easy to use. Android delivers on that. Plus, there is a ton of free software. Not spreadsheets and word processors but things that everyday people want to use.
The MS lock in was a lot more true 5 years ago than it is today. After the Vista debacle I gave up and got a Mac. I have MS Office for Mac and it works just fine for work stuff. I'll never buy another Windows PC. Why? Because I got tired of the way MS treated their customers. Got tired of license restrictions. I found better ways to get things done.
Microsoft has a Sudan Peoples Liberation Army licensing program for the Department of Aging and Adult Services? I had no clue!
The start menu wasn't 'incredibly awful' until they broke it in Windows 7. Then they said 'no-one uses the start menu, so let's get rid of it'.
The only thing they need to do to fix Windows 8 is remove the GUI and put back the one from Windows 7, preferably with the Windows XP start menu.
I can tell you're not in marketing. (Or maybe you're in the marketing division of Microsoft...your attitude is precisely ht problem they have)
The web is full of people not buying Windows 8 because they heard there's no start button. They want a start button? Microsoft should give it to them.
After you get the machine in their hands they can discover the new way of doing things and decide if they like it or not. The point is not to put any obstacles before the first step.
No sig today...
The problem is that there's people running Microsoft who still think the way to sell more Windows 8 isn't to listen to customers and fix Windows 8's problems,
There's a reason for this.
The root of the problem is that Microsoft believes in a zero-sum game, namely that:
"Empowering the customer results in Microsoft losing power."
This is a very common attitude in the publishing industry. They would rather lose their customers than lose their grip on power.
This is the driving philosophy that explains so much of what's going on in the industry:
* DRM -- Screw paying customers for the sake of retaining power over them
* Artificial limitations -- Hurt the customer so that products don't cannibalize each other
* Metro -- Badly inconvenience the customer for the sake of some dubious strategic marketing theories
* Locked-down RT bootloader -- Make the hardware less valuable simply to prevent a few Android installs
The list goes on and on.
The major problem is that it keeps dumping you into "Metro" mode while you're trying to use desktop programs.
Getting back from metro mode to desktop mode takes some effort, and it's a constant annoyance.
No sig today...
Which just goes to show you, profit isn't everything. Profit is great and all, I know that but if that's all that you care about eventually you lose your way and lose the confidence of the very people who are giving you the money that makes you profitable.
Then again, that can be applied to so many other companies other than Microsoft. GM, Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, several of the large banks, etc.
I've always said that this fucked up need for more and more quarterly profits will lead to the downfall of companies. All Wall Street cares about is profit, profit, and more profit. The people on Wall Street do not give a damn about the future well being of the companies that they fuck over, when they're done fucking them over and all that's left is a dead husk of a company they'll just go onto the next company to fuck over.
This need for more and more quarterly profits needs to end and we need to get back to a economically sound long term investment strategy.
OK, let me clarify ... because clearly you feel the need to be pedantic.
What unique combination of technologies to produce something novel and groundbreaking has MS developed over the last 10 years?
They couldn't make their own motion controller work, so they bought one and integrated that with XBox, but they didn't build it. The Zune was a "me too" product which apparently 'squirted' and nobody bought. Their tablets and phones, just more "me too" and the market doesn't seem interested. Tabbed browsing, Firefox had that before MS. I'm told at one point they made decent keyboards and mice -- but not what I'd call innovative.
Other than that, I don't believe Microsoft has 'innovated' much of anything in years. And in a lot of cases, they've done a piss poor job of copying what other people created.
I'm not saying you need to create every single piece of technology from scratch without relying on anything before. I'm saying they haven't strung together existing bits of technology to create anything which is novel or innovative in a very long time.
If Microsoft is reduced to making copies of other products, resting on their laurels and collecting revenue from Office and OS upgrades and not making new and interesting things ... then Microsoft despite all of this money on R&D is either pissing it away, or the management are incapable of taking it to the product stage and have anybody buy it.
Sorry, but Microsoft has become everything they used to criticize IBM for being -- too large to adapt, too rigid in their thinking, and missing out on what it is people are looking for in some of these newer technologies.
By rights with their resources and spending on R&D Microsoft should be putting out reams of cool stuff. Instead they've given us tablets and phones nobody wants, Windows 8 and not a whole lot else.
Microsoft may not be in trouble now, but long-term if they're not capable of making anything new and interesting ... they could be really screwed, because gone are the days where they could just trot out an OS every few years and an update to Office and make shit tons of money. You only have to look at their market share in tablets and phones to realize that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Kinect was a complete technology even before they bought it
No it was not. Primesense had a sensor and some algorithms in a consumer and developer unfriendly package. The sensor wasn't a new idea -- structured light has been around for decades The algorithms weren't a new -- the CV algorithms to process the data have been around for decades. Microsoft took these ideas and went the last mile of making it a reality for consumers and developers, which obviously is not easy since no one had done it before.
Microsoft buying the Primesense sensor and using it in their product is equivalent to Apple buying a multi-touch screen and using it in the iPhone. But no one is saying the iPhone wasn't an innovation.
Again, if you're arguing that very little actual innovation takes place, you will see a great deal of agreement.
No, I'm arguing that innovation is almost never the sudden development of a new and radical technology from scratch, but almost always the application or combination of existing technology in new ways. Even look at the Internet, the greatest innovation of our generation, It didn't happen over night, built by one company or entity from scratch; it was an evolution of technologies over 20 or so years.
[T]he Kinect is not innovative, it's just better than other similar things which came before
Really? Something comes out which is better than everything before it and that's not an innovation? What exactly is *your* idea of an innovation. You've told us plenty about what isn't an innovation, but I don't really see any indication from you about what *is* an innovation.
Really? Something comes out which is better than everything before it and that's not an innovation?
Microsoft didn't do the innovating part. They did the packaging. I hear that Microsoft is spending some money on actual innovation in biotech, though. that makes sense given Gates is massively personally invested in Big Pharma.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What the fuck are you reading?
Yeah, if you count 'other' at 40% of the market. And all Android.
Or, if you want an Apple spin. Apple's market share is still more than the next four tablet competitors combined.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I can't see any successful big ideas which have come out of Google in the last 5 years. The last good big idea was probably Android in 2007 and even that emerged partly from an acquisition. Apple's last good big idea was again in 2007.
??
Google Docs, Chromecast, Chrome, Voice navigation in Android, Map integration in Android, Social apis, Chrome frame, Google glass, Chrome OS.
http://saveie6.com/
I dunno. Although I don't foresee a "mass migration", Windows 8 is certainly drumming up a dangerous amount of interest in alternatives to Windows. It's gotten a LOT easier to talk people into giving user-friendly Linux distros like Ubuntu and Mint a try (and I've found most people tend to adapt to Ubuntu extremely well and end up loving it; hell, I'm a power-user who uses KDE but even I will admit that if you look at Ubuntu Unity from the perspective of being newbie-friendly, it's damn-well designed) and I've seen a lot more people willing to shell out the extra $ for Macs because OS X is a hell of a lot more appealing than Windows 8. I don't see Windows losing its lead in the PC OS market all that soon, but it's definitely faltering.
As tired as the whole "this is the year of Linux on the desktop!" crap has gotten, I will say that it's gotten to the point where you can realistically set up your "average Joe" users with Ubuntu and they'll be happy to have an OS that's easy to use, free, and comes with what they need. (Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice for most people.) As someone who does PC repair, BTW, I've tested out Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and 13.04 on a lot of different machines, and it's _extremely_ rare I run into any notable issues. Usually it'll run perfectly right off the bat, from my experience, and from my own more advanced usage perspective, I've only run into a few major issues, all of which were because I am a gamer and manually install the latest video drivers from AMD, and importantly, they were all fairly easy to fix, which is more than I can say of a large amount of the "Windows won't boot" scenarios I come across.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
I love how badly this strategy is backfiring. A lot of game developers have realized that OpenGL is a better choice than D3D, for the simple fact that if they use OpenGL, their work is easily portable between PS4, iOS, Android, OS X, Linux, and others, while with DirectX they're stuck with Windows and XBox.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Splitting Microsoft along business/consumer lines:
MicrosoftBusiness: *WindowsDesktop (Profitable)
Profits for Windows Desktop are declining.
*WindowsServer (Profitable) *WindowsServerApplications (Profitable) *WindowsCloud (Profitable) *WindowsMouseAndKeyboardWhatnots (Profitable)
MicorsoftConsumer: *Bing (Lossy) *Xbox (BreakEvens) *WindowsPhone (Lossy) *WindowsTablets (Lossy)
I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.
You missed a new profit center - Android Racketeering.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Howso? I don't see them in that position at all.
A person or business can set themselves up with the best of technology *without ever using a Microsoft product*...Can you name one significant area where that isn't true?
Sure, pre-Intel/Mac days for some database stuff a Windows machine is the only thing that made sense, but those days are long gone.
I think M$ is dead...watch closely and observe. This is what it looks like when a giant tech company fails.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Unify them by making them totally separate functional modes. Interesting strategy, that's for sure.
Yes. Microsoft even screwed that up.
Metro apps should have been able to run in Windows on the desktop. Instead they split the OS into two glaringly incompatible modes, and forced users to keep switching between them.
Their problem was that no-one was going to buy a Microsoft tablet without apps, and no-one was going to write apps for a tablet with no market share. So they had to push that Metro crap onto desktop users to try to get people to write apps that could then run on tablets and phones.
Hugh Pickens writes...blah blah blah...
Who is Hugh Pickens? I ask only because for someone to suggest that this is what MS needs to do, would need a precedent for this to be suggested, where this person would have been apart of and seen the end result directly. This person would have had to have been in a previous situation with a similar company with similar situations and have seen the progress in order to turn around and suggest that fracturing a company into smaller parts is for the better. If you have proof that this works, then please put on the table. I have yet to hear of companies that got better when they fractured off into smaller pieces, if anything, it has been the reverse, merger after merger solidifies the companies overall hold on the market and offers stability towards unifying that all sub sections follow the same protocols and can lose the dead weight of needless duplication of processes.
And yet you are still locked into Microsoft because you felt the need to buy their Office suite.
This isn't a criticism, merely an observation - I am in the same boat. For me, this lock in is about being able to create and edit business documents, as well as downloading existing Office documents and templates from the web and not having to worry about whether they will work in Numbers or Open Office.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Microsoft didn't do Surface the way they did because they thought it was best. It was the only choice they had, given their ongoing business strategy.
The problem with Microsoft's strategy is that it counts on sitting back and letting innovation happen elsewhere. Then seeing what works for their competitors, cloning it, and using their monopoly desktop OS and office suite to force their clone to 'succeed'. That strategey worked with local networks. Cloning Novell's networking and tying it to Windows killed Novell and made Microsoft the leader in file servers. Bundling exchange into Windows killed off all the other desktop email competitors. It worked with the internet (sort of). They were able to bundle, coerce their way from behind to make IE the clear 'winner'. If the Justice Department (and the EU) hadn't stepped in, that might still be the case. IIS is only there because everybody already had Windows servers in place.
But mp3 players were a different story, since there was no real advantage conferred by the Windows and Office monopolies. They were way to late to market and had no thumb to put on the scales to compensate.
That seems to be the case with phones and tablets, though they still stand a chance of using Office to skew the tablet market. But the quick and dirty desktop Office made RT unnecessarily complex as an iPad competitor and too expensive as Nexus 7 / Kindle Fire competitor - especially without all the 3rd party apps those other platforms have. So they're trying to use Windows 8 as a thumb on the scale to generate those 3rd party apps - fucking up traditional Windows in the process. Sure all new PC's will come with Windows 8 - problem is nobody's buying new PC's, partially because they don't need them, partially because they don't like Windows 8 (or at least what they've heard about it), and partially because there are other shiny toys grabbing all the attention.
So Microsoft has 'solved' the phone/tablet problem by introducing the fragmentation problem from hell. Sure there are lots of Gingerbread Android phones out there, but most Android apps can still run on them. Compare that to XP, Vista and Windows 7. Can they run Metro apps? No. So who's gonna write them? Maybe there will be some, but the vast majority of Windows apps are Win32 desktop apps, and those aren't going to go away - or be rewritten for the most part. But with all the talk about 'Metro being the future', who's gonna invest heavily in their existing win32 base either. I see this accelerating the move to web-based apps on the desktop without affecting the mobile market much at all.
But breaking up the company won't help now. They're already way too late with phones and tablets, and a new independent mobile unit would be even later.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
But it was their own fault - Microsoft would partner with one small company with the deal that if that small company works exclusively for them, Microsoft would stomp, thump, smash and crush all the other competitors. Startups would fail to get and lose all funding the minute Microsoft announced they were going to enter that market. In the end everything ended up as Microsoft DOS, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Spreadsheet, Microsoft Calendar, Microsoft Explorer, Microsoft Exchange (mail server). When Microsoft entered any market, that displaced a good few experienced programmers.
With Microsoft occupying the desktop ground, that left everyone else to flee to the small islands (mobile devices) or the mountains (cloud computing). Then over time, these markets grew and grew, forming their own ecosystems of companies collaborating as communities.
Then eventually, the mobile platforms become powerful enough to run web and email browsers. That takes away the motive for a lot of consumers who just want a PC to surf the web or send/receive email. The smart-phone or table treplaces the digital camera and the need to drive to an internet cafe miles away while on holiday.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Nope its causing something even worse for MSFT, they are sticking with Win 7 thus creating another XP for them that just won't go away and instead of buying new systems they have the ones they have fixed and use the money they save for new Google and Apple gear.
This not only fucks MSFT by giving them another XP headache but its causing all their OEMs to get on the phone to Google because people go into a store and 3 minutes of fighting that damned "LOL Hai I'm a smartphone, did you see our appstorez? LOL" Windows 8 is all they need to know and they just walk away, NO SALE. And corporate has said Win 8 is a DO NOT WANT so they can't even hope for the old "folks will get used to it at the office" trick and for the final insult Lenovo and Acer are shipping their systems with a third party shell and hacks to make Win 8 look and act like Win 7 which will fragment the audience even more.
Linux isn't what MSFT should fear, its flatline on the desktop and will stay that way, no what MSFT should fear is all these triple and quad desktops sold these past 6 years and all these dual core laptops that is more than "good enough". Nobody is switching away but they sure as fuck isn't buying anything new from MSFT either and that is a slow death for a software house.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Do you honestly think that windows 8 is going to cause a mass migration to osx or linux? If not, then what possible incentive do MS have to improve it? Users will either buy it anyway and put up with it, or they will buy windows 7 instead, either way is fine for MS. .
No. If my employer gets Windows 7 instead then he will probably just get more Office 2010 licenses. Which means I can get by with alternatives which by now can read 2010 formats. If OTOH my Windows 8 he will also get the newest office and the alternatives won't be able to read the most recent formats.
So getting Win 7 is a loss, though not as big a loss as going with Linux or OSX.
Oh, you articulated my primary issue with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 so well with a single line - "Metro -- Badly inconvenience the customer for the sake of some dubious strategic marketing theories"
In my role as a primary policy maker to many large global companies, I've outright dictated a complete ban of anything with Windows 8 and a refusal to allow it's connectivity to any network primarily because the user interface is so foul in every possible way and hinders efficiencies. Fortunately my emotional response was met with enthusiastic agreement by all directors, administrators, managers and practically everyone else so I don't seem like a dictator with an axe to grind and more like someone with common sense. Both are true.
Some admins even took this a step further and banned Windows 8 for BYOD connectivity as well... but I expect that will eventually be reversed when some executives try and connect their fancy convertible ultra-tablets. Hasn't happened yet.