Head of MS Research On Special Projects, Google X and Win 9

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Head of MS Research On Special Projects, Google X and Win 9

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 7, 2014 @11:38AM from the listen-up dept.

Velcroman1 (1667895) writes "Microsoft Research finally earned some long-overdue headlines last week, when ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reported on a 'Special Projects' group that would tackle disruptive technology and ultimately Google X. Peter Lee, head of the division and its 1,100 researchers, told Digital Trends he's not frustrated by all of that glowing press for Google's researchers and the lack of attention for MSR. 'Frustrating is not quite the right word,' Lee said, in an interview ahead of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for MSR's New York City office. 'I like Google X. The people there are good friends of mine. Astro [Teller, "Captain of Moonshots" with Google X] took classes from me at Carnegie Mellon, he's a great guy doing great stuff. But the missions are different. We want to make things better and ship them. That will always be primary for us. It will be secondary for them.'"

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Special Projects? by TechyImmigrant · 2014-05-07 11:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Does the author know that "Special Projects" is corporate speak for "Taken off of primary responsibilities prior to being fired".

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1. Re:Special Projects? by yuhong · 2014-05-07 14:12 · Score: 1
  
  At MS?
2. Re:Special Projects? by TechyImmigrant · 2014-05-07 17:51 · Score: 1
  
  Never worked there. I could name some other techy corps where executives were moved to "Special Projects" while the terms of their firing were worked out.
  
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Is this the team that... by oic0 · 2014-05-07 11:59 · Score: 3, Insightful

Is this the same team that killed the start button and moves all the options and settings around in a seemingly random manner for every version change of everything? At work users ask me "whats different in office 2013 vs the 2010 I was using?". They moved crap around so you have to find it again and they made it look a little different.
1. Re:Is this the team that... by MightyMartian · 2014-05-07 12:57 · Score: 1
  
  I was doing training today and had to help the new guy add our IT request mailbox to Outlook, and while it took me a few seconds to find where Account Settings in Outlook 2010 had been moves, once I got to the dialog, it was basically the same bloody window that had been there since at least Outlook 2000.
  
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2. Re:Is this the team that... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 14:39 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, that's what Microsoft Research does. Moron.
3. Re:Is this the team that... by EEPROMS · 2014-05-07 16:07 · Score: 1
  
  still hasn't got font scaling to work in Windows 8.*. Microsoft worries so much about the so called big picture that they cant fix simple things like making the fonts in their default apps auto size correctly. A great example is the weather app, in the hourly forecast section the text header reads as "Hourly Forec" were I should see "Hourly Forecast". It is little things like this that are making Microsoft look like fools when Apple do see these so called visual errors as being a serious fuck up. Guys fix all the little things before worrying about the big picture because there will be no money to finance the big picture at the rate you are going.
4. Re:Is this the team that... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 17:46 · Score: 0
  
  Is this the same team that killed the start button and moves all the options and settings around in a seemingly random manner for every version change of everything? At work users ask me "whats different in office 2013 vs the 2010 I was using?". They moved crap around so you have to find it again and they made it look a little different.
  No, it's not.
  
  MSR is pretty well separated from the product/business end of MS (think Bell Labs) and sort of does its own thing.
5. Re:Is this the team that... by TheRaven64 · 2014-05-07 20:51 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  How on earth did this get moderated insightful? MSR is not the Microsoft UI group, it is a well respected research organisation. If you actually want to know what they're working on, pick up the proceedings of pretty much any top tier computer science conference and you'll see a couple of papers from them.
  
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6. Re:Is this the team that... by Stuarticus · 2014-05-07 21:13 · Score: 0
  
  No, I think this is the team that showed us the Courier and told us not to buy an iPad because it would be out soon and would be sooo awesome.
  
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  If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
7. Re:Is this the team that... by Richy_T · 2014-05-08 02:02 · Score: 2
  
  Meh, it's not like Netscape/Firefox and Thunderbird haven't had their fair share of moving things around. And what's with Gimp splitting "Save As" out to "Save As" and "Export" so I have the extra step of having to cancel a useless dialog every time I want to save a png?
8. Re:Is this the team that... by Gibgezr · 2014-05-08 06:44 · Score: 1
  
  GIMP's choice of making "Save As" separate from "Export" was infuriating. Like MS Office ribbon bars, it was a step backwards in usability.Can anyone give me a good reason why all of the functionality of "Export" and "Save As" shouldn't be bundled into a single menu selection?
Corporate speak for... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 12:01 · Score: 0

"We want to make things better and ship them."
We want to be Apple, not Google.
finally earned some long-overdue headlines??? by QuietLagoon · 2014-05-07 12:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

And those headlines were about vaporware? Decades go by and Microsoft never changes, ~~trying to compare Microsoft vaporware against the shipping products of competitors.....~~
1. Re:finally earned some long-overdue headlines??? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 12:51 · Score: 0
  
  I thought Windows 8 changed everything when it shipped
But they're going to put Office in the CLOUD! by raymorris · 2014-05-07 12:09 · Score: 2

The article says they are working on innovative new things, like making your desktop rely on the cloud. That's amazing.
A bit condescending by jgotts · 2014-05-07 12:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

A bit condescending of an attitude for someone that is working at Microsoft, a company that is clearly on the wane. People don't go to Microsoft to create anything great. They go there for a stable income for their family and mortgage.
1. Re: A bit condescending by maccodemonkey · 2014-05-07 14:27 · Score: 2
  
  Microsoft has it's supporters. Smart people who are big fans of the company and want to see them win.
  And I say that as an Apple supporter. Maybe that's how I know these people exist.
  It's not necessarily the rule, but I know a lot of people raised during the tail end of the 90s who are huge Microsoft fans. In those days Apple was dying and Linux was non existent. Microsoft was helping create cell phones, computers, cars, pocket computers, and watches.
  To quite a few in that generation, they remember Microsoft as the true innovator behind the PC revolution. To the rest of us? Not so much.
2. Re: A bit condescending by spacepimp · 2014-05-08 01:32 · Score: 1
  
  Certainly there are smart people who want MS to win, but they would be deliberately ignoring the concentrated efforts at doing anything to stifle free and open competition. SCO v IBM and the lawsuits and their current mirroring of FUD efforts against Android are primary examples. Attacking open source to promote closed proprietary products is bad for humanity.
3. Re:A bit condescending by squiggleslash · 2014-05-08 02:07 · Score: 2
  
  I think Microsoft has done some great things, it's just by the time they get to market there are problems.
  Windows 8 has a superb tablet UI. If it had been left at that, with the tablet UI version of the OS shipped on tablets, and an unbroken desktop version shipped for desktops; or a core MVC API been implemented making it easy for developers to target both desktops and tablets acknowledging the completely different UIs and expected workflows then they did, we'd all be using it and Apple would be back in decline. Unfortunately...
  I feel like they're a much more inventive, innovative, company than they were 15 years ago. It's just they have some awful upper management that tends to cripple projects before they see the sunlight.
  
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4. Re:A bit condescending by cusco · 2014-05-08 05:47 · Score: 2
  
  This. I've worked on the MS campus quite a few times over the years and there are a lot of brilliant, dedicated people who work there. We didn't have a dedicated area to work in so generally set up shop in the common areas, and ended up overhearing a **LOT** of complaints about incompetent and clueless management. Dilbert-level stupid shit, guys who would give the PHB and Catbert a run for their money. Not to mention Ballmer's insane annual review process, which had team members volunteering to rotate the 'failing' rating among them to keep the team from being destroyed.
  Once again, the MBA Disease strikes deeply at US businesses.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
5. Re:A bit condescending by WheezyJoe · 2014-05-08 05:59 · Score: 2
  
  Microsoft "technology" is actually pretty good. Their products largely do exactly what they promise, and the company hires and continues to hire out of the best and brightest tech talent pool.
  
  It's their marketing that causes so much trouble, anger and teeth-gnashing. Their marketing people are infamously out of touch, habitually rely on (dubious) focus groups, but they're in charge and they consistently end up compromising their products with gimmicks and irritants intended to attract revenue for not-much-new. Most all of which fall flat, as consumers refuse the bait and stick with old releases that get the job done (e.g., Office 2003).
  
  I, for one, would happily pay for a new release of Windows and Office (and I know plenty of businesses that would do the same) if they simply ran and looked better; not different, better. Faster, more reliable, easier deployment, bugs squashed, new capabilities reflecting changes in technology... perhaps some new "killer feature". Instead, they deliver "different": no new capabilities, but requires new training, and new pricing schemes. Who needs that?
  
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Question... by Tasha26 · 2014-05-07 12:17 · Score: 0, Troll

Is this the same Microsoft Research team which researched and gave birth to a superb piece of shyte called Windows 8? A version Windows that cannot even update itself because it is that shitty under the hood!
1. Re:Question... by vux984 · 2014-05-07 14:17 · Score: 2
  
  Yeah, because nobody's ever had a distro upgrade fail on them ever in the history of linux. Pinhead.
2. Re:Question... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 14:43 · Score: 0
  
  You don't know what research is, do you?
3. Re:Question... by ratboy666 · 2014-05-07 15:00 · Score: 0
  
  Shill.
  See mommy? I want to play too!
  
  --
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4. Re:Question... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 23:28 · Score: 0
  
  Do you? They are working on W9 but didn't have a hand in W8. How thick are you?
5. Re:Question... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 23:30 · Score: 0
  
  Windows 7, no update fails. Mac OS X, no update fails. Now take your hippy gear and NSA-infected Linux and gtfo.
6. Re:Question... by vux984 · 2014-05-08 08:25 · Score: 1
  
  Windows 7, no update fails.
  Google only has millions of results for "Windows 7 service pack 1 won't install" and the same for OS X updates.
I can't wait! by paiute · 2014-05-07 12:22 · Score: 3, Funny

We want to make things better and ship them.
This is great! When did this new department start up?

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1. Re:I can't wait! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:31 · Score: 0
  
  We want to make things better and ship them.
  
  This is great! When did this new department start up?
  
  As soon as they fire every UX designer on staff. Ditto for Mozilla, GNOME and Slashdot.
2. Re:I can't wait! by TheRaven64 · 2014-05-07 20:56 · Score: 2
  
  That sounded odd to me too. MSR is really great at making things better, and MS is really good at completely ignoring everything MSR does when it comes to actually shipping products. It's fairly common to see research from MSR show up in open source projects years before MS notices it and incorporates it into a product. Apparently they've been trying to improve this for the last few years, but it's quite difficult to get researchers involved in technology transfer to the rest of the organisation without damaging their ability to do independent blue-sky research. They have had a few successes (F# came from MSR and seems to be gaining popularity), but not a huge number.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
3. Re:I can't wait! by gtall · 2014-05-07 21:53 · Score: 2
  
  I ride both side of that fence. The problem for researchers is that in order to solve a research problem, you need to knock it down to something quite small that you can get some mathematical modeling behind it and prove its properties. To solve an engineering problem, you need to corral several different technologies and get them all to work together. There are very few small engineering problems in the sense of generating new products.
  You might think to model the engineering problems in mathematics. The problem: scale. These are large problems with many very different parts. To model something that big in mathematics is asking more than humans can deliver because it requires you make several different areas of math work together when you have little theory for their interconnections. And any one engineering problem has several different models depending upon which aspect you are concentrating upon.
  Research problems might start as some aspect of an engineering problem, but you won't get much insight from the engineers who are not trained in abstract general methods. It frequently happens in mathematics that to solve a difficult problem, you need to enlarge its scope or generality even though it will still only cover a small slice of behavior. Engineers cannot even talk to you in your language because mathematics to them was done by long dead gods who brought the mathematics down from the mountain and none may change them.
  Engineering problems also have many intricacies, enough that makes their mathematics expressions awkward at best. To learn what those are, you need to do engineering. Engineering cannot be taught in that sense, you cannot sit down with your books and crank out a design. It takes a lot of prior experience. And engineers must also produce a product that can be produced efficiently. It won't do to have just any solution because it has some internal beauty like mathematics. It needs to be capable of reproduction and efficient reproduction at that. This notion isn't something readily expressible in mathematics.
Stop killing promising projects then. by andydread · 2014-05-07 12:25 · Score: 2

FTFS

a 'Special Projects' group that would tackle disruptive technology
"But the missions are different. We want to make things better and ship them. That will always be primary for us. It will be secondary for them."
Well you should have fixed and released the Courier dual-screen tablet instead of cancelling it if you wanted to introduce disruptive tech no?
1. Re:Stop killing promising projects then. by ourlovecanlastforeve · 2014-05-07 15:26 · Score: 2
  
  They did ship it, except it was called Surface Pro.
  
  And it didn't have two screens, it had one double density screen.
  
  I'm still confused about why they cannibalized their giant table-screen name for a new product, though.
2. Re:Stop killing promising projects then. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 21:42 · Score: 0
  
  I would have bought the shit out of that thing.
  The problem, from what I can tell, would be the piss-poor battery life for any useful sense of a tablet. (more so compared to other stuff)
  Right now if I were to turn my tablet on and check the battery stats page, the screen uses like half the power at mid brightness. Imagine 2 screens! You'd need a fusion reactor for that bad boy.
  Batteries are holding everything back at the moment. God damn it, where is li-air already?
  I can't wait until we finally have good batteries. It will change everything.
  But for now, tech is winning the race against the power source. Even now with my tablet plugged in and on full, it can't even run forever because it uses more power than the line can supply. (mainly the terrible USB Specs problem admittedly)
3. Re:Stop killing promising projects then. by Nemyst · 2014-05-08 04:13 · Score: 1
  
  The Courier was MSR's project, but the rest of MS killed it. It's not a fault of Microsoft Research.
"It's the biggest rewrite ever" by jones_supa · 2014-05-07 12:31 · Score: 1

Close to the release of Win9, I swear they will once again begin hyping how this is "the biggest rewrite of Windows that we have ever seen", while it actually will be the same Win32-style base turbocharged, with some new tweaks applied and some others taped on the top.
1. Re:"It's the biggest rewrite ever" by ourlovecanlastforeve · 2014-05-07 15:22 · Score: 1
  
  9 should be good.
  
  Remember, every other version of Windows is good.
  
  95? Shit. Crashed all the time. 98? Awesome. Transformative. Amazing. Me? Shit. Crashed all the time. XP? Amazing. Transformative. Vista? Shit. Crashed all the time. And there were internal memos leaked that exposed the fact it was intentionally difficult and frustrating to use. 7? Amazing. Transformative. 8? Shit. Didn't crash all the time, but fucking Metro. And now all the settings are in two different places, and every time you try to find one it switches to the fucking Metro interface.
  
  The reason Microsoft does this: It allows them to sell 2 Windows licenses for every PC OEMs sell. OEM licenses require OEMs to sell PC's with only the latest version of Windows, so the OEM has to buy one license for Windows 8, then another license for Windows 7 so they can ship Windows 7 as demanded by the customer.
2. Re:"It's the biggest rewrite ever" by cusco · 2014-05-08 06:22 · Score: 1
  
  If one ignores the consumer releases that rule doesn't hold up at all. Windows 3.11, Windows for Workgroups, was truly transformative in the work space. NT 3.51, with its domain structure, authentication, groups and NTFS was also transformative to the office network. NT 4.0 was a step up, but Windows 2000 server and workstation with Active Directory and Group Policies were also another giant leap forward. XP/Server 2003 and Server 2008 have been incremental, as has Win 7. I've so far been spared the annoyance of dealing with Server 2012/Win8, but I haven't heard much boasting about advances there.
  
  --
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Windows 9 may be sooner by Joe_Dragon · 2014-05-07 12:42 · Score: 1

they may just name windows 8.2 or 8.1 U2 windows 9 just to get rid for the bad taste of windows 8.
1. Re:Windows 9 may be sooner by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 14:32 · Score: 0
  
  they may just name windows 8.2 or 8.1 U2 windows 9 just to get rid for the bad taste of windows 8.
  True, but they still have to remove all of the "suck" out of Windows 8.1 U1, or else they just risk continuing that bad taste in Win9. And that could certainly push Windows 9 back a bit. Windows 9 must succeed--Microsoft's reputation is already suffering badly enough with every other release being a consumer failure, I doubt they want to see what happens if they produce two turkeys in a row.
  Also, if someone from Microsoft is reading this, all you need to do is give your users the ability to use one UI for everything. I don't care if it's Metro (assuming the Metro app market isn't as anemic as it currently is, natch), or a desktop, or some mashup, or something totally new. But seriously, if someone is operating in one UI and they open an image file, the very last thing that should happen is for them to get shunted into a totally different UI. Not rocket science here, people. I certainly hope Windows 8 is the first, last, and only OS that behaves like this.
2. Re:Windows 9 may be sooner by ourlovecanlastforeve · 2014-05-07 15:24 · Score: 1
  
  >Windows 9 must succeed--Microsoft's reputation is already suffering badly enough with every other release being a consumer failure, I doubt they want to see what happens if they produce two turkeys in a row.
  
  And what are you going to do if you don't like Windows 9? Go get Windows from another software company? That's right. Let the butthurt in.
3. Re:Windows 9 may be sooner by scumdamn · 2014-05-07 18:15 · Score: 1
  
  You can just stick with Windows 7 for a long ass time. I don't have any plans to move away from it since it works fine with any hardware out there.
4. Re:Windows 9 may be sooner by ciderbrew · 2014-05-07 21:56 · Score: 1
  
  7 is fine. MS list the Extended Support End Date as 1/14/2020. That will do.
  How long have people been hanging on to XP? - 14 years and going? http://support.microsoft.com/l...
Well, ship them then. by the_other_chewey · 2014-05-07 12:45 · Score: 4, Insightful

"We want to make things better and ship them." – That's an interesting quote.

Over the last decades, I've seen some really amazing demos of things being worked
on at MSR. Has any of it ever shipped? As a real product, I mean, not as some half
done and by now abandoned proof of concept?
1. Re:Well, ship them then. by sootman · 2014-05-07 13:28 · Score: 1
  
  "We want to make things better and ship them."
  One word: Vista. Years behind schedule with most big expected features cut.
  Two more words: Windows 8.
  Also: the original Surface. (Big-ass table.) Who thought that was worth shipping? (To the extent that it did.)
  Seriously, what planet is this guy on? "Better" and "shipping" don't belong in the same sentence when talking about MS. What was the last thing that was good and shipped anywhere near on time and wasn't a steaming pile on release day? Windows 2000? The MS Natural mouse?
  
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2. Re:Well, ship them then. by Brulath · 2014-05-07 13:30 · Score: 1
  
  Shipping something could also take the form of submitting a patent application, which they probably did.
3. Re:Well, ship them then. by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2014-05-07 13:46 · Score: 1
  
  "We want to make things better and ship them."
  
  Well, they could make things better for a lot of folks, if they would just start shipping Windows 7 again.
  
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4. Re:Well, ship them then. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:45 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  MSR have been responsible for a lot of advancements in graphics technologies (and not just in their own products). They have also done a heap around voice recognition and natural language. Then you have all the visual studio stuff they have contributed. I am sure if you go to the MSR website you will find a ton more, those are just the areas I am personally aware of.
5. Re:Well, ship them then. by rogoshen1 · 2014-05-07 15:59 · Score: 1
  
  didn't they create the intellimouse explorer (those were hot shit back in 1999.) as well as the natural keyboard?
6. Re:Well, ship them then. by mrxak · 2014-05-07 19:25 · Score: 2
  
  I've spent some time talking to guys who work at MSR. I believe they do want to make things better. I also believe they want to ship them. What I don't believe is MS management wants to make things better or ship anything that MSR comes up with.
  Maybe with the new CEO, things will change. Maybe that's just wishful thinking on the part of the MSR guys.
  
  --
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  Onions Will Kill You
7. Re:Well, ship them then. by gtall · 2014-05-07 22:04 · Score: 2
  
  The guy was saying "research" when he meant "development". I doubt much development gets done at MSR beyond proof of concept. MS appears to lack an internal structure to do development starting at the output of MSR. And that might be due to marketing being too big for MS.
  If you think about it, marketing is naturally antagonistic to new ideas. They spend years developing markets for products. Being asked to downplay those markets and their sunk costs for something new which has no track record of producing bonuses for the serfs manning the marketing barricades is asking them to cut their own pay. Why would they do that? There is no incentive. It won't do for management to say, but this is going to be big and allow us to compete against Apple in this market.
  Take fondleslabs. MS wants this new market. However, their marketing has just spent the last few decades selling customers on desk and laptops and their souls to Satan. Why should they get behind something that will eat their bonuses? So MS forces through something. The marketers probably figured that if fondleslabs were going to be promoted, then their interface had to look something like desk and laptops. No one would put desktop UI on a fondle, so they went the other way...and result was Windows 8.
  Research had nothing to do with it.
8. Re:Well, ship them then. by harrybarman · 2014-05-07 22:06 · Score: 1
  
  Having worked in a research lab before (HP not MS), I really feel their pain with this one. Typically product divisions are completely consumed with making incremental improvements to existing products. Even if they do recognise the work you've done as strategic to their business they are often unwilling/unable to do anything about it.
  I think the best option for a research lab is to have a more formal marketplace for ideas. Product divisions can bid for an idea, but also ideas can be spun out into new buisiness areas, or even related startup firms. Olivetti research in Cambridge (UK) did a good job with this, they spawned quite a few innovative and successful firms. Researchers who really believe in an idea are often keen to move to a spinout to make it a success.
9. Re:Well, ship them then. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 00:20 · Score: 0
  
  No, shipping just means sending things to Bill to play with.
enterprise may not like MS cloud by Joe_Dragon · 2014-05-07 12:48 · Score: 0

I don't think the places where the use lot's of firewalls and disk encryption systems will just let systems upload documents to an MS powered cloud system where they may sell your data.
Allegiance by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 13:42 · Score: 1

Microsoft Research built a space game better than Elite, Freespace or EVE Online before MMOs even existed. I miss that Microsoft Research.
Microsoft Research wants to ship things? by Namarrgon · 2014-05-07 14:27 · Score: 2

News to me.

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1. Re:Microsoft Research wants to ship things? by Nemyst · 2014-05-08 04:15 · Score: 1
  
  Not really. It's not because MSR wants to ship things that the rest of MS will actually allow them to do so. Unfortunately, they're entirely subservient to the corporate structure, which is ludicrously averse to just about everything that comes from their research arm. It's sad, really.
Well.. by jon3k · 2014-05-07 14:31 · Score: 2

They have to figure out some way to convince you to buy the new one. That way they can say, well we deprecated the old version so you can't use that anymore (no patches or support) but hey! dont worry! we changed the graphics and moved some buttons around!

Microsoft knows they can't survive by trying to sell you a BETTER Office Suite. Their only option is to move it to the cloud and convince you to pay every month for access.
1. Re:Well.. by ourlovecanlastforeve · 2014-05-07 15:12 · Score: 3
  
  Yes, the "cloud" is the best thing that ever happened to software companies. Adobe came up with the original concept of taking away software that you install on your own computer and making you run it on their servers instead. This prevents people from finding a version of their product that serves their needs and never upgrading. Now instead of trying to force you to upgrade by introducing critical bugs that interrupt your workflow (I've seen it done in person, not at Adobe but at other companies) they simply shut off access to your data if you stop paying them. "That's a nice rendering. Be a shame if you were to... lose access to it. Oh by the way, your monthly tithe is due."
2. Re:Well.. by spacepimp · 2014-05-08 01:37 · Score: 2
  
  They actually could survive by selling a better office suite. The fact is the changes made to their software aren't widely regarded as better. They'd sell a better OS if it was genuinely and provably simpler, faster more secure : better. The problem is the licensing the ham fisted lock in attempts and newer closed formats top prevent departing: I am looking at you Sharepoint!
3. Re:Well.. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 03:44 · Score: 0
  
  Um, timesharing on mainframes was the original concept.
  Like everything else on PCs, it came from mainframes.
4. Re:Well.. by cusco · 2014-05-08 05:25 · Score: 1
  
  To be truthful, 90% of every version of Office since 4.3 has been wasted on 90% of end users. I do more complex things than most people, and I really can't justify using an office suite for something more complex than extracting data from a database and throwing it in a pivot table. Anything more than that really should be done with specialized tools. I'm not really sure what a "better office suite" would look like.
  
  --
  "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Transformative. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 16:11 · Score: 2, Informative

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

transform verb [ with obj. ] 1: make a marked change in the form, nature, or appearance of

98, XP, and 7 were not transformative. Hell, they were all just minor changes from their prior releases:
98 = 95 with IE stuck on
XP = 2000 with Luna stuck on
7 = Vista with a haircut
If anything, the versions you're calling shit - even though I agree they were shit - were much more transformational:
95 = Transformational jump from 3.x.
(Me was shit and pointless, yes. Utterly a stopgap between 98 and XP, because 2000 was never pushed as a consumer release.)
Vista = Transformative, but a mess. By the time 7 was released, the UAC and signed driver mess has been cleaned up.
If anything, 2000 (which you didn't actually mention) took NT and made it consumer/mainstream compatible with plug and play, USB, et al. (As mentioned above, XP was just this with the grotesque Luna. Of course, mentioning 2000 breaks your 'every other version of Windows is good' statement.
enterprise may not like Google cloud by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 17:09 · Score: 0

I don't think the places where the use lots of firewalls and disk encryption systems will just let systems upload documents to an Google powered cloud system where they may sell your data.
That quote is entirely the point. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 18:21 · Score: 0

Google:
1. Invent cool thing
2. Monetise cool thing
3. Profit.
M$:
1. have idea / look at what everyone else is doing (really? took you how long to 'invent' the surface pro after the ipad?
2. Prepare buisness plan including predicted sales figures
3. Present buisness plan to management
4. Revise idea including feedback from marketing, advertisiing, and helpful 'ideas' from other depts/management.
5. Repeat steps 2,3,4 at least several times.
6. Become depressed at complete balls-up of original idea.
7. Abandon idea. Return to step 1.
6. Abandon
Disruptive tech by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 00:34 · Score: 0

If they intend to make Windows 9 "disruptive" in the same sense that Windows 8 is, in some 10 years there will be no MS at all.
Project by Richy_T · 2014-05-08 01:58 · Score: 1

Windows 9, codename "Osborne"
Let me pull that up... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 11:58 · Score: 0

...on my Microsoft Surface.