I agree that they need to prune and focus.. and I absolutely hate how they make up the worst names for all there products and services (Windows RT anyone?) which only adds to the confusion about their offerings.. but what SHOULD be one of Microsoft's big advantages is that they have *all* the pieces of the puzzle.
If they could ever just work together and integrate them all they literally have most of everyday computing covered with their products. The potential for easy sharing of data across platforms and form factors as well as ease of setting up solutions is huge.
From developer tools to the desktop, server, tablet, phone and cloud they have all the pieces. They should be whupping the competition with the inherent flexibility and ability to get things done when all those platforms are under one roof.
I have no idea why they have stayed with their knife in the back culture so long but they need to change it.
I always chuckle when the technology crowd here at slashdot and the people leaning right on the political spectrum always seem to pump up nuclear power as the solution to our energy needs.
Sure, in theory with the proper safeguards it could be ok.. but as Yogi Berra said:
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is.."
And the cost for mistakes is so high and long lasting.
You don't go into a runaway market at the same price as the leader.
Microsoft should have significantly undercut the iPad pricing model if they wanted to have any hope with RT. The only useful differentiation that it has over Android and iOS tablets is the ability to run Office and most people with the consumer model tablets don't want to do that.
They really should just have skipped RT altogether. It just confuses the market.
They should have stuck with the Pro only, and marketed the hell out of the fact that you could do real work and run existing apps on it and it has a real keyboard!
Microsoft should have been prepared to lose money on the hardware as a loss leader for a significant amount of time to get share and then make it up with appstore and software sales later.
There is no purpose to it. It has no advantages over the existing lower power tablets except Office which is something that people who are using those tablets don't care about.
As intel improves the power requirements of their main chips the Surface Pro is where Microsoft should be focusing their efforts. A single device that functions both as a full fledged PC when needed and a tablet when needed is the immediate future. At least I know I don't want to lug around multiple devices.
The US entered economic downturns that started off as bad as the Great Depression. The difference was that in 1920, 1873, etc. the federal government did not attempt to intervene as Hoover and FDR did. None of those downturns lasted as long as the Depression, and yet progressives have the GALL to claim that their programs worked when it took WWII to end the stagnation.
WWII essentially equals Keynesian type government spending at an absurd scale (out of necessity in this case).
We did have a small surplus which was used to pay down debt or as a rainy day fund until the "conservative and fiscally responsible" government took over. Promptly, they cut taxes (GST) because a surplus obviously means taxes are too high!
Then the economy fell off the cliff and they have been running large deficits ever since. Not that I disagree with government spending during recession. It does help blunt the damage but the trick is getting back to the black afterwards. They have recently pushed their target for doing so out another year.
That all being said, we are still in better shape than many countries at the moment, due in large part to the previous govt having the political capital to rein in the deficits left by the previous "conservative and fiscally responsible" government.
Ontario is also running a very large deficit as are some other provinces.
Romney on the other hand is hard to pin down. He has taken every stance available on every issue.
I'm not crazy about Romney, but Paul Ryan ('Eddie Munster') positively scares the fuck out of me. He really is an odious, red-eyed demon. If Romney wins and decides to delegate a lot of (albeit constitutional) power to Ryan, we could be in for a world of suck.
Agreed. Anyone who thinks that highly of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged needs their head examined.
Even one of the disciples, Alan Greenspan, finally admitted that so much of what he believed for so long about rational self interest didn't pan out in reality.
Continued spending full speed ahead over the fiscal cliff.
If Romney wins, with the Paul Ryan VP, cutbacks would be a requirement.
I was under the impression that Obama essentially had punted until after the election because the Republican Congress won't raise new revenue at all no matter the level of cuts offered.
So the automatic cuts will be about to kick in and suddenly he is going to be armed with a big hammer to bring down on their favourite pet spending items post-election.. if he gets re-elected that is..
2. Dragging the US down to the same socialistic level so many others in the world are mired in....misery loves company you know.
Like Canada for example? You know the country everyone is currently ass kissing because we're in better fiscal shape than most? (Thanks Liberal Party)
3. Even less of the American "We're #1" groupthink by the country.....so we can just become more meek, less competitive, and just follow the lead of the UN.
I don't know about you but I don't think that if you're the best you need to pat yourself on the back about it all the time. That is called bragging and it gets kind of annoying.
4. An even lower level standard of living for the US...meaning we consume less, leaving more oil for China.
Probably true.. we're in a race to the bottom in the first world because the playing field isn't level. How is that Obama's fault again?
5. The US 4 years closer to financial failure...and rebirth as God knows what...I didn't study as far into Saul Alinsky as those in the Obama administration has, but I think this likely is their early goals they are currently in the midst of establishing:
It has been a long time coming. Sooner or later someone will be left holding the bag and be forced to use their political capital to make the cuts needed or at least rein things in to let growth make up the gap. Again, nothing to do with Obama unless you're going to blame the financial meltdown of the world on him personally.
And I'm not even saying that Obama has done a great job but I think anyone who is reasonable has to agree he came into a heck of a situation.
I'm not saying that Obama has done a great job. I think he squandered a lot of the extreme level of public goodwill that he had coming into office. However, he did drag the US kicking and screaming into the first world by passing healthcare reform (even if it didn't end up single payer thanks to campaign contributions to even his own party) and he did manage to blunt some of the economic disaster he was left with.. on the other hand he definitely should have thrown a ton of the wall streeters into jail instead of inviting them right back into the White House, but that is how the game is played now. It is the golden rule. Those with the gold make the rules.
Romney on the other hand is hard to pin down. He has taken every stance available on every issue. For the slashdot crowd, the fact that his numbers just don't add up should be a big red flag as well. In his desperation to get elected he just tells whatever crowd he is in front of exactly what they want to hear.. facts be damned.
The polarization, name calling, and divisiveness in politics is at an obscene level in the USA right now and unfortunately Canada isn't far behind. Truth seems to have gone right out the window.
They should lose money on every tablet they sell initially to get the damn things out there!
This is falling into the same trap as everyone else who has matched Apple's price --- Apple has the mindshare, the apps and the cool factor. You have to undercut that at least until you are well established!
and the profit motive at work.. it really brings a tear to the eye when I consider how well unregulated private industry can solve these problems that governments just waste money on!
I won't be buying a Surface until I see if it fulfills some of its promise, but if it does, I will be all over it.
I don't want to have a laptop/desktop and a tablet. I am trying to simplify the number of devices I am trying to maintain and synchronize and even if I need to use a dock of some sort for a bigger screen etc at work - I like what the Surface Pro potentially offers.
Being able to do actual work on it when need be, take advantage of existing applications, and then switch to tablet mode when I want to sit and read an ebook/watch a video/surf the web on the couch is a great setup.
I think it will be difficult for them to pull off but I am hoping they can do it.
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.
Subscription so there is a lack of up front cost and you still get the familiar Office software, Exchange email boxes and none of the headache of managing it yourself.
The situation being understaffed and underfunded but expected to keep everything working... my advice is get out while you can.
It just isn't worth it. The reason why the systems are all patch and duct tape is because they think cheap is good management - and the longer you keep it running the more it proves it to them.
And hey, their new boat they bought with their bonus for keeping expenses down is awesome!
I know that I am starting to sound like a Microsoft shill by defending them all the time but I have had a Windows Phone 7 for a few months now and I think it is an outstanding reboot of Windows phones.
The old Windows Mobile was horrible and they needed to rewrite the entire thing.
I like Metro, I like the integration with Sharepoint, Office, and using ActiveSync for my Exchange accounts. Now with the Mango my phone is also integrated with my Office365 account and Skydrive.
I know that the Windows Phone 7 is not popular at all, and in fact if you go into a store you will be steered away from them. Microsoft needs to market the hell out of the fact they actually have a *good* OS and user experience. It is fast, clean and easy to use. I think that most people trashing Windows Phone 7 have never used one for even a day.
I feel that Windows Phone is the middle of the road choice between Apple and Android right now: Apple is more locked down and Android is more open (and fragmented).
My wife has an Android and it *is* much more complicated. She is pretty tech savvy and it still took her some time to figure out some of the apps/features of the phone.
Then again, compared to the clean Metro tile interface, both iPhone and Android look horrendously busy to me now.
1) Much of the low hanging fruit being gone - thereby raising the cost of going farther down any road.
2) No big bad "enemy" to beat which makes us more unwilling to take risks that we may if something was "on the line".
3) Rampant individual greed/lobbying/taxcuts/evasion and decades of deficit spending by governments at every level have left them without the ability to invest in a big future.
the compensation and performance of many management positions
the short sightedness that dominates our culture vs long term sustainability of any kind
the rich minority and everyone else
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft is not worth less than half it was when Ballmer started.
The stock is.. maybe you heard there was a crash of technology stocks right around the time Ballmer took over?
Their revenue (and profits if I recall) are all much larger than they were 13 years ago.
I agree that they need to prune and focus.. and I absolutely hate how they make up the worst names for all there products and services (Windows RT anyone?) which only adds to the confusion about their offerings.. but what SHOULD be one of Microsoft's big advantages is that they have *all* the pieces of the puzzle.
If they could ever just work together and integrate them all they literally have most of everyday computing covered with their products. The potential for easy sharing of data across platforms and form factors as well as ease of setting up solutions is huge.
From developer tools to the desktop, server, tablet, phone and cloud they have all the pieces. They should be whupping the competition with the inherent flexibility and ability to get things done when all those platforms are under one roof.
I have no idea why they have stayed with their knife in the back culture so long but they need to change it.
I always chuckle when the technology crowd here at slashdot and the people leaning right on the political spectrum always seem to pump up nuclear power as the solution to our energy needs.
Sure, in theory with the proper safeguards it could be ok.. but as Yogi Berra said:
"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is.."
And the cost for mistakes is so high and long lasting.
You don't go into a runaway market at the same price as the leader.
Microsoft should have significantly undercut the iPad pricing model if they wanted to have any hope with RT. The only useful differentiation that it has over Android and iOS tablets is the ability to run Office and most people with the consumer model tablets don't want to do that.
They really should just have skipped RT altogether. It just confuses the market.
They should have stuck with the Pro only, and marketed the hell out of the fact that you could do real work and run existing apps on it and it has a real keyboard!
Microsoft should have been prepared to lose money on the hardware as a loss leader for a significant amount of time to get share and then make it up with appstore and software sales later.
RT was a disaster from the outset.
There is no purpose to it. It has no advantages over the existing lower power tablets except Office which is something that people who are using those tablets don't care about.
As intel improves the power requirements of their main chips the Surface Pro is where Microsoft should be focusing their efforts. A single device that functions both as a full fledged PC when needed and a tablet when needed is the immediate future. At least I know I don't want to lug around multiple devices.
Who cares?
People posting for help trying to progress.
I'm going to buy this game just because they have illustrated their point SO well.
The US entered economic downturns that started off as bad as the Great Depression. The difference was that in 1920, 1873, etc. the federal government did not attempt to intervene as Hoover and FDR did. None of those downturns lasted as long as the Depression, and yet progressives have the GALL to claim that their programs worked when it took WWII to end the stagnation.
WWII essentially equals Keynesian type government spending at an absurd scale (out of necessity in this case).
So.. you're contradicting yourself.
Canada does not have a balanced budget.
We did have a small surplus which was used to pay down debt or as a rainy day fund until the "conservative and fiscally responsible" government took over. Promptly, they cut taxes (GST) because a surplus obviously means taxes are too high!
Then the economy fell off the cliff and they have been running large deficits ever since. Not that I disagree with government spending during recession. It does help blunt the damage but the trick is getting back to the black afterwards. They have recently pushed their target for doing so out another year.
That all being said, we are still in better shape than many countries at the moment, due in large part to the previous govt having the political capital to rein in the deficits left by the previous "conservative and fiscally responsible" government.
Ontario is also running a very large deficit as are some other provinces.
Romney on the other hand is hard to pin down. He has taken every stance available on every issue.
I'm not crazy about Romney, but Paul Ryan ('Eddie Munster') positively scares the fuck out of me. He really is an odious, red-eyed demon. If Romney wins and decides to delegate a lot of (albeit constitutional) power to Ryan, we could be in for a world of suck.
Agreed. Anyone who thinks that highly of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged needs their head examined.
Even one of the disciples, Alan Greenspan, finally admitted that so much of what he believed for so long about rational self interest didn't pan out in reality.
Continued spending full speed ahead over the fiscal cliff.
If Romney wins, with the Paul Ryan VP, cutbacks would be a requirement.
I was under the impression that Obama essentially had punted until after the election because the Republican Congress won't raise new revenue at all no matter the level of cuts offered.
So the automatic cuts will be about to kick in and suddenly he is going to be armed with a big hammer to bring down on their favourite pet spending items post-election.. if he gets re-elected that is..
Lessee...
1. 4 More years of bowing down to other powers in the world, and likely "Apology Tour II: This time we're REALLY Sorry".
Pants on Fire. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/17/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-barack-obama-began/
2. Dragging the US down to the same socialistic level so many others in the world are mired in....misery loves company you know.
Like Canada for example? You know the country everyone is currently ass kissing because we're in better fiscal shape than most? (Thanks Liberal Party)
3. Even less of the American "We're #1" groupthink by the country.....so we can just become more meek, less competitive, and just follow the lead of the UN.
I don't know about you but I don't think that if you're the best you need to pat yourself on the back about it all the time. That is called bragging and it gets kind of annoying.
4. An even lower level standard of living for the US...meaning we consume less, leaving more oil for China.
Probably true.. we're in a race to the bottom in the first world because the playing field isn't level. How is that Obama's fault again?
5. The US 4 years closer to financial failure...and rebirth as God knows what...I didn't study as far into Saul Alinsky as those in the Obama administration has, but I think this likely is their early goals they are currently in the midst of establishing:
It has been a long time coming. Sooner or later someone will be left holding the bag and be forced to use their political capital to make the cuts needed or at least rein things in to let growth make up the gap. Again, nothing to do with Obama unless you're going to blame the financial meltdown of the world on him personally.
And I'm not even saying that Obama has done a great job but I think anyone who is reasonable has to agree he came into a heck of a situation.
I can only hope that Nate is correct.
I'm not saying that Obama has done a great job. I think he squandered a lot of the extreme level of public goodwill that he had coming into office. However, he did drag the US kicking and screaming into the first world by passing healthcare reform (even if it didn't end up single payer thanks to campaign contributions to even his own party) and he did manage to blunt some of the economic disaster he was left with.. on the other hand he definitely should have thrown a ton of the wall streeters into jail instead of inviting them right back into the White House, but that is how the game is played now. It is the golden rule. Those with the gold make the rules.
Romney on the other hand is hard to pin down. He has taken every stance available on every issue. For the slashdot crowd, the fact that his numbers just don't add up should be a big red flag as well. In his desperation to get elected he just tells whatever crowd he is in front of exactly what they want to hear.. facts be damned.
The polarization, name calling, and divisiveness in politics is at an obscene level in the USA right now and unfortunately Canada isn't far behind. Truth seems to have gone right out the window.
The spending on elections is disgusting.
I'm so glad it will be over either way..
Sure it did.
Because the users who actually have a clue what Firefox even is can't go get it themselves.
They should lose money on every tablet they sell initially to get the damn things out there!
This is falling into the same trap as everyone else who has matched Apple's price --- Apple has the mindshare, the apps and the cool factor. You have to undercut that at least until you are well established!
and the profit motive at work.. it really brings a tear to the eye when I consider how well unregulated private industry can solve these problems that governments just waste money on!
I'm with you on this one.
I won't be buying a Surface until I see if it fulfills some of its promise, but if it does, I will be all over it.
I don't want to have a laptop/desktop and a tablet. I am trying to simplify the number of devices I am trying to maintain and synchronize and even if I need to use a dock of some sort for a bigger screen etc at work - I like what the Surface Pro potentially offers.
Being able to do actual work on it when need be, take advantage of existing applications, and then switch to tablet mode when I want to sit and read an ebook/watch a video/surf the web on the couch is a great setup.
I think it will be difficult for them to pull off but I am hoping they can do it.
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.
All the reports say WinRT is including Office RT. Its as simple as that. WinRT comes with Office, so it costs more.
Win8 bundled with Office would cost more, too.
The correct information has no place in this latest opportunity for everyone to sound off about how bad Microsoft is!!
Subscription so there is a lack of up front cost and you still get the familiar Office software, Exchange email boxes and none of the headache of managing it yourself.
http://www.office365.com/
The situation being understaffed and underfunded but expected to keep everything working... my advice is get out while you can.
It just isn't worth it. The reason why the systems are all patch and duct tape is because they think cheap is good management - and the longer you keep it running the more it proves it to them.
And hey, their new boat they bought with their bonus for keeping expenses down is awesome!
I know that I am starting to sound like a Microsoft shill by defending them all the time but I have had a Windows Phone 7 for a few months now and I think it is an outstanding reboot of Windows phones.
The old Windows Mobile was horrible and they needed to rewrite the entire thing.
I like Metro, I like the integration with Sharepoint, Office, and using ActiveSync for my Exchange accounts. Now with the Mango my phone is also integrated with my Office365 account and Skydrive.
I know that the Windows Phone 7 is not popular at all, and in fact if you go into a store you will be steered away from them. Microsoft needs to market the hell out of the fact they actually have a *good* OS and user experience. It is fast, clean and easy to use. I think that most people trashing Windows Phone 7 have never used one for even a day.
I feel that Windows Phone is the middle of the road choice between Apple and Android right now: Apple is more locked down and Android is more open (and fragmented).
My wife has an Android and it *is* much more complicated. She is pretty tech savvy and it still took her some time to figure out some of the apps/features of the phone.
Then again, compared to the clean Metro tile interface, both iPhone and Android look horrendously busy to me now.
1) Much of the low hanging fruit being gone - thereby raising the cost of going farther down any road.
2) No big bad "enemy" to beat which makes us more unwilling to take risks that we may if something was "on the line".
3) Rampant individual greed/lobbying/taxcuts/evasion and decades of deficit spending by governments at every level have left them without the ability to invest in a big future.
the complete disconnect between:
the compensation and performance of many management positions
the short sightedness that dominates our culture vs long term sustainability of any kind
the rich minority and everyone else
I know :(
I find it strange and disconcerting how the neo-con groupthink has swept through the media and public here now.