Detecting which mouse button was pressed would be the obvious case here. The problem is that the W3C mouse button definitions, while "standard", are retarded. Microsoft implemented a system (I dunno whether they did it before or after the W3C spec was approved) that makes a hell of a lot more sense.
There happens to be enough agreement that you can correctly detect the right button, but detecting the left button or middle button is a huge pain. (If you get the event at all, and it's *not* the right button, you can generally assume it's the left button... so.)
Note to IE bashers: most places where IE deviates from the standards, the IE implementation makes a hell of a lot more sense. There are entire JavaScript applications I can't deploy on anything but IE because of the standards' lack of a property like ReadyState.
Given, I'm not in DC, so maybe I'm massively misunderstanding... but you're saying the government screwed up the HOV lanes because DC commuters came up with their own solution that relies on having HOV lanes!? It sounds like the HOV lanes in DC are doing exactly what they're designed to be doing?
Here in Washington (the good one, not the lousy one with the Federal Government all over it), I agree with the OP. HOV lanes don't increase carpooling one bit, because the odds you have the same starting point, same destination and same schedule as another commuter are infinitesimally small.
A much better solution here is encouraging telecommuting, since we have so many tech workers. But the government so far has been completely hands-off there. (Although in practice, most tech companies here are already ok with telecommuting for at least part of the week.)
Are you saying that if the ebooks were stored as 1200 DPI scanned images (totalling up to 4 GB or more) than suddenly they'd be justified in charging $50?
What's an anti-privacy measure? Like, it forces you at gunpoint to enter your real name and address or something?
The analogy would be the advertisements companies putting a RFID tag in your car, that would be detected by each billboard you happened to pass by. Would you be OK with that level of location tracking?
Yes.
That's not to say I'd let them just put the thing in my car without compensating me in some way. But that's not what you asked.
I wouldn't.
Turns out the world doesn't revolve around you.
Since advertising is inevitable on the web, if you want sites to continue to provide (otherwise) free content, than I'm all for tracking behavior across sites. It means more targeted ads, which means higher ad rates, which means fewer ads overall. Think about it.
And reverse the scenario: what information are you so afraid of divulging? "Oh he went to cnn.com then he went to foxnews.com! WHAT A SCANDAL!" Is that what you imagine would happen? Nobody looks at the data at a personally-identifiable level because: 1) There's too much of it anyway 2) They can't do a better job sorting it out manually than the computers can automatically 3) Nobody gives a shit about what you do on the web
Also note that reputable ad servers do not host ads on porn sites, and porn ad servers do not host ads on reputable sites. So there's *no* data that links your cnn.com visit to hotdonkeyporn.com, if that's what you're nervous about. You pervert.
Look, be concerned about your rights eroding. I'm all for that, and I approve. And if you seriously don't like cookie-level tracking, well, then you already have the option to turn off cookies and Flash and do without it. But please, please, sit down and *think* about the situation for awhile.
Ads are good for the Internet. Content doesn't just magically appear. Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads. Targeted ads are fewer than untargeted ads. Stop knee-jerking, and *think*.
I don't particularly care if the data is misused because I don't agree with the method of data collection to begin with. I don't need people tracking my actions to see how to advertise to me.
Then turn fucking cookies off, like you've been able to for a decade.
Advertisers should be tracking products or sales, not individuals.
How could they do one without the other?
I support the FTC being proactive and considering preventative action. Should we wait for a crime to be committed before we make it illegal?
Yes, because there needs to be some sort of consensus that the behavior is a crime in the first place. Right now, there isn't-- you're simply assuming that because you don't like it, nobody else does either.
You actually support an unelected bureaucracy spending your tax money solving problems that browser makers solved a decade ago? Are you serious?
What about having it on a page of a commercial site that does not have ads on it? There is still a commercial advantage in attracting traffic or links to a site.
Yeah, but doesn't that same idea apply to *any* site? Flickr benefits from having more images on the site, the more images are uploaded the bigger their network effects and the more popular their for-profit site is. (Yahoo doesn't appear to have ads on Flickr, so currently it's a non-issue, but what if they added ads in the future?)
First of all: Windows 3.0? Seriously? Never used a Classic Mac?
Secondly: Saying "oh the WIMP interface is so old and tired" is really, really easy. Coming up with something better enough to displace it? Now that's fucking hard. It's been tried many times, and never gained any traction so far.
The porno-watchers come in more frequently than anyone else, and one guy in particular was in literally every month. Since selling him a $25 MBAM license we haven't seen him since.
Maybe he just had a heart attack while whacking it.
Xbox Live connectivity is intriguing, but not only do I not care about constant contact with my Live friends list...I don't want it.
Did it occur to you to simply not use it?
I hate people who complain about optional features simply existing. If you like it, use it. If not, don't. But you're saying you wouldn't purchase a phone because it includes a feature you don't plan to use!? Wha-huh?
Ah, that explains why it's impossible to remove the gmail app from my Android phone. Or even to remove your gmail credentials once you've entered them, without resetting the entire phone.
Oh wait, no, I guess it actually explains that Google wants to lock-in people to their services as much as Microsoft wants to, and you're completely wrong.
Yeah, Al Jazeera's 10 page photo spread on Lindsay Lohan was really silly.
I think you missed the point. Al Jazeera was the highly biased news source, CNN was the gossip rag. I dunno, maybe I missed the point, too-- but I do know that CNN certainly isn't news, it's entertainment.
Brian: "Think for yourself! You're all individuals!" Crowd (simultaneously): "Yes, we're all individuals!" Brian: "You're all different!" Crowd (simultaneously): "Yes, we're all different!" Man in crowd: "I'm not."
We might just have to agree to disagree about Office 2007. The only place I see it being panned by people before they use it is Slashdot, and Slashdot hates everything Microsoft does, so that's hardly a gauge of anything.
I don't know what you mean by "sensible stylesheet tool", but Word already has excellent styling tools. Before Office 2007, they were pretty buried and hard to find and use. Now they're in the forefront, and much easier to use. Things like this aren't *technically* a new feature in Office, but *practically* they are-- the Office team took a feature they already had and made it usable. So I call that a win.
It's kind of hard to criticize Office for not coming up with new compelling features when you can't think of any, either. Hah. You just rattled off a list of features Office already has, while adding some weasel words like "sensible" or "more powerful" or "compelling."
Just as a dog reflects its owner, a CEO reflects his company. MS is the boring spreadsheet maker. It can't do an iPod or indeed a PS3. Little Big Planet could NEVER have been a MS project.
Wait, what?
First of all, Microsoft can do a PS3. Arguably, it can out-do a PS3. Demonstrably, it can at least create an extremely strong competitor for the PS3.
Secondly, Microsoft isn't the type of company that can make Little Big Planet, but Sony *is!?* Sony's a bigger, slower moving, behemoth than Microsoft is.
And like Microsoft, the only way they can put out titles like Little Big Planet is by acquiring developers qualified to do it. (Which is why Microsoft bought Bungie and Rare for the Xbox division; they knew they didn't have the in-house talent for it.)
And hey, guess what? Little Big Planet wasn't developed by Sony, only published by them. So you can't cite Little Big Planet as a Sony example without citing, for example, Viva Pinata or Gears of War in the Microsoft column. Because Microsoft's relationship with Epic Games (developers of Gears of War) is identical to Sony's relationship with Media Molecule (developers of Little Big Planet.)
All you've shown is your own ignorance of how the games industry works.
If you want sexy, you go to Sun... and yes that Sun has been bought up says a LOT about how well sexy works. If you want a boring reliable server, you go IBM.
Sun? Seriously?
Look, if you think Sun's shitty products are "sexy", you're really beyond hope. There's nothing more I can say about that.
I actually agree with your post, but your examples are really goofy.
Did it? The entertainment division lost money last quarter. Has the Xbox actually made a net profit over its lifetime? By that, have the total profits on the Xbox paid for the total losses incurred over the years taking into account the cost of money?
Man, does *anybody* at Slashdot work at a corporation?
"Total profits" is not the only measure of success, not even one of the most important. (Well, it is for the company as a whole, but not for any one division.) Every corporation of a decent size has divisions that do not, and have never, contributed directly to the bottom line.
Let's use a computer example: would you say that the Xerox Parc research and development was a complete failure? After all, it never earned Xerox more than a token amount of revenue.
Or to use a "Slashdot when taken as a whole is hypocrites" example: remember how people were railing against Carly Fiona at HP for cancelling most of their R&D and scientific product lines? Those product lines were not profitable at all, so by your (whoever57) measure, cancelling them was the right thing to do and should have been lauded-- right?
In any case, I believe the Xbox program has been a success, and I believe that Microsoft believes that it's a success as well. (I don't know what exact metrics they are using to determine this.) Xbox has done more to get Microsoft's brand noticed than anything since Windows 95, and it's in a hell of a lot more living rooms than (say) Windows Home Server or Windows Media Center. It's also gotten Microsoft tons of goodwill from developers who previously completely ignored Microsoft products.
Office:It's way to late, given that OOo doesn't require re-training and Office 2007 (or whichever) does.
And yet, despite OpenOffice's freeness, Office 2007 is still selling like hotcakes. If you figure out why that is, you may understand the zen of Microsoft. (Note: same thing applies to Linux compared to Windows.)
Sure, Office 2007 "requires retraining" (assuming you work at a business that does any office app training at all-- I sure don't), but that's not enough to even begin to turn around Microsoft's dominance in that space. There are entire industries run on Excel and (to a lesser extent) PowerPoint. Entire industries.
Also, to be snarky, OpenOffice might not require retraining, but it's also buggy enough to require a significant amount of time to find work-arounds.
And frankly, the Xbox is doing well-- it's kicking Sony ass, or at least neck-and-neck, and Sony was a *really* entrenched competitor in the space. It's created new ideas that every other console maker has ripped-off, and it's gotten Microsoft a lot of goodwill from a lot of game developers that normally completely ignore them-- Japanese developers in particular.
Success doesn't necessarily mean "beat all competitors" or "low defect rate." I'm sure the Xbox is a success by the metrics Microsoft have set for the program; I don't see how it couldn't be.
The three most obvious, from a commercial point of view, are probably (a) avoiding the whole Vista fiasco,
How? That's a lot easier said than done... I'm pretty sure there isn't even a clear consensus on what exactly caused the Vista fiasco in the first place. Everybody has their own opinion.
I mean, the last time they had an OS release that poor (Windows ME), at least the schedule was rushed to hell and back. Vista, on the other hand, was both slow *and* bad.
That all said, I think it was mostly a perception/marketing problem:
1) Vista wasn't bad on hardware built to support it... but Microsoft gave the logo to vastly inferior hardware that they had to have known wasn't capable of running it well. Vista should have been sold initially as a "high-end" OS, since only high-end hardware could *really* knock it out of the park. They could have set a high bar for the logo, and rebrand XP as their low-end, mobile OS. (Until Windows 7 could take over both roles.)
2) A *major* failing was getting hardware makers on-board with their drivers. I have no idea what they could have done more to solve this, but I think something like Windows 7's long free preview period would have been a good idea for Vista. (Part of the issue here was also the long gap between OSes-- hardware makers hadn't had to make or update drivers for a long, long time before Vista came out.)
3) Microsoft was never in control of the Vista brand, pundits were. The average computer consumer probably saw a dozen articles talking about how awful Vista was before they'd ever actually used it, or before they heard anything from Microsoft about it. (Their Mojave campaign pretty much proved this one)
Anyway, by the time Windows 7 came out, the hardware issue was resolved (both by making the OS leaner, and by the normal increase in computer performance over 2 years), the hardware issue was resolved (Vista drivers finally worked well, and Windows 7 could use those), and the marketing was much, much better. Result? Successful launch.
(b) handling the release of the new Office UI better, and
I don't agree with this; I think they handled it quite well. What changes would you have proposed?
One major gap, though, was the slooow availability of the Mac file conversion utilities. Microsoft has been doing pretty well with Office on Mac, but that one issue really reminded everybody that the Mac is a second-class citizen, which is a shame after all the work they've put in to applications like Entourage.
(c) not running so many loss-making divisions in the name of diversification.
I agree. I'd like to see them drop the pointless web search and advertising focus. Yes, this means giving Google a practical monopoly. But:
1) Microsoft has spent BILLIONS on this, and is barely any better-off than they were before, and
2) Microsoft is simply no good at it. But that's ok, you can be no good at things! Just accept it and move on.
They've had a catastrophic release for each of their main products, and in doing so,
The Office 2007 release was not catastrophic by any measure, except for maybe Slashdot chatter.
Not innovating merely requires laziness, but not innovating
Except Office 2007 is exactly the kind of innovating that people have been asking for, and you just panned it.
Man, I was enjoying your post until the last couple paragraphs.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Detecting which mouse button was pressed would be the obvious case here. The problem is that the W3C mouse button definitions, while "standard", are retarded. Microsoft implemented a system (I dunno whether they did it before or after the W3C spec was approved) that makes a hell of a lot more sense.
See this page for a bit of commentary: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/events_properties.html#button
There happens to be enough agreement that you can correctly detect the right button, but detecting the left button or middle button is a huge pain. (If you get the event at all, and it's *not* the right button, you can generally assume it's the left button... so.)
Note to IE bashers: most places where IE deviates from the standards, the IE implementation makes a hell of a lot more sense. There are entire JavaScript applications I can't deploy on anything but IE because of the standards' lack of a property like ReadyState.
Wait, what?
Given, I'm not in DC, so maybe I'm massively misunderstanding... but you're saying the government screwed up the HOV lanes because DC commuters came up with their own solution that relies on having HOV lanes!? It sounds like the HOV lanes in DC are doing exactly what they're designed to be doing?
Here in Washington (the good one, not the lousy one with the Federal Government all over it), I agree with the OP. HOV lanes don't increase carpooling one bit, because the odds you have the same starting point, same destination and same schedule as another commuter are infinitesimally small.
A much better solution here is encouraging telecommuting, since we have so many tech workers. But the government so far has been completely hands-off there. (Although in practice, most tech companies here are already ok with telecommuting for at least part of the week.)
How the fuck is file-size relevant? At all?
Are you saying that if the ebooks were stored as 1200 DPI scanned images (totalling up to 4 GB or more) than suddenly they'd be justified in charging $50?
What's an anti-privacy measure? Like, it forces you at gunpoint to enter your real name and address or something?
The analogy would be the advertisements companies putting a RFID tag in your car, that would be detected by each billboard you happened to pass by. Would you be OK with that level of location tracking?
Yes.
That's not to say I'd let them just put the thing in my car without compensating me in some way. But that's not what you asked.
I wouldn't.
Turns out the world doesn't revolve around you.
Since advertising is inevitable on the web, if you want sites to continue to provide (otherwise) free content, than I'm all for tracking behavior across sites. It means more targeted ads, which means higher ad rates, which means fewer ads overall. Think about it.
And reverse the scenario: what information are you so afraid of divulging? "Oh he went to cnn.com then he went to foxnews.com! WHAT A SCANDAL!" Is that what you imagine would happen? Nobody looks at the data at a personally-identifiable level because:
1) There's too much of it anyway
2) They can't do a better job sorting it out manually than the computers can automatically
3) Nobody gives a shit about what you do on the web
Also note that reputable ad servers do not host ads on porn sites, and porn ad servers do not host ads on reputable sites. So there's *no* data that links your cnn.com visit to hotdonkeyporn.com, if that's what you're nervous about. You pervert.
Look, be concerned about your rights eroding. I'm all for that, and I approve. And if you seriously don't like cookie-level tracking, well, then you already have the option to turn off cookies and Flash and do without it. But please, please, sit down and *think* about the situation for awhile.
Ads are good for the Internet. Content doesn't just magically appear. Targeted ads are better than untargeted ads. Targeted ads are fewer than untargeted ads. Stop knee-jerking, and *think*.
I don't particularly care if the data is misused because I don't agree with the method of data collection to begin with. I don't need people tracking my actions to see how to advertise to me.
Then turn fucking cookies off, like you've been able to for a decade.
Advertisers should be tracking products or sales, not individuals.
How could they do one without the other?
I support the FTC being proactive and considering preventative action. Should we wait for a crime to be committed before we make it illegal?
Yes, because there needs to be some sort of consensus that the behavior is a crime in the first place. Right now, there isn't-- you're simply assuming that because you don't like it, nobody else does either.
You actually support an unelected bureaucracy spending your tax money solving problems that browser makers solved a decade ago? Are you serious?
What about having it on a page of a commercial site that does not have ads on it? There is still a commercial advantage in attracting traffic or links to a site.
Yeah, but doesn't that same idea apply to *any* site? Flickr benefits from having more images on the site, the more images are uploaded the bigger their network effects and the more popular their for-profit site is. (Yahoo doesn't appear to have ads on Flickr, so currently it's a non-issue, but what if they added ads in the future?)
First of all: Windows 3.0? Seriously? Never used a Classic Mac?
Secondly: Saying "oh the WIMP interface is so old and tired" is really, really easy. Coming up with something better enough to displace it? Now that's fucking hard. It's been tried many times, and never gained any traction so far.
The porno-watchers come in more frequently than anyone else, and one guy in particular was in literally every month. Since selling him a $25 MBAM license we haven't seen him since.
Maybe he just had a heart attack while whacking it.
That'll never work. I'm not going to let you put some loser's beat up POS battery in my beautiful new car.
Xbox Live connectivity is intriguing, but not only do I not care about constant contact with my Live friends list...I don't want it.
Did it occur to you to simply not use it?
I hate people who complain about optional features simply existing. If you like it, use it. If not, don't. But you're saying you wouldn't purchase a phone because it includes a feature you don't plan to use!? Wha-huh?
Ah, that explains why it's impossible to remove the gmail app from my Android phone. Or even to remove your gmail credentials once you've entered them, without resetting the entire phone.
Oh wait, no, I guess it actually explains that Google wants to lock-in people to their services as much as Microsoft wants to, and you're completely wrong.
The cheap Chinese copies made from the "open to scrutiny" plans are probably not going to be as safe as the Boeing originals.
Just FYI, Windows 7 has full multi-touch support. (Doesn't guarantee your applications will use it sensibly, but it's there.)
Yeah, Al Jazeera's 10 page photo spread on Lindsay Lohan was really silly.
I think you missed the point. Al Jazeera was the highly biased news source, CNN was the gossip rag. I dunno, maybe I missed the point, too-- but I do know that CNN certainly isn't news, it's entertainment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA
Brian: "Think for yourself! You're all individuals!"
Crowd (simultaneously): "Yes, we're all individuals!"
Brian: "You're all different!"
Crowd (simultaneously): "Yes, we're all different!"
Man in crowd: "I'm not."
Troll? Seriously?
That's exactly what they want you to think, via marketing. You're falling right into their diabolical trap!
No, their market is actually douchebags with more money than sense. Which this article is just confirming.
Yes, I have. And I disagree with you.
We might just have to agree to disagree about Office 2007. The only place I see it being panned by people before they use it is Slashdot, and Slashdot hates everything Microsoft does, so that's hardly a gauge of anything.
I don't know what you mean by "sensible stylesheet tool", but Word already has excellent styling tools. Before Office 2007, they were pretty buried and hard to find and use. Now they're in the forefront, and much easier to use. Things like this aren't *technically* a new feature in Office, but *practically* they are-- the Office team took a feature they already had and made it usable. So I call that a win.
It's kind of hard to criticize Office for not coming up with new compelling features when you can't think of any, either. Hah. You just rattled off a list of features Office already has, while adding some weasel words like "sensible" or "more powerful" or "compelling."
Just as a dog reflects its owner, a CEO reflects his company. MS is the boring spreadsheet maker. It can't do an iPod or indeed a PS3. Little Big Planet could NEVER have been a MS project.
Wait, what?
First of all, Microsoft can do a PS3. Arguably, it can out-do a PS3. Demonstrably, it can at least create an extremely strong competitor for the PS3.
Secondly, Microsoft isn't the type of company that can make Little Big Planet, but Sony *is!?* Sony's a bigger, slower moving, behemoth than Microsoft is.
And like Microsoft, the only way they can put out titles like Little Big Planet is by acquiring developers qualified to do it. (Which is why Microsoft bought Bungie and Rare for the Xbox division; they knew they didn't have the in-house talent for it.)
And hey, guess what? Little Big Planet wasn't developed by Sony, only published by them. So you can't cite Little Big Planet as a Sony example without citing, for example, Viva Pinata or Gears of War in the Microsoft column. Because Microsoft's relationship with Epic Games (developers of Gears of War) is identical to Sony's relationship with Media Molecule (developers of Little Big Planet.)
All you've shown is your own ignorance of how the games industry works.
If you want sexy, you go to Sun... and yes that Sun has been bought up says a LOT about how well sexy works. If you want a boring reliable server, you go IBM.
Sun? Seriously?
Look, if you think Sun's shitty products are "sexy", you're really beyond hope. There's nothing more I can say about that.
I actually agree with your post, but your examples are really goofy.
Did it? The entertainment division lost money last quarter. Has the Xbox actually made a net profit over its lifetime? By that, have the total profits on the Xbox paid for the total losses incurred over the years taking into account the cost of money?
Man, does *anybody* at Slashdot work at a corporation?
"Total profits" is not the only measure of success, not even one of the most important. (Well, it is for the company as a whole, but not for any one division.) Every corporation of a decent size has divisions that do not, and have never, contributed directly to the bottom line.
Let's use a computer example: would you say that the Xerox Parc research and development was a complete failure? After all, it never earned Xerox more than a token amount of revenue.
Or to use a "Slashdot when taken as a whole is hypocrites" example: remember how people were railing against Carly Fiona at HP for cancelling most of their R&D and scientific product lines? Those product lines were not profitable at all, so by your (whoever57) measure, cancelling them was the right thing to do and should have been lauded-- right?
In any case, I believe the Xbox program has been a success, and I believe that Microsoft believes that it's a success as well. (I don't know what exact metrics they are using to determine this.) Xbox has done more to get Microsoft's brand noticed than anything since Windows 95, and it's in a hell of a lot more living rooms than (say) Windows Home Server or Windows Media Center. It's also gotten Microsoft tons of goodwill from developers who previously completely ignored Microsoft products.
Office:It's way to late, given that OOo doesn't require re-training and Office 2007 (or whichever) does.
And yet, despite OpenOffice's freeness, Office 2007 is still selling like hotcakes. If you figure out why that is, you may understand the zen of Microsoft. (Note: same thing applies to Linux compared to Windows.)
Sure, Office 2007 "requires retraining" (assuming you work at a business that does any office app training at all-- I sure don't), but that's not enough to even begin to turn around Microsoft's dominance in that space. There are entire industries run on Excel and (to a lesser extent) PowerPoint. Entire industries.
Also, to be snarky, OpenOffice might not require retraining, but it's also buggy enough to require a significant amount of time to find work-arounds.
They make excellent mouses and keyboards.
And frankly, the Xbox is doing well-- it's kicking Sony ass, or at least neck-and-neck, and Sony was a *really* entrenched competitor in the space. It's created new ideas that every other console maker has ripped-off, and it's gotten Microsoft a lot of goodwill from a lot of game developers that normally completely ignore them-- Japanese developers in particular.
Success doesn't necessarily mean "beat all competitors" or "low defect rate." I'm sure the Xbox is a success by the metrics Microsoft have set for the program; I don't see how it couldn't be.
The three most obvious, from a commercial point of view, are probably (a) avoiding the whole Vista fiasco,
How? That's a lot easier said than done... I'm pretty sure there isn't even a clear consensus on what exactly caused the Vista fiasco in the first place. Everybody has their own opinion.
I mean, the last time they had an OS release that poor (Windows ME), at least the schedule was rushed to hell and back. Vista, on the other hand, was both slow *and* bad.
That all said, I think it was mostly a perception/marketing problem:
1) Vista wasn't bad on hardware built to support it... but Microsoft gave the logo to vastly inferior hardware that they had to have known wasn't capable of running it well. Vista should have been sold initially as a "high-end" OS, since only high-end hardware could *really* knock it out of the park. They could have set a high bar for the logo, and rebrand XP as their low-end, mobile OS. (Until Windows 7 could take over both roles.)
2) A *major* failing was getting hardware makers on-board with their drivers. I have no idea what they could have done more to solve this, but I think something like Windows 7's long free preview period would have been a good idea for Vista. (Part of the issue here was also the long gap between OSes-- hardware makers hadn't had to make or update drivers for a long, long time before Vista came out.)
3) Microsoft was never in control of the Vista brand, pundits were. The average computer consumer probably saw a dozen articles talking about how awful Vista was before they'd ever actually used it, or before they heard anything from Microsoft about it. (Their Mojave campaign pretty much proved this one)
Anyway, by the time Windows 7 came out, the hardware issue was resolved (both by making the OS leaner, and by the normal increase in computer performance over 2 years), the hardware issue was resolved (Vista drivers finally worked well, and Windows 7 could use those), and the marketing was much, much better. Result? Successful launch.
(b) handling the release of the new Office UI better, and
I don't agree with this; I think they handled it quite well. What changes would you have proposed?
One major gap, though, was the slooow availability of the Mac file conversion utilities. Microsoft has been doing pretty well with Office on Mac, but that one issue really reminded everybody that the Mac is a second-class citizen, which is a shame after all the work they've put in to applications like Entourage.
(c) not running so many loss-making divisions in the name of diversification.
I agree. I'd like to see them drop the pointless web search and advertising focus. Yes, this means giving Google a practical monopoly. But:
1) Microsoft has spent BILLIONS on this, and is barely any better-off than they were before, and
2) Microsoft is simply no good at it. But that's ok, you can be no good at things! Just accept it and move on.
They've had a catastrophic release for each of their main products, and in doing so,
The Office 2007 release was not catastrophic by any measure, except for maybe Slashdot chatter.
Not innovating merely requires laziness, but not innovating
Except Office 2007 is exactly the kind of innovating that people have been asking for, and you just panned it.
Man, I was enjoying your post until the last couple paragraphs. :)
No they didn't, they supported IA-64, in fact they only very recently discontinued it.
Only server OSes, and only a subset of them. x64 has enjoyed broad support.