It's worth noting that under Satya (in my org, Cloud and Enterprise) we open sourced ASP.NET, use 50+ OSS libraries in Visual Studio, have all the Azure cloud SDKs on GitHub, and on and on. We made Portable Libraries happen and now share code between iOS, Android, and Windows. This is not your grandfather's MSFT, and now the dude who helped us (Azure) change things in a fundamentally non-MSFT and totally awesome way is in charge. I'm stoked - big things coming, I think.
I suggest open sourcing Windows. Put it on GitHub with a permissive license and accept pull requests. The internet will blow up, you'll instantly win back all of the developer mindshare that has been lost over the years.
Let's just say that comparing Windows to the linux kernel would be a mistake. Hosting the windows source would be a challenge for any source control system out there. Git / github is not exactly optimized for projects of that size.
But wouldn't it be nice if Windows could be modularized in the process of such an open-sourcing effort, such that that comparison wouldn't be a mistake? For example, if just the NT kernel could be separated into its own project, with a clean linkage-point, there'd probably be all sorts of interesting efforts to, for example, create a Debian/NT distribution, or cross-pollinate driver code between Windows and Linux. (Actually, having two major open-source consumer-PC OSes would probably finally force a standardization on a HAL to allow a single driver-pool code base to be shared between the two systems.)
Sure, Windows is more than a kernel. I imagine the NT kernel vs the Linux kernel would be roughly comparable. But to compare 'Linux' the OS to Windows would mean Windows vs. GNU/Linux/X.org/Gnome/KDE... or say, the source for every package in the base Debian distribution.
I doubt that Windows is monolithic/bloated. Convoluted sure, backwards compatibility is a bitch, but Windows is probably broken into neat little modules by now.
Apparently you don't know what you're talking about. Source Depot at Microsoft (rebranded Perforce) can do it, while TFS cannot, therefore half of Microsoft stores its source code in TFS and half in SD. Git scales really well, at least well enough for the Linux kernel which is not much less than Windows kernel.
That would be the most awesome thing that could ever happen, when they can just keep offering the windows 8 for the customers in boxed but allowing developers to contribute to the project.. I cannot think of percentage of people who will be lost customers, it will not matter when everyone in another 10 years will have their own linux systems on cloud..
Linux and BSD have the security advantage of having their ugliness shown to the world for decades. When you push a change that everyone can see, you don't have the option of hiding your ugliness behind a compiler.
If Microsoft released the source code to Windows 98 OSR2, which is effectively abandonware as far as I understand, it would be great. A lot of multimedia applications and old games would instantly become easier to preserve.
But this is the attitude Microsoft needs to eliminate. The days of making money on operating systems is rapidly fading away. They already gave away Windows 8.1 as a free upgrade, so they're aware of it.
An open source XP would get many hackers interested in Windows, something they desperately need.
It's pretty hard to do it with a conventional OSI certified license. Anyone can rebuild your product and resell it or give it away. Red Hat tried something similar but CentOS still existed.
Microsoft could come up with their own license that was "open source" but not "free software" by Stallman's definitions (ignoring here the people who've attempted to make these terms synonymous), which would allow people to change code and distribute freely among license holders, but not allow people to resell or just give out copies of Windows. I'd actually be really excited about this, because I think the FSF is overboard with their demand that everyone essentially make their software unsellable.
They could go the Red Hat route, go GPL, accept that they'll no longer get money for software licenses but instead support contracts (they could even try selling these to consumers; Dell would pay MS $50/PC not for a copy of Windows, but for a subscription to Windows Update). This would shift the dynamics of the company a bit, but probably not as much as one may think, since enterprise keeps MS afloat anyway, and it may be a good solution.
Yes, and you could distribute it, as long as you had a checkbox prior to the download that said, "I assert I am a Windows license holder and entitled to utilize derivatives of its code", or a banner that printed a similar message after installation, instructing you to uninstall if you aren't a license holder.
He still does. GO to one of his meetings in berkeley, he sells emacs, linux CDs. RMS is not against selling software. He just doesn't like restrictions that all. btw, who likes restrictions?
And I'm totally stoked to learn that Scott Guthrie has been promoted to take Satya's place. Both of you guys are awesome! Now when are you going to open up C#, CLR and buy Xamarin ;)?
Ah just so they have access to the vast resources and become 1st party libraries. Mono is not known in most of the linux world and Microsoft support would be a significant boost. Businesses would also be hesitant to support it adopt it unless Microsoft is backing the platform.
Microsoft supporting Mono would not be a good boost in the eyes of most Linux people, as far as I can tell. In fact, Miguel de Icaza connections to Microsoft have been cited as an argument against Mono.
The fact that Mono is a reimplementation of something Microsoft did actually went against it for a lot of *nix people. Which is dumb and stupid, but hey, after Embrace Extend Extinguish, everyone got kinda jumpy. So, Microsoft purchasing it would be a hard sell, IMO.
Would love to see Windows Phone open up for hobbyist devs. Love the Windows Phone experience out of the box, but having to jump through hoops to write apps for my own personal use pushed me to android.
OSS is nice, but why do you guys keep pushing the shitty HTML5? It is totally crap for enterprise. Also EF is always trying to catch up with NHibernate, why not simply contribute to the latter?
You forgot the sarcasm tags, I see. Or you don't have much experience with WPF. It might be nice in theory, but I've had to work around enough bugs marked "wontfix" that I recommend everyone stay away.
I have years of experience with WPF & Silverlight and agree that it has high learning curve, but once you know it there really isn't much of anything you can't to simpler, faster, and more elegantly than in HTML5, if you have a back end you need to interact with.
Some things only work in Silverlight, some only in WPF, and mixing both at the same time is a royal pain.
There are a LOT of bugs and regressions in WPF4 that are "wontfix", were supposed to be fixed in 4.5 or 5.0, but that's never going to happen. (Google "wpf 3.5 4.0 bug wontfix" to see a very incomplete list of regressions. I've met some of these myself, and some that are not on the first two pages).
And lastly, unlike Silverlight (Mac or Win, no Android, no iOS, no Linux), HTML5 is much more widely available (and with an easier graceful degradation path). The only place where using WPF or Silverlight makes sense today is when your target audience is using a locked down system - e.g. an enterprise with tightly controlled client machines. Otherwise, it's a no-go just from this perspective.
I didn't find the learning curve intimidating, FWIW. But the experience with using and deploying me scarred me.
I agree that HTML5 is much more available. I wouldn't recommend a silver light app for any consumer based product.
But I would have for enterprise applications if it was going to continue to be supported.
The lack of support killed off the language, not the language itself, IMO.
What about using it on anything that isn't windows or mac os?
Isn't it kind of the point of web browsers to render webpages in a common open language instead of being a host for proprietary vendor specific plugins? What's the big advantage over standalone applications in that case anyway?
Sure, but why make the commitment to build your whole thing windows-only when you are only a tiny bit away from actually doing it platform independent. Like, for having options in the future, and stuff.
Turning HMTL 5 into a competent application platform = million of man hours.
Convincing Google, Apple, Mozilla, the rest of the universe to adopt Microsoft's closed platform (even if it were Open Sourced) = billions of billions of man hours :)
We are talking about enterprise. There is a chance to build something nice there instead of cramming badly-designed document-oriented languages into GUI space. Apple is closed AFAIK.
I'd never thought I'd say this after the years of aggressive (and at times anti-competitive) dominance but I think the world needs a strong Microsoft again.
Although Microsoft remains very strong in the corporate world, its presence in the Internet and mobile worlds are now pretty limited and leaving the two power-houses of Google and Apple to shape the industry.
Satya has done a good job with Azure, and it will be interesting to see whether he can make Microsoft more relevant to the Internet back into someone that can influence the industry.
Why? What good would a strong Microsoft provide us? What void would that fill? We've been there, done that and frankly, I don't care to go back. They abused their power when they had it and I have no intent of giving it back to them to give them another crack at it.
No, I much prefer today's world of Google, Apple, Samsung and FOSS in all its myriad forms battling it out. There's more developer frameworks than ever available to us. More languages. More everything.
The world of Google and Apple (Samsung and FOSS aren't even a player) is a world of closed computing platforms where people can't control their own devices and can't and don't code for them. More languages? I don't think so. How many languages can you use to write apps for your iPhone or Android device? Objective C and Java respectively and that's about it. With Google not only do you not control your apps/device even your data isn't under your control any more.
Yes, Microsoft's business practices weren't so great, but I don't agree the new world is much better. As a developer it actually feels worse. The only exception is Linux and server side development which is in a sense a niche (plus that existed before Google and Apple rose to their dominance and could have co-existed with Microsoft perfectly happily).
I strongly disagree. FOSS is a huge force for both backend development and front end web development. One can also argue that Android is mostly open. EDIT: The large majority of servers in the world are running on FOSS. I can also predict a large number of upcoming devices like the internet of things to be running on it. Whether or not they run Android is another story.
The only reason FOSS may not be a "player" is because it's not a single monolithic organization, but instead it's a very loose coalition of thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies.
> How many languages can you use to write apps for your iPhone or Android device? Objective C and Java respectively and that's about it.
This may be the case for clients, but a lot of mobile apps also depend on server side apps.
Agree re development but whether Android is open depends where you are in the world and where you draw the lines on what constitutes Android.
In North America and Europe it's theoretically open but OEM's dependence on Google's services (which for many people are part and parcel of the Android experience) and the control Google exert through that means that there are real limitations on how open it is in reality. This week showed just how much freedom Samsung, the largest smartphone maker in the world, has to do what it wants with Android - almost none.
You can argue that that's not really Android, it's the services, but until there are solid FOSS alternatives to those services you can't use Android to put together a compelling smartphone without Google.
That may change over time but for now for a majority of people it's a relatively closed platform.
In China and much of Asia where Google services are either unavailable or less compelling it is far closer to open. OEMs use the OS, bundle what they want and ship it without Google knowing or controlling anything and that's maybe a third of Android shipments worldwide so not insignificant.
> you can't use Android to put together a compelling smartphone without Google
I actually have an older Galaxy S and I installed CyanogenMod on it without Google's services, so no Google Play, no GMail, etc... The phone is actually usable. I have more apps on it than I have on another Win Phone 8, a Lumia that I received as a gift.
As a browser, I'm using Firefox, which I happen to believe it's the best mobile browser right now. For email I'm using K-9 Mail, a pretty good open-source email client that can also do PGP encryption btw. My contacts and my calendar are synced fairly OK, since I'm connected to my Google account through the Exchange protocol.
For maps I'm using OsmAnd - extremely awful interface, but the maps are from OSM and are awesome and because it helped me get to where I wanted, I have tolerated the UI. For music and movies I'm using Apollo and VLC.
For Facebook and Twitter and other high-profile apps, I could have gone with Amazon's Appstore, however I preferred to use the web interfaces, packaged as apps in Firefox's marketplace. Not as snappy as the native interfaces, but they work and you also get better sandboxing.
The amount of work to go from zero to open-source Android is huge. You could fork Android and release something usable today. Amazon did it ;-)
This is exactly it. Many people don't realize this when they say Android is not open. But you could install F-Droid, which is a repository of open source Android apps and you could pretty much live without Google at all on Android. You would lose many conveniences but you will still be able to make use of all your phone's smarts.
1) This is really an option for a relatively small part of Android's install base most of whom don't know F-Droid exists, let alone how to install it or why they might want to.
2) Any company wanting to produce a phone on this basis is (a) depending on a lot of other products and organisations and (b) putting out a product with - for instance - a substandard maps product next to the competition.
So yes it's open, but not in the way that I think many would like it to be (that is where a genuinely open phone that the average punter can and does use exists).
I don't disagree with anything that you're saying; I've already hinted at it with my previous post.
That said, yes Android isn't technically Android without Google services but it doesn't mean that stripped down it's still not useful. Just ask Amazon or one of the many companies in Asia that have forked it.
> until there are solid FOSS alternatives to those services you can't use Android to put together a compelling smartphone without Google.
You've made my argument in the same post.
> In China and much of Asia where Google services are either unavailable or less compelling it is far closer to open. OEMs use the OS, bundle what they want and ship it without Google knowing or controlling anything and that's maybe a third of Android shipments worldwide so not insignificant.
Yep, I don't think we're disagreeing, I'm more commenting on - I'm certainly not saying that Android isn't open, more that open should be seen as a continuum rather than a binary switch.
The interesting thing for me is how Google react to the areas where they're losing control of Android. For them Android is (or was) a means to an end - it stopped Apple getting control of the mobile space which would have made Google beholden to Apple for traffic to their services.
I personally don't believe Google have particularly strong feelings about Android as an open source property, they care about it for what it does for them in areas they do care about. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out over the next few years and what that means for Android.
Windows Phone 8 ... not open-source, doesn't have anything like CyanogenMod, cannot be forked, does not allow app installs from third-party sources, doesn't allow replacing Bing's search with anything else (and the available setting in IExplorer for setting the in-browser search provider doesn't work) and wifi tethering must be explicitly allowed by the mobile career (which is a PITA since my mobile career couldn't wire the settings so I'd have to take my phone to them).
That last point is one of the reasons for why I switched away from iOS to Android. I have yet to encounter an Android phone that doesn't do Wifi tethering because the mobile career says so. And my prior mobile career also had the nerve to ask me for an extra 4 EUR per month for wifi tethering. It's my device damn it and I feel that Windows Phone is a shitty iOS replacement, without the sexy.
> How many languages can you use to write apps for your iPhone or Android device? Objective C and Java respectively and that's about it.
For targeting iOS you can actually use Ruby [1], C# [2], Java [3]. Many iOS games are using Lua for scripting. Speaking of which, Unity 3D is a platform for building games and you can use Javascript, C#, Boo or UnityScript (a sort of ActionScript). The problem with iOS is that Apple had artificial restrictions that disallowed virtual machines, so bytecode and virtual machines were out. I think they lifted those restrictions, though iOS is what I call a defective by design platform.
On Android there are no limits. People build stuff with Java, because it's the least painful path and works fairly well. Games are still being built with C++. I have used Scala and it works well. Many people are also building apps with JRuby and Clojure ... though Dalvik is not as capable as a real JVM, so dynamic stuff has performance issues.
Even if you target the browser, you can compile C++ to asm.js and for replacing Javascript there are full-featured replacements available that use Javascript as bytecode - like Dart or ClojureScript.
> server side development which is in a sense a niche
Err, what? 99.9% of all software being built today is either server-side or has indispensable business logic that's handled server-side.
> [Linux, server-side] could have co-existed with Microsoft perfectly happily
You're probably too young to remember all the shit Microsoft did to prevent Linux and the web as a platform from happening. That's OK, you'll live and learn.
Anyone owning a computing device in the days of Microsoft's reign was able to use any programming language in existence (pretty much) to do development for their device. The APIs were accessible and libraries and technologies played with each other. Mostly because they were around some common lower denominator (e.g. a C or lower level API). You could install anyone's software without needing an intermediary. It was clear that you owned your device, you owned your software and you owned your data. They didn't force other software vendors to pay them a fee. It wasn't Microsoft that broke all that. Microsoft is only playing catch up there.
I don't know Windows Phone 8 at all but if all you're saying is right then that sucks and I won't defend Microsoft there.
SaaS is just another facet of this multi-pronged attack on the user.
I think you are remembering it a little more rosy tinted than it really was.
You could use any programming language you wanted - as long as you ported the headers and import libs to it. The Windows SDK and other Microsoft SDKs supported only C (Microsoft's, not Borland's or Watcom's, nor GCC) and Visual Basic. Wanted to use Delhi and Borland didn't create import units yet? Too bad, you had that to do for yourself.
Which is similar situation today. Both iOS and Android have well defined ABIs. Do you want to use something, that is not oficially supported by respective vendors? You can create the bindings for yourself. Nobody is preventing you. For some languages it was done, for some it was not. Android by its nature supports anything that compiles into Java bytecode, so even the bindings problem is a less of an importance. (Yes, there could be problem with Clojure, because of different assumptions on the part of Clojure and the constrains on Android devices. Due to that, it will run, but very slowly).
You can install any apk on Android device, without any intermediary. On the other hand, Microsoft got Apple envy and does prevent you from installing any application on WP handset.
I don't think the openness of the desktop world was because of Microsoft. If any other company had taken over, we would've seen pretty much the same thing imo.
In today's mobile world, Apple and others could learn from the drawbacks of the desktop world and implement a "better" system, at least in some respects. It has certainly helped their revenue.
I think I know the answer to this question, but I'll ask anyway - Have you seriously tried to use the Embarcadero products for a "shippable" ios/android app?
I'm guessing no.
The entire experience is a sorry joke. I'm a big fan of Delphi as far as a tool to produce good/fast/native apps goes. They really dropped the ball with the ios/android tools. They ripped off GPL code, causing multiple patches to "fix" mis-appropriated open source code, it's fairly obvious there is no money, and the only customers they have are the existing ones who have a bunch of greybeards with a lot of Delphi experience and nothing else who are desperate to pump out _something_ for the mobile market, but are unprepared to learn _anything_ new.
Sorry, I'm just bitter that they took a decent product (Delphi 7), and took a shit on it, and then continued to grind it into oblivion.
Anders Hejlsberg, the chief architect of Delphi moved to MS in 1996 and became lead architect of C# in 2000. Which kind of explains why C# has many of Delphi's nicer features.
Android allows you to freely deploy your applications to their devices, while iOS requires a little more work. In neither case do you have to go through their respective stores (I'm thinking enterprise/personal apps here). For commercial sales it's increasingly a moot point: consumers are purchasing apps through app stores regardless of platform.
As a developer, I've never felt more free, less beholden to a corporate entity and their hidden agenda, and have an awesome stable of tools and technologies from which I can use to build solutions. It's almost gotten to the point where I have too much choice!
you are indeed wrong. By default apps need only to be signed. This is also easy to bypass (right click and select open while holding...option i think? not at workstation right now..) as well as easy to change globally (preferences).
You have too much choice until it comes to shipping your work to the public. Then you're at the various App Stores' mercy. The gate keepers may choose to postpone your approval indefinitely, and reserve their right to yank out your product at any time in the future. As a developer, never before in history have you been more beholden to a corporate entity!
Android - Ruby, Python, Clojure, Java, Common Lisp, Haxe, C#, HTML5, Scala, C++, C, anything that runs on the JVM or translates to Java, anything that compiles to native code. Basically everything. Some are easier than others.
On my phone there are commercial apps that run on Clojure and Haxe, two fairly obscure languages.
This is hilarious, since Linux and BSDs are just killing it in the server space - take a look at stats on Amazon EC2, or DigitalOcean, or even just server market share stats. Take a look at what pretty much every web service uses as their backend (Linux).
Linux is pretty much the only game in town in the HPC (supercomputing) market.
> As a developer it actually feels worse.
I'm currently working with someone who only knows how to program with a ton of hand-holding from VS. I don't doubt it feels worse for you.
Linux makes development feel 1000x better if you are willing to learn a few basic things, which you'll retain forever.
This is why the world is better today - because Apple, Google, MS, IBM - not one of them 'controls' anything. They all push a little in various directions, but openness is winning. Linux is more relevant than ever, Mozilla is more relevant than ever, and the open web is bigger than ever.
I admit it's a somewhat emotional reply ;-) However, I think anyone will be hard pressed to show that Google and Apple have somehow advanced the state of openness vs. what we used to have in the "good old days". Their business model relies on closeness and being able to extract recurring revenue. Microsoft was not quite like that, they did rely on recurring revenue from newer versions but I feel that's more like getting a new car vs. being overcharged on your ink in your inkjet printer.
EDIT: Something happened to my footnote. The HW specs used to be open in the PC WinTel era. We could freely exchange software. We could run multiple OSes. Lots more choice in languages etc.
Well, MS has copied everything the others are doing including the App Store model. This shows how uncreative they are. I would rather have a world without MS too.
> The world of Google and Apple (Samsung and FOSS aren't even a player) is a world of closed computing platforms
As a user of Omnirom and a donator to Replicant I don't understand how you come to this conclusion.
Agreed, the alternatives to google apps are not too good today, but that could relatively easily be changed. But if compared to windows phone. Really? How?
> where people can't control their own devices
If installing a different operating system with the tools from the official SDK is not controlling my own devices, what is?
Again, the proprietary drivers is a bad situation, but compared to windows phone, what exactly do they more openly?
> and can't and don't code for them.
All the tools required to build apks are open source. The eclipse android plugin was open source and android studio is open source. Enabling installing your own apps directly is natively built in and can literally be enabled in seconds. If you "can't and don't code for" android even if you want, then there is really nobody but yourself to blame.
> More languages? I don't think so. How many languages can you use to write apps for your iPhone or Android device?
As others have said, you may want to use android's gui toolkit, but other than that native applications can rather easily be wrapped. As it is linux, you may even run command line programs in any language you can compile for arm or compile an interpreter for directly.
> Objective C and Java respectively and that's about it.
Have you actually heard about xamarin'c c# for mobile devices? python + kivy? ...?
> With Google not only do you not control your apps/device
Well, I can compile the operating system myself and remove any apps I don't like in the process. I could also remove them from the device because I have root rights. There is literally nothing but the proprietary drivers and firmware I don't control, but again, how exactly does that get better with windows phone?
> even your data isn't under your control any more.
I use the google apps for convenience but you can use your android device without them perfectly fine. Install f-droid. Install only open source apps. Try doing this with windows phone?
> Yes, Microsoft's business practices weren't so great, but I don't agree the new world is much better.
With android being open source you can see the benefits directly: Other systems like Blackberry OS (or whatever it is called) or Sailfish OS can (rather) easily implement android's runtime and run almost all android apps natively. Compare this with what wine has to do?
> As a developer it actually feels worse.
It feels worse not to have proprietary microsoft specific tools that lock you into the microsoft ecosystem forever?
It's not Microsoft that was/is bad, it's having any single entity have too much power. In my opinion, right now, that is Google, and that's why we need a stronger someone - anyone. And Microsoft fit the bill.
Doesn't Microsoft have 90% of the desktop? About the same dominance in "Office apps", along with their proprietary formats keeping people uncomfortable using "compatible" software. That dominance is almost 2 decades old and it's quite hard to fix.
When most people get a job, they're going to be using Microsoft because that's what they will be given. I've never been somewhere where I'm told which search engine to use. Most places still don't offer an alternative to IE in the work place. That's why developers are still coding to IE7.
It really is frustrating that people don't understand this. I wouldn't mind a better Microsoft, except for the fact that people have short memories and don't really understand how powerful Microsoft currently is. Google is the the same ballpark? Seriously!?!
And Google has an absurd share of the search market, with which they can make or break (and have made or broken) all sorts of businesses. Consumers can choose not to use Google, but businesses can't opt out of how they're listed.
The Office formats, for all their quirks, are open and documented. There's no one forcing you to use MS Office. You probably can't switch which OS you're using at work, but Windows is fairly permissive of portable apps that evade most of the security restrictions. We're locked into using IE8 at work for compatibility reasons, but I'm able to use Chrome on my work computer just fine.
If you don't think Google is heading down the old Microsoft route, I point you to the bundling of Google+ with all of their other apps. Yes, it delivers value. But that's what Microsoft said when it started bundling IE with Windows.
> Consumers can choose not to use Google, but businesses can't opt out of how they're listed
A better way to put that would be businesses can't opt out of consumers using Google. Obviously you can not be listed simply by using robots.txt or not having a website.
This makes 0 sense. You can absolutely opt out, but wouldn't every business want to be at the top. I imagine if someone comes up with a better page ranking algorithm they definitely have a shot at beating google.
>bundling
I think its referred to single sign on in the enterprise world. Its much better than having to remember different logons and profiles for every google service (which youtube did)
I imagine if someone comes up with a better page ranking algorithm they definitely have a shot at beating google.
Not a chance... about the same as Linux has at beating Windows on the desktop, in my opinion. It's too entrenched, too far ahead, barrier to entry to even get to a level playing field is too high...
I'd love to see it, to be honest. I hope beyond hope it will happen. But I think it's more likely to see something remove the need to search entirely than have a new search engine take out Google's dominance.
I agree. It's not just the algorithm, scale etc. It's the chicken/egg problem - to have a good page ranking you need a lot of usage data from a lot of users and to get a lot of users you need a good page ranking.
You're mistakening Microsoft's residual momentum for current acceleration.
The technology sphere is a lot bigger than the desktop now. This year there will be almost twice as many Android devices shipped than Windows + iOS/OSX devices combined. The future of technology is going to decrease the importance of the desktop even further, and Google has 90s-Microsoft level market share of every other type of consumer networked device. This is what scares people about Google.
The "decreased importance" you cite is only relative; I for one don't see the desktop becoming unimportant any time soon.
For one thing, my aging parents need 24 inch or bigger screens to adequately see what they're doing. As a programmer and watcher of digital video I need a minimum of 24 inches of 1080p screen.
Then there's the enterprise, where biggish screens are needed for basic IT.
I said decreased importance, not unimportant. There will always be a need for PCs in development and enterprise, my comment was simply with regard to consumer use.
And I agree there will always be a need for large screen devices, but this doesn't necessarily mean desktops. Smart TVs or set-top boxes like Apple TV or streaming devices like Chromecast or consoles like the Xbox are where the growth is happening in the large format market. The Playstation 3 is the most popular Netflix streaming device.
I'm one of the dinosaurs that uses my laptop for everything these new consumer devices provide, but it doesn't mean I ignore that most people are moving away from this use case.
You can connect a monitor and keyboard to a tablet. Desktop/Other is a dichotomy that didn't age well. My "desktop replacement" is a laptop from 2009, and I expect to replace it with a docking station and something like the Surface in the next few years.
That remaining 90% share is having a severe chilling effect on general-purpouse computing. That share needs to get eaten up by Linux and Mac OS if we want to keep open computing healthy.
Who ares about the market share or the desktop? Microsoft does not make significant new revenue from their installation base. Google however does with their platforms (web and mobile), so does Apple (on mobile mainly).
I think it's very interesting to see an internal MS manager with a background in Bing and Azure to become CEO, interesting times are sure ahead.
Furthermore, either desktop is no longer relevant as the New Guard (Apple, Google) want us to believe, in which case Microsoft's past and current dominance on desktop is a fairly moot point as far as today's technology is concerned OR desktop remains relevant and we should be pressuring the New Guard to prioritize innovation in that space.
I personally strongly prefer modern "desktop" computing (that is, working with a computer with large displays while at a desk; I don't care what form factor the actual box takes) to computing on small devices.
Separately, I tend to like Microsoft's products more than Apple's and Google's even though I'm not a .NET developer. I'm weird, I suppose.
But all that said, Apple and Google are right that desktop is not hot—even a fan of desktop computing like myself must admit it's fallen out of favor. I've had my share of rants about why that is and what could be done to address it if firms are interested. But putting that tangent aside, I find those who bemoan Microsoft's dominance on desktop are using the wrong angle. If you like desktop computing like I do, but you don't like Microsoft, don't attack Microsoft. Instead, ask your favored firm (Apple, Google, whatever) why they don't offer you something you'd like in the desktop space.
I for one never agreed with past depictions of Microsoft as a monopolist on the desktop even through my experiments with oddball alternatives like OS/2. Their tricky business being what it is, they were not a monopoly. There were other options, but I eventually realized that I didn't like the alternatives.
Finally, I'm not sure I precisely agree with the implied shift from "desktop" and "the Internet." I figure I understand what you mean, but I can't help but envision the popular Homer Simpson quote: "Wait, they have the Internet on computers now?" Being a desktop aficionado, my desktop computing environment is all about network-enabled consumption and creation.
I see the chief battlefronts as:
* Small-screen versus large-screen (where I favor large screen and want small screen devices to be subservient views on applications running on my application server).
* Federated or self-control with sharing via documented protocols versus the plain cloud (where I favor federated or self-control because I feel the plain cloud we have today has brought us tremendous lock-in and multi-device/multi-cloud chaos).
All of these involve "the Internet," being the common communication medium.
I agree with most of your points, but I think the key missing piece is integration.
IMHO, it's not an issue of "desktop" vs. small device, but integrated applications and presence that works smoothly across platforms vs. monolithic and siloed apps that keep you on one device.
Nobody does this well yet, but the holy grail of computing is to be able to move from desktop to tablet to laptop to phone and have your apps, data, and presence seamlessly follow you around.
Mobile has lept ahead in perceived value because it provides an illusion of that integration. Since you have the device with you always, you get a taste of what having everything everywhere would be like. However, that is fleeting and the providers have jumped at the chance to make it a walled garden that feels open (since the device is always with you), but doesn't share or play with others.
Eventually, people will become aware that mobile only is closed and bad, and integrated open multiplatform will rise, whether that is based on multi cloud or personal cloud or whatever technology best supports that seamless transition between devices.
Yep. I honestly could see the desktop being relegated to only scientists, programmers, IT, and possibly gamers, with mobile and tablet devices replacing it for nearly everyone else. This kinda makes me sad, seeing as I'm in the programmers group, and our fun toys (desktops) are starting to go away, but ultimately it's probably the right direction for society.
It's worth noting that desktop computing is being relegated to the groups that you mentioned only because they are the only groups remaining that have a compelling use for a full-sized desktop, not because of some innate laws of the universe.
It's at least partially on Microsoft to come up with good reasons for normal people to use their platform over all other options, and they've fallen very flat on that note in the past 15 or so years - particularly in the consumer space. It'd be interesting to see a revitalized Microsoft really attacking this space, but the promotion of Nadella makes me think that this isn't really what the MS board has in mind.
As long as the fun stuff is still available, I don't much care if my mother uses it all that often. If I can still put together a kickass gaming/programming PC, with nice big monitors and a comfortable chair, I'm happy.
>It's not Microsoft that was/is bad, it's having any single entity have too much power.
I can't come to the same conclusion. Just look at how much innovation has happened to areas that Microsoft dominated as opposed to those dominated by Google. Google basically sets fire to whatever it gets into. Look at how much they've enriched the developer space in those areas. Everything Microsoft is still stuck in the early 2000s.
Yeah, I don't really get that above post at all. Perhaps it's just because I haven't strayed too far into the web/mobile space (Dart, Android applications, etc.), but when I think of the "programming space", I think of Microsoft (VS, C#, XNA, .NET, etc.) much quicker than I do Google.
Tell that people who started projects in GWT ;-) (which by itself is quite horribile as it's Java, but not quite Java and you can't use most of the libs out there because the class library is very crippled)
Do you mean Visual Studio or their languages? If the former, that's a tool. They make good tools, no doubt, but closed tools aren't really conducive to open innovation. They've made good languages, but again I wouldn't want to get tied down to a closed platform.
Actually, neither do I. Its funny, because when they do hit on something like Node.js (built with v8), Google ignores it. Its sort of puzzling actually.
Popular web browser that doesn't suck was already taken care of. HTML5 Apis are a collaborative effort. Angular is a novel entrant that is one among hundreds.
I'm not trying to suggest that Google isn't contributing positively to the dev community, but I strongly dispute the idea that they have enriched it in any way proportionally to the way they've profited from it.
Thanks for your comment - you just reminded me that I have been meaning to create a Google Takeout archive. I'm curious how easy it will be to access and use the data programmatically in my own software.
The archive is still being prepared, but I am genuinely curious to see if it is better than the various office documents, spreadsheets, and backup formats I have had to use in years past. I am, for the moment, optimistic.
I would prefer a strong Microsoft that keeps improving Bing and its web/mobile advertisement branch, which can counter-balance GOOG on web/mobile sphere. A GOOG with almost infinite cash flow from Ads would be as bad as MSFT in 90s. It's already the case that nowadays GOOG has become increasingly more arrogant.
I think Bing is a lost battle. The real question is what can they do on Azure, and can they move people to a cloud-based Office suite.
On arrogance - this comes with size. The larger a company gets, the more internal stakeholders they have. What was once a simple, "Of course we'll change that" turns into "Who else is impacted to this change?" to "Let's only change what we need to, and not get distracted by everything else."
My inclination is the more competitors, the better. But we don't necessarily need more standards. Creating another service provider for cloud based computing is great. Creating another browser that everyone needs to optimize their websites for separately - not so great.
I think Bing is a lost battle. The real question is what can they do on Azure, and can they move people to a cloud-based Office suite.
Bing is actually doing surprisingly well, considering the team competes with probably the most successful department and the foundation of GOOG. IMHO it's likely one of very few successful strategic moves of MSFT in competitive markets. Without Bing, GOOG would pretty much print money and pour money on whatever futuristic projects they feel like. Oh, well, they're already doing these stunts, it would only get worse without Bing. Azure and Office-in-the-cloud alone cannot compete with freebies backed by big pockets.
Creating another browser that everyone needs to optimize their websites for separately - not so great.
I agree on the pains caused by browser fragmentation, but I do think it's still a good thing to have IE especially the new versions around. The recent move of GOOG pushing for Dart is a dangerous sign that GOOG is starting to flex its muscle and do whatever they want. Mozilla alone stands no chance in such a challenge, in a same sense they couldn't in a battle against MSFT about 2 decades ago.
Exactly, I don't see a downside in Google pouring money at futuristic projects. This is a good thing, their research and development only helps the computing industry. I guess people are just stuck in the mindframe that everything Google does is bad. Sure they seem to do some sketchy stuff sometimes with personal information, but that doesn't mean everything they do is a bad thing.
Only when getting fined for antitrust or monopolistic behavior, which doesn't mean it is a monopoly - only that a regulating body is trying to prevent it from eventually becoming one.
Definitively, mono-poly means one entity in the market.
I understand the etymology, however using that as a basis for reasoning is unhelpful since it's the legal and economic consequences in real-life that actually mean something.
How exactly is Dart dangerous? It's open source, unlike C#.
One nit to pick here: C# is open sourced, though the .NET framework is not. Anyway, let's focus our discussion on Dart.
Somehow I had an impression that GOOG might have a plan B that would push Dart to replace JS on the web and Java on the mobile and a walled-garden that unifies current ChromeAppStore and PlayStore. JS would be totally marginalized and obsoleted. I'm not a fan of JS, but throwing away the enormous efforts done for the past decade is too much a churn and waste for me to swallow. I could hopefully be totally wrong though.
In the US. In desktop. Globally, and once you count mobile, it's negligible. After 9 years on the market, including multiple rebrandings, it's a lost cause.
Bing was more than just a "rebranding" of Live search. And another thing, it shook Google from complacency. Do you remember the spate of improvements that came on the heels of Bing, some copied directly from Bing like infinite scroll on the image search?
We are all better off with a Bing than without. I can comprehend literally zero harm caused by Bing. It's not like you can make a "but IE hurts developers" argument here.
Moreover, if 1/3 of desktop US traffic is of nominal value in your opinion, I think possibly you're jaded.
Yep, google was complacent until Bing showed up. Then google released instant results, improved its images and video results. Bing had a better version of initially). Competition is good.
Maybe it's just a bias on my part, but I don't see anyone using "Binging" as a word to look something up. I would like to see the #s more in depth. (How much of it is directed from Yahoo, and IE, etc)
I never want to see a Microsoft monopoly over "desktop computing" (hah, what an aged term!) again, but I'd definitely like to see their talent get to assert itself further than it currently is able to. Microsoft started as a development tools company and they're still pretty damn good at it. I hope the next decade allows that group to flourish at the very least.
> Microsoft started as a development tools company and they're still pretty damn good at it.
Why are they so behind in C++11 support in their tools then? I think they are falling behind in their tools advantages already. With emergence of OpenGL debugger from Valve that will only escalate (at least on the gaming scene).
That's ironic considered that Microsoft was ahead of the curve on C++03. They were the first, IIUC, to fully implement the standard, and were way ahead of the competition during the whole process.
It wouldn't be unfair to call me a Microsoft "hater", but I've always had respect for their development tools, and especially their compilers. I'm doing a little Windows development these days, but it's on an ancient version of Visual Studio (2003) that can't be upgraded at this time, so I'm not familiar with the latest and greatest. I'm surprised to hear they are behind the curve here, although I'm not surprised to hear that anyone is having trouble implementing the amazingly complex stuff that was introduced in C++11.
They are behind competition (gcc and clang). I doubt they can excuse it with the lack of resources, so I'm not sure why it is so. I don't really use their compilers so it doesn't bother me, I'm just pointing out the fact.
I think they're too distracted with the WinRT and its accompanying C++/CX silliness to properly focus on C++11. It feels like the 1st party platform got the priority in manpower.
It's good to keep some perspective. C++ standards are incorporated into tools so much faster than they used to be it's not even funny. I'm not on the inside so I don't know why things are so much better, but clang, gcc, and visual studio people are all doing a pretty great job.
The current version of their compiler supports many C99 language constructs and libraries; I think VLAs and the restrict keyword are the most noteworthy features still missing.
IntelliJ IDEA is a really fantastic IDE for Scala/Java. I haven't used VS in ~6 years (and back then not deeply) so I don't have a great basis of comparison. But IntelliJ does a fantastic job and it's steadily improved over the years.
Then I don't think you've used VS much. Intellisense with tooltip comments, templates and code snippets. Most VS users haven't scratched the surface of its power. IntelliJ borrows a lot of the ideas from VS btw, their Resharper addon is excellent. I've also used XCode and Eclipse, they're poor men's versions of VS.
I've use VisualStudio every day for the past years. And honestly there are a lot ideas they could borrow from other tools like Eclipse.
Some examples that I personally feel are ways that C# in VS is lackluster compared to Java in Eclipse.
No proper automatic build. While the stuff in Eclipse is a bit too aggressive sometimes it's really one of those really cool features to have.
Errors, warnings, other tools like StyleCop don't show errors inline with the code. I mean, really? I have to scroll through the error list and click?
It also doesn't really seem to understand the code it's processing. I'd expect that when I'm working on Silverlight with C# that the premiere tool from Microsoft should be able to handle things like refactoring properties in C# where it would update automatically in XAML.
And this is not even mentioning the complete trainwreck that is MSDN. Perhaps you can understand it once you really get into it, but I find it extremely confusing the way it mixes different frameworks with similar but subtly different functionality. (Eg a lot of things in Windows Phone are similar, but not identical, to features in .Net and trying to find the "chain of classes" that are relevant to your code is not nearly easy enough.)
Some of these things are probably things you can fix with extensions like Reshaper. But in the end you'll pay hundreds of dollars to compete with something that is free in Eclipse.
Neither is very useful if you need to support many platforms. Microsoft it too entrenched in their walled garden mentality. Cross platform development never will be their strong side and it's their downfall.
Questionable, or I'd say depends on your taste. In mobile sphere C++ does just fine, especially when combined with Qt and QML. And performance still matters most of the time, whether we are talking about embedded or server systems.
If you are going to use Qt/QML you might as well move to C#. C# will always be more performant than JavaScript (QML is based on JS). Plus the bloat introduced by Qt (signals and slots etc) makes it just as slow as C# without any of its benefits.
What is that "always" based on? In Qt QML is needed for the interface only. All application logic can be written in C++ so performance is not an issue.
> They abused their power when they had it and I have no intent of giving it back to them to give them another crack at it.
I feel like in some ways they were victims of their own success (Microsoft was). Building the core of an OS around a browser? At the time, a fairly novel idea, but really forward-looking. And I believe that's part of what brought about the massive anti-trust lawsuit.
As I understand it, the first version of the Microsoft Network (MSN) didn't allow general internet access at all - it was a completely proprietary walled garden, like the original AOL.
> I think the world needs a strong Microsoft again
It's extremely dangerous to think if Microsoft as weak. They have enormous profits and revenue - far, far bigger than Google, for example - that are secure far into the future. They are willing to plow this money for an almost indefinite amount of time into any product to brute force it to success (see Xbox) and they are willing stoop lower and employ underhand tactics to an extent that nobody else in the industry will match. So fear not, Microsoft is a long way from weak. We should worry a lot more about the possibility of them actually becoming completely dominant again than we should worry about the relatively benign prospect of them becoming weaker.
Well, Google does have a higher market cap by some 21%, so obviously the market values Google more.
History is littered with corporate walking corpses that owned markets at times that are are coasting or dead. Just look at how long AOL raked in billions after they long since ceased to be relevant to anything at all. I am not saying that MS is this, but they are feared to become one if they don't find a way to become much more relevant to how many people see the future going.
Agreed. Microsoft tried to create a closed system, but they were prevented by governments worried about them consolidating their power forever. Now, we are faced with two closed systems fighting for power, ios and android. Companies like facebook talk about their "mobile moment" the time when their presences on closed systems eclipsed their presence on an open system, the Internet.
I long for a time when data flowed freely along pipes and tubes.
How can we be certain that a stronger, with a strong developer engagement, Microsoft will not start creating proprietary closed systems and protocols again, siloing open systems into a closed ones (by using its embrace and extend tactics)?
Microsoft is a big place. I predict we're going to continue to create and ship new stuff, and it will vary in all degrees of 'open'. But in my experience as a 3rd party outside developer, it's pretty rare that stronger engagement leads to things being more closed.
> Microsoft tried to create a closed system, but they were prevented by governments worried about them consolidating their power forever. Now, we are faced with two closed systems fighting for power, ios and android.
Am I in opposite world? People want microsoft software on their mobile devices because an open source OS is too "closed"?
I would believe what you actually want is an alternative to google apps on android...
Except that, I'd dare say most of the successes in the last 5-10 years, IMO, have not been merely "brute force" successes. XBox is a fantastic product, all things considered. Azure is a compelling competitor.
It would be more accurate to say Microsoft is willing to plow money into a product long enough for that product development to get past the barriers to success that are inherit in a 130k person software company.
> XBox is a fantastic product, all things considered.
Fantastic in what regard? Can I put my favorite linux distribution on it? Can I even write and release software for it under GPL? Without "applying" to microsoft and waiting for them to "approve" it?
Maybe it's just me but I don't really see why I should buy hardware that is 100% controlled by microsoft when it can't do anything that a general purpose computer couldn't do...
It's not a computer, it's a home theater / gaming machine. (With the exception of maybe the newest, which I haven't used yet) Why on Earth would you want to buy one to use as a general computing PC? That'd be dumb.
Frankly, it works very well for what it was designed to be. 4-5 years ago it provided an awfully intuitive platform to plug into your TV and stream video, tv shows and music from your home network or increasingly from the Internet. Almost no configuration necessary, rarely has issues, and fixes for those issues are pushed fast and often.
It's a home media PC for people that don't have the gumption or wherewithal to build one, and a much more pleasant interaction than many/most of the other HTPC distros out there. And really, almost no one wants to go through building a home server and HTPC, thus the continued advances in "smart" TVs and game-consoles-as-HTPCs.
> they are willing stoop lower and employ underhand tactics to an extent that nobody else in the industry will match.
Worse than Google or Amazon's dominance of the marketplace? The squashing out competition that they do? I don't think so - Microsoft could be on a par perhaps, but certainly no worse.
Not sure about Amazon. But I'd definitely say worse than Google. For all of Google's dominance they offer APIs using open standards for the vast majority of their products, their operating systems are all open source, they guarantee to give you your data with takeout. Mostly where they are dominant it is because they've made products people really want and not because they've locked their customers in. I'm sure you can find exceptions but I think overall their track record is substantially better than Microsoft's ever was.
That's a fair assessment of Google. My views are coloured because of a few really good startups I saw crushed when Google released products for free (specifically Calendar, and Reader IIRC).
I have a long-running joke with friends when we come up with ideas, that we'd better not do it as "Google's going there soon". Thankfully it seems to have slowed down its expansion a bit in the last few years.
Also the power they wield with search and adwords, to make businesses thrive or die - especially if they play the rules (cf RapGenius). Though I don't expect it would be any better if Bing was the dominant search engine.
tl;dr: I don't like semi-monopolies. Small, competing and thriving businesses are the best.
From a technical standpoint, I'd love to see Microsoft starting to gain more traction in the developer world. Coming from Java and Objective-C, I'm pretty excited about C# and .NET, which seem much friendlier towards us developers.
Thanks to Don Syme? F# surpasses C# as a language, and a lot of the CLRs power comes from proper generics. And Simon Peyton Jones (Haskell is pretty neat, isn't it)?
C#'s a nice contender against Java, but in my hindsight, it had an overly limited vision.
Depends on who "us developers" is. Not all development is for Yet Another Corporate CRUD App (dressed up as some fancy groundbreaking tech). I'd argue they already have a significant presence in that particular "developer world" anyway. The vast majority of software run on enterprise desktop systems is Microsoft software, customized and extended in some cases by in-house (or contracted) development using the very walled-garden Microsoft suite of software/languages/compilers.
MS's offerings in that arena are at least as good as any other, if not superior, and I think far superior to the latest fad of (ab)using the web browser as a One Size Fits All application platform.
"Yet Another Corporate CRUD App (dressed up as some fancy groundbreaking tech)" - I think Ruby and Python are used for more then that, I think there is some sort of way of using them for mobile development as well, not the typical glorified web/HTML5 dev you are writing about.
In the past MS was very antagonistic towards open source and even open source projects within their own ecosystem. N-Hibernate and N-Unit come to mind as examples.
Why did this matter? Innovation is much faster and a lot cheaper with open source. Other platforms benefited and grew from it, and a lot of people left the MS ecosystem because it seemed to stagnate i.e. you have to re-invent a lot of wheels when staying in MS's world while all of that is already done and freely available to you on other platforms.
I'm not saying that MS hasn't changed their stance on open source (Codeplex is a prime example). I'm just telling the story of how MS lost traction with developers.
The problem is, this analogy is not precise. In patent wars it often doesn't work because there are privateers (NPE patent trolls) which have nothing to lose and MS and other patent aggressors readily employ them to do the dirty work for them in order to avoid retaliation. So, the mere existence of many big patent holders does nothing to prevent such threats, and especially for smaller players.
True - it doesn't reduce the patent threat for smaller players. But it does limit the dominance of any one big player and provide more opportunities for smaller players to participate.
>> the two power-houses of Google and Apple to shape the industry
and they went in a bad direction imho:
- Apple closed down the app distribution process (we don't like what they are saying, let's censor Phone Story etc. etc. ..)
- The One of Google graps all information it can reach: the world (how boring it gets), me (nicely aggregated behind closed doors). Meanwhile spamming the world with ads.
Regarding the former, governments should enforce a non-exclusive app store policy. Regarding the second, it's more difficult, maybe the Chinese were right to 'shut them out'. Of course I like/kind of depend on some google services. Tricky.
They have always been 2 steps behind on virtually every product release.
Windows phone - check.
Browser that supports modern javascript - check.
An OS that looks wonky on the desktop because they're attempting to play catch-up with mobile devices - check.
You can probably throw Azure cloud services up there too.
If this guy can clean house and run a better ship that what they've been doing, more power to him, but they've got more to worry about that swapping their high paid CEO if they're going to have a future outside of Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
That's the same reason I want to switch to developing for Windows. Except, I don't consider Unix the ideal standard anymore. For instance, PowerShell isn't a real unix shell, but it seems to be a type-safe version of one with first-class access to the platform's first-class API, which is exciting.
No. Unix/Linux and the command line IS easier for development, once you get over the initial learning phase. So many great command line tools and functions, you can get a language, or an environment up and running in seconds instead of dozens of minutes or hours...
Microsoft = closest company ever made in software. They don't contribute as the rest of the companies and, they take years to advance in many topics. they had their strong with 95, XP, but then...
I hope the new CEO has the courage and the power to set out a vision and stick to it for more than just a few years in a row.
Microsoft under Ballmer has been a study in short attention span. Changing themes, names, and directions every three to five years. When I was a Windows sysadmin back in the day, it was incredibly frustrating to build anything on the Microsoft platform because by the time you wrapped your brain around the new way of doing things, the next server OS release would change everything. From what I've seen since I moved on to a different career, that pattern hasn't changed.
Apple's success has come from a laser focus and constant improvement for the past 17 years. Microsoft used to be similarly focused. Remember the old adage that Microsoft would get it right by Version Three, and wipe out the competition? Well, they haven't stuck to any particular plan for long enough to come up with a version three of anything in 15 years.
Hell, Microsoft pioneered tablet computers, but after some promising early models and some decent push into the innovation required, they kind of just let that project wither on the vine until Apple came up with a workable model. Then MS desperately tried to pivot and turn everything, even the server OS, into a tablet-and-desktop-friendly mess.
> Remember Zune? Remember Live? Remember the Kin??
We should be very careful about criticizing others for their failed products. The side-effect of experimentation and innovation is that some of the experiments will result in failure to find market fit. Market fit failure isn't a good thing for a company, but it's much worse to not experiment at all.
Moreover, it's surprising that the grandparent evokes Apple as a counter-example, since it discontinued iTools, MobileMe (or perhaps more importantly iDisk), Ping, Xserve, etc. With the exception of Ping, products that a large group of people relied on.
I guess I failed to make my point clearly. These were not necessarily bad ideas. The Kin got pushed out too early and too sloppily. It would have been better to kill the project before launch than what happened.
Zune could have been a good brand but rather than sticking to their guns, they abandoned it. Live was another unifying brand that they gave up on too quickly in favor of new rebrandings -- Bing, Office365, etc.
My point is that the constant jumping from idea to idea and rebranding instead of sticking with good ideas and revising until they're successful is a pattern of the Ballmer years that is a big part of Microsoft's lack of impact in the computing world over the past 5-10 years as Apple and Google and Amazon have risen to the forefront.
I'm most familiar with the example of the Kin, and it was not an example of "experimentation and innovation", but a case study in how Microsoft has largely lost its ability to execute on a proven concept.
For that matter, the Zune was a (late) iPod clone; sure, it had some experimental features (that didn't pan out, but, hey, they tried), but it was hardly seriously innovative.
It also was yet another example in how you'd best not trust Microsoft, as part of it they threw their PlaysForSure ecosystem under the bus.
Hmmm, getting whole sectors of the world to trust Microsoft in the future is going to be a tall order for the next CEO, assuming he doesn't just punt on many of them, which might be the wisest thing to do.
Execution matters. Zune Pass died a few months ago. I can still use account credit I put on my AppleID from 10 years ago (in fact I still have a few bucks on one of my early accounts).
A small startup that gets squished by larger competition has an excuse as to why it shut down services and let down it's customers. Microsoft has no such excuse. They failed to compete, then the failed their customers. Innovation is wasted if it's improperly handled.
> When I was a Windows sysadmin back in the day, it was incredibly frustrating to build anything on the Microsoft platform because by the time you wrapped your brain around the new way of doing things, the next server OS release would change everything.
[...]
> Apple's success has come from a laser focus and constant improvement for the past 17 years.
Really? OS 9, OS X, iOS? Sure, it's not quite the same number of platforms as Microsoft have done in that time. But I don't think that they're on polar opposites of the spectrum here as you suggest (nor do I think that being at one end of this spectrum is necessarily good).
I'm not sure I totally understand what you're saying, but I'll try to respond:
When Apple bought NeXT and Steve Jobs took over as CEO, the OSX project was born at that moment. Before that Apple had been stabbing wildly in the dark for a solution to their outdated OS, with a bunch of failed efforts at a rewrite. Yes, they updated the old MacOS a couple of times, which needed to happen, but as soon as OSX was ready for prime timee, they made the switch.
iOS is to some extent based on the same internals as OSX, but even if it were a completely different architecture, I'd say it's actually a good example of Apple's focus. Rather than forcing crossover and synergy where it doesn't make sense (ie, forcing the Metro interface onto the desktop and server, without actually providing Metro interfaces to their most popular desktop apps or server tools), Apple created separate OSes for devices that have completely different roles.
Microsoft is often being thumbed as being thickheaded and stubborn as well as unable to be flexible and quick enough to change with the market. "Short attention span" is definitely something new.
Are those mutually exclusive? Couldn't they miss a trend and then eventually bring it to market late, and then change their minds about it shortly afterwards?
Right, my point is that they didn't have the guts to stick with that product or the brand. It didn't do well after a couple of revisions, and they dropped it for the newest unified marketing idea.
I tried to buy one not long ago and was sad that they had been discontinued. I don't know if this is still the case today (or even relevant in the world of smartphones) but I could not for the life of me find an MP3 player with an FM tuner in it. But the Zune had one, did it not?
> I tried to buy one not long ago and was sad that they had been discontinued. I don't know if this is still the case today (or even relevant in the world of smartphones) but I could not for the life of me find an MP3 player with an FM tuner in it. But the Zune had one, did it not?
A Nokia Lumia 520 is dirt-cheap and has an FM tuner.
All you have to do is to pretend that it isn't also a phone.
You said you were looking for an MP3 player with FM radio, and couldn't find one. I just meant that you could've found what you needed by expanding your search to include phones.
I have considered phones, hence the smartphone comment above in my post. Before this time last year, I'd never owned a smartphone before, and hence they weren't on my radar too much when I was looking for a device that included an FM tuner.
I'm not sure this is a helpful diagnosis - Microsoft didn't have a short attention when it came to tablets (as you say, they pioneered them, and they haven't abandoned them), they just didn't get the form factor right, and many of the Live services have just been rebranded. Likewise, Apple has also demonstrated a short attention span at times. Remember Ping?
It's not that they didn't get the form factor right, it's that they didn't align as a company to make sure it was a success. To my knowledge, in-fighting between different divisions in Microsoft lead to the Tablet PC's ultimate demise and as an early adopter myself I definitely felt the pain of it. Tablet pen functionality in Office was a pathetic, tacked-on afterthought, for instance.
Good point - there were several problems with Microsoft's tablet approach, and you're certainly right that application software is one of them. The main thing I wanted to say is that "short attention span" and "abandonment" don't accurately describe what went wrong.
In those early iterations the stylus support was pathetic. In contrast, Today's stylus hardware/software integration on their Surface Pro line is great.
I look forward to Microsoft finding their own perspective not only in hardware, but in software/search as well.
I hope that this is just doublespeak to reassure people who think Gates is important to Microsoft's future success. Personally, I think both Microsoft and the world would be better off if Gates stepped away completely and focussed all of his efforts on the Gates Foundation's work.
I think you're missing the point that Gates will be spending more time at Microsoft to lend gravitas to Nadella amongst the other Microsoft managers he beat out for the job. I imagine once they get the message and give the guy a chance to get his sea legs, Gates will back away.
I agree with your assessment but I think its a negative. Nadella needs to be able to command respect on his own. If you're right in your thinking then it indicates that the board really doesn't have confidence in him.
It was mentioned several times he has a calm and thoughtful approach, which is 180 from Balmer. It will be interesting to see if they can all make the adjustment.
I agree, I find it difficult to see how Gates lurking around would be productive for Microsoft. A new CEO needs to establish their own direction and rapport among employees, but the mere presence of Gates could prove too much in the way of politics there.
I think Bill Gates is brilliant, but if I was a major shareholder in MSFT, I would have him focus all his efforts on his foundation.
If the new CEO wants to change the culture for the better, Gates could be helpful, the Ballmer regime eliminated a lot of the failsafes Gates put into it.
Without a cultural change Microsoft should end its here to now futile attempts to expand outside of its core (has the Xbox, at net, ever made the a lot of money?), put Windows and Office in maintenance mode after restoring the utility of the former for normal desktops, and mostly become a stodgy enterprise software company.
I'm not arguing against that. I'm asking have they been able to make serious money off of it, and while I'm at it, what's the potential for the future?
I assume the first generation wasn't wildly profitable due to the costs in establishing the ecosystem.
The second generation's hardware execution was infamously botched; we know they took a $900 million write-down on that debacle, and can be sure there were massive additional costs in e.g. brand equity.
I have a Chromecast (plugged into the HDMI input on my Xbox One, actually). I don't see that being a credible threat to Xbox among consumers who can afford an Xbox. Possibly something used in tandem when there's not a native app (the Xbox apps for YouTube and Netflix are a much better experience than Chromecasting from a laptop or phone for me).
What do you mean by cloud gaming? Something like the Ouya or Steam's new device?
VR will be interesting. I'm not familiar enough with the hardware requirements to comment intelligently about that. I haven't done much with VR since the late 90s. Is the PS4/XB1's hardware not powerful enough to drive the kind of things that we're seeing the beginning of with Oculus Rift?
Regarding VR: Valve claims that pc's are a better fit to VR and they've done some serious research on VR. I'm taking it on face value(maybe i shouldn't ?).
Cloud gaming is when games are run on a server and streamed to your home. Combine chromecast and cloud gaming, and you suddenly got a huge platform, with much more users than xboox one/ps4. And since it's google ,it would probably run android games which there are tons. This could make the platform preferable for AAA gaming.
One more element that could be important in this is microsoft's "project spark" which let users build games with amazing creativity and amazing graphics. It's still in beta , but when it's release it could be a huge force in gaming , especially together with VR.
I'd heard of this before, but never tried it myself. Out of curiosity, I just tried playing a game through OnLive, using my relatively high-end (for the US) business broadband connection.
I chose Witcher 2 since it was featured on the OnLive home page.
As the intro video streamed, I was impressed. It was smooth and the quality was good.
After the intro video, it all fell apart. The round trip latency on the menu screen was very jarring. Gameplay significantly magnified the latency issues. I felt like my character was drunk, trying to walk around even in the tutorial phase. I can't imagine how terrible that would be during demanding phases of the game. It really was terrible.
Maybe this would be useful for less demanding games, where latency isn't so crucial, but isn't that the whole point? A low powered device probably wouldn't need to outsource rendering in the first place if the game is slow enough that latency doesn't matter. Maybe I'm missing something.
Ironically, playing a few minutes on the OnLive trial made me interested in buying and downloading the real game via Steam, and made me never want to try anything on OnLive again.
For low latency, That's the sort of problem google likes to have: hard technical problems that require a lot of capital(building plenty of gaming clouds physically close to users).Maybe onlive just didn't had enough money so your cloud is far from you.
BTW: sony will be also offering it , so maybe the tech is ready ?
If Wikipedia's to be believed, OnLive has a datacenter here in Georgia with me, probably in metro Atlanta. This same machine I used to try OnLive has a 10-12ms ping to my Linode here in their Atlanta datacenter. It's not going to get much quicker than that over the WAN. If they can't give a decent experience to someone like me, I wouldn't want to see the average user's experience.
Cloud gaming is when a server renders your content for you, then streams the video to you. So you could play a very resource intensive game on e.g. a cheap tablet.
In the US, at least, I see that severely limited by the small usage caps most of us with wired connections live under.
I expect it to follow whatever path Netflix et. al. blaze. Depending; Moore's Law is very much alive, but doesn't apply to batteries. What's the attraction of a cheap tablet vs. a not quite so cheap capable tablet now, or a cheap capable tablet tomorrow, and how much will this depend on battery capacity?
I understood the Foundation's primary problem to be figuring out how to efficiently spend all of their money they are required to spend every year without accidentally funding Al Qaeda. Does Gates have to be around for that?
I don't know, but unfortunately I am very skeptical of NGOs, and charities
It looks like 80% of the money goes for "management" and the rest goes to the actual people in need. Not to mention the contracted "fundraisers" that are paid poorly. (I have nothing against the fundraisers per se, they're usually college kids trying to make some money)
At most established nonprofits relatively little money actually goes to management. There have been a very few cases that have gotten a lot of publicity, but it's relatively a small (and dangerously over-stated) issue.
That said, 'administrative expenses' are a notoriously poor way to measure nonprofits. The group GiveWell is known for attempting to rate charities based on impact.
http://givewell.org/
Basically,
A) The average charity doesn't spend that much on management.
B) Even if the 'average' did, there are plenty that don't.
C) Even so, try using 'impact' rather than 'administrative costs'
D) There are many great causes to give to, and that's really all that matters here.
That said, I would typically expect large companies to have large biases to help local causes rather than the best things for the world.
Full disclosure: my mother and my sister both work in fundraising. I've also done some freelancing for university fundraising departments.
80% is pretty good in the fundraising industry. Usually it's closer to 90%. Don't ever do one of those "text 12345 to donate to hurricane victims in the tropics" sort of thing, the returns on those are abysmal. But really, what do you expect? People doing work have to get paid. Most of the fuel in a rocket is for getting the rest of the fuel in the rocket off the ground.
One of the ways that fundraising departments try to keep the costs down is to use volunteer work (i.e., a form of donation of time) and internships to do the grunt work of calling people on the phone. Nobody expects those college kids to stay in those internships for their entire careers. Usually, they're only there for the "busy season", the end of the year where people rush to get donations in to count towards their tax writeoffs. For many of the kids, it's either that or a completely unpaid internship in advertising.
And government is actually a lot worse. In the US, only about 55% of your tax dollar goes towards social services. Then you have to take the admin percentage off the top of that. To beat an 80% number like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they'd have to keep overhead down to less than 64%. That's so absurdly low that I can't imagine it is possible.
My comment in my original post refers to the fact that every charity in the US is required to spend a certain percentage of their endowment every year. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a HUGE endowment. They have to spend so much that they can't find enough outlets for it. They have to fund projects that aren't necessarily part of their core goals because they can't fund their core goals anymore.
And the snarky comment about Al Qaeda is a commentary on the nature of Al Qaeda, they are not a single organization that operates above the board, they are themselves more of a foundation and loose conglomeration of various groups for mutual benefit. But the way our government casts it, if you help any organization that has any ties to Al Qaeda, then you are helping The Al Qaeda Man Who Is A Single Person Who 9/11 9/11 9/11.
So, when you have more money then you literally know what to do with, just tossing it around makes it very easy to hit Al Qaeda.
It's true that governments are much more efficient at delivering funds than charities. It's an economy of scale. Also governments have a lot more oversight than charities do.
That is the complete, 100% opposite of reality. Charities have tons of reporting requirements that they have to meet to demonstrate--to the government--that they aren't at least a money laundering operation, say nothing about using the funds appropriately. There is no such equivalent oversight of government bureaus.
You're right in a way, but wrong in a more important way.
Charities can spend their money on administration, marketing, etc., such that very little can end up going to their chosen task. A government is the opposite. There are millions of people clamouring to whinge about any amount of waste in government. So you end up with governments being up to 6 times more efficient at delivering aid. The classic example is the cancer cure charities that deliver almost no research funding, while government grants are an excellent source of funding.
It will be very interesting to see what this means. When he dropped the CEO title, the goal was to be more of a visionary too.
An open question... What's the big thing he brings to the table? Strategic thinking? Vision? Competitiveness? Respect in the Company? All of the above? What's the best way to harness this? (Ok, that's open questionS)
Good point. It's very hard to be partially committed to either technology or running a huge firm. Mastering the internals of a huge company is a full time job. So is staying on top of technology in the marketplace. Hiring an insider does help on the first point.
> Good luck to Bill in his new roll on the Board as "Founder and Technology Advisor".
Probably more of a honorary title than anything else. I doubt he'll be as active as Microsoft makes it seem. If anything, Microsoft would be smart to let the new CEO follow his own visions, not Gates's visions.
It looks like Microsoft is starting to head in a better direction given their backtracking on "metro" style for desktop applications. I hope they develop more software for non-Windows devices. I really wouldn't mind using Microsoft software on non-Windows. I only use Windows for testing and gaming.
I wish Nadella and Microsoft luck, and hope they make a real turn around.
As a side note it is also exciting to see some more diversity in the top ranks of one of our biggest technology companies. If I were a young aspiring engineer from India, or anywhere in the world really, I'd feel pretty good about the future right now.
Also amazing is that they're publishing and embedding Google YouTube videos on that page.
I think the #1 thing Microsoft needs to do in order to right itself is become a platform that developers love, which isn't the case today. Becoming fully posix compliant would be a great start to that.
The CLR, .NET and Visual Studio are quite nice, some of the best in the IDE world.
However, it's Microsoft's tendency to squeeze and coerce compliance that drove people away. Proprietary everything means you don't play nice with everyone else.
Now the web has leveled the playing field somewhat, and they can't be coercive to be successful. It'll be interesting to see them play will on other companies' turf and platforms.
IIRC (old Windows NT4 MCSE here) POSIX subsystem never had access to TCPIP, which made it pointless. It was a sales point, rather than a genuinely useful subsystem.
That said, I think OSs are irrelevant: people are happy to pay for apps, cloud hosting etc and MS are happy to provide it to them, Windows or not, for money.
Per http://www.unityisplural.com/2012/01/windows-posix-complianc... due to a procurement lawsuit in 1995 the Coast Guard was forced to accept a NT based "open system" bid. I don't know if they actually cared at the time, but the UNIX(TM) losing bidders certainly did, and it certainly made a big difference in subsequent adoption of NT/Windows.
They abandoned it when they dominated developer mindshare, which they do not today.
Also, I'm not talking about a posix layer that is all but hidden, I'm talking about making Windows a posix system. Coreutils (or something like it), a free compiler, a terminal.
Microsoft already provides "something like" coreutils, free compilers, and a console subsystem. While these things could use considerable improvement — particularly the console subsystem — I'm not sure that the best approach for either Microsoft or the market is to encourage a POSIX/GNU monoculture. I'd rather see Microsoft incorporate good ideas from the competition into future products, and vice versa.
I'd hazard a guess and say that they didn't use it much and only noticed »Whoa, I have to type Get-ChildItem instead of ls? That's so bloated, get me out of here.«
(Side note: I'm a developer, not an administrator and I use PowerShell as such – I have no clue of how to query AD or manage IIS, but I do know the language very well. I also was a technical reviewer of the PowerShell Cookbook 2nd ed.)
From my experience the language has some quirks (that are being slowly remedied in recent versions, e.g. handling of one-element arrays), but otherwise is quite well designed. The quite consistent naming of cmdlets give you enough hints to figure out what a command would be, if you only knows it exists, e.g. querying things always start with Get, projection is done with Select, etc. In a way, PowerShell is more unixy than traditional Unix utilities in that they really do one thing and only one thing. This can lead some to consider PowerShell overly verbose, because the pipeline often looks like
Get-Things | Select-Things | Format-Things
But to me this is actually nicer because I can concentrate on each part individually and not figure out the switch to ls that tells me the file size. And well, PowerShell passes objects through the pipeline so most of the time you can cut text processing to a minimum because you already get what you need directly (which is not to say that text processing is poor in PowerShell – -match, -replace represent grep and sed and switch -regex is very nice for quickly writing parsers for semi-structured text content).
I started out code-golfing Project Euler problems in PowerShell and later noticed that because it's .NET-based it can complement .NET development fairly well. Examples below are all things I did recently.
Need to fiddle around with a format string to get it right?
'{0:yyyy-MM-dd}' -f (Get-Date)
Or need to quickly test a web service whether the new method works correctly?
What I recall hearing was that wherever the standard allowed a POSIX call to just set errno to indicate "sorry, we don't support this", MS's POSIX compatibility library did so, rendering it useless.
I'd take PowerShell over bash any day. If you mean the console window, that's completely independent of the applicating running inside both on Unix-likes and Windows and admittedly there are things to improve. However, there are ConEmu, Console2 and others which by now work really, really well.
Sure you can! Right click on the console window bar (top) and look in Settings. You will need to increase the horizontal buffer size or something like that.
Why can I resize all other windows by dragging the bottom right but not cmd.exe?
I also forgot to mention how slow text output is on cmd.exe when compared against terminals like xterm on linux. If the new CEO can improve the windows command line experience I for one would be immensely grateful.
Because cmd.exe is a fixed width based on the character count. You can drag the height down but not the width sideways. If you right click on the black C:\ icon in the top left and go to properties, the layout tab will let you set the character count width and in turn change that, or alternatively set the font size which will scale the window to suit the character count at the new font size.
You might have been facetious to prove a point but surprisingly few know you can change those settings there, and I like making my terminal oldschool-hacker-green :)
edit: Actually, I've no idea what I've done but now I can drag the window arbitrarily and it'll just show more characters. Maybe I set a font and now can do it? I don't know!
edit 2: I made it go to 160 characters, then set it back to 80, and now it'll let me drag it out to 160 but no more? This is so confusing Microsoft is on drugs
edit 3: Oh, ok. Screen buffer size sets the 'you can resize to this maximum' whereas screen size sets the 'you start at this size'. I'll stop making edits now.
Right, but that's a considerable inconvenience compared to the usual ways of resizing a window. Also, IIRC, there's no Win32 SIGWINCH equivalent, so full-screen interactive console utilities won't respond correctly to resizing.
While there are reasonable third-party workarounds for the most pressing problems, the Windows console subsystem could use lots of love.
That's ridiculous. PowerShell's #1 selling point, object oriented streams, is only available to .NET languages! Which is why the community will never prosper.
I use TCC from these guys (jpsoft.com). It used to be called 4NT and before that 4DOS. Basically it's a superset of cmd.exe (a super-dooper-set these days) and lets you do pretty much anything you can do with shells like bash.
If you're from a Unix background, you're probably better off running bash from Cygwin, but if you're a Windows guy, TCC is a great shell.
It's the first thing I install on a Windows machine.
I'm sure his diversity is only skin deep, and that being born in Hyderabad to an Indian civil servant and migrating to America as an adult had no effect on his personality, experience, or opinions.
I'd think a SJW would be more concerned that he's an able bodied cishet male. That's only marginally better than the dreaded able bodied cishet white male.
That comment is basically impossible to refute. You can say it to anyone and automatically win the argument, regardless of content. You call me a racist, well, I call you a cheapskate.
Ha ha ha! Because he doesn't look different enough! Get it? Cause he's basically a white guy with darker colored skin, get it? Because being born in a different country and moving here basically makes you white, get it?
There's something deeply symbolic about watching those enthusiastic people doing their Sorkin walks for the camera through the vast and completely empty halls of the Microsoft offices (or is it a museum, I can't tell).
By the numbers, Microsoft is still incredibly relevant. At the same time, I can't even remember when I last used any MS product. It's not a boycott, there are simply no points where their stuff intersects with my life. I can imagine I'm not the only one, and that's not a comfortable position to be in for them. However, it's also difficult to see how they could ever break out of that. From where I'm standing they look like a partly consumer-focused IBM: rich, powerful, calcified, eternal, but computing has largely moved on and left them behind.
As a former MS user, I wish them all the success in the world turning this around.
You must not work in the corporate world. Microsoft has a massive foothold in enterprise: email, instant messaging (lync), excel, word, visio, project, even sharepoint and those are just the pieces you can see not to mention whats going in the backend.
Being one of the only Mac users in my office I constantly have to find work arounds for everything. Sadly they will be relevant for a long time we have almost 30,000 people using windows and they wont be learning anything new for a long time if ever.
I do hope the changing of the guard will help microsoft to build better products that integrate with OS's beside windows.
The decline of Microsoft will be a generational thing. At some point, those offices are going to be inhabited by kids who grew up with google docs, dropbox, a variety of IM options, and who have never seen a native email client.
When these kids grow up and enter the workforce, they will want to use the tools they know, and will not understand the point of in-house Windows sysadmins, or the software licensing fees.
My 21-year old daughter grew up using Microsoft products, and has abandoned them completely. Everything she does is in the cloud, (mostly google, yahoo for email). She enters the workforce in one year.
Whatever the new CEO does, he basically cannot win back a generation that has learned to do office tasks on non-Microsoft products. It's sort of like what happened with GM. They produced absolutely shitty cars in the 80s, and many people who had early experiences with those cars started buying Japanese cars and stayed there. (No, I don't have statistics to cite, that's just my impression and personal experience.)
I give Microsoft ten years until their first quarterly loss.
>> When these kids grow up and enter the workforce, they will want to use the tools they know, and will not understand the point of in-house Windows sysadmins, or the software licensing fees.
When your company reaches a certain size, auditors and such will put an end to that.
Also: The success of BYOD suggests that things aren't quite so fixed. And seriously, if you're concerned about viruses, you're going to REQUIRE Microsoft products?
Yep we only install virus scanners at email gateways to make the exchange servers not die. The virus scanners are for windows, never had any auditor for sox or pci ask about software, sounds like a shit auditor.
Our PCI auditors like to see anti-virus on every machine, Windows, Linux, Mac, or Unix. That might not be a requirement, but every year they ask to see our AV solution for everything.
"I give Microsoft ten years until their first quarterly loss."
Hahah - If i had a penny for every time I've heard that. I'm an apple user myself - but MS offers all of what you are describing your daughter to be using as well - in fact I know many companies are already rolling their staff onto Office360 and so on. As for google docs etc - if you ever had to really crunch data - nothing comes close to Excel even today. I'm not saying they should keep doing what they are doing - I do think it's foolish to assume that they dont know whats going on in the world outside and aren't capable to grow with it.
Most people don't, that's why it doesn't matter. I volunteer as treasurer of a cub scout pack. We switched from Excel to Google docs spreadsheet. We're using about 1/1000th the power and limitations of google docs, and google's capabilities are expanding faster than our needs are expanding. I don't care if Excel would be "better" because we'd only need 1/100000th its capabilities or it would take 20 times longer to learn how to use.
Most business tasks run into exactly the same scaling issue.
Business decisions are never made by qualified techs on the basis of pessimism, they're always by completely technologically unqualified managers in a hurry on the basis of optimism.
It doesn't matter that Office360 does blah blah blah -- the next generation of office workers aren't using it now, and that's a problem for Microsoft.
I agree that google doc products are inferior to MS Office. (I find that Libre Office is good enough for me.) It's a funny argument to bring up though. Ignoring the cheaper, inferior alternative is exactly what led to Microsoft's dominance over IBM.
> I agree that google doc products are inferior to MS Office. (I find that Libre Office is good enough for me.) It's a funny argument to bring up though. Ignoring the cheaper, inferior alternative is exactly what led to Microsoft's dominance over IBM.
But Microsoft is not ignoring Google Docs. The Office web apps are also free, have more features than Google Docs, and have better compatibility with Office files. Microsoft is even bundling desktop Office for free with certain tablets, such as the Dell Venue 8 Pro.
There have always been cheaper products. Microsoft even used to sell one. Back when Office was $500, Works was $100. And yet -- even back then, companies opted to pay the extra money for Office.
The only difference now is that the lower-priced product is free. But as a percentage of the worker's salary, Microsoft Office has actually gotten cheaper over time.
No, thanks, I prefer to drink water. Sounds like you bought too much Kool-Aid. You must be tired of drinking it. I recommend that you return it to the store.
Office 365 (not 360) already generates over a billion dollars in annual revenues -- and that includes the desktop versions of Office. Even the consumer version of Office 365 Office has already sold about 2 million subscriptions.
And there are 50 million users of the Office web apps. If you don't know any of them, then perhaps you should think about whether your own experiences are skewed, and unrepresentative of what's actually happening out in the marketplace.
>When these kids grow up and enter the workforce, they will want to use the tools they know, and will not understand the point of in-house Windows sysadmins, or the software licensing fees.
I am inclined to agree. Already I can see the difference in the new interns and new hires at my job. Many of them are using chrome books at home so they tend to use chrome plugins to do everything at work.
Also professors and departments at universities are starting to use open source products in their curriculum as opposed to the traditional Microsoft suite. Even the school I graduated from uses google for email.
These are the kids that change their tools whenever a better one comes along. They are exactly the people who CAN be won over by the first better client they see.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, except I wanted to point out that I still greatly prefer native email clients (I'm 24, for what it's worth). Outlook is actually a very competent piece of software on OS X and I use it at work; it's easily on par with Mail.app for me. I prefer either of these to any web email interface I've used, as they are considerably more responsive (even Gmail seems laggy in comparison).
There is nothing in my comment to suggest otherwise.
On a meta note, I've been getting these "corrections" a lot here on HN lately, I'm just not sure why that's happening. Am I just too sensitive? Should I be more explicit in my comments? I'm not being touchy, I'd really like to know.
> I do hope the changing of the guard will help microsoft to build better products that integrate with OS's beside windows.
Agreed, it would be great if they aimed for integration as a more general goal too.
> I can't even remember when I last used any MS product
> Microsoft has a massive foothold in enterprise
> You must not work in the corporate world
You said you never interact with MS products, those products have a massive foothold in the corporate world, therefore you probably do not work in the corporate world.
If you are doing corporate work, not just software development (though even that too) in a corporate setting but business analysis, etc., and you do not use powerpoint/excel/visio then you are very much outside the norm.
>On a meta note, I've been getting these "corrections" a lot here on HN lately, I'm just not sure why that's happening.
The "corrections" as above, are an attempt to offer a different opinion that counteracts yours because it is seen as outside the normal expirience people are having and since you are getting them often I would think that is because there are many aspects of your comments that are outside the norm.
>Am I just too sensitive? Should I be more explicit in my comments?
I don't think so, your comment seems to add a valuable perspective from someone who does not use MS products in their daily activities, pointing that it is possible when surrounded by the right work culture.
Well, count me outside that norm too. I work in a pretty corporate environment and nobody here uses Microsoft stuff. In fact, I've never worked anywhere where the vast majority of people weren't on a Mac.
In my job, each year I end up in dozens of meetings between corporate executives from different countries around the world. Nowadays, it is true that I see them bringing mostly Macs and iPads.
But this is, in my experience, a rather astonishing change from even 5 years ago, when 95% of the computers I would see these visitors bring would be Windows (and the majority of those still being Windows XP).
>I've never worked anywhere where the vast majority of people weren't on a Mac.
If you are a web designer or creative professional I could see how this could be true for your team. My company provides people with a Dell but for those that wish you can BYOD. 98% of people use the company laptop.
In the past 20 years I've been employed, Mac has never been a majority. First PCs with Windows, now increasingly Linux on developer machines and management with Macs.
But we still have Mac machines, because our customer data comes in in Excel, our applications are written to be compatible with IE8, etc.
The second sentence you quoted appears to be backing up the assumption, or giving you a clue as to where it came from. I don't think he was "correcting" you
> On a meta note, I've been getting these "corrections" a lot here on HN lately, I'm just not sure why that's happening. Am I just too sensitive? Should I be more explicit in my comments? I'm not being touchy, I'd really like to know.
No, it's not you, I'm seeing it a lot as well. Especially the "you actually don't know what you're talking about" threads citing Dunning–Kruger or the equivalent.
I think the world has gotten a little weird. You have real life businesses today that have no Microsoft stuff in them at all. If you live in a corporate environment defined by your Windows XP desktop, it's difficult to imagine a world where grey, 9 lb laptops and horrible corporate Windows installs aren't the norm.
I work in the corporate world. Only thing I use a Microsoft product for is running games. I do have Excel installed on my Mac, but haven’t touched it in ages (though this is mostly because things I deal with polarized themselves between „I can just do it in Numbers” and „where’s my Matlab”).
EDIT: I don’t mean it’s irrelevant, I just mean your assumption wasn’t really legitimate. There’s now many big companies that only use Microsoft in limited ways, and probably even some that don’t use the software at all.
> I do hope the changing of the guard will help microsoft to build better products that integrate with OS's beside windows.
It's not about integration, for Microsoft it's about migration. Why give customers, who are already well and truly invested, any leeway to migrate part of their infrastructure to a competing product?
Interoperability only makes business sense to allow people to migrate to your product, not when there's a risk of allowing customers to ease moving away from it. Given that they've already taken over the corporate/office world, there's not much left out there to suck in. Most of their battles are now in mobile and in the server room. Both of which they're coming from a losing position.
As a counterpoint, I use Microsoft stuff more than ever now. I migrated my email from Gmail to Outlook.com, I subscribe to Office 365 Home Premium, I use Skydrive as my cloud storage provider, and I'm starting to dabble in ASP.Net for web development again.
Oh, and I use (and enjoy) Windows 8.
So, yes, people like you exist. But so do people like me.
You probably use services running on Microsoft-based platforms all the time if you e.g. have a bank account, use commercial airports, have insurance of any form, etc. Those big numbers you're waving away represent real, significant businesses.
Even if you assume I didn't know that (which is somewhat audacious of you), this sounds exactly like IBM. Which was my point, and I'm not waving anything away. I guess there's nothing wrong with being another IBM per se, on the other hand they wouldn't have had to change CEOs if they were all that satisfied with their general trajectory.
I'm not assuming anything, I'm reading what you wrote:
> there are simply no points where their stuff intersects with my life.
As to your other point: Microsoft is big. A "general trajectory" is very vague at their scale. Failure in one area (mobile, tablet) does not imply failure in another (enterprise), or indeed overall. I don't see what's wrong with trying to find a CEO who can turnaround that failure, and don't think it's really indicative of anything other than a missed opportunity.
That's nitpicking. But yes, technically you're correct, I didn't cover the cases where other people outside of my control are using MS software behind the scenes which has an influence on my life. However, we're getting very far away from the original point just for the sake of one-upmanship.
I'm not asserting MS is failing. We basically agree though that there are areas where a turnaround would be exceedingly beneficial or even actually needed. I was trying to illustrate something about those areas, namely that I'd like MS to come back and make contributions to things I care about. It's not selfish, it was merely a wish to make our ecosystem richer again. And I wouldn't have guessed this opinion to be that controversial, but here we go.
It's not notpicking, and your constant attempts to belittle critical responses to your opinion is becoming annoying.
Your argument is: because you don't see their products intersecting with your life, and - you imagine - that of many others, you imagine that's an undesirable position for them to be in, and that computing has largely moved on and left them behind.
I'm pointing out that your argument is focused on one niche -- a big one, but by all means not one that makes them "left behind" just because they have a small presence within it.
Perhaps you think Walmart [1a] is irrelevant and left behind because you never shop there? Or that Apple [1b] is irrelevant and left behind because you don't own an i*device/service?
I apologize if my comments seem belittling, I assure you they're not meant that way. In fact, condescension is the main impression I got from your first reply. At the same time I feel your tone has taken on a personal and aggressive quality that is not acceptable. I was merely trying to rectify what I thought was a miscommunication or maybe a misunderstanding of my original post. Now I see that's not likely to be productive, so excuse me for bowing out of this thread.
Although his email is filled with "corporate BS" and buzzwords it's surprisingly humane.
He introduces himself, explains about his way of thinking, tells about his family, for example
It's something MS needs. A fresh departure from Ray Ozzie, who looked like said Good Morning to his wife with a Corporate Memo, or from Ballmer, who, although energetic, didn't have a good aim for things (well, to be fair it's difficult to throw chairs with precision)
What is a good change here is simplicity of language & clarity - Who Am I?, Why am I here, Why are you here and What do we do next.
A good departure from corporate bs that is spewed when there is a change of guard.
That said Satya Nadella has a task like none other in the business. Good Luck to Satya and MSFT.
Mobile and cloud first could be emphasizing being where customers want Microsoft to be, rather than Windows, which has a tiny portion of mobile and cloud.
Microsoft already produce some apps for the web, iOS and Android, and Azure can run Linux VMs.
Hopefully they just go wherever people want to pay them, eg, to access MS Office where they need it, even if it isn't via a Windows device.
It is interesting how devoid of content it is. I think that much better way to motivate the troops is to give tangible goals and be brief.
Anyway good luck be with him - from what I read in his bio he was heading the only part of MS recently that managed to not alienate its customer and developer base.
Having been at a company that recently underwent a CEO change, the first email is always fluffy. It's a greeting, gives their "big picture" strategy to give some idea of what's new with the new CEO, because that's every employee's concern right now.
In the next few weeks, the new CEO will be solidifying everything with Q&As, visiting the various campuses, and announce any new org changes. Org changes will be the big thing that impacts what individual contributors actually do in their jobs. Major changes to the 2014 strategy or goals would be announced soon, but seeing as how it's mid Q1 it's probably going to be changes for Q2 or 2H.
John W. Thompson was once general manager of the division of IBM that produced OS/2[1], which was soundly defeated by Microsoft. I wonder how he feels about being chairman of Microsoft now given that previous experience.
[1] Around this time, he reported to an executive named John M. Thompson, hence the use of middle initials.
It's all well and good to recognize that he clearly hasn't let his personal feelings about his past project's destruction hinder his career. That's an admirable quality in him and worth noting.
It's another thing to pretend he's a robot and has no feelings on the matter, which is what you're implying. I think the original question is a valid one. Clearly he would have thoughts on the matter and they may be interesting to hear.
Another way you can read it is with a comparison with Stephen Elop and Rick Belluzzo. Could he have intentionally mis-managed OS/2 leaving the space open for Windows 3, being then rewarded by a position at Microsoft's board?
I know nothing about his career or his decisions WRT the OS/2 product, but, after having a closer look at the other two, a pattern of executive placement as an offensive weapon starts to form.
He's only been on the Microsoft board since 2012, which is nearly 20 years after the release of OS/2 Warp. That is pretty a far-fetched scenario in this case.
I agree. I don't know where he was in the meantime and what his relationship with Microsoft was during that time. If OS/2 was sabotaged from within, it was, quite possibly, the first time Microsoft did it.
It's far-fetched anyway. Belluzzo is much less far-fetched and Elop is pretty obvious.
> I know nothing about his career, but, after having a closer look at the other two, a pattern of executive placement as an offensive weapon starts to form.
A critical historical factor that doomed OS/2 from the outside was that following IBM tradition, after the evolution of PC -> XT -> AT, they told IT managers the PC-AT would be the last microcomputer they'd have to buy for a long time.
Unfortunately, per Bill Gates, its 286 was "brain dead chip" and absolutely hopeless and slow in Protected Mode, which is where it needed to run for a modern, large address space computer. As I understand it, the OS/2 inability to abandon the 286/PC-AT for the 386 is what really drove the split.
(It wasn't even IBM that came out with the first major 386 system, but Compaq.)
The 286 really had a lot of technical issues and IBM's apparent reluctance to embrace the 386 did hurt them in the long run (as well as MCA). Yet, for software built for OS/2, the 286 was just fine. Its main problem was dealing with DOS programs that wanted direct access to hardware. The fact that developing for OS/2 was painful and expensive was not helping. IBM made a lot of stupid decisions and Microsoft benefited greatly from those decisions.
What I was told by various people who tried this is that Intel had no idea how people actually coded for the x86/weren't willing to make segment sizes larger than the original 64 KiB, and the penalty for loading a new segment register was "tens of cycles" per Wikipedia, I've heard on the order of 40 earlier.
So a lot of existing code bases, including a couple I worked on for PCs (Gosling Emacs and a write once filesystem) ran, or would run, fantastically slower in Protected Mode.
Yeah, sure, you could with no small amount of pain write more efficient code for OS/2 1.x, but why bother after Windows 3.x became a big hit?
Oh, yeah, now you're reminding me that the cost to develop for it was $6K for the SDK in 2013 dollars, plus of course a PC-AT with a lot of memory (at least 1.5 MiB, which wasn't cheap back then, nor was the AT).
The 32-bit OS/2 2.x and "NT OS/2" was a different story however, and while this decision was made before MS turned this project into a fiasco, this reminds me of how abandoning segmentation altogether and going for a flat address space for OS/2 2.0 and "NT OS/2" was a mistake for security reasons, and I realized that the Morris worm spread around Sept 1988, when both was in development (MS sent the first OS/2 2.0 SDKs to developers at the end of 1989).
I don't want to jump to conclusions, but after watching the video I have a really good feeling about Satya. He doesn't strike me as a neurotic Microsoft evangelist salesman like Steve Ballmer.
I would love to see Nadella's Microsoft get more involved in open source projects, and win back some developer love that has become lost in darker years.
Here's the concern:
1. Everyone thinks Microsoft needs a rethink.
2. Ballmer and others inside Microsoft think they did that and just need to execute on it (devices first, etc.)
3. This guy helped develop the rethink that is in-process.
Any external candidates would have had to buy-in to the restructure already started but not fully executed under Ballmer. Since he was theoretically part of the changes started with Ballmer, he will continue the same agenda.
IMHO the re-think wasn't too far off. Microsoft's tablet OS is pretty nice. It was just late to the game and needs a stronger app ecosystem but they're working on that. The UI for Win8 desktop was DOA. They really over-shot there but have taken what I feel are appropriate steps to mitigate some of the damage and I think we'll see a nicer, better solution come Win9.
I hope so. We need more competition out there and Microsoft should be in the mix. It will be interesting to see changes if Ballmer and Gates remain on the Board in some capacity.
I'll be more interested when he unleashes his "arse kicking" on the company and starts pushing roadmaps out. That's a make or break moment for a lot of us involved in Microsoft's ecosystem.
You know for the first time in a very long time I actually want to make Windows software. It's not really Microsoft's fault though. I really like twitch.tv, and streaming games from Windows is really easy thanks to OBS. I want to build stuff that makes user and streamer interaction easier via OBS on Windows. I wouldn't put it in the Windows store though. Heh.
Given that the internet as the public knows it is only 20 years old, there's really not that much tradition. A kid in 1990 wouldn't say "I wanna be a web developer", because that job simply did not exist - it would still be several years before Mosaic came along (it's just had it's 21st birthday)
For the internet perhaps not. For our industry - we can trace it back to the 1950s or 1960s (I know there were earlier uses of computers, but I've never sen them as similar enough to our pattern).
I wish Microsoft would stop using language like "he saw how clearly Microsoft empowers people to do magical things". It makes it sound like Microsoft people are still off in la-la land, continuing to create interfaces like Metro for the desktop. Get Microsoft back to being a great software engineering, customer-focused and reliable company that enables people to be more effective in their jobs and help make those people's customers happier.
I totally agree with this. Microsoft would be really smart to cure themselves of all the delusional "we've got the greatest and most innovative people" crap. Sure, sure, pat yourselves on the back for your accomplishments and be proud when you do things well, but don't act like it's because you've somehow managed to hire the Chosen Devs. That kind of thinking just leads to never being self-critical.
So I've done consulting with a 20MM+ USD startup that has engaged MSFT over a long period for acquisition potential. It was the case that Balmer had to personally approve every M&A activity over 10MM USD. Hopefully Satya will put in place an A-team of shrewd investors to delegate much of this activity because it seems nonscalable for a CEO to get involved in nearly every transaction. Satya has a lot of work to do to keep what works, modernize and throw out the bad (repeatedly trying to apply the same UX from one platform everywhere).
PS: Azure is great technically and is lightyears ahead most other parts of MSFT but it has not found enough customers to warrant applause. AWS eats their lunch.
I still feel like I don't know who this guy is. I'm sure he's awesome but a lot is left out. The MS official bio stuff says he has a family, has worked for MS for a long time, has some degrees, and loves cricket. But what has he been doing at MS for 22 years? What roles has he had?
Microsoft needs a CEO who's willing to focus, and that means killing the stupid ideas and making hard decisions on what they're trying to be and what they aren't trying to be. Windows 7 and Xbox 360 were both relatively successful products. It seems to me that Windows 8, Xbox One and other recent products have suffered from a lack of focus.
They're trying to segment such that their phones run one OS and their tablets and laptops run another. This is a really bad premise for a lot of reasons. The right processor architectures for laptops are not the same as the right processor architectures for tablets and phones. Windows 8's interface that tries to cater simultaneously to touch and mouse input is a confusing mess for users. They've decided to kill foundational elements of the UI for reasons that are simply boneheaded. It's obvious that an OS focused on touch input and mobile processor architectures and an OS focused on mouse/keyboard input and desktop architectures is a much better strategy.
As far as I can tell, Ballmer was a nut whose principal qualification was being Gates's college roommate. Hopefully we'll see Microsoft become more competitive in the consumer space with this change.
Watching the video of Satya, I found that I was most happy about all the plants in their building. Also it's interesting to listen to Satya's native accent come and go depending on what he's talking about.
This is an interesting pick. He may be diplomatic but he is quite clear about the current organisation problems, that Microsoft's need to amplify their work. Microsoft has been a traditional technology company but increasingly, they are getting trounced on the consumer side because they never had to build up a competency due to their incumbency.
Microsoft is very good at long term support platforms. They have clearly articulated how long they will support each of their iteration of OS, and software packages. These work extremely well in the enterprise space. Moving a lot of their disparate services into long term support - e.g. skydrive makes good sense.
If they can now do the same for their software platforms and provide long term support for how to write long lived applications that will run well on the ARM and x86 platforms, we should start seeing some consolidation in the APIs again.
> He joined Microsoft 22 years ago because he saw how clearly Microsoft empowers people to do magical things and ultimately make the world a better place.
Twenty-two years ago, Windows 95 was three years in the future. As I recall, Microsoft's only truly great product was Word (Excel was getting there, I think), although I guess Flight Simulator wasn't too bad. Microsoft was trying to pretend that Windows 3.1 was a competitor to the Mac. Lisp machines were still trying to make a go of it.
In 1991, Microsoft was already ascendant. You may be too young to remember, but MS-DOS was everywhere. Given the failures of Commodore and Atari, the rise and fall of the 80's unix wars, and with Jobs no longer at Apple, Microsoft essentially took visionary leadership of the computing scene by default.
Instead of using proper unix machines, my early computing years were spent on DOS and Win 3.1.
I was around back then, and was using Macs and Unix, looking down on folks for using Windows & DOS. To this day, I can't begin to fathom the sort of mindset it takes to settle for worst.
I certainly would not have agreed that Microsoft ca. 1992 was at all visionary. I felt embarrassed for them and their users back then, much as I would for an adult who shows up at the office proud of the childish fingerpainting he spent the last month making. Grasping, copying, but not visionary.
I had the pleasure of meeting Sathya a year back. He was giving a presentation to a crowd where he said "anyone uses Windows Phone?" No one raised their hands. He said "damn, even I use an iPhone".
I love the breadth and the diversity of all of the customers we empower, from students in the classroom to consumers to small businesses to governments to the largest enterprises.
It's interesting to see the governments standing between small businesses and large enterprises in the minds of such men.
Even for governments that are bigger than large private industries in scale, they often make IT purchasing decisions at a lower level of the organization which makes the effective scale as a purchasing entity smaller; so, there may well be a sensible business reason for this ordering.
I'm curious about his accent. It sounds like it would've taken a lot of work to develop. Is sounding American-ish a requirement of rising to the upper echelons of a company like Microsoft?
Let me give you a perspective on this. I moved to the US from India when I was about 17 and I am almost 33 now. My accent has definitely evolved over the years and it sounds a little more American-ish even though I can never be a native speaker. I actually prefer that people can understand me when I talk to them. If someone thinks that I sound American-ish, good for me because they will feel comfortable striking a conversation with me. If someone thinks that I am faking it, they can choose whether they want to interact with me or not and I respect that.
So the point is that accents can evolve naturally over a period if the person makes an attempt. Yes it gets harder as you get older. Just because someone sounds American-ish doesn't mean that they are not speaking it naturally.
A lot of people do not realize that their accent can actually be a hindrance in communication. They might have near perfect grammar but accents do cause a problem. I know this is a controversial topic and even pg got some flak for saying this but a "neutralized" (notice the American spelling) accent is important for communication. If you are a leader/CEO, even more important.
He still sounds Indian - eg 'more meaning', 'unbounded' has the emphasis on the vowels which is quite Indian. He also pronounces 'perseverance' differently from an American. I don't think he's putting anything on.
He's been in the U.S since his masters, an accent change over that many years is quite natural, and hardly has anything do with the fact that he's in a high powered position in the company.
Is it racist to not understand half of what is said through a thick accent? if it is I'm a big jerk.
edit: why the down votes? Honest question, parent seems to be implying that its a bad thing that he adjusted to his environment, an environment where clear communication is paramount,.
Do you mean Nadella's in particular? I didn't think it was that bad. Anyway it's only racist if you think less of a person just because you can't understand them. Remember there are lots of people who can't understand you, either.
We all have accents whether we were born in America or not. Have you ever been in the South? Just because we talk slow doesn't mean we think slow ;)
Typically, it just requires spending time around the person and interacting with them. It doesn't matter where they are from or what sort of accent they have. After a few days, you'll understand them.
And also, an accent has no bearing on intelligence.
This is not always the case, for instance I've worked with a great guy from China, after almost a year I still have a hard time understanding him and often have to ask him to repeat himself. It makes working collaborating difficult face to face.
My Argentinian TA once said "if I have an accent and you have an accent, we might have a problem." That said, all my coworkers are Chinese (many have never been to the states or outside of china) and I don't have a problem with anyone's accent (they can barely understand my Chinese though).
I do fine on the street, but my Chinese isn't technical enough to work at work, I just don't have the vocabulary (thankfully, English is supposed to be our working language anyways).
Being able to communicate is extremely important for even mid-level executives. If the accent makes understanding continuous speech more difficult and lacking vocabulary prevent the creation of accurate metaphors, it's a big problem.
Nadella shows no sign of this. He may not sound "perfectly american" but he's understandable enough for me. In fact, he sounds vaguely European. Keep in mind I am a Hungarian, born in Brazil who learned Hungarian, Portuguese and English in that order. If I can understand him, I suppose Americans will have little trouble ;-)
I'm really hoping this gives Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanselman a path up the MS corporate ladder. They're contributions to the .NET dev community cannot be understated.
I heard Scott is already pretty high up in the ladder and reports to Satya today. I hope he takes over Satya's position and heads the Cloud and developer efforts though.
Yes, this is exactly what I was alluding to. Scott Guthrie is the reason ASP.NET has so many Microsoft made open source components, so having him in a position of greater power can only be good for MS, the dev community, and OSS in general, I think.
Can someone in the know shed some light on how a CEO of a corporation this big gets selected, from searching for and vetting candidates to the competition involved amongst nominees vying for the position? I imagine it's less about an admissions-type board reviewing applicants' credentials and accomplishments and more about years and years of strategic positioning, favors, and relationship building with people that matter. Or a bit of both.
> Can someone in the know shed some light on how a CEO of a corporation this big gets selected ...
It's easy to summarize: the stockholders trust the corporation's board, and the board trusts its selected candidate. There are very few written requirements, most of the process is based on the judgment and experience of the board members -- which is why they're sitting on the board.
> ... years and years of strategic positioning, favors, and relationship building with people that matter.
That's accurate. But the bottom line is that if the candidate doesn't work out, the board's credibility evaporates -- that part of the process is also ruthless and unwritten.
I'm very skeptical of them going with someone who's been with the company that long. I think they needed an outsider. I was glad when the Sundar Pichai rumor started.
Also think it's a bad thing that Gates is going to take a more active role as the technology world today is very different from when he dominated. Gates is famously (if the stories are true) the one who didn't like the Courier tablet, for example.
Interesting that they chose a walk and talk kind of thing, in a completely vacant office. What where they hurrying towards that they couldn't take the time to sit down?
It made me think of the logistics behind the video. "Hey everyone, the hallway is closed off for the next two hours because we want to show our new leader in an environment completely devoid of people."
I don't recognize the building, but the layout is reminiscent of their Conference Center, with its very wide, open hallways and no personal offices. Every time I ever went in there when there wasn't a big event happening, it was vacant just like that. It wouldn't really have been any effort at all to reserve it for filming. [edit: as to why they'd want to show them wandering around in a vacant building, I have no idea other than pure aesthetics]
I was just disappointed he didn't hop on the vespa and putter away at the end.
I'd say, from my armchair: take a long hard look at what's really happening out there, step out of your bubble. Stop this ridiculous attitude towards competitors and open source, at least long enough to see what they have to offer. Get your people some Macs, get your server people exposed to some Linux, get them some iPhones and iPads and Android devices, and make them see why you've been losing ground. Those competitors aren't perfect, they all have distinct and horrible weaknesses that you can exploit by making something better. Step out of your bubble and make something.
I am no fan of MS given what I went through with them in the '90s, but I'll give Satya the benefit of the doubt. Here's what I'd say to him:
Recognise that operating systems are less relevant than they were and port everything to everywhere. This means dev tools, Office, etc. People will pay for Visual Studio on the Mac and on Linux if it's the same experience as it is on Windows.
De-complexify Windows and focus on its number one use case: Office. Windows is essentially a platform for running Office and playing games.
Make Visual Studio Pro free or unify Express and allow extensions. Make ASP.NET & friends as easy to deploy on Linux as it is on Windows (or put some serious energy into mono).
Not sure if they are good suggestions or not for the business but they would certainly help me out!
This is a bit of a tangent, but is not having an MBA a significant impediment to advancement in Microsoft to the executive level? I've never worked there, but the impression I have is that a programmer there could never hope to rise to this sort of level in the company.
A part of me was hoping for an outside technologist, as I'm almost instinctively suspicious of anyone who could grow and thrive in the dysfunctional stack rank regime, but this is so much better than the CEO of a soft drink company, for example.
Stack ranking is largely attributed to Lisa Brummel, Executive VP at MSFT. And it's been stated in many articles that stack ranking caters to the top 10% and nobody else.
I wasn't thinking it was his idea, but he obviously did very well in the stack ranking ecosystem, which implies (among other things) looking at your own success in terms of a peer's failure.
For a system with a set turnover ratio, you could make a claim that everyone in the company views their own success as a result of someone else's failure. Be it a VP, GPM, Team Lead, etc. Because it happens at every level within the organization.
"Our industry does not respect tradition — it only respects innovation." ... "Our job is to ensure that Microsoft thrives in a mobile and cloud-first world."
Catching up to the current state of things does not sound like innovation.
Also, "mobile" and "cloud first" is a sure fire way to continue with Windows decline with every new version they put out. If they really continue down that road, you can bet your behind that Win7 will put XP to shame regarding longevity. There is no need to "wait for Win9" if that is their way forward. Nothing needs to be "cloud first". Especially no Desktop OS. But MS currently still has problems acknowledging this fact. Unless the new CEO changes that, Win7 will stay put. Period. And a guy coming from Enterprise should know that. But since he also comes from "the cloud", it is about a 50:50 chance he'll actually do the right thing.
Did anyone else notice the way that they are dressed? There is not a single tie anywhere in any of the pictures. Even the people in the background are dressed casually. I can't ever remember a CEO of a major corporation not being fully outfitted in formal office attire, Steve Jobs not withstanding.
I take this to mean that Microsoft is aiming to be hip and cool. That's not a bad thing, if they really mean it and can pull it off. I hate the coat & tie thing when it dictates what I can do and my level of political influence. Those things should be decided by my ability to think and reason, not where I shop for clothes.
Well, it was his first day on the job. I didn't expect him to roll out a 50-page strategy document.
He was cheerleading here. Boosting the morale of Microsoft employees by talking about how awesome they are and how their lives will improve under his tutelage.
Microsoft has a long history of being focus on the marketing of developers, even as the main strategy to prevail and control the corporate IT market. Having a CEO who shares a similar culture background as more than half the population of who currently employed in IT industry, brings to Microsoft a distinctive advantage when it comes to both selling to this market or attracting talent. Very clever move. Kudos to Bill G.
On the other hand, contrary to Ballmer, the new CEO will be under strong influence of Gates and the investors.
Well Congrats to their new CEO, there is a lot of work to do to put MSFT on the right path for the future. The industry has changed, consumers have changed, MSFT needs to evolve too.
Very interested to see what the new CEO will bring and hopefully a much needed injection on the innovation front. His background in R&D and running the cloud divisions at Microsoft makes him a different proposition to Ballmer. I like the idea that Bill Gates can maybe combine with him as Founder and Tech advisor and balance old and new with some vision. Microsoft has lost it's way in recent years and although not a wholesale change maybe they can give it some new direction
Words of new CEO of Microsoft "I marvel every day at how people can excel..." taken out of context are hilarious when I think about all stupid stuff people do with Excel.
In Bill Gates' video, at 0:28, does he laugh just a little bit as he says "we took advantage of the internet" when listing their historical innovations?
It'll be interesting to see the direction Mr. Nadella takes the company in. Hopefully he expands the Research division and tears down barriers to incorporating more research gems into the product lines. I'd also like to see more UI/UX innovation. One further thing I'd like to see: Visual Studio as a platform-independent product line with F# as a major player in that platform.
if you want Microsoft to innovate, simply throw out everything you have done so far and bring us a real object-oriented operating system that can work seamlessly on one machine, many machines on a lan or many machines on a wan.
Productivity could be vastly enhanced from what it is today by a true object-oriented design.
Computers are not file cabinets. Computers contain objects. The file metaphor no longer serves us.
I'm hoping Satya can break through Microsoft's notorious cycle of be strongly competitive, but then neglecting a product when it has achieved dominance. Also, continue and expand the embracing of open technologies. Do all that and avoid monpoly tactics and you should be good to go.
Microsoft has always been its best as the underdog and that's where they're at now.
If he focuses the entirety of MS on cloud and mobile, while offering some level of innovation, he will have done a good job. I think the real challenge is how do you make a company whose flagships are non-mobile and non-cloud products like Office and Windows go mobile and cloud? Those are massive institutional forces of inertia.
Indeed. Enterprise is where Microsoft has the most traction, and benefits most inertia and lock-in. It faces competition from SaaS companies, but that's an unavoidable transition Microsoft will have to make.
Office 365 seems to be doing very well. In that case, it's the SaaS companies that should be deeply afraid of Microsoft. As a total offering (consisting of cloud components and PC-based components) it's pretty hard to beat.
Running O365 on Azure has probably substantially improved the platform.
I can't see why Microsoft would take the slightest interest in the mobile software world of 100,000 different $1 crapware products. There's no money in it.
Rovio is one of the most successful mobile developers there is, with annual income of $150 million, across pretty much every mobile platform. They're great at it.
$150 million isn't even visible next to Microsoft's $60 billion yearly income.
The key here is innovation. Innovate or die. Simple as that regardless is OSS or proprietary. Is Satya up to the challenge to turn the sinking ship around? We will see in the next a few years.
Cool, with Bill also more in the action we can probably hope some interesting times ahead. Another "white" topic though: does anyone notice those white spots in the MS logo?
Sidenote: the videos are embedded from YouTube. I'm impressed and even a bit encouraged that Microsoft set aside NIH long enough to use a competitor's product.
Microsoft should spend the next 10 years running conduit and fiber to most homes in North America and building out the highest capacity network. No one else quite wants it badly enough, not even Google, and the incumbents are no threat at all. They have the money. They'll never win at software again in a big way. Micronet is the answer.
Yeah, I'm sure the FTC would love that. I'm not saying it's a bad idea in theory, but MS is still a monopoly in many ways... they don't need to invite further scrutiny in that regard.
On the other hand, the last time they got busted in the U.S., they got off with a slap on the wrist. The E.U. seems to take that stuff a little more seriously.
I also found it interesting that they felt the need to include a photo of Satya looking chilled out in a hoodie. Just feels really forced - it seems completely out of character based on all of his other imagery / appearances elsewhere.
There is nothing wrong with the guy wearing suits to work if he wants, but it seems that they're trying unnecessarily hard to make him fit some sort of cool geek stereotype.
Video fail: apparently Bill Gates video was filmed with a chroma-keying (blue-screen) and because of original reflections on his glasses you can now see "through his head".
I agree with the above. After watching the video in HD and fullscreen, it looks like the reflection of a screen more than anything else (to me). Hardly surprising, given that the hallway is covered in television monitors.
The only good thing about this is showing the world that the curries are finally stepping up. It will not make one iota of difference to anything Microsoft does, its culture, policies, etc.
The sad thing is that I'm of Indian heritage and I have to agree with him. It's not related to race, it's more about the education that most Indians receive. All are taught more about being bean-counters than striving to create new and innovative (gah, hate that word) solutions. I like the Metro approach. It just needs to be split into two configurations for both desktop and a tablet OS, and Microsoft could have a real winner.
I'm afraid that we'll backtrack all the way back to the 7 days and inhibit progress. It's been shown to happen in the past, and it's not an illegitimate concern, however racist it may seem.
it's more about the education that most Indians receive.
He was educated in the US. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella:
"Nadella earned an MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business."
For what it's worth (and I don't plan to weigh-in on the topic of Indian education one way or the other, as I have no knowledge in this area) he did receive his BS in EE at Mangalore University[0], in India.
I am Indian and I am heavily suspicious towards the very tow-the-line and do not argue attitude many have. Not saying I agree with the comment I responded to, but to say that some general level statements cannot be said is ridiculous.
Probably related to who is or was CEO of Adobe Moto. Anyways, correlation is not causation, or in this case, not even meaningful. It was a racist statement.
Adobe is the monopoly in the desktop graphics tool market. Not sure why no VC targets it at this moment, which does seem like a slow dinosaur to attack on.
Pixelmator's proprietary, and can't run on non OS X ATM due to reliance on, IIRC, CoreGraphics or similar. If they recreated those libraries on other platforms they may have a PS competitor.
Once again, I'm amazed at the level of racist comments on HN. The truly sad thing is, reading this guy's other comments, you get a sense he/she is a truly intelligent person.
Disclaimer: I work in Azure.