Is Microsoft as poorly managed as I think it is?

Great Debates
21

Easy there man,

Just because I criticize windows doesn’t mean I’m criticizing you. Why they hell are you so sensitive?

As far as Window’s advantage being backwards compatibility, I’d agree, but we’re beyond the phase where emulation isn’t possible now. As long as the architecture stays the same you can look to see 70 percent speed. And if you’re worried about losing backwards compatibilty most of those applications are old (read small) so it’s not a big issue. Microsoft could easily build their version of the Classic environment that OSX did when it first came out.

As far as getting people excited? You think that’s a bad idea? You must not remember the roll-outs of Windows XP and Windows 95. I was excited about those two. Vista? Meh. Everyone knew it would be a POS from the getgo because it was rushed. But really it’s a question of critical mass of coders and code. I sort of feel that at that size the amount of man-hours to add something it far higher than it would be if it were still a smaller OS. This is why I think it’s important that they cut the fat and restructure everything. All of that legacy support is jeopardizing their ability to produce a modern OS.

Antivirus? Again, you’re turning it into a Mac vs PC thing. It’s not. It’s a PC vs. the rest of the world thing. I shouldn’t have mentioned that I own a Mac, because my criticisms would seem more valid then I guess. Apple doesn’t need to do it, because like you said, it has only 5 percent market share. But Microsoft seriously needs to get it under control, and I’d suggest integrated antivirus.You sound like those people giving Bush all of this credit for having done a good job despite the difficult circumstances we are in. Stop making excuses. Microsoft is the de facto owner of the PC experience, and if it is shitty, then it is their fault. They are starting to do this with the Malicious Software Removal Tool, and this Windows One Care, but really it ought to be included.

Oh yeah, while I’m at it, get rid of all of those goddamned system tray icons. I doubt I will be really hurt if I don’t have the absolute bleeding edge version of RealPlayer. I don’t need all of those updater systray icons. There’s even one for QuickTime! That’s another huge problem with the user experience. Most people don’t know what the hell anything down there does.

22

Half the additions to Windows you suggested couldn’t possibly be integrated for fear of anti-trust violations. What Apple is able to do, with its tiny market share, and what MS is able to do are two completely different things.

Buying out an anti-virus company and including its product wholesale into Windows is not going to happen.

23

Basically because you sound like every other koolaid drinking Mac-head I’ve ever met. Or alternatively, you sound like Justin Long in those Mac vs PC ads and those have recently started to piss me off because they’re out and out lying now to “prove” Mac’s superiority over Vista.

I remember the rollout of Windows 95. It was insane and it never made sense to me that people could get that excited over an OS. But the only reason 95 was such a draw was because it was a relaunch of the entire Windows look and feel. You can’t do that every time and Vista was just an evolutionary step, not a revolutionary one. So it’s understandable that people aren’t as excited.

As Capt. Ridley pointed out, this would be illegal. Not to mention a waste of time as there are three perfectly good antivirus programs out there, one of which is completely free.

And Microsoft is not the de facto owner of the PC experience. Your Mac bias is showing. After the OS, a PC can be whatever you want it to be with whatever software you want to be on it. That is the whole point of a PC.

Again, this is not Microsoft’s fault. If your system tray is overloaded, then you put too many icons down there. How can you blame Microsoft for something you (and the software company that made the systray icon) did?

24

You know what Justin_Bailey just forget about it. I come in here and try to have a good faith discussion about what I feel Microsoft ought to do better and you come in here and turn it into a PC vs Mac argument and shit all over my fucking thread. I hope you’re happy.

Why the hell are you so goddamned sensitive? Did a Mac owner steal your girlfriend? How many times to I have to say:
“I USE AND LIKE WINDOWS”

There are things I don’t like about OSX too. I just think that windows could be improved in a lot of ways. My ideal OS would be a combination of both. My ideas are good, an you’d rather sit here and make excuses for Microsoft for some reason. I realize you have a knee-jerk reaction from years of having this argument, but you can drop your old tactics for a moment, because this is not something I normally do.

Well you know an OS roll out is not supposed to be a Blockbuster movie
Remember Windows 95?
Well Vista is an evolutionary step…

Whatever…you’re not going to be convinced. The fact of the matter is that Vista being an evolutionary step after 5 years is pretty pathetic. Not only has it been 5 years, but 5 years of the most mainstream computer use ever. If Microsoft were to make a revolutionary new OS it should have been with Vista. But we’ve already covered why they couldn’t do that.

Microsoft is the de facto owner of the Windows experience. Sorry, my “Mac Bias” isn’t showing because I have none. Microsoft is in control of it because they produce the main interface. What is Sony going to do to change it? There’s very little that can be done. Sure they can add boot menus and helper programs and the like, but they can’t control much else. Again, i’m relying on my years of experience and fixing almost a thousand computers. I think I’m in touch with how the average user feels about things.

The system tray argument. You, again, miss the boat entirely. Do you honestly not know that I don’t know how to keep my System Tray clean? But does the average user know? They do not. That is my point. I am talking from, again, years of experience of hearing customers bitch about Windows. Nobody likes those icons down. Yes it IS Microsoft’s fault for designing such a ridiculous way of doing things. It was a good idea back in 95, but when they started letting any program put it there it became overcrowded. It all goes back to Microsoft owning the experience. Half of those icons are “updater” icons anyway, meaning little programs that do nothing but sit in memory and check for updates. How about a unified update system in Windows that includes all programs? That’d be a great idea. Then you won’t need all of those stupid programs that each check individually.

It’s pretty obvious what happened here. I mentioned offhand that I had a Mac (I’ve got PCs too) and you flipped the fuck out and went into panic mode. Chill out and think about your arguments because they are pretty weak. You have some intense desire to defend the status quo for God only knows why. It’s one thing to argue the validity of my points but all you do is come in here and say, “That’s the way it’s supposed to be” for every thing I say. Well maybe it should be different? Maybe it’s possible to be critical of Windows without being a slavish Mac enthusiast who disses Windows at every turn? I think the whole concept of bashing another’s operating system is childish and immature. But I am not criticizing from a foreign point of view, but as a daily Windows user.

As for antivirus, Microsoft already has it with Windows One Care. Now look, again, I’m talking from YEARS of supporting computers. Do you know how fucked up it is now? You know those ads that say, “Your computer is Infected”? People actually USE those. I’ve had people that have PAID for fake antivirus. This shit really has to end. The average person simply finds it all too overwhelming. And trust me, most antivirus suites just confuse the hell out of them too. That’s why I suggested that Microsoft ought to include it in the system-level. I admited that it might be illegal, but on the other hand, it’s actually be worth it. At the very least they could develop a framework for an antivirus program to have a specific function and more natural feel.

The point is that for a large portion of users, Windows is broken. You know how to keep your computer running, good for you. But it’s too difficult for a large portion of people. The problems that we deal with are almost always 90 percent software, of which I’d say is damn near 100 percent virus related. And you can say, “Well it’s their own fault” but at some point Microsoft needs to take responsibility because it makes their product look bad.

You’re arguing that Microsoft doesn’t owe anyone anything more than what Windows is promised to do. It’s not supposed to do Antivirus, or a lot of other things that it could. But guess what? Your average consumer doesn’t care. The negative associations are there.

Or you could accuse me of Windows bashing again, which I have never done in my life. I don’t give a fuck which operating system you use. And listen closely, I get the Windows experience. I never even had a Mac until two years ago. I like a lot of things with Windows. Can’t I come in here and air my complaints about Windows without getting labled a Windows hater? I’m just sick of having to answer questions for my customers that Microsoft should have addressed YEARS ago.
For your edification, Justin Bailey I’ll list all of the things that I hate about Macintosh…

Firefox and Safari are both terrible on the Mac, Way too slow.
Doesn’t Run MSOffice as well and some parts of it don’t work
No games, plus harder to develop games for it
XCode is strange (No tabs?)
No Paint…seriously
NO CTRL ALT DEL…You have to wait for the system to stop doing what it’s doing to kill a program even if it’s working with the stuck program
Finder sucks horribly
You can’t navigate with the keyboard like in XP
But hey, just call me a stupid Windows Basher and dismiss me. How dare I criticize the status quo?

25

For what it’s worth, I think Terraserver predates Google Maps by a long spell.

Also, I haven’t been to Terraserver ever since I got Google Maps.

26

Speaking as a guy who hasn’t owned a Mac since the mid-90s, maybe you should switch off the part of your brain that remembers Merk happens to use one. Your anti-Mac-user bias is blinding you to what he is saying. Sure, a lot of Mac users are annoying but Merk is just asking about what a lot of Windows users wonder regarding MS’s business model, or lack of one.

And if anybody can tell me where to find the “search and replace” menu in Word '07 I’d appreciate it. It’s a good thing I remember the old shortcut keystrokes–and that they still work, not a given with MS–because when I tried to search on either “search” or “replace” in Help the first result is “Overview of finding and replacing characters in Indic, Southeast Asian, and right-to-left languages” and I cannot afford to replace this $3500 TV my boss has me using as a monitor.

27

You made it PC vs Mac, not me, when your OP and practically every other post you made in this thread included a variation on the theme “This is something Microsoft does poorly (but Apple does this same thing great).”

I have also very calmly and rationally refuted your arguments about things Microsoft is doing wrong. This is especially true of things like antivirus software and the system tray, which you stubbornly believe that Microsoft controls in some way. They don’t. And if repeating this point is threadshitting, well then I’m sorry.

Is Windows perfect? Of course not. But your suggestions on how to “fix” it are either pointless or illegal. But I also have to comment on this:

This is just not true. The majority of users hum along for years doing nothing more than email, word processing and a few websites with no problems. You’re in support, so you obviously see a lot of the problems, but the “majority” of people are perfectly fine with their PC experience.

28

A few observations…

Microsoft does seem to find and absorb technologies and destroy their creators, and they seem to win in the marketplace for all sorts of unethical and sometimes illegal reasons. It’s been a while since I talked with anybody who’s bought a Microsoft product because they wanted it - that is, people buy it because they perceive that they have to. Kind of like insurance or auto registration fees.

Bill Gates, as a young man, wrote a nice version of BASIC and sold it. He’d meet people who would tell him how wonderful his product was, and he’d ask them if they had paid for their copy, and they’d stammer out a “Well, no, not exactly…” I always figured this made him bitter, and that’s why his company became so vicious about collecting revinue as their reason for being and creating software as an apparently necessary evil in doing so.

Years ago, I had friends of friends who programmed at Microsoft, and they’d tell stories of big revolts about the programmers being made to use Microsoft products (like text editors and file management systems) instead of products they thought worked properly.

29

Background: I’m a windows-only user, but think that the only good program microsoft makes currently that I know of is Excel. (The prior version of MSVC was excellent too, but the current one is crap.) I will upgrade to Vista when they pry XP from my cold, dead hands.

A complete rewrite? Nice idea; never gonna happen. Not while they’re taking a year to design a menu! Also they will never base their system on another company’s code unless they buy the company first.

Also, the only reason I use microsoft is it runs my programs. I am not interested in any OS that doesn’t provide that capability - I don’t care if it emulates or what, but they’d better run. Why else use the OS? And I’m probably not alone in thinking like this.

Screw that; instead just try to keep me from being repulsed. The DRM stuff I heard about Vista, before and after its release, convinced me I never want to own it. And it doesn’t help that I’ve heard literally nothing but bad things since.

I don’t need to be excited about an OS - it’s not supposed to do anything. It’s just there to be the vacant lot my actual programs stake out their tents on. The less I notice the OS, the better an OS it is.

The only reason I agree with this is because their commitiees are apparently carefully arranged to be the worst possible things in existence. They don’t need a dictator, they need a sane design strategy. Specs I can agree with, but the only buzzworthy feature I care about is ‘smaller, faster, less noticeable, things run better’. Now, that’s simplicity!

Not their problem. Nothing that isn’t actually made by Microsoft is, or has any effect on, the “Windows brand”.

DVD players, CD burning software - these come with the hardware. Not MS’s problem.

Audio players, Photo Viewers - MS does provide these -and they suck. But they’re not 'SHAREWRE", and there is no bill for them.

System Tray clutter: Not Their Problem.

The perfect OS is useless without programs. Bundled programs are, of course, useful, but they’re not part of the OS.. And I’d be more excited about microsoft bundling more programs with the OS if nearly everything MS wrote wasn’t crap.

I agree their code shouldn’t be so buggy. Beyond that, there is no benefit whatsoever of a built-in virus scanner over a 3rd-party one. And frankly I’d rather have mu virus-scanner developed by people who specialize in it.

Bah, I’ll never use this sort of ‘no-own, pay-to-play’ stuff if I can possibly help it. I’ll lag permanently back on XP and current programs if I must. I think I’m rare in the extent I take that, though. (I won’t even rent movies; I must own.)

I don’t really care about mobile, but - how do you know they don’t have a mobile strategy? Because they haven’t reacted to future events yet? (By the way, are you paid to promote Apple? 'Cause you’re pushing them really hard in this OP.)

30

Found it myself, no help from YOU people. :wink:

31

OK, ex-Microsoftie with 6.5 years experience in the Services (i.e. field engineering / consulting) side of the business; 2.5 years working on Windows before that. I quit Microsoft to chase my fortune at a pre-IPO company this past January, although I still have a lot of friends working for MS.

First things first, you’re conflating two different beasts. Microsoft isn’t just Windows, and Windows isn’t all Microsoft has. Speaking of the motivations, for example co-existence with OSX, will be different from Microsoft as a whole (who would support say Office working with OSX) and Windows (who want to see OSX die a bloody death and take Apple with it). So in light of that:

Some points stated here are IMO valid. Microsoft has never specialized in innovation, more like taking another’s idea (usually legally but not always, hence the number of lawsuits) and evolving it. The list of success and failure projects isn’t wrong; it’s just overblown in that everyone screams that Microsoft is failing and dying as a company because of one significant failure, which says more about their agenda than Microsoft’s chances. Sure, Vista isn’t a raging success, but it’s far from a huge flopping failure and isn’t even close to being the worst failure in the OS arena - anyone remember WinME? MS-Bob? Total up the successes vs failures of new product launches; I would hazard a guess that Microsoft’s doing pretty damn well, in spite of a few wobbles, in the overall stakes of success vs failure of new products compared to any other business in any other sector.
Zune - yep, kinda failed to kill iPod but going from zero it’s got a 15% market share already which ain’t bad in a crowded market
XBox - can you deny Xbox is kicking some serious ass?
Vista - slow adoption for sure, and a decent amount of bad press, but Vista is still being adopted. most of the problems people are seeing are application or driver incompatibility issues - not Microsoft’s fault although Microsoft as usual is catching the blame
MSN Music - sure, it ain’t killed iTunes, but it ain’t that bad either and it’s still cranking along and making money. And integrated with the Zune it’s got some serious fans.
Tablet PC - not selling all that well compared to standard laptops, but definitely an option and have gone from 1 offering to every major manufacturer offering at least 1 tablet PC
Lots of other stuff is given away for free (Internet Explorer, etc…) so I don’t really count those as a success vs failure, but the bundled software you get for free (media players, etc…) is at least as good as, if not better than, any other free media players on the market (Real, QuickTime, etc…) although they won’t compete with pay applications.

Second, a misconception seems to be that NT was a complete re-write of the Windows code base. Not true; it was never part of the Windows code base, they started in very separate teams a long long time ago. Some (very few) code elements were shared between them, but XP was the first time the NTx and Windows 9x code bases were merged into a single product with different SKUs for Home User / Office users. This was first attempted with Windows 2000 but didn’t happen completely - Win2k was originally called NT5 and originally was planned to be the retirement of the 9x code base, and XP was basically NT6 with bits from the 9x code base they wanted to keep.

On the business side, my opinion is that Microsoft does learn from it’s mistakes but slowly and has become such a large ship that it takes quite a while to change directions as a whole or even as a whole division - over 86,000 people work for Microsoft worldwide when I left in January; that’s up from 25,000 when I started there in 1998 as a permatemp. 4 years ago Microsoft Services hired a guy named Mike Sinneck from IBM to run our global Services team at VP level. Sinneck came in, and in addition to pissing off a whole host of people, completely re-organized the field Services teams. This re-org was widely seen as a huge mistake, pushing the organization away from a model that worked (managers were subject-matter experts running a team of consultants with sales people helping place the consultants into customers) into a model that didn’t work too well (all consultants now report into a pool of managers who are not SMEs and might have no field experience at all; sales people report into others who place the consultants on site - effectively 4 levels of management for a Services engagement when we had 2 before the re-org) but the problem is this: Sinneck was canned after just over a year, but no-one changed his model because it was showing increased revenue and this cannot be altered. Profit has become the driving force, rather than efficiency, and the two do not always go hand in hand.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Windows is only one part (admittedly a large part) of a huge global business. Microsoft’s other divisions combined make far more money than Windows alone (although Windows makes more than any 2 other groups combined); so whilst there is a huge focus on Windows and it is absolutely seen as core business, it’s not the only focus anymore. Hell, X-box wowed so many people with it’s runaway success; Office is kicking ass left right and center, and the Enterprise products are capturing more and more market share every year (stuff like System Center products, Exchange, and SQL). Visual Studio is a huge tool in the developer market and growing market share all the time. Silverlight is hugely popular with web developers and it’s not even out of the door yet. Sharepoint is selling so fast Microsoft Services didn’t even have to “sell” it, just take orders.

My final thought is that in my opinion one failing of Microsoft is lack of a long-term strategic mindset. This has been evident for a long time, but Microsoft really only thinks at an Exec level 12-18 months ahead, and does a major re-organization of the company traditionally every 6-12 months. I think this is why it’s so damn tough to develop new products anymore, because if a new product takes more than 12 months to develop, there will be at least 1 if not 3 re-orgs and there’s every chance that the team you started with ain’t gonna be the one you finish with. One re-org, I ended up working in a team where I didn’t even know who my ultimate boss (boss’s boss’s boss) was for over 3 months.

To answer the OP’s specific suggestions.
Rebuild the OS from scratch:
Reverse compatibility is a main draw to any Windows OS. If Microsoft started from scratch, in addition to taking years to release a new product, it would lose a lot of that. And don’t forget - every time Microsoft end-of-lifes a product, they get jumped on from on high. When Microsoft finally killed free support for NT4 two years ago, I got no end of shit from customers for killing this ancient product. I finally started asking them - how much longer would you expect us to support a product for free? Another 15 years? 20? Yet you think Microsoft should just completely re-write the code every time there’s a new release? Never, ever gonna happen. You’re also talking about roughly doubling the size of the development org by doing this - you’d need to keep the people writing old code for supportability and service packs, and you’d have to hire a whole bunch of new people to write the new code as well. So this certainly wouldn’t help with efficiency of new development projects.

Find a reason to get people excited:
Windows doesn’t really care about OSX; anything with less than a 5% market share doesn’t get much notice in war team planning meetings, I can tell you. Windows’ big competitors right now are Google and Open Source; Microsoft knows from experience that giving away something for free that people think is of value is a difficult proposition to fight, so that’s where the next battle is going to come from. And even then, is less to do with Windows features and functionality and more to do with total cost of ownership, which according to lots of studies Windows still wins in the enterprise space (i.e. it cost less over 3 years to buy, install and maintain Windows than it does to buy, install, and maintain an open-source alternative). So this means the big bet is going to be management products for enterprises (i.e. System Center tools) rather than worrying about the Vista feature set competing against OSX.

Finally, people don’t give damn about the OS, they care about features of that OS. Vista’s features are very important to a lot of people, but they represent change to the ‘known’ way of doing things (which people don’t like) and were poorly marketed as well - does anyone outside of MS really understand what User Access Control was trying to achieve or do they just see a bunch of stupid prompts that piss them off? Combined with an industry that sucked ass getting those products to work with hardware (yes, Toshiba, I am talking about your pathetic attempts at writing BIOS code for your “Vista-ready” laptops and tablet PCs you tossers!) and application developers who were way, way behind the power curve in adoption, and you’ve got applications / features / hardware that doesn’t work properly with Vista.

Stop designing by committee:
I quite agree with you here; Microsoft needs a new Bill Gates. Even when Gates stepped down from the CEO slot, he was still ‘the man’ who was pulling all the strings and drove the interoperability strategy between groups (i.e. Office and Windows, Enterprise and Windows). Now they’ve got different people running different divisions and Ballmer at the top and none of them have the same level of respect. Ray Ozzie was hired to do Gates’ job when he leaves for real but it ain’t happening yet and he doesn’t have the power to create cross-division working yet as there are too many independent fiefdoms with too much power.

Get rid of the crapware:
*This is technically not Microsoft’s fault, but it has the power to keep this stuff from happening in the future. - *
Actually, Microsoft doesn’t have this power. Microsoft sells an OEM license to a customer (Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, whoever) who then can do whatever they want to that code within the license and can plug whatever bloatware they want on top. On my Lenovo thinkpad, everything from login to home screen is branded Thinkpad - I don’t see a Windows logo unless I look for it. Windows can’t stop this bloatware because once it’s left the shop, people can do whatever they want with it and because Microsoft is required by law to publish APIs that allow software vendors to write code that uses things like systray icons. You have a problem with too many systray icons? Talk to Sony, talk to Real, talk to IBM, talk to QuickTime. Don’t bitch to Windows because there is nothing Windows can do about it.

Get a handle on viruses:
Oh fer f’s sake… if people manage their PC correctly, viruses are much much less of a problem. Microsoft publishes, for free, patches once a month. Microsoft releases, for free, the Malicious Software Removal Tool, on the Microsoft web site. Microsoft published a firewall product which is given away free with XP and Vista.
Want to be fully secured against 99.9% of the threats out there? Then do this:

  1. Turn on Windows Firewall.
  2. Turn on automatic updates and install all Microsoft patches that it downloads for you
  3. Download and install Forefront or install another AV client.
  4. Do not run any attachment you get in email or click-through any links you get in email
  5. Turn on maximum spam filter in Hotmail (or other free email clients) and / or install a spam filter with your AV client
    Guess what? You won’t get viruses anymore. Or in other words, **RTFM! **

Figure out a niche for the switch to cloud computing:
Yeah, that niche, for now, is anyone connected to a LAN. In other words, businesses. They are tearing off salespeople’s hands for this. The problem is, most of them don’t know how to do IT right, or securely, so they screw it up then blame Microsoft for their failures.

Cloud isn’t for everyone, just like Systems Management Server isn’t for everyone - sometimes legal requirements (i.e. Data Protection Act / HIPAA) will prevent it’s use in certain occasions. But don’t forget as well - there are two ‘clouds’ where the data can reside; inside of a firewall (as in a cloud that is your house’s data, or your company’s data) and then outside of a firewall (i.e. everything else - a cloud of the whole internet). Restricting access and authorizing approved access and auditing that access is merely setting the right security for access to the right cloud, it doesn’t mean opening the kimono for everyone to see everything (like that would ever be something Microsoft, of all organizations, would encourage)

Figure out some kind of mobile strategy.
The iPhone struggled because it was limited by the provider, exactly the same as any other device. You have a problem with your mobile device, talk to your mobile provider, don’t try to blame the phone manufacturer.

But nothing, and I mean NOTHING, the iPhone does hasn’t been done better, faster, and earlier on a Windows Mobile device. Microsoft owns the smartphone landscape, or at the very most shares it with Blackberry, and is actually a better choice for businesses than Blackberry because the Windows-based smartphone integrates cheaper (i.e. for free) with existing Exchange messaging systems and allows providers more control over the handsets issued. The strategy is there, and the iPhone is at best a johnny-come-lately vanity device which lacks major functionality (3g, native integration with Exchange, mobile certificate services, secure web browsing) that business users (and especially business IT managers) require.

32

Cmd-Alt-Esc brings up a list of programs, and you can kill the non-responsive ones. You can even relaunch Finder if it gets hung on some stupid network problem.

As far as your main points, I think that most have been addressed pretty well, but I’ll respond to two.

Crapware. This really isn’t Microsoft’s problem. The whole point of having system builders like Dell put together their own packages is that they can be tailored to the tastes of the person using the system. If you want a computer without crapware, you can get it. But you have to pay for it. Buy a Dell configured for Business, or an Alienware machine for gaming, or something. You won’t get crap. But as long as people want to buy the cheapest computer they can, they’re going to have it subsidized by pre-installed advertising. They’re making the decision that the crap is worth the reduced price.

It’s not even necessarily a bad decision. I’d happily buy a computer that comes at enough of a discount if it’s got crap on it. I am perfectly capable of stripping it all off and installing what I want. It probably takes me an hour or two. Well worth saving a few hundred dollars between the business model and the “home” model.

Rewrite from scratch. This is a total non-starter. However, what they are planning to do for Windows 7 is a more modular approach, where they let backwards compatibility for most stuff be handled by emulation/virtualization, and really focus on a more solid and reliable platform. This would have many benefits of a rewrite, without all the horrible loss of market that breaking compatibility would bring. I have high hopes for this plan.

33

You think they would learn from their mistakes.

Windows 98 (and Win98SE) was a decent O/S. It was coughreplacedcough by Windows ME.

Windows XP is very good. It was coughreplacedcough by Windows Vista, or more accurately known as Windows ME[sup]2[/sup].

34

I’m not an MS basher, but I’ve got a few nitpicks with your post:

What is your definition of “hugely popular”?

Do you have any cites to support your statement? (I would not consider downloads to be a very good metric. It shows interest, but doesn’t show us who is actually using it.)

Microsoft owns the smartphone landscape?

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but Symbian has about 65% market share and Windows Mobile about 12%. I’m sure some of the Symbian devices aren’t in the “smart” category so maybe it’s not as lopsided as the percentages appear, but it also seems like a stretch to say MS owns it. Do you have any data to back it up?

35

Happy to answer as best I can…

Agreed, downloads are a poor metric, and since silverlight was only very recently released it’s hard to judge actual uptake, but press is favorable and reviews are good.

You’re right about the overall numbers; I was neglecting Asia which have the highest numbers of Smartphone users and where Symbian is the biggest brand. It does come down to how you define “smart” though - most of the Symbian devices are just phones with added features, not really ‘smart’ phones. For the higher end ‘PDA in a phone’ I believe the market share is more like 40% Symbian, 20% Microsoft, 20% Blackberry, 8% iPhone, 2% other.

My main point was that comparing the iPhone with it’s competitors and saying it was a best of breed product and holding it up as the best mobile strategy is just silly. And claiming Microsoft does not have a mobile strategy is just silly as well.

36

Not an accurate comparison. Vista is very different under-the-hood from XP; ME was an incremental change at best from Win98 and never intended to ‘replace’ the 9x code base.

And chalking up Vista as a failure is quite premature IMO. It has some problems, but it’s not nearly the failure that ME was.

37

Usual disclaimer: I love Macs, but writing software on Windows machines pays my salary. So I love Windows, too.

But Microsoft gives the appearance of not caring about its customers. Apple gives off a much different appearance, but they treat their customers with some contempt as well. Microsoft inflicted horrible, DRM-laden software in their latest OS. Apple is going to do the same thing; it’ll probably just come in a gentler, prettier package. Microsoft sure has some image problems, and they need to make decisions that will keep their customer base in the long term.

IMO a critical flaw in their Vista release was that they undervalued their historic appearance of backwards-compatibility. If you bought Windows, it would clunk along with your current PC, but you could get some functionality out of it. By making Vista too demanding of hardware resources, they shot themselves in the foot because pretty much everyone would have to buy a new computer just to support the new OS. And if customers are pissed off and have to buy a new computer, they might look around at whatever other offerings are out there.

Which is why (in my opinion) their making a clean break and rewriting from scratch might not necessarily result in their making more money. In the 90s, Apple was basically flat-lined, only selling to a small number of zealots and some niche markets. They were so desperate that they brought back the control-freak CEO they’d ousted and gambled their entire future on one thing: buying another company, redesigning their OS around it, trying to forecast what people would want to buy and hoping their existing customers wouldn’t be too pissed off about having to buy all new software and hardware. It seems to have worked out, but who knows? A few wrong decisions or bad breaks and they might now be like Silicon Graphics or Amiga.

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MS should steal a lot of ideas from Apple.
[ul]
[li]Rebuild Windows over Unix, ala OS X. Keep the Vista line going, but use that marketing muscle to make the new OS the new hotness. You’ll need a new name for the OS, too. More on that later.[/li][li]Simplify the OS. A lot. Limit the components supported, and control the drivers yourself. Separate the OS from program data, end the registry, keep program installations self-contained. Make DLLs a memory.[/li][li]Find the best interface team in the world and put them in charge of the interface. Remove the other stakeholders from the process.[/li]
[li]Fire Balmer and replace him with a better messianic visionary. He/she should be a hothead who fires underperformers cruelly and without hesitation, but he should have taste. Balmer lacks taste.[/li][li]Update Windows every two years, like clockwork. Charge $100 for it. No upgrades, no corporate licenses, no disparate versions.[/li][li]Rename the company. You heard me. Throw out that bajillion dollar brand name. It’s a creatively bankrupt, soulless name. People will buy a product from a company called Microsoft, but they’ll never love it. Replace it with a name that has some warmth and personality. It won’t take much. My suggestion? Windows. Windows Vista is the OS. Windows Office is the suite. I use a Windows Optical Mouse. I just bought some Windows stock. Crazy, maybe. But I think it’d take about 6 months for people to get used to that, and it would definitely convey a break from the past. For all its success, Microsoft needs to break from the past.[/li][/ul]

There you have it. A roadmap for success from some guy on the internet. Just what Microsoft was lacking.

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I wonder how they screwed this up so badly. If Vista was on time, I could see them overestimating the increase in disk and memory capacity and CPU speed on your base PC - but considering that it was so late, they did a really bad job. The only explanation I can think of is that Vista’s resource requirements got out of control, and nobody made the decision to have a reckoning. When you design processors you always get to the point where the chip has expanded so much it is either totally manufacturable or too expensive - then you do a die diet, and cut out stuff that isn’t essential. Someone at MS must think computing resources are infinite.

That they bowed down to Intel and labeled underpowered machines Vista ready didn’t help either.

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replies in green

And I am sure they would work for a much smaller company with no history and a similar product type; they just won’t work for Microsoft for the reasons described above. You can’t take a model that works for a different company (Apple, which makes some independent software but makes it’s own proprietary computer platform including both software and hardware) and try to apply it to a company in almost a different industry (making software which runs on a huge variety of hardware platforms and only a limited amount of hardware development at all) and expect it to work. You’re also taking a model that works for an organisation with less than 5% market share in it’s industry and trying to apply it to a business with 98% market share in it’s primary industry which just ain’t gonna happen.