Microsoft 'under attack' On All Fronts 671
khujifig writes "The Beeb are carrying a story looking at the challenges facing Microsoft in the next few years.
This includes a brief description of the M.Home (sans Clippy) which the Beeb describes as "a far cry from real life", and a discussion of the next few years competition for Microsoft. They go on to highlight Linux, OpenOffice.org, the GIMP and Firefox (which Gates himself has used: "I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better,"), and look Apple in relation to Longhorn. Not as bad a read as I was expecting. Their summary: Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to innovate or die. "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?."" It should be said, tho', that articles like this have been written about MSFT for a long time - and there's still billions in their war-chest.
The Internet is only a part of computer usage... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, they're looking for people to code things like Outlook Live, which is essentially a web service edition of Outlook Web Access. According to the recruiter, they seem to be going full-speed toward services (while keeping an eye on the cashcows).
Former microsoftie Here (Score:5, Interesting)
They had two large problems that lead them to either slow these plans down or abandon them altogether (not sure since I no longer work there). The first is that people expect MS to lose money on support. Note that they only lose money because they are darned inefficient at providing support, however, so it is not the great value that it appears.
Secondly, they don't want to gut their partner program by directly competing with their partners.
There is a third problem that I don't think they have thought about, however. This is that the services industry is pretty close to what economists call "perfect competition." There are very few barriers to entry. Customers can switch service providers at any time at very little cost. So services will *never* be the cash cow that Windows and Office are. Yet Windows and Office are under what I call terminal attack. The attacks from the open source community are simply not ever going to go away, and Microsoft can never really win this war-- the best they can hope for is a containment strategy which quite frankly isn't working at the moment.
What about emerging product markets (home of the future sort of things)? Great, and there is growth potential there. However, there is no potential for Microsoft to grow there because these markets are small. And they are competitive. So they could grow rapidly and Microsoft would simply be unable to have this growth translate into similar levels of revenue growth. This means that these markets *will not* satisfy shareholders.
Microsoft, as a software company, is dying. But it is a death of a thousand cuts and is unlikely to be a dramatic implosion in the immediate future. However, give it five or ten years and we will see a very different picture. I predict that in 10 years, that Microsoft will largely be a media and entertainment business. However, I make the following predictions:
1) Longhorn will be praised as a great marketing success by Microsoft. It will sell more retail copies than XP.
2) We are already in the opening period of a war for the desktop. A few battles have gone either direction. Each battle that Microsoft loses will force more interoperability from them and will cause more to fall. It will also bring more expertise to open source software. Battles that FOSS loses will have no long-term implications. The Desktop War is already heating up, with Microsoft launching a counterattack via television advertising
3) The consumer market will follow the corporate market.
4) Microsoft will lose this war within 10 years.
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to the vast majority of computer users. Most people I know think that the Web and the Internet are the same thing.
The computer using experience for most is: email, web surfing (this includes shopping on eBay) and gaming.
Digital photography is starting to push into that list more and more, but let's face it, Picassa is a great app and the price is right!
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Picassa needs to get its own camera download interface and replace Microsoft POS. Let's see, I've just downloaded images from a camera, what do you want to do? Thanks to Microsoft, you get two options:
1) Upload to web (Microsoft approved, of course)
2) Print online (Microsoft approved, of course)
What crap.
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:3, Informative)
And for many, gaming is also the web. Freecell.com, Yahoo games, Neopets.com, etc.
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your post mostly refers to home users.
What about word processing and other office applications, which is the #2 application in my office (after Email/Outlook)?
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:5, Informative)
Haven't you heard of OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] lately? You don't need Microsoft to do word processing.
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, I do. All my clients send me documents in either Excel or Word format. If I can't read them properly, or mess them up making edits and sending them back, it's at least embarassing.
Sure, mis-matched versions of Office can cause problems - but then I can say "well, sorry about that, but I used the right software - could you send it again please? Maybe try saving it as an older version, say Word 97?". If I use OO.o and it messes it up, it's my fault.
Not fair, perhaps, but that's the way it works in business a lot of the time. Thankfully, I don't have to deal with that sort of crap very often.
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:3, Interesting)
About a year or two ago, most users dodn;t moan too much about the BSOD's or the virus/worm attacks. Heck they didn;t even bugger too much about functionality problems. Nowadays, however, I hear much more moaning and frustration.
If microsoft loses the attitud
Re:The Internet is only a part of computer usage.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would suggest that the majority of people buy a computer which has MS products pre-installed. Very few people actually go out and buy MS products.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obligatory Song Quoting... (Score:5, Funny)
...and I feel fine.
The Gimp? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought The Gimp was Adobe Photoshop concurrent, and AFAIK, Adobe has not yet been bought by MS.
Re:The Gimp? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Gimp? (Score:4, Insightful)
But those people could run to MacOSX and keep their photoshop. But this would require a change of hardware.
Re:Except one thing (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you figure?
Photoshop is the compilation of years of work, hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D, and -- most importantly -- over 15 years of industry feedback and exposure. Adobe has crafted Photoshop to fit real world needs, based on input from people who actually use it in a professional setting.
Indeed, at this point, it's impossible to say which has more influence: industry over Photoshop, or Photoshop over industry.
The GIMP, while an admirable effort -- and certainly one worth continuing -- is nowhere NEAR ready to take a place on the professional stage. Just the lack of native CMYK support alone is enough to render it useless for pretty much every company, individual graphic designer, and photographer I can think of.
Saying that the GIMP's interface "is a bit rough around the edges" exposes you as an enthusiast, but probably not a professional user (that is, one who earns his living off of graphic design). The difference between a good, familiar interface and a rough, unfamiliar interface can translate into massive ammounts of lost time. At this point, after 15 years, the Photoshop interface has become something of a standard; when you open a graphic design program you expect certain hotkeys to do certain things, certain menus to be in certain places, and certain tools to work certain ways. Everything that deviates from those expectations translates into lost time. The GIMP is rife with breaks from the "standard" interface.
I know that slashdot is hardly the place for Adobe users, but uninformed "our OSS product is better because it's free" thinking is bad for all of us. I'd love to be able to replace Photoshop with the GIMP some day, and maybe I will. But if people really believe that the GIMP is a viable replacement for Photoshop today, I fear that day will never come.
-F.
Re:Except one thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Then I went & used photoshop 5.5 for 45 minutes on my girlfriend's powerbook. Never had such a quick turnaround in my life. I went right back to Gimp, gave it one look and thought "What is this shit?" and stopped caring (and developing) for it.
I'm no graphic artist, but I'll go to the gf's macs before using gimp on my own desktop.
Re:The Gimp? (Score:3, Informative)
or is it the other way?
Why is it better? (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes it so much better? I've been using Firefox for a while now and it seems like more then 'just another browser' to me.
Re:Why is it better? (Score:5, Funny)
"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer is better...at downloading malware, spyware, viruses, and leaving your machine gapping open to the world."
Re:Coz he's a control freak (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft isn't entirely about control, it's about taking advantage of its monopoly with incompatibility with the competition. Gates likes IE because as long as it has a large marketshare, Microsoft can break compatibility with things it doesn't like, thus eliminating them (see the issues with Java and CSS2).
Re:Why is it better? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is it better? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest problem with Firefox at the moment is that these features aren't well-ad
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is exactly why most users still use IE over Firefox. Most users are just that, users . They don't want to spend hours tweaking their computer out of the box. They want to open up their PC, turn it on, and check email, write papers, do what they have to do without worrying about any of th
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone who thinks that IE will never be as good as Firefox is very very naive. Just as MS need to innovate to survive so does OSS.
Re:Why is it better? (Score:5, Insightful)
(oh, and i have no real problem with slashdot rendering in Firefox)
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly it does come with my box - not as a 4 Mb download I have to make afterwards.
The fact that it comes with the OS is not a reason that makes it better than other browsers.
(That said, I understand the "conveniently located" thing, and the fact that if some browser weren't included things would be worse--unless you want to distribute by CD, BBS, or FTP or something.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just so you know, the ability to render badly formatted pages "correctly" is _not_ a good thing, because it promotes bad coding. Regarding the download thing... just add together how much mbs of updates have you patched your base IE6 since winXPvanilla. Oh, you don't know ? That's one more point against it in my world. But the point is, even IE7 won't have near as good standards
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why is it better? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm on a reasonably up-to-date Debian unstable, on a 1GHz Athlon with 256MB RAM, which should be more than enough to run a browser and plenty other things besides. This, I feel, does not help firefox's cause, even though it's certainly not the usual
One word reason "Support" (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't about which is the better product... it's about which one will get the project done AND be supported if shit hits the fan.
Support does NOT mean Forums or RTFM. They want real people. The fact is most people are not IT people. They just want it to work and forget about it. If it breaks they want someone to call to get it working again.
The same is for large companies except in the fact that they want support of future innovations. You are institituting a large scale database project... you are using My-SQL... something goes wrong... what do you do? Post in a forum, email a friend...
Same situation you are using MS-SQL, you can call tech support and bam get an answer or at least a much more educated idea.
I'm dissing open source. It's awesome and I think it keeps innovation alive and is always an alternative. But without the support... you aren't going to get the backing you might want.
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:5, Informative)
Or you can get support from MySQL...you did buy a commercial license right?
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why do they use Windows rather than Linux? You just defeated your own argument: they're more concerned with having someone to blame when it goes wrong than having something that 'just works'.
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue isn't why windows is easy, the issue is that windows is easier than linux.
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:5, Insightful)
Indexes are recreatable, and we could easily have time for dropping all indexes, deleting any references to such indexes and recreating them - but the glitch wouldn't allow to do this.
The MS knowledge base for that error message contained a single sentence that basically said - 'Known issue since 2003, no workaround available'.
The phone support suggested us to reinstall the computer/SQL server, and populate the data from backups.
We had other issues with other, fairly niche commercial software - and it is clear that the vendor support is useless, and it is not an argument.
The real support will be provided either by in-house people or third-party support companies. Or by the vendor charging extra in an attempt to compete with these third parties.
This support is as available for open source programs as for closed-source programs. It is a separate service.
Re:One word reason "Support" (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had my share (roughly four) of 'major' issues with SQL Server, all with very large databases (ie, just rebuild it from a backup wasn't an alternative). Calling MS PSS is always the last choice. In all cases I found the SQL Server support beyond incredible. In two cases I had them sending me a runtime debugging monitor and they had top tier PSS support actually watch and log in realtime SQL Server taking a crap.
The issue in one case had to do with computed columns and indexed views. While syntaxtically legit what I wrote to occur on that column, it defeated the Deterministic/non-Deterministic requirement check, and this at some point led to an invalid mem read.
The amount of support I got was almost too much to handle. The app was not fully in production (call it final testing), and I was almost receiving too much communication and phone calls from MS PSS on the issue (was damn busy). They figured out a work around for me, tested it against the database for me (that was one big-ass rar file I set them. around 62gig for the set of data we were testing aginst, they downloaded it all weekend). To develop the work around they even looked at my data access layer and made sure the performance would be adequate.
And, in the end, this PSS support call was free. The problem was in SQL server, not hardware or setup.
I have other stories for the other serious problems I've had with sql. I can't attest to this level of support on any other MS product, but with SQL, you get more than what you pay for.
p.s, as part of the anti-FUD, can you post the KB article # that has "Known issue since 2003, no workaround available" in it.
I've found OSS support to be often better (Score:5, Informative)
I remember a big CORBA corporation, won't name them or their product, but it was basically an ORB. We had used their stuff for previous versions of our product, but it was unstable and a nightmare to maintain. Just to give you an example, telnetting into their software that was attached to our process, would kill the whole server by just typing a random character!!!
So one day they started asking us "how much money we make" with our product, and wanted to charge us a % of the profits we make! Not only that, they wanted to charge us in the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, for their new support scam to be renewed in a yearly basis. Oh, and the new version of their orb required us to recode our app!
So when they told us this, one of my co-workers had been testing JacORB [jacorb.org]. Turns out this our software was faster, more stable and ran in more platforms than the one from the comercial vendor!
Not only that, but when we had problems, we usually got responses the same day. We even got sent code to patch the software for some problems! All of this FOR FREE!
I have no problem paying for tech support, but a lot of this support is not only too expensive, but it's very slow and no, it's not much better than the message boards or mailing lists of some of the open source products. Try dealing with Oracle tech support and exchaging code with them, to see how slow it is to get them to fix problems.
My prediction for the future of MS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My prediction for the future of MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Google GMail vs. Exchange? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google GMail vs. Exchange? (Score:5, Interesting)
But what if Google sells a "GMail appliance?"
All the features of GMail, but on your own VPN, and nobody but you controls the data. Starting to look more interesting.
Add the ability to plug in any service you want where the ads normally are... company announcements, whatever.
Now *that* would be really attractive, I think, to a lot of companies. I don't know how well their Search Appliance worked out, but a GMail appliance could indeed be a threat to Exchange.
Get real.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is about likely to go under as IBM, they may take a hit now and again, they they always come out fighting.. Look atthe X-Box, they had no real console based experenice before, yet they managed to give Sony a good fight, even debuting a year after Sony... I expect that the new version of IE will have everything that FF has, and more...it's just how MS does things...
I have always looked at MS as a big mean dog...you really don't want to mess with them, and you really really don't want to back them in a corner..
Please don't talk this as pro-MS, it's more of a pro-reality statement
Re:Get real.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing most people forget about when they talk about Microsoft's "death" is that a big cash balance gives you extra lives in the (real) reality. To extinguish Microsoft, you would first have to drain their cash hoard.
For all practical purposes, Microsoft is invulnerable.
Even if today's computing industry were to disappear tomorrow, Microsoft has sufficient cash resources to re-make itself many times in other industries.
This is basically why we have antitrust laws, as there's no
Re:Get real.. (Score:4, Informative)
According to Lou Gerstner, IBM was dangerously close to the edge. Read (about) his book about getting elephants to dance; you can find enough info on the web, for instance here [forbes.com].
nice quote: "Gerstner says that few people even understood how perilously close the firm was to running out of cash."
Re:Get real.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ya, I gues you are right...they completely failed at the target...unless the target wasn't to make money the first time around...but then again..they always said they were going to lose money on t
Re:Get real.. (Re: RMS & power) (Score:4, Insightful)
RMS had a nice job at a nice enterprise, and a great product he could sell (Emacs, yeah, laugh), and he did sell it.
He was in a much better position that Bill Gates at the time.
He could have had some dollars.
He wanted freedom, not power. Well, freedom _is_ power, but is a much nicer power, because it's power to all the users, and not just to some guy.
Of course, I believe RMS does want recognition, or even fame, but if he wanted _power_, there would be no point in copyleft.
GNU is used by lots of people throughout the world, and he has even less power than Linus!!
But that's not accidental, the GPL warrants that!
Games (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Games (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, my PlayStation plays games just fine, and it doesn't run Windows.
Die ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe they won't die anytime soon.... (Score:5, Interesting)
How old is IE? Wonder if the recent Firefox buzz hasn't got them back in the shop feverishly working on IE 7. Wonder if many of the feature in the said browser won't mimic those found in Firefox (opera, safari, etc...)
How old is XP? Wonder if the recent Jaguar/Panther/Tiger buzz hasn't got them in the shop.... (you get the idea).
I hope we can keep them lumbering for a few more years. It would sure be nice to see them either start to *really* innovate or throw in the towel.
If you make them lose money long enough, it doesn't matter how much they have in the war-chest: like any good capatalist, they'll pull out when they realize its not growing anymore.
Re:Maybe they won't die anytime soon.... (Score:3, Interesting)
IE6.0 is 4 years old (was released in October 2001)
It sure has
Perfectly true, many of the features in said browser won't mimic those found in Firefox, Opera or Safari (BTW the way you phrased it is misleading, Opera or Safari are full fledged browsers, completely independant from Fire
Better Headline! (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft stranglehold. (Score:4, Interesting)
Only niche market software sources are able to peck away at MS.
People are brainwashed into following the most marketed item with all of the fancy surface features.
all? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Microsoft is that they've become too big and they have way too many products.
There's not a single company who can fight with Microsoft. But all of them are fighting with them: Sony, Nintendo (xbox), Linux, mac os x, solaris (windows), mysql, postgresql, oracle, IBM DB2 (ms sql), firefox, opera (ie), google, yahoo (search engine, MSN), openoffice (office)
Microsoft just can't win. After having 95%+ of market share in desktops they need to search a way to grow even more to satisfy the stock buyers, so they fight in every market. And they can fight against a single or a few companies, but not against the whole IT industry
Re:Microsoft stranglehold. (Score:3, Insightful)
Google.
And you meant 'their'.
Move Along, Nothing to see here - lookeylou. (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, most new Microsoft "lines" have failed miserably: Passport, MSNBC,
Besides, most companies are afraid to compete with Microsoft: Just look at MacAdobeMedia. They were formed explicitly because of fear. Most companies that are competing with MS started in an area that Microsoft moved into (Skype).
Q:What do you call a clumsy 800lb gorilla?
A: Sir (or an 800lb gorilla)
MS is weak (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MS is weak (Score:3, Informative)
I think Microsoft is in the weakest position it's been in in a long time
I'm not so sure. Seems to me the number of exploits in FF [slashdot.org] and Safari [slashdot.org] are increasing. (I'm a FF user as well.) Put on the tin foil hat and one might guess that Longhorn is being delayed while exploits for competitive products increase in number. If Microsoft does a good job improving security management in Longhorn, it will be a big hit.
As for VB programmers, those not using VB.Net are either still using VB 6 or went to C#. Where else
Not an attack a correction. (Score:3, Insightful)
Attack? Which attack? (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft is a lost cause (Score:5, Insightful)
"So much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" he argued.
And I have to say that software gets [forcefully] purchased all the time as well. Heck, I can remember buying dozens of computers -- ranging from desktops made into back-office quasi-servers to full blown workgroup type servers. To get each and every one of those machines the Windows tax had to be paid (at the time). I'm sure those machines are counted in Microsoft's totals for market share as well.
They still run Linux to this day.
Heck, I can count now HUNDREDS of computers that I'm responsible for that all originally legally ran Windows. Care to guess which Linux distro I used on them? Sad -- but a lot of those installs showed up as only one (1) [bittorrent] download...
Mr. Gate's arguments don't and won't fly for too much longer. Microsoft days are numbers -- and yes, I am ready to sell-short their stock when the day(s) come. Might as well make money on their misery -- they certainly have on mine.
Isn't it like that for everone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is under 'attack' on all fronts, and either needs to inovate or die.
Isn't it like that for every company in this domain? I mean, there are a lot of them who just copy, but those who work well and make big bucks, usually its the law : Inovate or die
As bad as Microsoft is... (Score:4, Insightful)
We needed their marketing power to jumpstart the PC market, as the more talented companies like Apple just weren't going to do it.
Forcing a pseudo standard via their monopolistic practices is what brought us to this point, and I don't think we would have advanced as far as we have if we still had 20 companies running around catering to hobbyists or niche markets..
However, the need for this has passed. Its time for the giant to step aside and let the rest of us get back to work. They if course will not go down with to a long and expensive fight. But their time has come and gone, its just a matter of how long will they keep flapping around like a beached whale before they concede to reality.
( A similar thing is just now starting to happen in the 'entertainment industry' as well )
Re:As bad as Microsoft is... (Score:4, Informative)
There was one reason PCs "could be built at cheaper cost", and it had nothing to do with Windows: The famous reverse-engineering of the "IBM PC" allowed the market to be flooded with hundreds of compatible clones, all competing vigorously on price. I still remember the days when just about every PC's major marketing tack was "IBM compatible".
Most PC purchases at this time were not even for the purpose of running Windows - most business and home users still ran DOS. Microsoft had nothing to do with "making PCs cheaper", they only took advantage of the fact that PCs were becoming cheaper anyway.
PCs also subsequently advanced at a rapid rate, getting more powerful very quickly. Combined with their low cost, flexibility and configurability, they just took off. And MS, as you say, were "in the right place at the right time".
Pirates of Silicon Valley (Score:3, Insightful)
Pointless article (Score:3, Interesting)
How is that news? That is the primary fact of the software market. Since the core markets for software are totally saturated and "over-featured" that shifts the focus from innovating on existing products to innovating in the arena of pricing models. That is exactly what is happening.
Mysql is not an innovative database; instead the pricing model for Mysql is the innovation.
That said, I've been watching MS for decades now. They never ever give up. My guess is that once the current "monopolist" leadership retires, a younger, more innovative crew will take over the company and start mixing proprietary software, OSS software and services to deliver a new pricing model.
If you combine MS's brand recognition, market penetration, and massive warchest with truly "cool" products priced appropriately, they will be a even greater powerhouse and effectively leave Linux (but not OSS applications) in its niche.
Uses of computers far exceed email and a browser (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps in the not-too-distant future there will be some tool out there that will ensure 100% compatibility and transferability of proprietary systems to open solutions. Sure, there are jumps and fits today in that direction, but we are not at that magical point yet.
To that end, it really is Microsoft's challenge to 'innovate' enough to stay ahead of the Linux pack while not biting off so much that the product never ships (aka Longhorn).
What has to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft has not lost its ability to innovate because its people aren't smart any more. They have not lost their ability to innovate because they just don't have any more great ideas. They have not lost their ability to innovate because of poor management or leadership.
Microsoft has lost its ability to create innovative products for three reasons:
1) The company is now run by HR, which is forcing a politically correct agenda into the rank and file. The biggest head on this hydra is the review process, where you are reviewed by your direct manager. From this review comes rewards and longevity at the company. Because of the onerous process, people tend to drift into comfortable spots where they have a great relationship with their manager, and stay there. If you don't do this, you run the risk of being one of the lower echelon that is managed out of the company. There is no peer review, the system encourages favoritism. The process is completely destructive to innovation, you do what your manager wants, not what is right for the company. They are different things.
2)Microsoft cannot move innovation from the research groups into the product groups because the product groups are completely disfunctional and understaffed. Once the 35% y/y growth stopped, it became all about revenue, and headcount became a scarce commodity that had to be completely justified. Because of this, the resource pool is spent on the most critical areas, which tend to be test and sustaining engineering, and whatever Bill wants to fund this year. This leaves little for new features and innovation. In fact, the feature list for Office has over a thousand new features on it, they can fund maybe 30. The 30 are picked by Sinofski or Bill. The rest are dropped. Work from Research is ignored.
3)Employee morale is at an all time low. The place is just not fun to work at any more. The stock option program is gone, replaced by a stock award program that gives the employee one-tenth the leverage they had with options. The stock has been flat for 5 years. The will and desire of the average employee is gone. It's just a job.
Microsoft has to address these three problems in order to remain competitive. I, personally, do not believe they can fix these issues. It will take them a long time to die, and it will be painful to watch, but they will join the ranks of AT&T, DEC, SUN and the long list of other one-time greats.
Re:What has to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
Having worked in the research department of a company that behaved like this I can relate. We had a small team in research, but they were very good people, and we were given a reasonably free hand to look into new areas and come up with new things. The problem was that the product people, and management, largely ignored (or equally often misintepreted) our ideas. It wasn't a communication issue, it was just that mamangement was extremely focused on the product that had and struggled to look outside it at all. I actually had a research project forcibly shut down because it was so much better than the current product. I had used some outside libraries to kickstart development, and it was a pure NIH decision.
In the end we had a huge blowup of a Dilbert cartoon posted in the office and directed people's queries there. It read something like:
PHB: This is Bob from the research department, he'll be presenting their latest findings.
Bob: We at the research department have conducted a study of how our research gets used.
Bob: We have found that all our research is either ignored, or misinterpreted by idiots, such as yourselves.
Bob: Therefore, we have decided not to actually do any research anymore, we'll make stuff up. If you play along we'll make sure the comparative salary survey goes your way.
Bob: Anyway, it's 3 o'clock, and that's quitting time in the research department.
Wally (to Dilbert): I have a new hero.
Jedidiah.
Re:What has to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is coming from one of the biggest Microsoft haters out there.
Similar in the way that Dell provides *innovation* in the computer industry, MS is *innovative* in the software industry.
They just aren't technically innovative, they have innovative business models.
Note, however, you can be immoral and unethical, but still innovative.
MS is a very innovative company. They pull tricks no one else has ever thought of.
FORTUNE: GATES VS. GOOGLE (Score:3, Interesting)
Rusty Gates (Score:4, Insightful)
MS has long been kept ahead by its huge external developer program. But IE bugs can't be addressed by those developers, because the source is secret. Ironically, that integration between app developers and the market is OSS' true strength. Exactly where MS has made its greatest success. Will Gates finally starve up in his ivory silicon tower?
Microsoft Fall from grace and risen again (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone here said that Microsoft has become a dull and boring place, and I tend to believe it has. I think their engineers have lost the spice to create really cool things, because we can see that in the evolution of windows. Since Windows 95 we have seen the START taskbar... below. And the only differences are nicer graphics and more compatibility with hardware and games. That is basically it.
And frankly by the look of things, Longhorn is just looking to be a big fat white elephant. Longhorn will be Microsoft's downfall. Nothing the OS has is impressive, not glass, not Aero... basically its more gloatware... The only thing it had that was amazing, IMHO, was the WinFX foundation and that got ripped out.
But to say Microsoft entirely is doomed is an overstatement. While I think Microsoft's downfall will be the OS Longhorn, it will rise from the ashes with the new Xbox 360. I guess while they are not innovating on the Desktop they are doing it on the Living Room. So all is not lost for Microsoft.
In that sense the competition they are getting heavily from Apple will either put them on their toes or bring them to their knees, specially if more governments around the world choose to dump Microsoft for cheaper and better functioning Open Source solutions.
That is why I strongly believe Longhorn won't be the event they think it will be. The most important group of people that has to upgrade their systems and wont do it in the first 5yrs is the corporate sector. The consumer will prolly upgrade to Longhorn, but not that quickly as you think they can. Mostly because the hardware requirements to run LH with all the bells and whistles are short of obscene and your average PC comes with a Intel Video graphics card that sucks... But on the other hand, their innovative new Xbox 360 will do everything you wanted to do in the living room and will change the way the living room is. In that department SONY doesnt have a chance.
Everything that is important will happen this summer and by the end of the summer we are going to be well aware of who is winning the war of Microsoft vs The World.
They're doing *some* good stuff aren't they? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a sole inhouse developer in a company with about 100 employees. I build specialized desktop and web tools for sales and logistics and stuff for presenting info to customers etc. Nothing I do is really rocket science but off the shelf tools just don't do what we want so its worth keeping me around. We're a typical company in many ways. MS Office on every desktop.
I've done some private / volunteer projects using LAMP, I've fiddled with Java, I maintain a Linux web host for a non-profit. I consider myself a reasonably competent programmer despite having written many thousands of lines of VB6.
For someone in my position, right now, Visual Studio, the
MSDN [microsoft.com] is a great resource.
ASP.NET is finally moving web development out of the stone age with real debugging and abstraction from the tedium of html. According to MS, the new version will be all W3C compliant and yes they do test with FireFox. I'm coming to the concluson that nothing really comes close to ASP.NET for ease of development for web projects. I've used several PHP frameworks. Prado [xisc.com] is very cool and I was planning on using it for another volunteer project for a non-profit I'm involved with but good ASP.NET web hosts are appearing, complete with SQL Server that don't cost a lot more per month than LAMP so
Reading
Slowed growth for MS in a growing industry -a sign (Score:5, Insightful)
if (no complaint)
stick to status quo
else
fix complaint
The problem is that complaints are usually symptoms of larger problems, and by tacking on simple fixes, Microsoft usually just ends up with a convoluted framework for whatever product they happen to be fixing.
Your average joe doesn't understand the potential of new technology, he is just reacting to the new-fangled features you just put in. This is why technology design by survey fails miserably. You need someone who fully understands what is at the edge of current technology, and who can creatively apply it in ways that enhance the average joe's life. I don't get the impression that Ballmer gets this idea. In fact, I have heard through the grapevine that the problem is ingrained in Microsoft company culture, and no one challenges it, because the company is conservatively micro-managed from the top.
Microsoft gets away with this model because the average joe is unaware of innovative concepts while they are new, before Microsoft has copied them. But the software remains clunky, akin to cars of the old days, where you cranked the thing up by hand and put up with the smell, noise, and the breakdowns - because there was still a tangible benefit. People thought this was the nature of cars back then, and accepted it because they couldn't see any better. Better engineering will eventually make computer systems easier to use and more reliable, analagous to what the Japanese did to the auto industry. Aside from good design the Japanese automakers popularized the use of statistics to test their components to make sure the performed reliably, carefully revising materials and design based on what worked, rather than going with the what was most available on the market. The computer industry could use that same sense of perfection, followed through with design by people who understand both people and the techonology, and of course lots of unit testing.
Microsoft hasn't re-invented itself as management would like shareholders to think, it has only re-hashed itself into something superficially better in order to avoid any more slip. Until the old guard leaves, that isn't likely to happen. This can be witnessed in the company's financials - growth continues, but is slowing in a growing market, despite a monopoly. If you want to make some dough, invest in some Apple stock and watch Microsoft sink in the long run - since it is pretty clear that they will be sticking to their guns with Ballmer. I've never owned a Mac but I've used a few and I see them as the next best thing, especially with the affordable mini model out, a good architecture to boot, and style that drops Microsoft right on its ass.
My two cents (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the interesting point that this article raises is that Microsoft is no longer able to bully its competition. Back in the days of the web browser wars and even the GUI wars Microsoft was able to win because it could either undercut, buy out, or out lawyer any corporation on the planet. In the absense of innovation and an active monopoly these appear to be Microsofts only weapons and they are all neutured by OSS. You can't undercut or buy-out free software, and the global nature of OSS seems to give lawyers the willies. There is only one thing left for them to try and thats patents, and I don't anybody really wants to open that can of worms, even M$... but they will.
Just as Microsoft needs an Apple, I think OSS needs a Microsoft (if only to keep it on its toes) so I don't want to see M$ die completely just reduce its market share to a healthy 30-50%. But I'd also like to see them release some decent products. I can't remember the last time I saw some Microsoft software and thought "Hey thats cool!". They've got the resources what's stopping them?
PC Software is becoming a commodity (Score:5, Interesting)
Money + Monopoly = expansion. (Score:4, Insightful)
PDAs/Smartphones: They keep respinning this and getting better and getting more market share. Any prediction when they hit #1?
Game Consoles/SW: Jan 2007: It is not out of the question to consider that Xbox2 will be the number one gaming console in North America. MS will probably also be a significant publisher (having bought out a pile of gaming companies)
Next Gen DVD: Microsoft had its own compression format placed as one of the mandatory codecs in both formats..
The list could probably go on an on, but anwhere money is being made in large amount MS will be there and eventually will be a significant if not dominant player.
Under-estimate them at your folly.
Aren't all companies always "under attack" ?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose that msft has monopolized the desktop for so long, that the very idea of msft having to compete like a normal company is considered peculiar.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But where is the competition? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But where is the competition? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But where is the competition? (Score:5, Informative)
According to Gartner Mac market share is at 3.7% for Q1 2005 [macobserver.com]. Not to mention that Macs tend to be used longer (still using a 400mhz G4 from 2000 as my primary computer when my PC from the same time has long been recycled).
As for Linux, maybe not desktop-ready, but clearly more secure than Windows? Oops, I fed the troll.
Installed user base vs. market share (Score:3, Insightful)
Market share means percentage of what's being sold, a useful figure for projecting influence and company health, but it's generally confused with 'how many Macs are out there being used' -- especially by trade press.
The long service life of Macs adds significantly to the installed user base. I'd like to see more reliable recent figures, if anyone knows where I can find them.
These stats are part
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obligatory MS isn't dying troll (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Obligatory MS isn't dying troll (Score:5, Informative)
So nice to see clueless moderators mod this nonsense up. NOT!
Get your bloody facts [sec.gov] straight!
Re:Don't shoot your eye out (Score:3, Insightful)
wtf?!? Did you just pull this right out of your ass. First off, XP is less than 4 years old(Oct 2001). That is an extremely brave statement to say considering that almost every application can run on previous versions of Windows and today we have virtual machines to run any OS anywhere as well. But... what applications do you really need that have no replacement?
Games... You got every OS on that one, but console gaming is clearly an altern
Re:Don't shoot your eye out (Score:4, Informative)
Often this turns into a lot of their time. The fact is that when using Linux I can read any document you give me, and mount/use any drive on the network, I have full compatibility. Windows hasn't got this important feature because they are being deliberatly obtuse and not interoperating. The guy down the hall starts to feel outmoded when me with my Linux machine and Betty with her Mac can interoperate together completely and can both interoperate with him, but his machine can't do the same.
MS simply has to change this practice. They also have to get serious about supporting more applications. A lot of the publishing work we do is in TeX because TeX is pretty much the defacto standard of professional publishing. MS has rudimentary at best support, whereas Linux and Mac make it easy as pie.
There is a serious growing threat here, and as has been shown numerous times the idea that it costs more to switch platforms is false. It costs nothing more to dual boot, and often the cost of switching is zero or less, especially in an environment that has been dual booting for a while.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)