there never was "that vision thing"
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| Author | Content |
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| gus3 Oct 27, 2010 10:04 PM EDT |
[rant] I suppose the unquestioning parrots at CNN are to blame in part for spreading such a lie. Microsoft has never had a vision, has never innovated, has never come up with something that was at once unique, new, and a game-changer for desktop computing. Demand paging and pre-emptive multi-tasking on the desktop? Already done with Xenix. To someone schooled in OS fundamentals, even running multiple hard real-time threads of execution on an original PC is almost trivial (I've seen it). I'm not charitable enough to say Bill Gates was ignorant, when he said Windows 95 was the first desktop OS to have pre-emptive multi-tasking. GUI's on the general desktop trace their history to the Xerox Alto. Douglas Engelbart demonstrated pointer-based computing in 1968. Sadly, even malware was spreading on other types of computers before it was spreading on MS-DOS. Oh yeah, MS-DOS. Swiped from 86-DOS, itself internally related to CP/M (viz. the dollar sign as a string terminator). Xbox. Perhaps the most successful diversification effort to date, but it's still not an original idea. The Zune? Released two months after the iPod, then buried by other companies with dedicated media hardware divisions (Creative, Sony, Toshiba). Bob? Well, the idea of "dumbing down" the computing experience wasn't new, but Microsoft certainly did take Bob to new lows in "friendly computing." CNN should be embarrassed to be Ballmer's mouthpiece, but somehow I suspect they aren't. [/rant] |
| tuxchick Oct 27, 2010 11:00 PM EDT |
Bill Gates was very smart at exploiting competitor's weaknesses, exploiting insider relationships, buying and stealing technology, and being more ruthless and bullying than anyone else. Straight out of the robber baron playbook, right down to retiring to a life of genteel philanthropy after leaving a massive swatch of scorched earth behind. It's always been nauseating how the press hangs on every word that falls from Gates' mouth, as though he were imparting marvelous wisdom. To me he always sounds like a simpleton, like this quote from CES 2008: "A key building block certainly for Microsoft is the Windows platform. We'll evolve that and use it as really the centerpiece building block. This actually was an incredible year for PCs. PC sales grew over 13 percent. Of course, that's a really gigantic base, and it's been amazing to see that." He sounds like Chauncey Gardner, the simple-minded gardener in the movie "Being There" that everyone thinks is a genius. What would computing look like today had it been free of the grip of the junkiest monopoly ever? Maybe we would not still be shackled to the shortcomings of the x86 platform. Maybe there would be multiple strong microchip manufacturers creating wonderful things, free of having to dumb down for Windows. How much more diverse would the market be, with more real choices and a feast of genuine innovation? Would we have per-seat client licenses, crippleware, forced upgrades, insane EULAs, an Internet 90% infested with malware? Thanks to Microsoft tech is decades behind where it could have been. |
| jsusanka Oct 27, 2010 11:05 PM EDT |
microsoft is a great place to work if you are a patent lawyer. other than that they provide no value. the only reason I even touch windows is because my work makes back room deals with no input from the user community. there isn't a day that goes by someone sitting near me isn't complaining about their desktop or is forced to reboot for one reason or another. the article says microsoft cares about consumers - since when - all they care about is the consumer's wallets and how much they can take out of it. microsoft can't die quick enough in my book - they have held the computer industry back for decades and will continue to do so while they exist. |
| patrokov Oct 28, 2010 1:26 AM EDT |
@jusanka: they do care about their clients...in the RIAA and MPAA. |
| gus3 Oct 28, 2010 2:30 AM EDT |
@tc: Your last sentence is speculation, neither true nor false. But oh, how I wish we knew. |
| cabreh Oct 28, 2010 4:30 AM EDT |
@gus: I think you're wrong on one thing. Microsoft definitely had a vision. That vision was to make as much money as possible by being the only one left standing in whatever computer field they entered, and at any cost to anyone else. But, they really relied on the technical vision of everyone else. |
| tracyanne Oct 28, 2010 6:09 AM EDT |
Quoting:But, they really relied on the technical vision of everyone else. Indeed, back in the late 80s, early 90s there was a lot of innovation, a lot of companies coming up with all sorts of software, but slowly then almost overnight most of them disappeared, either bought out by microsoft, or simply dri9ven to the wall... because Microsoft decided they wanted the market, and used the fact that almost everything, at that time was developed to run on their desktop. Al they had to do was announce their intention to build an application that did what that software did, and the market dried up. Microsoft's version was usually inferior, but it didn't matter they were the only game in town. |
| JaseP Oct 28, 2010 9:05 AM EDT |
Yep,... Stacker Electronics, DR-DOS, et al. It's a laundry list of companies driven under by M$. M$'s "M-O" has always been to buy/steal/copy & then creatively re-write history. They have even attempted to take credit for Tablet/Ultra-Mobile computing by editing the Wikipedia on tablet computing to say that M$ "invented" it with the Origami project. All the building blocks for tablets & MIDs existed long before their efforts to run THEIR software on those emerging form factors. No innovation whatsoever out of Redmond WA. That is, unless you consider taking dirty business practices to a new low, an "innovation." |
| jdixon Oct 28, 2010 9:29 AM EDT |
> Microsoft definitely had a vision. Yes. A computer in every home and office; running Microsoft software. |
| helios Oct 28, 2010 9:39 AM EDT |
It isn't the media's fault entirely....I mean they have their fault liability for mimicking everything MS says on a national or world news stage but in the end, it's a complete con job. I can't find it right now but here in the states, Microsoft is running a commercial showing a mother trying to take a family photo. They are advertising their cloud services. The family is on the sofa but instead of a orderly group, the boys are acting up, the teen aged daughter is texting and the dad is looking like he is experiencing a cavity search. The mother has taken a number of shots but in every one of them, one or more of the subjects is screwing up the shot. Mom slaps open her laptop and starts manipulating the head shots of the good poses and dragging them to the bodies of those that are not. In seconds she has "created" the perfect family photo. Funny thing though, there seems to be no mismatch of shirt patterns or irregularities...it's like she took the shot in one take. First off, this has nothing to do with "the cloud"...except that MS may have provided a prop app to do this....something I did in minutes myself in Gimp. Second, the commercial strongly suggests that MS "invented" this technology. Crop and paste has been around in photo editing since the 90's. So instead of a wise consumer base groaning, millions of people are now thoroughly impressed with Microsoft's "innovation". They might not have invented audacious acts, but they seem to have perfected them. h |
| pmpatrick Oct 28, 2010 11:56 AM EDT |
Microsoft hasn't been a consumer brand since Windows 95 IMHO. That's the last time I recall there being widespread purchasing of a new MS operating system by the consuming public. It was the era when PCs went from a tool of hobbyists and technophiles to a device purchased and used by the public at large. After that, joe consumer bought a "computer" that came with windows preinstalled; he didn't buy an MS operating system as a consumer choice because there was no choice in the PC market. I think MS has understood this for a long time. They market and sell their products to commercial entities, not to the general consuming public. Their operating systems are sold to PC manufacturers like Dell and Acer and their office products are sold to businesses. Consequently, MS does take care of their customer base, i.e the Dells and major corporations of the world, to the extent they have to with their vendor lock in and monopoly grip on that market. MS could care less about joe or jane consumer because they are not MS customers. Accordingly, the premise of the article strikes me as false. MS isn't a "dying consumer brand". MS hasn't been a consumer oriented company since the early 90s, at least in their major product lines - Office and Windows. MS's focus has since been the commercial, not the consumer, market, much like Intel. |
| Ridcully Oct 29, 2010 4:12 AM EDT |
I've just read the present lead story on how Linux is now *the* computer system for supercomputers and China has just created a "a 2.507 petaflops computer ~ 2.507 trillion calculations per second". Rather staggering. http://reallylinux.com/docs/chinaleads.shtml But what it does show to me is that Microsoft is now well and truly on the sidelines with respect to the world of supercomputers. Another straw in the wind perhaps ? |
| bigg Oct 29, 2010 7:26 AM EDT |
They never have been important in the world of supercomputers. I posted here a few days ago an article with HPC market share numbers. It used to be Unix, now 85% Linux, but MS's share has always been low. To me, that speaks volumes. There was no way to use their desktop monopoly to work into the HPC world, so they failed. That's the story of Microsoft. |
| tuxchick Oct 29, 2010 9:21 AM EDT |
Windows on supercomputers is a proven catastrophe-- the researchers who try it either laugh themselves into painful spasms, or have fits of uncontrollable retching. It's sad and messy. |
| bigg Oct 29, 2010 9:32 AM EDT |
Just to add something about HPC. Market share numbers in HPC will overestimate MS's share because they will be share of revenue. A lot of individuals (like me) grab old retired Windows machines, install Linux, and run jobs using MPI. It's very easy for basic parallel jobs and it requires almost no maintenance. It also requires no Windows license. |
| JaseP Oct 29, 2010 9:52 AM EDT |
Supercomputer software is not where the profit is w/ those machines. It's in building & maintaining them so that their computing cycles can be sold/shown off. M$ has no incentive other than PR in supercomputing. Linux licenses are free (for the software itself). So Linux scales well to supercomputer architecture. M$ will go where they can make $$$. They really ought to use their $30+B to penetrate the on-line commerce & records transfer (i.e.: medical & financial/banking records) markets. That's where the real $$$ will be. People will gladly (ignorantly?!?!) pay an M$ tax for easily managed transactions. M$ just has to put a little lipstick on that pig, & viola! They could probably buy up Pay Pal pretty easily. |
| helios Oct 29, 2010 10:40 AM EDT |
Even Microsoft could take lessons in corrupt business practices from Pay Pal. h |
| JaseP Oct 29, 2010 2:18 PM EDT |
I wholeheartedly agree. It would be a match made in hell, for sure. But it would make for less harm from Redmond everywhere else, if they switched over to just that. |
| hkwint Oct 29, 2010 7:43 PM EDT |
I'm pretty sure if you have a supercomputer, you _receive_ money instead of paying for using Windows. From what I've read, those supercomputers boot from the kernel straight into the shell. So there's almost no 'GNU' involved (apart from Bash / GCC maybe?). Of course, if your scientific apps run on an almost 'bare' kernel, you want to be able to tweak that kernel and maybe change source code. Hence there's absolutely no need for Windows, and I'm pretty sure all research groups running Windows HPC are 'bought' by MS. As to what MS should do: I'm pretty sure while Android-market share is on the rise, they're earning more from their patents, without having to sell any single software-license. How's that for an easy way of earning money. As to PayPal, I'm not sure what corrupt business practices is referred too, but coming to think of it, Microsoft buying eBay would almost make sense. |
| helios Oct 30, 2010 10:24 AM EDT |
@ hkwint Not meaning to hijack the thread but Pay Pal is a law unto their own. They don't answer to any US or EU banking regulators. It is common knowledge that they "freeze" people's accounts for 180 days at a time for "suspicious" or "risky behavior. They decide what is suspicious or risky...case on point is the software dev that had 600K euros frozen. http://notch.tumblr.com/post/1096322756/working-on-a-friday-... Paypal locks your money down, you cannot transfer it to your bank and you cannot use it to purchase or pay anyone. We had our own issues with Pay Pal but all we are out is the 123.00 in our frozen account. We've contacted them by phone and email and still they stonewall and won't release the money. paypalsucks.com is a good place to start. Thousands of people are already involved in lawsuits but because they are set up out of US and EU jurisdiction, they pretty much do what they want. Ethically, it would seem that MS would be the perfect purchaser of Pay Pal but they will never sell...It's a multi-billion dollar a year enterprise. Unfortunately, they make part of their money by locking people out of their accounts. MS does the same by locking them in. h |
| caitlyn Oct 30, 2010 11:06 AM EDT |
Microsoft has always been good at spotting consumer trends early and spotting technologies that likely will sell well to consumers. They didn't have to invent anything. All they did was spot marketing opportunities and capitalize on them. Bill Gates was very, very good at that. The problem now, as CNN correctly points out, is that Microsoft is jumping into technologies late and falling behind. They were a leader at popularizing things. Now they can't even do that. The article pines for the Microsoft of yore and still finds opportunity to fawn over Windows Phone 7 and IE 9. The latter former has less chance than MeeGo to displace Apple or Android, IMHO. The broswer has to overcome a lot of previous bad press and negative images that have been built up by previous versions. |
| hkwint Oct 30, 2010 10:27 PM EDT |
Thanks Ken, sorry for my memory-outage, as I've reed most of this before, but seems I forgot. Maybe I was never affected by those issues: "In Europe, PayPal is registered as a bank in Luxembourg under the legal name PayPal (Europe) Sàrl et Cie SCA, a company regulated centrally by the Luxembourg bank authority, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF)[47] (note that all of the company's European accounts were transferred to the PayPal's bank in Luxembourg on July 2, 2007.[48])" (Wikipedia), I don't know. They canceled my account after inactivity (I thought it was a scam, but it seems to be genuine) and I'm not sad as I forgot my password anyway. But it's good to know they cannot be trusted. Sad, because PayPal seemed the only reasonable way for non-creditcard-owners in the EU (over 200M I guess) to buy from the US. Caitlyn: Guess you saw a summary of the report of Goldman. 'nuff said, I guess. |
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