OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/19933/The_Hits_and_Misses_of_Microsoft Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:11:27 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com disagree with MS not being innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320432 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320432 The only point i would disagree with is that Microsoft is not innovative. There are plenty of projects and idea springing up from Microsoft and it's research labs. Just nip over the channel 9/8/10.

The only thing i would say about Microsoft's innovation is that they seem to be so excited to get the technology out there, that they don't give it enough spit and polish before release, which usually ends up with a dirty mark against an excellent product.

WHS is one example that comes to mind, a KISS home server which could stream and backup data. Excellent in execution and ideas, however the data loss bug just left a bitter taste and a dirty mark against an excellent product.

xbox360, in the rush to get it out in the market they push it out with a major heating problem (gone through 3 x Xbox360's myself). xbox live, excellent. Achievement points, excellent. Good games, excellent controller all excellent, but RROD on them just leaves it with a dirty mark and a bitter taste.

I think the one product which still impresses me to this day has to be Windows 95 and Windows 2000. Windows 95 brought in a new era of computing to the masses. Windows 2000 both pro and server brought a ton a new features, a directory and was incredibly quick and very very stable. Never had one problem with the OS. I only upgraded to XP when it was getting harder to play games on 2k and some bits of hardware wouldn't run aswell. Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (REM2000) Comments profit http://www.osnews.com/thread?320435 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320435 You can say about him what you want but not, not knowing where the money is.

"In late 1995 following the writing of a famous memo entitled "The Internal Tidal Wave" Mr Gates re-worked Microsoft to put the internet at the heart of everything it did." :-)

Fact is he couldn't have spend billions on charity if he hadn't founded microsoft.

Although i finally tend to
o think MS is to fat and needs some restyling. Have they lost their touch if they arguably had any. Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (netpython) Comments Comment by yakirz http://www.osnews.com/thread?320437 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320437 Hits:
====

Midtown Madness
Office (but bloated)


Misses:
======

Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows XP
Windows Vista Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (yakirz) Comments Sorry but http://www.osnews.com/thread?320438 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320438 I could have made a guess better than this based on those statistics, no visionary, just a good businessman which there are many. Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (SlackerJack) Comments Not so Black and White ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?320439 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320439 Microsoft's innovation are not so direct but then again many of it is directed towards behind the scenes applications. Wether you use VC-1 or H.264 MSFT gets a cut of the royalty fees, yes Apple pays them for their use in Quicktime. Actually, by my definition of innovation, only a handful of companies have been innovation and they do not include MSFT, Apple or IBM.

The one thing Bill Gates did was change the corporate culture. The CEO used to be a suit in the top floor and rarely know what was being developed and kept a close eye on the spread-sheet. MSFT change the definition of employee percs but then again expected a lot out of them ;) Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dindin) Comments RE: Not so Black and White ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?320446 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320446 To paraphrase Monty Python: "Apart from Fortran, magnetic storage, DRAM, the relational database, superconductivity, RISC processors, what has IBM ever done for us"? Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Skibum) Comments RE[2]: Not so Black and White ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?320449 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320449 developerWorks, SWT, ICU, the foundations for Eclipse, AIX, etc.... Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments RE: disagree with MS not being innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320451 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320451
Good games, excellent controller all excellent, but RROD on them just leaves it with a dirty mark and a bitter taste.


Agree, except for the controller part. The d-pad is absolute garbage. Don't believe me? Try playing Pacman CE on it. BTW: In my humble opinion, that is the absolute best game on the 360. Halo and GTA4 can lick my ass, Pacman CE FTW ;) Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (WorknMan) Comments RE: Comment by yakirz http://www.osnews.com/thread?320453 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320453 Midtown Madness? Are you f--king kidding me? Burnout is so much better. Wtf

Also your other opinions are wrong also. damn. Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (byrc) Comments RE: disagree with MS not being innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320467 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320467
The only point i would disagree with is that Microsoft is not innovative. There are plenty of projects and idea springing up from Microsoft and it's research labs. Just nip over the channel 9/8/10.

The only thing i would say about Microsoft's innovation is that they seem to be so excited to get the technology out there, that they don't give it enough spit and polish before release, which usually ends up with a dirty mark against an excellent product.

WHS is one example that comes to mind, a KISS home server which could stream and backup data. Excellent in execution and ideas, however the data loss bug just left a bitter taste and a dirty mark against an excellent product.


Personally, I found that it was a great idea, but executed poorly. I have to admit though, I am a fan of the 'whole widget' concept. Personally if it were me, I would have developed an appliance with a stripped down version of Windows with a web front end; the whole operating system residing on a 8gb flash card, with all storage for the server residing in a slotable expansion bay.

The slotable expansion bay would be a matter of sliding in a new hard disk (there would be 4 slotable bays) - the operating system automatically handles the formatting and configuration of this (but can be changed in the web browser interface). The size of the device would be around the same as the planned Eee PC desktop which ASUS is looking at.

For the average user, they run out of space, go down the road, purchase a 'slotable storage' cartridge, they slide it in, and the device handles the rest. Sat, 28 Jun 2008 00:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kaiwai) Comments Anyone else notice... http://www.osnews.com/thread?320475 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320475 ...that the BBC's Flash video widget has a volume control that goes to 11? Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Johann Chua) Comments RE: disagree with MS not being innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320500 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320500
I think the one product which still impresses me to this day has to be Windows 95 and Windows 2000.


That's only because you never used IBM's OS/2 operating system which Windows '95 and 2000 were copied from but weren't half as good.

IBM didn't succeed with OS/2 because it could no longer control the distribution channels like it did back in the '70s with their mainframe systems.

Notice that history is repeating itself with Microsoft. Whenever they go outside the distribution channels they control (please, they REALLY do) their success is well ... not successful.

While they have sold millions of XBox360s they have only netted profits during two months of sales. Also note that "sales" to Microsoft does not mean sales to consumers but to retail stores. It doesn't matter if retail stores used to have millions of unsold 360s. Microsoft still counts those, and Zune sales by the way, as sales. Reality of actual retail sales isn't as kind.

I know, I know, I know, sigh, you love Microsoft and Bill Gates.

Bill Gates created a monster built on blocking distribution channels, not on quality. If you think they have quality products it is because you haven't really used competing products.

You think they haven't blocked distribution channels? Well, go into a regular store where you buy computers and try to buy a Linux computer. How about any other operating system on a PC other than Apple's. You can't find even one? How is that possible? How many different brands of cars are there out there and you can find only one brand of operating system. Don't you find that a little ... weird.

Read some history about BeOS and how they were willing to give their OS to OEMs like Dell, HP, Compaq, Toshiba for free to install by itself or side by side and guess what. Microsoft went to those companies and showed the contracts they signed that said they were not allowed to ship any computers that had anything else installed other than the latest version of Windows.

It's true.

I could go on but you still won't believe me. If you ever pull your head out of ... well, once you do and do some real research on why Microsoft is so big, how nobody can sell anything that they can't get on store shelves, you'll find out why. Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sabon) Comments RE[2]: disagree with MS not being innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320510 You made two points. One is that stores are buying millions of zunes and xboxes that are not selling, but getting counted towards sales.

This is silly. If the 360 had flopped at its launch, you would probably be right, but no retail outlet is going to continue to place orders on a product that is not leaving its shelves.

Your second argument has an incident that happened about a decade ago to back it up. However, over the last five years more have been offering linux options. In fact, I believe at this point there isn't anyone NOT offering linux.

You are perfectly correct that they USED to do really nasty things, find me stuff they have done in the last five years in regards to blocking alternative os adoption.

Ten years ago you couldn't find Macs in most stores either. Now you can. It has nothing to do with microsoft, and everything to do with Apple getting back on track, and the market being created. A store will not stock something that will not sell. As soon as there is enough demand for linux, it will become available.

An example of this is I was pricing high end desktop replacements recently. I like HP, and the HP HDX seemed like a nice computer. However, it is only available online in the states, not here up in canada.

I guess I could blame apple for blocking distribution channels or something equally as hairbrained. The reality is, there really isn't that much demand for that kind of computer. Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (google_ninja) Comments RE[3]: Not so Black and White ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?320518 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320518 I believe the parent to your comment was talking about inventions, not products. Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (javiercero1) Comments RE[4]: Not so Black and White ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?320520 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320520 Yes, he did.

But, by the way, the products (and services) I mentioned (though they by itselft are inventions too) are big contributions to the community done by IBM... Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments RE[2]: disagree with MS not being innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320525 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320525
"I think the one product which still impresses me to this day has to be Windows 95 and Windows 2000.


That's only because you never used IBM's OS/2 operating system which Windows '95 and 2000 were copied from but weren't half as good.

IBM didn't succeed with OS/2 because it could no longer control the distribution channels like it did back in the '70s with their mainframe systems.

Notice that history is repeating itself with Microsoft. Whenever they go outside the distribution channels they control (please, they REALLY do) their success is well ... not successful.

While they have sold millions of XBox360s they have only netted profits during two months of sales. Also note that "sales" to Microsoft does not mean sales to consumers but to retail stores. It doesn't matter if retail stores used to have millions of unsold 360s. Microsoft still counts those, and Zune sales by the way, as sales. Reality of actual retail sales isn't as kind.

I know, I know, I know, sigh, you love Microsoft and Bill Gates.

Bill Gates created a monster built on blocking distribution channels, not on quality. If you think they have quality products it is because you haven't really used competing products.

You think they haven't blocked distribution channels? Well, go into a regular store where you buy computers and try to buy a Linux computer. How about any other operating system on a PC other than Apple's. You can't find even one? How is that possible? How many different brands of cars are there out there and you can find only one brand of operating system. Don't you find that a little ... weird.

Read some history about BeOS and how they were willing to give their OS to OEMs like Dell, HP, Compaq, Toshiba for free to install by itself or side by side and guess what. Microsoft went to those companies and showed the contracts they signed that said they were not allowed to ship any computers that had anything else installed other than the latest version of Windows.

It's true.

I could go on but you still won't believe me. If you ever pull your head out of ... well, once you do and do some real research on why Microsoft is so big, how nobody can sell anything that they can't get on store shelves, you'll find out why. "

Obviously a quote from his new book Why Microsoft keeps me awake at night available at all good book stores now! Sat, 28 Jun 2008 18:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Al2001) Comments Microsoft not innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320526 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320526 I have to agree with some others assertions that Microsoft is simply no longer innovative. They used their monopoly power to crush any proprietary innovators long ago and without the competition to keep them on their toes they've stagnated. Whenever they've needed to react to a perceived threat they've purchased the technology they needed and by "embracing and extending it" usually have made it worse. Further, many innovative technologies that Microsoft purchased have since stagnated once the competition is out of the picture. Bearing this in mind, I'm very happy that Microsoft failed in its attempts to acquire Yahoo! Even today, Microsoft is falling behind others in the tech community quite quickly. Nay, it's already far behind. The open source community works fast and furiously and the fruits if its labors (i.e., Linux, Amarok, KDE / Gnome) are powerful, stable and useful in the enterprise. While it's true that the open source community has its own problems to contend with, it remains truly innovating. I'd like to see where Microsoft is in 10 years, now that Bill Gates (some would argue the heart and soul, as well as the voice of reason of Microsoft) is out of the picture. How long will it take ol' Steve Balmer to really screw things up. Sat, 28 Jun 2008 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cmost) Comments RE[2]: Comment by yakirz http://www.osnews.com/thread?320542 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320542 I think he was pretty dead on with the Misses. Think about when XP first came out.... it wasn't even semi-decent until SP1 and much better after SP2. Didn't even notice anything with SP3....

Windows 2000 is still the only MS OS that hasn't left a completely nasty taste in my mouth (just a partial one, for when it first came out and the drivers were horrible) Sun, 29 Jun 2008 02:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (leech) Comments I'm still not sure when Microsoft was innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320551 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320551 Of course, using the Start button to shut down the machine comes close. No one outside Microsoft could have seen that coming.

Other than quitting Harvard to programme a BASIC interpreter, I think Bill Gates' development of routines for showering, shaving, and applying anti-perspirant did the most for the world and especially for anyone working close to him were all hits.

He obviously knew how to market software but before IBM, how much business did the company do in compilers/interpreters and Z-80 cards for the Apple II? Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bousozoku) Comments RE[3]: Comment by yakirz http://www.osnews.com/thread?320553 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320553 Nah!
The «Misses» -list is wrong too.

Any «Misses» -list when it comes to Microsoft HAS to include «Microsoft Bob».


Nalle Berg
./nalle. Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Nalle) Comments The XBox, a hit? http://www.osnews.com/thread?320618 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320618 I fail to see why the XBox should be a hit for Microsoft. Sure, they got their piece of the market share, yes. But it has cost them, and cost them dearly; they've never been able to make money from the XBox. Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Pfeifer) Comments RE: The XBox, a hit? http://www.osnews.com/thread?320635 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320635
I fail to see why the XBox should be a hit for Microsoft. Sure, they got their piece of the market share, yes. But it has cost them, and cost them dearly; they've never been able to make money from the XBox.


The Home and Entertainment division includes money wasters like the Zune so it's not just consoles. While they have been making more from 360's it's not as easy as looking at division profits.

Xbox 1 was a colossal waste of money but the 360 has achieved what the first version set out to do... Sell.

If you include both xbox's together then you are right about not making money, but by itself the 360 is a success. Hardware profitabillity and game attach rates are a lot better than the competition. (excluding wii hardware which is highly exorbitant for a gamecube with remotes.)

I have bought about 30+ games (not including arcade games) and spent plenty of money on this failure.

While i bought a wii for my girlfriend and i'm looking at a ps3 for a mythtv box with occasional exclusive. the xbox has already won my cash and to a business, that's what matters.

Money spent:
Xbox360 = ~4000AUD
Wii = ~600AUD
PS3 = (waiting for tax money) a possible 600AUD

For windows itself, windows 2000 was the greatest MS innovation to a newly hired network administrator. XP was the awesomeness of 2000 with better hardware support.

Server 2k3 made life a hell of a lot easier too.Edited 2008-06-30 01:39 UTC Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (stabbyjones) Comments A hit, OK, but maybe just right-place, right-time. http://www.osnews.com/thread?320642 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320642
There can be little doubt that Microsoft has helped to evangelise desktop computers and got many people using them. Today about 90% of desktop machines run Windows - a testament to the success of the company.

I've always agreed with this sentiment. I have applauded Bill Gates for having the vision that others apparently lacked.

But now I'm rethinking this. Bill Gates clearly has lots of natural business ability that he needed to get where he is today. But wasn't an awful lot of Microsoft's success just due to being at the right place at the right time? If he had never been born, are we to believe that the desktop PC would not have the dominance it has today?

I've decided to believe there was an inevitableness to the PC. Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KenJackson) Comments RE: A hit, OK, but maybe just right-place, right-time. http://www.osnews.com/thread?320647 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320647
"There can be little doubt that Microsoft has helped to evangelise desktop computers and got many people using them. Today about 90% of desktop machines run Windows - a testament to the success of the company.

I've always agreed with this sentiment. I have applauded Bill Gates for having the vision that others apparently lacked.

But now I'm rethinking this. Bill Gates clearly has lots of natural business ability that he needed to get where he is today. But wasn't an awful lot of Microsoft's success just due to being at the right place at the right time? If he had never been born, are we to believe that the desktop PC would not have the dominance it has today?

I've decided to believe there was an inevitableness to the PC. "

Well, if Gary Kildall (Digital Research) or his wife had signed the agreement with IBM, NDA included, it would have been a very different story.

Digital Research had a very usable GEM GUI available long before Microsoft, though the lawsuit with Apple took a lot of the bite out of it. However, had DR become much bigger due to the IBM PC and clones, by 1986, they might have reached a much better agreement with Apple. Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bousozoku) Comments RE[2]: disagree with MS not being innovative http://www.osnews.com/thread?320658 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320658
IBM didn't succeed with OS/2 because it could no longer control the distribution channels like it did back in the '70s with their mainframe systems.


It was more than that. OS/2 was really a pretty good operating system for its time, and I wrote a fair bit of code for it; however, one of the biggest impediments was COST. OS/2 required a lot of memory compared to DOS/Windows and, if you were around at that time, you will remember that OS/2's release has the unfortunate timing of coinciding with a spike in memory prices; in fact, my company decided to hold off on ordering several hundred OS/2-based PCs because of the increased cost. Programmers started playing around with Windows and, even though OS/2 and Windows had very different internal architectures, Windows started to gain steam because it had lower memory requirements, it implemented rudimentary multi-tasking, and the visual appearance was similar to OS/2 Presentation Manager; hence, in a lot of ways, Windows blunted the advantages of OS/2. Of course, it was very obvious to me (having written code for both platforms) that OS/2 was a superior operating system to the early forms of Windows. But in the end, it didn't matter. OEMs got a successor to DOS that used a marginally additional amount of memory, and Microsoft had already established a lot of the contractual relationships with OEMs; whereas, IBM was an OEM, itself. Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tomcat) Comments RE: The XBox, a hit? http://www.osnews.com/thread?320660 http://www.osnews.com/thread?320660
I fail to see why the XBox should be a hit for Microsoft. Sure, they got their piece of the market share, yes. But it has cost them, and cost them dearly; they've never been able to make money from the XBox.


That was true in the beginning, but no longer true. Microsoft is actually making money on the Xbox 360; whereas, some of its competitors (eg. Sony) continue to lose money on every console sold. Yes, MS had to take a $1B write-off due to faulty heat problems; however, it has apparently fixed the problem. Coupled with a bunch of best-selling titles (Halo 3, PGR4, Call of Duty 4, etc), Microsoft's Xbox live service has really kind of made the Xbox the center of many gamers' entertainment rooms. Additionally, Microsoft has been able to take advantage of falling component prices to transparently ship newer versions of the 360 in order to lower costs further. Of course, Sony still has a few cards up its sleeve, since it won the Blu-Ray battle and it has an exclusive on what's rumored to be the greatest video game ever made -- the new Metal Gear Solid game; so, it's still very early in the console wars. Anything could happen. Mon, 30 Jun 2008 06:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tomcat) Comments