Microsoft’s shares sink by more than 10%(google.com)
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Microsoft’s shares sink by more than 10%
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT
302 comments
Whenever people mention Microsoft as only a "Windows and Office" company, I know they have a very outdated perspective of the company. Look at all the billion dollar divisions they have that are not Windows and Office. Sure, almost all their other products such as SharePoint, AD, Exchange, SQL Server, .NET are based on Windows, but people buy Windows because they want those products, not the other way around.
Also: Ballmer was absolutely right when he made that comment about the iPhone. The iPhone did not sell phenomenally well at all when it was introduced. It did alright, but nowhere near what it does now. The average Joe could not afford one at $600. I know, because I had the original one (only because my employer bought it for me, of course), and and I was the envy of people everywhere. Random people on the street and at restaurants and airports would ask me wistfully how I liked it.
When it did take off was when AT&T started subsidizing iPhones to the tune of $400 per phone (and then make money off the contracts, because the average Joe is a short-sighted chump). That's when suddenly everyone I knew had a brand new iPhone (and later, Android phones). I would credit that business model for bringing about the smartphone revolution more than the revolutionary design Apple introduced.
Did Ballmer absolutely miss the alternative strategy? Of course! But so did Apple / AT&T initially. It was probably born later out of desperation when the iPhone wasn't selling as they hoped.
Also: Ballmer was absolutely right when he made that comment about the iPhone. The iPhone did not sell phenomenally well at all when it was introduced. It did alright, but nowhere near what it does now. The average Joe could not afford one at $600. I know, because I had the original one (only because my employer bought it for me, of course), and and I was the envy of people everywhere. Random people on the street and at restaurants and airports would ask me wistfully how I liked it.
When it did take off was when AT&T started subsidizing iPhones to the tune of $400 per phone (and then make money off the contracts, because the average Joe is a short-sighted chump). That's when suddenly everyone I knew had a brand new iPhone (and later, Android phones). I would credit that business model for bringing about the smartphone revolution more than the revolutionary design Apple introduced.
Did Ballmer absolutely miss the alternative strategy? Of course! But so did Apple / AT&T initially. It was probably born later out of desperation when the iPhone wasn't selling as they hoped.
You hold a rather unusual view of how the iPhone progressed. The subsidy model already existed for numerous other smartphones -- but they sucked. Apple sold ~4 million iPhones from launch to end of 2007. Those were unsubsidized purchases and they captured >20% of smartphone market share (http://arstechnica.com/apple/2008/01/the-truth-about-the-iph...). It seems pretty clear-cut that it wasn't a new carrier sales model that made the iPhone a success.
That chart shows cumulative sales only until early 2008, before the 3G was introduced. This does not show the most interesting aspects of iPhone growth. The subsidy model existed, but it did not apply to the iPhone. Here's a more revealing chart (from Jan 2012):
http://paidcontent.org/2012/01/25/419-chart-apple-iphone-sal...
Note how in '08, when the subsidized iPhone 3G was introduced ("New features, new price") it sold almost more in one quarter than the previous original had sold all year. Of course, it also had a number or new features such as an app store, but the one that really made a difference was the subsidy. Also, as mentioned below, it was sold internationally so that certainly helped, but it was the US smartphone market that first saw phenomenal growth.
As you say, the original iPhone did do well, but that was compared to the rest of the smartphone market, which in ~2007, was tiny by today's standards, because it was mostly limited to business users. The subsidized iPhone suddenly created a consumer smartphone market. Even as the iPhone was gaining market share, the other players were also selling more and more devices every year, which is why they were complacent. Until they weren't. The rest as they say is history.
Note how in '08, when the subsidized iPhone 3G was introduced ("New features, new price") it sold almost more in one quarter than the previous original had sold all year. Of course, it also had a number or new features such as an app store, but the one that really made a difference was the subsidy. Also, as mentioned below, it was sold internationally so that certainly helped, but it was the US smartphone market that first saw phenomenal growth.
As you say, the original iPhone did do well, but that was compared to the rest of the smartphone market, which in ~2007, was tiny by today's standards, because it was mostly limited to business users. The subsidized iPhone suddenly created a consumer smartphone market. Even as the iPhone was gaining market share, the other players were also selling more and more devices every year, which is why they were complacent. Until they weren't. The rest as they say is history.
> Note how in '08, when the subsidized iPhone 3G was introduced ("New features, new price") it sold almost more in one quarter than the previous original had sold all year. Of course, it also had a number or new features such as an app store, but the one that really made a difference was the subsidy.
But, er, that's not actually what happened. The original iPhone was released in about six countries in June 2007, usually at $600 or equivalent. In September 2007, the price dropped to $200 (in the US; there were regional variations). In June 2008, the 3G was released, at $200, in 22 countries.
It had 3G (the original's lack of 3G made it a hard sell in Europe, in the few countries where it was even available; many European telcos had skipped EDGE and gone straight to UMTS/HSDPA), and the app store, and people were more used to the idea. In 2007, normal consumers simply didn't know what a smartphone was, at all. It's far more likely that a combination of that was responsible for the growth than a price drop which actually happened nine months earlier.
But, er, that's not actually what happened. The original iPhone was released in about six countries in June 2007, usually at $600 or equivalent. In September 2007, the price dropped to $200 (in the US; there were regional variations). In June 2008, the 3G was released, at $200, in 22 countries.
It had 3G (the original's lack of 3G made it a hard sell in Europe, in the few countries where it was even available; many European telcos had skipped EDGE and gone straight to UMTS/HSDPA), and the app store, and people were more used to the idea. In 2007, normal consumers simply didn't know what a smartphone was, at all. It's far more likely that a combination of that was responsible for the growth than a price drop which actually happened nine months earlier.
Hmm, I guess I'm looking at the wrong time frame. Do you know what sales were like from launch until they subsidized it? I remember tracking its progress from announcement through launch and until a couple years ago, and as I recall it only really took of after the subsidies. Am on a phone, so can't find a cite to back that up at the moment though.
Edit: my memory is not to be trusted, but articles like this were the ones where I first heard of iPhones being subsidized by AT&T... In 2008: http://www.maclife.com/article/at_t_to_subsidize_iphone_2_0
http://m.cnet.com/news/at&ts-iphone-3g-subsidy-will-cost-em/...
I can't recall the original iPhone being subsidized until then.
Edit: my memory is not to be trusted, but articles like this were the ones where I first heard of iPhones being subsidized by AT&T... In 2008: http://www.maclife.com/article/at_t_to_subsidize_iphone_2_0
http://m.cnet.com/news/at&ts-iphone-3g-subsidy-will-cost-em/...
I can't recall the original iPhone being subsidized until then.
> I would credit that business model for bringing about the smartphone revolution more than the revolutionary design Apple introduced.
That wasn't actually a new business model. Subsidy was already pretty much standard in the US; it's just that for whatever reason (probably risk-aversion), AT&T didn't do it for the iPhone for the first six months.
That wasn't actually a new business model. Subsidy was already pretty much standard in the US; it's just that for whatever reason (probably risk-aversion), AT&T didn't do it for the iPhone for the first six months.
No, you have to keep in mind that the first iPhone was really just US only. It took off when it went global with the iPhone 3G.
People who say Ballmer is a bad CEO based on the stock price really aren't paying attention. He took over at the height of the tech bubble. Microsoft's PE (and everything else) was a joke. Since he took over revenue and profits have increased by an impressive amount. The only reason the stock has been flat is that it was extremely over inflated when he took over.
(Certainly he has made mistakes, but frankly I think he's done just fine. Windows phone 7-8 have been pretty good, just slightly late. Xbox has been pretty successful. Azure has been fine. Bing has been the only real failure/money loser, but at least it might be holding back Google to some extent. That was the whole purpose anyways.)
(Certainly he has made mistakes, but frankly I think he's done just fine. Windows phone 7-8 have been pretty good, just slightly late. Xbox has been pretty successful. Azure has been fine. Bing has been the only real failure/money loser, but at least it might be holding back Google to some extent. That was the whole purpose anyways.)
Steve Ballmer started at Microsoft in January 2000 [1]. Since then the S&P 500 has gained 15 points, the Nasdaq has lost 12, and Microsoft...about 45 [2]. Thus MSFT has under-performed the S&P 500 by over 60 points and the Nasdaq by over 33.
This does not show that Ballmer is crap. Just that Microsoft has been crap since Ballmer took over. Generously: he has been unable to arrest the disintegration of shareholder value.
UPDATE: Out of the 3 395 overlapping 20 trading day time periods between 7 January 2000 and 19 July 2013 MSFT outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) in 1 543 of those periods, or 45% of the time. Thus, if you were to flip a coin on any trading day between those dates and, were it to come up heads, buy and hold MSFT for 20 trading days you would, on average, make money on 9 out of 20 days. If you made money you made, on average, 4.9%. If you lost money you lost, on average, 4.6%. Comparable statistics for SPYs are a 59% win rate (3 out of 5 times), 3.2% up, 4.4% down.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer
[2] https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=0&chdv=0&...
This does not show that Ballmer is crap. Just that Microsoft has been crap since Ballmer took over. Generously: he has been unable to arrest the disintegration of shareholder value.
UPDATE: Out of the 3 395 overlapping 20 trading day time periods between 7 January 2000 and 19 July 2013 MSFT outperformed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) in 1 543 of those periods, or 45% of the time. Thus, if you were to flip a coin on any trading day between those dates and, were it to come up heads, buy and hold MSFT for 20 trading days you would, on average, make money on 9 out of 20 days. If you made money you made, on average, 4.9%. If you lost money you lost, on average, 4.6%. Comparable statistics for SPYs are a 59% win rate (3 out of 5 times), 3.2% up, 4.4% down.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer
[2] https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=0&chdv=0&...
Msft had a PE of 58 when he took over. S&P had a PE of 29. Msft was vastly overvalued, there was nothing he could have done that would have made msft go up in normal conditions.
I say Ballmer is a bad CEO because of the stack ranking employee evaluations and the rampant smothering of prototype technologies that later turned out to be valuable in favor of "core" technologies - you know, the two behaviors that are absolutely toxic for a tech company.
"Stack ranking employee evaluations"
I agree with a great many criticisms of Microsoft, but this one always strikes me as nonsensical. I was an intern at Microsoft and (while I never participated in stack ranking) it never seemed particularly destructive. I went on a tour of Valve and one question that was asked during the Q&A was what kind of evaluation and ranking system they used - the answer was stack ranking. Companies have to use some form of evaluation and ranking for their employees once they grow past a certain size - it's just an organizational requirement. The alternative is upper management without quantifiable information about the many people under them, which makes it harder to allocate resources and operate efficiently. Or so I imagine, I'm not in upper management at a very large company, but that certainly seems to be the case pretty much everywhere.
I agree with a great many criticisms of Microsoft, but this one always strikes me as nonsensical. I was an intern at Microsoft and (while I never participated in stack ranking) it never seemed particularly destructive. I went on a tour of Valve and one question that was asked during the Q&A was what kind of evaluation and ranking system they used - the answer was stack ranking. Companies have to use some form of evaluation and ranking for their employees once they grow past a certain size - it's just an organizational requirement. The alternative is upper management without quantifiable information about the many people under them, which makes it harder to allocate resources and operate efficiently. Or so I imagine, I'm not in upper management at a very large company, but that certainly seems to be the case pretty much everywhere.
Go through a stack ranking where you get a bad review simply because "there are too many good developers on the team" before you say that it is a nonsensical criticism.
Making employees feel like shit for reasons outside their control is bad management.
Making employees feel like shit for reasons outside their control is bad management.
Anecdotal, but, I know a bunch of good developers at Microsoft, and I've never heard any one of them complain about that before. They complain about a bunch of things, many of them related to upper management, but that "lost decade" article was the first I heard anyone complaining about stack ranking.
Stack ranking has been used at Microsoft since 2006. Furthermore, he wouldn't be overly involved in deciding performance evaluations. That's more the role of Lisa Brummel, who is the EVP of HR.
What's, in your view, an example of such a technology?
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> People who say Ballmer is a bad CEO based on the stock price really aren't paying attention
Most of the criticism here doesn't mention the stock price, but since you bring it up...
> He took over at the height of the tech bubble. Microsoft's PE (and everything else) was a joke.
Even if you set your start date as the collapse of the tech bubble in 2002, Microsoft's stock price has remained pretty flat. You might argue that the market was still overvaluing Microsoft in 2002, but perhaps that was because it overvalued the ability of its CEO to grow profits and return cash to shareholders.
> Since he took over revenue and profits have increased by an impressive amount
How much of the increase in profits is due to the Windows/Office cash cow, which would have existed under any other CEO? For the remaining growth in profits, how much money was invested to achieve that growth? After all, any CEO can increase company profit by $1 billion per year - he just needs to put $20 billion in a bank account.
Most of the criticism here doesn't mention the stock price, but since you bring it up...
> He took over at the height of the tech bubble. Microsoft's PE (and everything else) was a joke.
Even if you set your start date as the collapse of the tech bubble in 2002, Microsoft's stock price has remained pretty flat. You might argue that the market was still overvaluing Microsoft in 2002, but perhaps that was because it overvalued the ability of its CEO to grow profits and return cash to shareholders.
> Since he took over revenue and profits have increased by an impressive amount
How much of the increase in profits is due to the Windows/Office cash cow, which would have existed under any other CEO? For the remaining growth in profits, how much money was invested to achieve that growth? After all, any CEO can increase company profit by $1 billion per year - he just needs to put $20 billion in a bank account.
I'm not saying he is a great CEO. I'm saying he was put in an impossible situation and he's done fine. Msft had a PE of 58 when he started. And he gets to follow bill gates. Just like Tim cook. It doesn't matter how well he does, people are calling for his head because he isn't Steve jobs. It's tough to follow a legend. (I also think Tim cook is doing just fine)
I think most people are unconfortable with Balmer's lack of pushing Microsoft in new directions. Not so long ago Blackberry's numbers wheren't bad, they were selling a boatload of devices, clausing new deals all around the world, and pushing these facts as a sign of health. But it just felt wrong because all the good news were about fields bound to die or shrink in the near future.
Balmer as a CEO brings plenty of money, sales are strong, figures are good, but mostly in fields that might as well disappear in the next years. Even things like Office and .NET which should have many years left are so heavily bound to windows that they might as well get silently siloed into niche markets while the current PC market gets disrupted.
Balmer as a CEO brings plenty of money, sales are strong, figures are good, but mostly in fields that might as well disappear in the next years. Even things like Office and .NET which should have many years left are so heavily bound to windows that they might as well get silently siloed into niche markets while the current PC market gets disrupted.
At the 2010 company meeting, Balmer said "Last time I told you do good things and the stock price will follow [LONG PUASE] Do good things and the stock price will follow." That was when I decided Balmer could say one thing as CEO that would positively impact the stock price and by definition it would be the last thing he could ever say as CEO. (Sometimes I wonder if that pause was him coming to the same conclusion)
That line, coupled with the fact that it was preceded by a cheesy line form a TV show about high-school football that most SDE's wouldn't get caught watching let alone bye into the sentiment when applied to a software company, really didn't make me think he was in touch with ... well anything.
That line, coupled with the fact that it was preceded by a cheesy line form a TV show about high-school football that most SDE's wouldn't get caught watching let alone bye into the sentiment when applied to a software company, really didn't make me think he was in touch with ... well anything.
Ballmer is ideal material as a COO but he is in no way CEO material.
He didn't even join the board until he got made CEO.
He has done a pretty good job with maintaining the lines that make Microsoft the bulk of its revenue but in new areas he is very fucking useless.
Bill Gates did some masterful work at making Windows the dominant force that it is but Balmer has done nothing but waste money on Windows Phone and Surface.
If only Balmer was smart enough to realize he needs someone else to get new shit off the ground, then Microsoft would have half a chance.
He didn't even join the board until he got made CEO.
He has done a pretty good job with maintaining the lines that make Microsoft the bulk of its revenue but in new areas he is very fucking useless.
Bill Gates did some masterful work at making Windows the dominant force that it is but Balmer has done nothing but waste money on Windows Phone and Surface.
If only Balmer was smart enough to realize he needs someone else to get new shit off the ground, then Microsoft would have half a chance.
They have the cash and they have the researchers. Brilliant researchers doing excellent research. Thing is; they don't really use that research. A few things end up in cash cow products (like one of the automated data type detection features of rise4fun.com went into Excel), but that's about it.
I think the next Xbox is going to be the thing that finally takes him out. Not one gamer I know wants one, and the 360 works just fine for the family. They managed to derail what was one success story he could actually point to... It's going to be an epic bellyflop. I say he's out after the sales figures come in next year.
The xbox is such a small percentage of Ms overall sales, id highly doubt it...plus Amazon and other retailers have sold out of pre orders already
The XBox was really the only diversification from their core Windows/Office business which has really even slightly worked, though. MSN/Windows Live/Bing/Whatever it's called now was a massive cash sink and market failure, as was Zune and Windows Phone. Azure is looking like it's heading that way too, though no-one's making much profit in that market right now.
Ballmer got it wrong regarding the iPhone, but I doubt that doing nothing was an option in that case.
Against its rivals in the computer segment, Microsoft didn't have to act, but Apple came at them from a different angle; by leveraging its dominant position in the music player market. Nokia, which had a crushingly dominant place in the smartphone business when Apple joined, tried the "just keep doing what you do" strategy for a long while; their marketshare steadily dropped. Probably not coincidentally, it was an ex-MS exec Elop that changed that strategy, with results comparable to Microsoft's. RIM is still clinging to it, with no success.
In comparison, Google had a more measured, deliberate approach, but they did react to Apple. When Apple went into the smartphone business, Google was gearing up to fight against Nokia, RIM and Microsoft. The disruption caused by Apple forced Google to reevaluate. They figured out key places where Apple was unable or unwilling to compete on, and capitalized on those.
Against its rivals in the computer segment, Microsoft didn't have to act, but Apple came at them from a different angle; by leveraging its dominant position in the music player market. Nokia, which had a crushingly dominant place in the smartphone business when Apple joined, tried the "just keep doing what you do" strategy for a long while; their marketshare steadily dropped. Probably not coincidentally, it was an ex-MS exec Elop that changed that strategy, with results comparable to Microsoft's. RIM is still clinging to it, with no success.
In comparison, Google had a more measured, deliberate approach, but they did react to Apple. When Apple went into the smartphone business, Google was gearing up to fight against Nokia, RIM and Microsoft. The disruption caused by Apple forced Google to reevaluate. They figured out key places where Apple was unable or unwilling to compete on, and capitalized on those.
My memory is that MS were ready to go with an actually decent, capable release of Windows Phone (WP6.5? maybe?), which then got clobbered and reworked into a consumer OS when they panicked over how well the iPhone was doing.
Apple didn't come at them in an unavoidable way at all - Apple was going for a small sector of the consumer market, where MS could have ripped the business market away from an already-floundering RIM inside a generation. It's just not Apple's way to target enterprise functionality the way MS can.
Apple didn't come at them in an unavoidable way at all - Apple was going for a small sector of the consumer market, where MS could have ripped the business market away from an already-floundering RIM inside a generation. It's just not Apple's way to target enterprise functionality the way MS can.
At least it wasn't as bad as the MS OS/2 2.0 fiasco:
http://yuhongbao.blogspot.ca/2012/12/about-ms-os2-20-fiasco-... (notice my reference to the PX00307 anti-trust exhibit which shows some of the decision making back in 1990)
Why was this a "fiasco"? The result of the process outlined in that memo was, not to put to fine a point on it, one of the most profitable business decisions in world history.
I admire Gordon Letwin as much as the next guy, but OS/2 was never going to be the commercial success that Windows became, for basically the reasons the memo lays out: Windows 3.0/3.1 absolutely dominated the exploding PC market because it was targeted at hardware that anyone could afford. OS/2 was dependent on a level of hardware that wouldn't be commonplace until another generation or two of Moore's Law cycled through.
Microsoft simply didn't have that time to waste, and neither did their customers. The choice was between abandoning a phenomenally successful OS and API for the "next generation", or slowly building a bridge from that OS into the future carrying their customers with them. They made the right call, even if it did take roughly 11 years until Windows XP for the transition to truly be complete.
I admire Gordon Letwin as much as the next guy, but OS/2 was never going to be the commercial success that Windows became, for basically the reasons the memo lays out: Windows 3.0/3.1 absolutely dominated the exploding PC market because it was targeted at hardware that anyone could afford. OS/2 was dependent on a level of hardware that wouldn't be commonplace until another generation or two of Moore's Law cycled through.
Microsoft simply didn't have that time to waste, and neither did their customers. The choice was between abandoning a phenomenally successful OS and API for the "next generation", or slowly building a bridge from that OS into the future carrying their customers with them. They made the right call, even if it did take roughly 11 years until Windows XP for the transition to truly be complete.
Yes, but OS/2 2.0 was not going to be released in 1990 either so it would be stupid to abandon Windows 3.x immediately anyway. And as I mentioned in the comments, nothing prevents the two from coexisting for a few years with OS/2 2.x being compatible with Win3.x.
So which one should PC developers have targeted? Both? When one was selling at something like 20x the rate of the other?
Win3.x (OS/2 2.x would be able to run Win3.x apps) or both, but this problem would only last a few years at most. Eventually 286s and <4MB of RAM would become obsolete. (And BTW OS/2 2.x not running well in 4MB of RAM had more to do with the Workplace Shell, MS had similar difficulties with the Explorer shell too)
To be honest the iPhone 3G was released only one year after the original iPhone.
If they had said "Windows/Office and nothing else" imagine how much they would be getting slated on HN?
Like if Apple announced an "iPhone and nothing else" strategy.
Companies with billions of dollars in the bank are in the best position to do risky R&D projects and the rest of the industry is better because of it.
Like if Apple announced an "iPhone and nothing else" strategy.
Companies with billions of dollars in the bank are in the best position to do risky R&D projects and the rest of the industry is better because of it.
Yeah, it isn't that he tried to diversify that's the problem, but that he did it so incredibly clumsily. A company with billions in the bank had no business bringing out WP7, say.
I've historically liked him because of the "developers, developers, developers" thing, but over the last 5-10 years I think history has proven you right. He's a bad CEO who consistently makes bad decisions.
Half-agreed. I still like him because he's the only rich and powerful person who would do that ridiculous dance on stage for the whole world to see, only in the name of people like me, me, me!
But "bad CEO"? Come on! If you look beyond the HN filter bubble, he has definitively diversified MS beyond its early Windows/Office shackles, increased revenues consistently and made (most of) the new divisions very profitable.
And if you think there's no "HN bubble", ask yourself why there's this huge front-page thread about MSFT tanking 10% but little talk about GOOG tanking 14%.
But "bad CEO"? Come on! If you look beyond the HN filter bubble, he has definitively diversified MS beyond its early Windows/Office shackles, increased revenues consistently and made (most of) the new divisions very profitable.
And if you think there's no "HN bubble", ask yourself why there's this huge front-page thread about MSFT tanking 10% but little talk about GOOG tanking 14%.
"developers, developer, developers" could be called a "behavior smell". Something is very wrong when CEOs are jumping that way.))
In a stable market with no big changes, he would be an excellent CEO, and he was generally considered a good one until the last few years (some would say after Vista, other after the iPhone).
No Azure? No XBox? I feel like those have made Microsoft a decent chunk of cash since they hit the market...
Has Xbox actually been profitable? I understood that overall, they're still down a net few billion. I can see how entertainment and taking over the home and living room (especially after their moronic handling of Media PC) is important, but I don't think it's been a cash maker by itself.
A quick search turns up one article[1] claiming 3BN loss over 10 years.
As far as Azure, I'd be surprised if they've recovered all the money they've put into engineering and so on. Maybe if you consider they had to do a lot of similar work for MS online.
1: http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h...
A quick search turns up one article[1] claiming 3BN loss over 10 years.
As far as Azure, I'd be surprised if they've recovered all the money they've put into engineering and so on. Maybe if you consider they had to do a lot of similar work for MS online.
1: http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h...
I honestly think the Xbox is their gamble on "the next big thing". I don't think it's about the games. I think it's about the living room presence. And in my mind that is Apple's next big battle, and Microsoft has a huge head start. Cable boxes are going to die/morph into the game consoles. If I had to make a prediction, I could see Apple and Nintendo working together on a competitor...
But Xbox is just their entry into the next battlefield: the living room and tv.
But Xbox is just their entry into the next battlefield: the living room and tv.
Here is the VC question: how are you making money off a box in the living room? Who is buying it? Why?
What does it bring that a tivo that plays netflix and hulu doesn't already? Of anyone I know, they either have no cable (younger gen), where they just hook a computer into the tv to watch online content, they have cable and a tivo or provider DVR (mid aged families) or they are >60 years old, don't want anything to change, and can't learn to use a dvr even when I guide them through it (my grandparents).
Who is your audience? Why? What value are you delivering they don't already have in their living room? How is that going to save your company? How is an xbox one, which, while not sale-subsidized by license fees like the 360 or ps3 were, isn't making you healthy margins but supposed to provide revenue generation?
What does it bring that a tivo that plays netflix and hulu doesn't already? Of anyone I know, they either have no cable (younger gen), where they just hook a computer into the tv to watch online content, they have cable and a tivo or provider DVR (mid aged families) or they are >60 years old, don't want anything to change, and can't learn to use a dvr even when I guide them through it (my grandparents).
Who is your audience? Why? What value are you delivering they don't already have in their living room? How is that going to save your company? How is an xbox one, which, while not sale-subsidized by license fees like the 360 or ps3 were, isn't making you healthy margins but supposed to provide revenue generation?
Or it's the entrance to your home, entertainment-wise. How long do you think that cable companies are going to be putting these hideous, power-eating, under-performing boxes from Motorola / whomever in your house, which serve essentially minimal purposes. In my hypothetical future, game consoles replace those. Why have 3 pieces of hardware when you can have one (wifi router + cable box + xbox)? As TV changes over the next X years, I think Microsoft is positioned very, very well to make moves in this space. They have the weight to lean on the Comcast / Verizon / Cox / Turner / take your pick, and the technical ability to make things work.
Looking further down the line, you can see a future where home automation is centered around your central console, another area where I think Microsoft could make some moves. In a sense, they could own the operating system of your home. But this is probably a decently long ways out, so who knows.
Looking further down the line, you can see a future where home automation is centered around your central console, another area where I think Microsoft could make some moves. In a sense, they could own the operating system of your home. But this is probably a decently long ways out, so who knows.
> How long do you think that cable companies are going to be putting these
Well, as long as they are "free" and subsidized by bills. People like free, and cable companies usually give out the ancient hot DRM DVRs for free with subscriptions. I don't see people lining up to replace their DVR with an xbox (which isn't an actual replacement, it has no coax in or tv tuner).
> Why have 3 pieces of hardware when you can have one
Xbox doesn't have DOCSIS either. You can't put a cable modem in it. You maybe can use it as a router, but you can use anything with a land line ethernet plug as a router, or you could get a hotspot as a router.
> you can see a future where home automation is centered around your central console
I see this, but xbox one is so locked down, expensive, and it uses gamepads, not tv remotes. I don't see people keeping the xbone on as a media sync server, when you could buy a router with attached storage for a quarter the price.
Well, as long as they are "free" and subsidized by bills. People like free, and cable companies usually give out the ancient hot DRM DVRs for free with subscriptions. I don't see people lining up to replace their DVR with an xbox (which isn't an actual replacement, it has no coax in or tv tuner).
> Why have 3 pieces of hardware when you can have one
Xbox doesn't have DOCSIS either. You can't put a cable modem in it. You maybe can use it as a router, but you can use anything with a land line ethernet plug as a router, or you could get a hotspot as a router.
> you can see a future where home automation is centered around your central console
I see this, but xbox one is so locked down, expensive, and it uses gamepads, not tv remotes. I don't see people keeping the xbone on as a media sync server, when you could buy a router with attached storage for a quarter the price.
In my mind, the end user wouldn't pay $400+ for the device, it'd have wifi and whatnot built into it. The content delivery system would subsidize the cost. And honestly the majority of the market could give a shit about being locked down.
The answer to your question is proprietary gamer content. There's a certain generation that will spend big money to have an ideal gaming experience, and a subset of that set doesn't like that on PCs.
I know the audience you speak of won't do this, but Steam big picture mode does solve that problem. Plug pc into tv via hdmi, get a bluetooth adapter or just use a corded 360 or ps3 gamepad, play games. You can even do that with a gamer grade laptop which also happens to be portable, albeit expensive.
I see a full-os media server box plugged into the tv that can act as router, sync server, tv dvr, game console, and with miracast etc provide displays all over a home, but I don't think xbone is sophisticated enough to do it. Does it even support non-xbox gamepad input?
I see a full-os media server box plugged into the tv that can act as router, sync server, tv dvr, game console, and with miracast etc provide displays all over a home, but I don't think xbone is sophisticated enough to do it. Does it even support non-xbox gamepad input?
I'm in my twenties. Have cable no dvr or tivo and want an xbox one. Same with my brother who is in his twenties.
XBox is only profitable if you read the data very carefully (ignoring sunk costs), or if you take the 360 _on its own_, ignoring the original and XBox Live. It will probably eventually be profitable, but it isn't now.
I'd be astonished if Azure is profitable; AWS isn't, and it sees vastly higher volume at similar prices. And, of course, profitability for Azure is a messy concept; is it profitable when it makes more than they spend on it, or when it makes more than what they spend on it plus what they're losing by selling fewer Windows Server licenses to Amazon et al?
I'd be astonished if Azure is profitable; AWS isn't, and it sees vastly higher volume at similar prices. And, of course, profitability for Azure is a messy concept; is it profitable when it makes more than they spend on it, or when it makes more than what they spend on it plus what they're losing by selling fewer Windows Server licenses to Amazon et al?
XBox has made far less money than a stock buy back plan would have therefore it was a bad idea. I don't know the specifics on Azure but it's still in the rounding error stage.
But then people wouldn't have their XBox.
An earlier comment about how better it would have been for Microsoft to just do nothing. Maybe, from a money perspective. But meanwhile they did research, tried out designs, products, services. It's not all loss.
There's more to the trip than the destination. There's a whole ride where things happen and have a value in themselves. Unless we only value the shareholders' money.
An earlier comment about how better it would have been for Microsoft to just do nothing. Maybe, from a money perspective. But meanwhile they did research, tried out designs, products, services. It's not all loss.
There's more to the trip than the destination. There's a whole ride where things happen and have a value in themselves. Unless we only value the shareholders' money.
?? A stock buy back doesn't make any money. It's just an alternative to dividends. It distributes money that the company has made.
Yes, but sane CFOs have to evaluate "what's the best use for this money?" and trade off share buy-backs (or overt dividend declarations) against other investments the company could make.
So, it's perfectly reasonable to say that any investment with dramatically worse return than a share buy-back is a financial loser. If you'd like to argue it's a strategic winner, then change the time window or otherwise make the financial analysis take those strategic gains into account (with an appropriate discount to compare NPVs).
So, it's perfectly reasonable to say that any investment with dramatically worse return than a share buy-back is a financial loser. If you'd like to argue it's a strategic winner, then change the time window or otherwise make the financial analysis take those strategic gains into account (with an appropriate discount to compare NPVs).
> Yes, but sane CFOs have to evaluate "what's the best use for this money?" and trade off share buy-backs (or overt dividend declarations) against other investments the company could make.
Sure. That means they decide between investing a certain amount of capital in some projects, or returning that capital to the investors.
> So, it's perfectly reasonable to say that any investment with dramatically worse return than a share buy-back is a financial loser.
Not, it's not reasonable. Investing on a project has return for the company, but dividends or buybacks don't. They're in a different category. I think OP wanted to say "it would have been better to invest the money at the risk-free rate than investing on that project".
Sure. That means they decide between investing a certain amount of capital in some projects, or returning that capital to the investors.
> So, it's perfectly reasonable to say that any investment with dramatically worse return than a share buy-back is a financial loser.
Not, it's not reasonable. Investing on a project has return for the company, but dividends or buybacks don't. They're in a different category. I think OP wanted to say "it would have been better to invest the money at the risk-free rate than investing on that project".
CFOs are paid to and should be evaluated on creating/optimizing returns for the owners of the company (the shareholders).
If the return from a project for the company (and the therefore the shareholders) is greater than that of a dividend/buyback, do the project. If the dividend/buyback is the idea with the best return, do that.
This evaluation works whether on a projected/discounted look-forward basis or a backward looking basis. In both cases, you have to model assumptions about the path not taken.
Note that most established companies have a portfolio of ideas. Few operating companies return most of their net profits to shareholders. (some companies setup as financial instruments do/must, and whether a REIT is an operating company or not is a question, but Microsoft certainly is an operating company and returning 100% of net profits, even if that were the best idea they had on first-order evaluation, would be a terrible idea.)
If the return from a project for the company (and the therefore the shareholders) is greater than that of a dividend/buyback, do the project. If the dividend/buyback is the idea with the best return, do that.
This evaluation works whether on a projected/discounted look-forward basis or a backward looking basis. In both cases, you have to model assumptions about the path not taken.
Note that most established companies have a portfolio of ideas. Few operating companies return most of their net profits to shareholders. (some companies setup as financial instruments do/must, and whether a REIT is an operating company or not is a question, but Microsoft certainly is an operating company and returning 100% of net profits, even if that were the best idea they had on first-order evaluation, would be a terrible idea.)
It increases the stock price and is known to have a signifcant positive effect whenver a buybackplan is announced
It does this only because the market thinks that management thinks the shares are undervalued. If things are "efficient" then a buyback and dividend are equivalent Conversely, if shares are overvalued then a dividend payment is better for management.
At any rate, the relevant thing to compare Microsoft's investments to is the opportunity cost of the money. If Ballmer spent ten billion dollars on a project that netted only a 3% ROI, then shareholders would have been better off receiving that money and putting it into other companies.
At any rate, the relevant thing to compare Microsoft's investments to is the opportunity cost of the money. If Ballmer spent ten billion dollars on a project that netted only a 3% ROI, then shareholders would have been better off receiving that money and putting it into other companies.
Theoretically but dividends are also taxed and that makes dividends less attractive as an option
Dividends are taxed at the same rate as capital gains, so it should make little difference to a shareholder if a company paid him 1000 dollars or raised the resale value of his stock by 1000 dollars.
No, because your forced to pay capital gains early thus having less money to compound. Try simulating it with 10% growth vs 5% dividend (which is used to buy the same stock) and 5% growth for 10 years.
I meant in terms of the corporation, buyback vs dividends, buyback will have a greater impact because of the tax factor
I thought they're already making a billion a year on Azure?
Xbox could be seen as a loss-leader to grab a place in the living room, where they've done better than most other players in the space.
Xbox could be seen as a loss-leader to grab a place in the living room, where they've done better than most other players in the space.
Assure had 1b in revenue but actual proffit is based around internal booking keeping numbers some of which are a little off IMO.
Only 1.3% of Microsoft's revenues ($78B) are from Azure ($1B). Like he said: almost a rounding error.
Oh for Microsoft, maybe. I'd love to have rounding errors like that! A more salient question for now is, is that a rounding error for Amazon, Rackspace, Heroku, etc. as well?
Microsoft got extremely rich thanks to Windows and Office. Windows and Office was pretty much all to profit from back then. It was the whole of it pretty much, they stagnated web browsers with IE6.0 after putting Netscape out of business. Microsoft thrived by being able to control the whole industry.
Windows and Office is not the whole story today.
Windows and Office is not the whole story today.
Microsoft spends a lot of money on R&D....I think Windows will become primarily a enterprise OS and Microsoft as result will shrink but will still be important.
You are right and i'm asking since years: are microsoft investors blind? Why they not make any pressure on the directors board to change the ceo? How much time they need again? Or are they trusting the "reorganize reorganize reorganize" that is now ballmer motto?
I would think the grandiose gestures of billion dollar investments are meant to have pretty press releases to try to inflate the stock values.
>we must do something
>this is something
>we must do this
With many of their new products, Microsoft seems to finally have viable offerings. The dangerous thing for Microsoft's competition is that previous iterations of Microsoft products stunk so you had to go to the competition by default. That is not the case anymore so expect to see much thinner margins for Apple, Google and others in the future.
Azure including their Virtual Machines are a great competitor to Amazon AWS and EC2. I've used both.
Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are a great competitor to Google Apps. I've used both.
Windows Phone 8 is a great competitor to iPhone. I had iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s and now a Nokia Lumia 928.
Windows Surface Pro (i.e. not RT) is a great competitor to iPad. It really is a desktop/laptop replacement unlike the iPad and again, I've owned both.
Windows 8 had several issues out of the gate. I use it every day and spent the 10 minutes necessary to learn the new interface to get used to it. Many people aren't willing to do that. Vista had even more problems, and Microsoft still came roaring back with a very successful Windows 7. Microsoft is hoping Windows 8.1 does the same thing for Windows 8.
In all of this, the customers win. Expect cheaper prices with increased competition - example being how Amazon just lowered their EC2 pricing by as much as 80%.
Azure including their Virtual Machines are a great competitor to Amazon AWS and EC2. I've used both.
Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are a great competitor to Google Apps. I've used both.
Windows Phone 8 is a great competitor to iPhone. I had iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s and now a Nokia Lumia 928.
Windows Surface Pro (i.e. not RT) is a great competitor to iPad. It really is a desktop/laptop replacement unlike the iPad and again, I've owned both.
Windows 8 had several issues out of the gate. I use it every day and spent the 10 minutes necessary to learn the new interface to get used to it. Many people aren't willing to do that. Vista had even more problems, and Microsoft still came roaring back with a very successful Windows 7. Microsoft is hoping Windows 8.1 does the same thing for Windows 8.
In all of this, the customers win. Expect cheaper prices with increased competition - example being how Amazon just lowered their EC2 pricing by as much as 80%.
I get that you're a Windows Dev and obviously try to put in the effort to find the good things in Microsoft's current product line - but you also need to see the reality here. Microsoft definitely does not have viable offerings.
Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was.
The new xbox is probably the most panned product announcement I've ever seen.
Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange.
Windows Phone has been a dismal failure in terms of actual customer traction - especially outside USA. Numerous product placements are making this more of a joke than anything - (everyone laughs when a hacker in Burn Notice pulls out a Windows Phone).
Surface Pro is not even in the same market segment as an iPad - Surface Pro competes with laptops and the Mac Air, not with the iPad. You can't use them for the same tasks.
Azure is in no way a competitor to AWS/EC2 - it's more a competitor to Digital Ocean in terms of scale, and Digital Ocean is outperforming it completely.
I get that you've used the Windows stuff and the competition and find the Windows stuff better for you - that's likely because of how familiar you are with the Windows environment and Windows announcements. However, most people off the street are completely confused by it. You need to try and view the situation objectively if you want to understand why the MS share price is diving and all your customers are hopping ship.
Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was.
The new xbox is probably the most panned product announcement I've ever seen.
Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange.
Windows Phone has been a dismal failure in terms of actual customer traction - especially outside USA. Numerous product placements are making this more of a joke than anything - (everyone laughs when a hacker in Burn Notice pulls out a Windows Phone).
Surface Pro is not even in the same market segment as an iPad - Surface Pro competes with laptops and the Mac Air, not with the iPad. You can't use them for the same tasks.
Azure is in no way a competitor to AWS/EC2 - it's more a competitor to Digital Ocean in terms of scale, and Digital Ocean is outperforming it completely.
I get that you've used the Windows stuff and the competition and find the Windows stuff better for you - that's likely because of how familiar you are with the Windows environment and Windows announcements. However, most people off the street are completely confused by it. You need to try and view the situation objectively if you want to understand why the MS share price is diving and all your customers are hopping ship.
I second all of these conclusions and have a few anecdotes of my own to add.
WinXP is still the dominant Enterprise Operating system (crazy I know).
Exchange email is seen as a relic of a time gone by for new companies and something that admins usually hate in large companies. Outsource it (and I'll note that the largest reseller of Exchange, Intermedia, doesn't sell Office365).
The first windows phone I had was Windows Mobile 4.0. The flipphone handsets that came out during 6.0 were good, but every one of their gigantic, flagship, Halo devices, was terrible. HTC had some of the most badass, feature-packed phones ever, and the Operating system killed them. It's just a pile of bloat, the same way WinPhone7 and WinPhone8 appear to be. Look at the work they've done with Nokia where they basically paid Nokia billions of dollars in marketing money to attempt to promote WinPho8 and ended up hemmoraging marketshare in the transition from Symbian (Elop's "Burning Platform" memo should go down as the worst corporate writing ever, and it's not lost on me that he came from $MSFT).
I won't even dignify the surface with commentary. It was an unmitigated disaster that everyone saw coming.
Azure is only large because of promo usage. It's not competitive even with Digital Ocean in terms of scale (my personal opinion, I have no facts to back this up except anecdotes I can't publish). There's a lot of empty instances in Azure land.
Microsoft is making a lot of obvious errors. They continue to be unable to remove FUD and the Cruft of age. If they go down this path, the inertia will eventually kill them; it might take 20 years, but Microsoft is already becoming a place that finds it hard to recruit. I would argue that without their ridiculous abuse of the H1B program they would not be able to remain competitive.
In short, there's a lot of stuff to fix. The bright spot for Microsoft, as always, is licensing, but that's an ugly, ugly business.
My $.02.
WinXP is still the dominant Enterprise Operating system (crazy I know).
Exchange email is seen as a relic of a time gone by for new companies and something that admins usually hate in large companies. Outsource it (and I'll note that the largest reseller of Exchange, Intermedia, doesn't sell Office365).
The first windows phone I had was Windows Mobile 4.0. The flipphone handsets that came out during 6.0 were good, but every one of their gigantic, flagship, Halo devices, was terrible. HTC had some of the most badass, feature-packed phones ever, and the Operating system killed them. It's just a pile of bloat, the same way WinPhone7 and WinPhone8 appear to be. Look at the work they've done with Nokia where they basically paid Nokia billions of dollars in marketing money to attempt to promote WinPho8 and ended up hemmoraging marketshare in the transition from Symbian (Elop's "Burning Platform" memo should go down as the worst corporate writing ever, and it's not lost on me that he came from $MSFT).
I won't even dignify the surface with commentary. It was an unmitigated disaster that everyone saw coming.
Azure is only large because of promo usage. It's not competitive even with Digital Ocean in terms of scale (my personal opinion, I have no facts to back this up except anecdotes I can't publish). There's a lot of empty instances in Azure land.
Microsoft is making a lot of obvious errors. They continue to be unable to remove FUD and the Cruft of age. If they go down this path, the inertia will eventually kill them; it might take 20 years, but Microsoft is already becoming a place that finds it hard to recruit. I would argue that without their ridiculous abuse of the H1B program they would not be able to remain competitive.
In short, there's a lot of stuff to fix. The bright spot for Microsoft, as always, is licensing, but that's an ugly, ugly business.
My $.02.
WinXP is still the dominant Enterprise Operating system (crazy I know).
Source? Everything I see states that Windows 7 is the dominant Windows operating system in the Enterprise.
HTC had some of the most badass, feature-packed phones ever, and the Operating system killed them. It's just a pile of bloat, the same way WinPhone7 and WinPhone8 appear to be.
This is just silly. You bring up Windows Mobile 4.0, then 6.0. Then you lump Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 in with them. Tell me - which WP8 phone have you owned? Because you're replying to a thread I started in which I said everything before WP8 stunk. So if you haven't used WP8, there isn't much point to your comment.
I won't even dignify the surface with commentary. It was an unmitigated disaster that everyone saw coming.
Surface Pro is doing well. Surface RT is what is not doing well - as you said, it's a solution looking for a problem.
There's a lot of empty instances in Azure land.
Where do you get these stats?
and it's not lost on me that he came from $MSFT
And it's not lost on me that you use a 90s-era style anti-Microsoft inclusion of a $ when mentioning them. Do you at least realize how biased you are or do you lack introspection?
Source? Everything I see states that Windows 7 is the dominant Windows operating system in the Enterprise.
HTC had some of the most badass, feature-packed phones ever, and the Operating system killed them. It's just a pile of bloat, the same way WinPhone7 and WinPhone8 appear to be.
This is just silly. You bring up Windows Mobile 4.0, then 6.0. Then you lump Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 in with them. Tell me - which WP8 phone have you owned? Because you're replying to a thread I started in which I said everything before WP8 stunk. So if you haven't used WP8, there isn't much point to your comment.
I won't even dignify the surface with commentary. It was an unmitigated disaster that everyone saw coming.
Surface Pro is doing well. Surface RT is what is not doing well - as you said, it's a solution looking for a problem.
There's a lot of empty instances in Azure land.
Where do you get these stats?
and it's not lost on me that he came from $MSFT
And it's not lost on me that you use a 90s-era style anti-Microsoft inclusion of a $ when mentioning them. Do you at least realize how biased you are or do you lack introspection?
You think Windows is great. I don't.
You think you can tell me my comment is worthless despite the many years I've spent deeply entrenched in Microsoft culture. The past has relevance.
Well is relative with respect to the Surface Pro, but I won't waste my keystrokes attacking its sales figures.
As I mentioned in another comment I've got a lot of folks who run big stuff on Azure and I can tell you that almost all of their instance time is comped. Take that for what it's worth, I don't run in Azure and don't plan to run in Azure, but I can appreciate your comments here.
The $MSFT comes from StockTweets. I'm not biased, I am a student of the industry. If you ask me to critique Apple, I'd have a number of things to say. Microsoft isn't all negative, they still make a ton of money, but calling the Kettle black isn't a crime. WP8 is not a dominant operating system. Azure is not a dominant cloud infrastructure. Surface is not a dominant tablet.
We can debate semantics, but we can both agree that Microsoft has a lot of work to do. I believe it's in the product, and, if I understand you correctly, you believe it's in the branding/marketing. Chances are we're both partially correct.
Does that make sense?
You think you can tell me my comment is worthless despite the many years I've spent deeply entrenched in Microsoft culture. The past has relevance.
Well is relative with respect to the Surface Pro, but I won't waste my keystrokes attacking its sales figures.
As I mentioned in another comment I've got a lot of folks who run big stuff on Azure and I can tell you that almost all of their instance time is comped. Take that for what it's worth, I don't run in Azure and don't plan to run in Azure, but I can appreciate your comments here.
The $MSFT comes from StockTweets. I'm not biased, I am a student of the industry. If you ask me to critique Apple, I'd have a number of things to say. Microsoft isn't all negative, they still make a ton of money, but calling the Kettle black isn't a crime. WP8 is not a dominant operating system. Azure is not a dominant cloud infrastructure. Surface is not a dominant tablet.
We can debate semantics, but we can both agree that Microsoft has a lot of work to do. I believe it's in the product, and, if I understand you correctly, you believe it's in the branding/marketing. Chances are we're both partially correct.
Does that make sense?
> WP8 is not a dominant operating system. Azure is not a dominant cloud infrastructure. Surface is not a dominant tablet.
The closest claim that was made to any of these was that WP8, Azure, and Surface Pro are "viable offerings" in their markets. Not that they're dominant. You even give an example of "folks who run big stuff on Azure" -- how is that not proof that Azure at least provides competition in the cloud services market?
The closest claim that was made to any of these was that WP8, Azure, and Surface Pro are "viable offerings" in their markets. Not that they're dominant. You even give an example of "folks who run big stuff on Azure" -- how is that not proof that Azure at least provides competition in the cloud services market?
It's a monopoly game with a power-law distribution. If you're not playing for first place, eventually Amazon's Zero margin business will subsume all of the smaller players.
I articulated this point in a blog post for our site[0] in which I describe a phenomenon I call Bezos' Law. Essentially, the cost of cloud computing in general (currently driven by AWS) is cut in half roughly every 18 months. This is like Moore's law, except it's driven by market conditions instead of technical innovation. The endgame of Bezos' Law is 0, but everyone else will get out well before then (once it ceases being a profitable business). Since AWS will be the largest player in cloud infrastructure, it will eventually shift from being a profit center for other organizations and will become a cost center. After that it becomes a matter of time.
IMHO, this is also the plan for Amazon's Commerce business long-term and is why the market provides them with such a ridiculous P/E ratio.
So does Azure provide competition? Maybe. I think most of the people on Azure are on there because Microsoft is comping the time (pure conjecture based on the kinds of numbers they put forward). The endgame, from my perspective, is that everyone gets choked out by Amazon with time unless someone upends them, and that's why I think the position of "providing competition" isn't going to materially move the needle for a company like Microsoft. Not now and not long term. They've called Azure a billion dollar business, but only when counting comped hours.
Lots of conjecture, I definitely put myself out there for some flaming, but that's how you learn whether your positions can stand on their own merits. Let me know what your thoughts are :).
To be clear, in spite of everything I've said today, I am long-term bullish on Microsoft. I just think Ballmer isn't making smart decisions right now.
[0]http://blog.2600hz.com/post/55614383443/bezos-law
I articulated this point in a blog post for our site[0] in which I describe a phenomenon I call Bezos' Law. Essentially, the cost of cloud computing in general (currently driven by AWS) is cut in half roughly every 18 months. This is like Moore's law, except it's driven by market conditions instead of technical innovation. The endgame of Bezos' Law is 0, but everyone else will get out well before then (once it ceases being a profitable business). Since AWS will be the largest player in cloud infrastructure, it will eventually shift from being a profit center for other organizations and will become a cost center. After that it becomes a matter of time.
IMHO, this is also the plan for Amazon's Commerce business long-term and is why the market provides them with such a ridiculous P/E ratio.
So does Azure provide competition? Maybe. I think most of the people on Azure are on there because Microsoft is comping the time (pure conjecture based on the kinds of numbers they put forward). The endgame, from my perspective, is that everyone gets choked out by Amazon with time unless someone upends them, and that's why I think the position of "providing competition" isn't going to materially move the needle for a company like Microsoft. Not now and not long term. They've called Azure a billion dollar business, but only when counting comped hours.
Lots of conjecture, I definitely put myself out there for some flaming, but that's how you learn whether your positions can stand on their own merits. Let me know what your thoughts are :).
To be clear, in spite of everything I've said today, I am long-term bullish on Microsoft. I just think Ballmer isn't making smart decisions right now.
[0]http://blog.2600hz.com/post/55614383443/bezos-law
> You even give an example of "folks who run big stuff on Azure" -- how is that not proof that Azure at least provides competition in the cloud services market?
Well, it offers competition in a niche; it's largely price-competitive with AWS for Windows instances, but not for other OSes.
Well, it offers competition in a niche; it's largely price-competitive with AWS for Windows instances, but not for other OSes.
He said Windows 7 was the dominant Enterprise Windows operating system, not 8. And this is correct, 7 is the domant enterprise windows deployment, XP having been recently retired in most Fortune 500 companies. Ask around any IT dept and you'll learn this first hand.
> As I mentioned in another comment I've got a lot of folks who run big stuff on Azure and I can tell you that almost all of their instance time is comped.
That has been my impression, yep. I know a few people using it, but I don't think any of them are actually paying for it.
That has been my impression, yep. I know a few people using it, but I don't think any of them are actually paying for it.
Source? Everything I see states that Windows 7 is the dominant Windows operating system in the Enterprise.
Try looking at reports not authored by the Microsoft marketing department.
Surface Pro is doing well.
Seriously. Whatever they're paying you, is it worth your dignity?
Try looking at reports not authored by the Microsoft marketing department.
Surface Pro is doing well.
Seriously. Whatever they're paying you, is it worth your dignity?
My corporate laptop was WinXP, scheduled for upgrade to Win7 in 2015, until I made a stink and got Win7. WinXP is dominant where I work, anecdote of one plus the corp.
> Everything I see states that Windows 7 is the dominant Windows operating system in the Enterprise.
That seems improbable. Windows 7 only passed Windows XP in global usage under a year ago, and while reliable figures are hard to come by, most polls show in the region of 60% XP usage for the enterprise sector.
That seems improbable. Windows 7 only passed Windows XP in global usage under a year ago, and while reliable figures are hard to come by, most polls show in the region of 60% XP usage for the enterprise sector.
Azure has $1B in revenue [0]. Are you seriously telling me that DigitalOcean is that large?
I think I'm going to need a citation if you want me to believe that.
[0]. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/microsoft-azure-sal...
I think I'm going to need a citation if you want me to believe that.
[0]. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/microsoft-azure-sal...
You are misreading the punchline of that Article. It says $1B in Sales, not $1B in revenue. There's nothing in that article that says that's revenue, only sales. There's also nothing in that article that says it doesn't include comped hours.
Believe me, if Azure had $1B in revenue, Microsoft would not be quiet about it. The keyword "Sales" is there for a reason.
*Edit: "Microsoft’s $1 billion sales figure includes Azure, as well as software provided to partners to create related Windows cloud services, Anderson said in an interview." from the article. This is definitely not just instance time they're talking about.
Believe me, if Azure had $1B in revenue, Microsoft would not be quiet about it. The keyword "Sales" is there for a reason.
*Edit: "Microsoft’s $1 billion sales figure includes Azure, as well as software provided to partners to create related Windows cloud services, Anderson said in an interview." from the article. This is definitely not just instance time they're talking about.
Excuse the ignorance, but what am I missing here? Don't all sales qualify as revenue?
Edit: quote from the article: > “I expect them to double annually from here,” Staten said of Microsoft’s Azure revenue.
Seems to at least imply sales and revenue are interchangeable in this context.
Edit: quote from the article: > “I expect them to double annually from here,” Staten said of Microsoft’s Azure revenue.
Seems to at least imply sales and revenue are interchangeable in this context.
You know what. I read that Bloomberg article multiple times and I've never seen it anywhere else on the Internet. As I googled to make sure I wasn't making a grave error, the term "Azure $1B Revenue" has quite a few hits.
I must gracefully admit my error here. It's possible that they're counting comped time on the system as revenue, but it's much more unlikely if they're using the term revenue in public.
Edit: The only leg I have to stand on is the comment about the cost of software being included in Azure revenue. That's smelly accounting IMHO, but maybe I'm missing a detail.
I must gracefully admit my error here. It's possible that they're counting comped time on the system as revenue, but it's much more unlikely if they're using the term revenue in public.
Edit: The only leg I have to stand on is the comment about the cost of software being included in Azure revenue. That's smelly accounting IMHO, but maybe I'm missing a detail.
I work at MSFT in the Azure division. I have no idea about the specifics of accounting terminology, but from what I hear internally I can say that we're quite pleased with both the absolute numbers and the projected growth. It's understandable that our cloud isn't as prominent in the minds of the HN crowd as some of the other well-known ones, but we actually do have the kind of customer base to make the public numbers credible.
Thanks very much for the contribution to the discussion. I appreciate the insight.
When they talk about software being counted as part of the billing do you have any idea what they might mean? I believe it was described as software to build applications in Azure.
When they talk about software being counted as part of the billing do you have any idea what they might mean? I believe it was described as software to build applications in Azure.
You may have heard about the reorganization the other day, I think we're now called "Server and Cloud". Perhaps they may be referring to systems such as Azure Active Directory and Message Service Bus? There's a lot more going on than a simple PaaS VM and web hosting. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh967619.aspx http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/messaging/
Dude, sales is revenue. Maybe you're thinking of net earnings or profit?
Thanks for this comment. For a moment, I didn't understand basic economics terms.
Digital Ocean is worth 15.6 billion so ut's not exactly a small company. Edit nm wrong company.
Rackspace is worth about $6bn, so I doubt some new startup with a tiny market share is worth more than twice Rackspace.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:RAX
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:RAX
Posting a new made-up number is the opposite of a citation. Just FYI.
Also, I'm going to be straight with you... There's not one bit of me that believes that number.
Also, I'm going to be straight with you... There's not one bit of me that believes that number.
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/s...
Market Cap: 15.6B
Market Cap: 15.6B
That's the wrong company and those numbers aren't in USD (On the order 10-15 million USD market cap).
That number is in Korean Won.
051160:KOSDAQ. Wake up dude.
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To be fair, Windows XP use is moving to Windows 7 - just so people can have 4GB or 8GB of memory on their work PC.
Not Windows 8, but Windows 7.
Not Windows 8, but Windows 7.
This is precisely what fueled my employer (19,000 employees) to do a mass update of Windows XP to Windows 7. We'll probably skip 8 like we did Vista and go to 8.1 or more likely 9.
The 3 GB of usable memory you're limited to with 32-bit Windows XP is very restrictive.
The 3 GB of usable memory you're limited to with 32-bit Windows XP is very restrictive.
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Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was.
This is revisionist thinking and shows your own bias that you accuse me of.
You have a review of every single Microsoft product. I have to ask - what is your experience with Office 365, Hosted Exchange and Azure?
What tasks can you do with an iPad and not with Surface and vice-versa?
Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone. I've owned 3 iPhones - how many Windows Phone 8 flagship devices have you owned?
This is revisionist thinking and shows your own bias that you accuse me of.
You have a review of every single Microsoft product. I have to ask - what is your experience with Office 365, Hosted Exchange and Azure?
What tasks can you do with an iPad and not with Surface and vice-versa?
Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone. I've owned 3 iPhones - how many Windows Phone 8 flagship devices have you owned?
I don't believe it is revisionist thinking as the data backs it up very objectively. http://www.zdnet.com/windows-8-continues-to-fail-7000016222/
I, like nearly everyone on the planet, have never owned a flagship windows phone. I have no reason to own one. It doesn't matter if it is better than an iPhone or not - nobody buys them because nobody wants a windows phone. It's probably just a branding issue at this point, but branding is very important.
Irrelevant to the mobile phone market itself, but I would personally never buy a locked down windows phone as I enjoy hacking my phone to do strange things / connect to strange devices - and windows phone just doesn't offer that. I was previously very involved with windows mobile which was gloriously open and far more hacker friendly than windows phone. It's a pity MS discontinued it, the HTC Universal was one nice piece of hardware.
I, like nearly everyone on the planet, have never owned a flagship windows phone. I have no reason to own one. It doesn't matter if it is better than an iPhone or not - nobody buys them because nobody wants a windows phone. It's probably just a branding issue at this point, but branding is very important.
Irrelevant to the mobile phone market itself, but I would personally never buy a locked down windows phone as I enjoy hacking my phone to do strange things / connect to strange devices - and windows phone just doesn't offer that. I was previously very involved with windows mobile which was gloriously open and far more hacker friendly than windows phone. It's a pity MS discontinued it, the HTC Universal was one nice piece of hardware.
Win8 is bollocks and has very low Enterprise adoption rates. I'm not a consumer guy so I can't speak there, but I don't think it's performing at all well in Business.
Office 365 is a decent product, I don't have any issues with it except for the marketing strategy (I disagree with cutting off the channel).
We run hosted exchange through intermedia at my office and other than some occasional issues with syncing, we don't have problems. It's certainly a bigger headache than Google Apps, but it's what we started on and it's not enough of a pain to get us to switch.
I have not used Azure personally, but have friends who operate fairly significant infrastructures on there. They've no complaints about the DC (except for the ridiculous SSL incident) but more about things like provisioning times and support responses. This is hearsay though so take it with a grain of salt.
You can do everything you can do on an iPad on a Surface, but the surface is visually unappealing, priced too high and not user-friendly. Those things matter a lot more than they used to; Microsoft needs to understand that the facts on the ground for product development have changed.
The Lumia 920 is not better than the iPhone, I don't know what criteria you could possibly be using to come to that conclusion. That's pure fanboyism, IMHO; I mean they faked the photos for the launch of the phone!? It doesn't get much worse than that.
I have a background in wireless and have used almost every version of the Windows Handset family. I can tell you that the process manager used to be the problem, along with the user experience, but today the issues are cultural as much as they are usability. Microsoft has a culture of adding options to menus and throwing in the kitchen sink; there's no product development because everyone is operating their own Fiefdom. Very similar to the culture at AT&T.
Office 365 is a decent product, I don't have any issues with it except for the marketing strategy (I disagree with cutting off the channel).
We run hosted exchange through intermedia at my office and other than some occasional issues with syncing, we don't have problems. It's certainly a bigger headache than Google Apps, but it's what we started on and it's not enough of a pain to get us to switch.
I have not used Azure personally, but have friends who operate fairly significant infrastructures on there. They've no complaints about the DC (except for the ridiculous SSL incident) but more about things like provisioning times and support responses. This is hearsay though so take it with a grain of salt.
You can do everything you can do on an iPad on a Surface, but the surface is visually unappealing, priced too high and not user-friendly. Those things matter a lot more than they used to; Microsoft needs to understand that the facts on the ground for product development have changed.
The Lumia 920 is not better than the iPhone, I don't know what criteria you could possibly be using to come to that conclusion. That's pure fanboyism, IMHO; I mean they faked the photos for the launch of the phone!? It doesn't get much worse than that.
I have a background in wireless and have used almost every version of the Windows Handset family. I can tell you that the process manager used to be the problem, along with the user experience, but today the issues are cultural as much as they are usability. Microsoft has a culture of adding options to menus and throwing in the kitchen sink; there's no product development because everyone is operating their own Fiefdom. Very similar to the culture at AT&T.
I really don't get the windows 8 hate. Yes, metro isn't for everyone, but it can be disabled. Aside from that, boot time is incredibly fast, memory and power consumption are light, and the UI overall seems incredibly well polished. Now if they would just include a decent terminal I might consider using it.
> but it can be disabled
If it could really be disabled (and the disabling was supported by Microsoft instead of in spite of them) I'd agree with you, but it actually can't. Or at least Microsoft has gone obnoxiously far out of their way to ensure you will continually invoke it by accident, even if you tried to turn it off.
For example even after installing classic shell, random videos and photos still open the metro UI - full screen in all its glory. I also often end up falsely triggering the multitasking gesture (swipe from left=>right across trackpad). And the wifi-control panel has been turned into a brain damaged metro simpleton. And in 8.1, searching my start menu is going to return Bing results even if I was only looking for a file on my computer. My documents are going up to SkyDrive by default even though that might violate my privacy, cause me to break the law in certain industries that are regulated, cost me bandwidth or just plain be against my wishes.
If I had one word for this Windows release it would be "disrespectful". Because Microsoft has put all their own needs ahead of my own. In their selfish desire to promote their own products they have essentially become the bloatware that infected all their PCs and used to be the fault of the OEMs.
If it could really be disabled (and the disabling was supported by Microsoft instead of in spite of them) I'd agree with you, but it actually can't. Or at least Microsoft has gone obnoxiously far out of their way to ensure you will continually invoke it by accident, even if you tried to turn it off.
For example even after installing classic shell, random videos and photos still open the metro UI - full screen in all its glory. I also often end up falsely triggering the multitasking gesture (swipe from left=>right across trackpad). And the wifi-control panel has been turned into a brain damaged metro simpleton. And in 8.1, searching my start menu is going to return Bing results even if I was only looking for a file on my computer. My documents are going up to SkyDrive by default even though that might violate my privacy, cause me to break the law in certain industries that are regulated, cost me bandwidth or just plain be against my wishes.
If I had one word for this Windows release it would be "disrespectful". Because Microsoft has put all their own needs ahead of my own. In their selfish desire to promote their own products they have essentially become the bloatware that infected all their PCs and used to be the fault of the OEMs.
Don't forget skydrive looking at and deleting private files.
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It's a genuinely good operating system. I use 7, 8 and OSX every day. I prefer OSX(largely because I have access to a great terminal, familiar shell commands and lots of great developer tools :)), but the rabid hate displayed for 8 is completely out of line with reality. It's faster, more efficient and gives you better management tools. A lot of the hate seems to derive from some weird belief that you need to use Metro if you use Windows 8, which is simply not the case.
The only thing you 'need' to use is the Start Screen, but that should be a rarity since you should have the majority of your familiar programs down on the bar. Moreover, even when you need to use it, you use it the same way you do in 7. Just hit the windows key and type away!
My one complaint would be that the settings are a bit of a mess. There was clearly a rush to make things accessible from both the Desktop and Metro side of things, and as a result the settings can be kind of odd to find/navigate.
The only thing you 'need' to use is the Start Screen, but that should be a rarity since you should have the majority of your familiar programs down on the bar. Moreover, even when you need to use it, you use it the same way you do in 7. Just hit the windows key and type away!
My one complaint would be that the settings are a bit of a mess. There was clearly a rush to make things accessible from both the Desktop and Metro side of things, and as a result the settings can be kind of odd to find/navigate.
> What tasks can you do with an iPad and not with Surface and vice-versa?
Surface RT is just the worst form factor for use in bed; the iPad is 10 times easier to hold in portrait or landscape, not to mention the high res screen looks much better than the Surface for close up in-bed viewing (RT again, I don't have a Pro). The Surface seems to be useful for Office when on a table where the keyboard can be used, but that is not part of my usage habits.
I see how Surface is cool, but the iPad still provides a better experience for my personal use cases. Haven't tried the Pro, but I already carry a laptop around for coding.
> Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone.
My 920 lacks apps :( Even Facebook and Skype are missing from the market my phone is locked too. I keep an old iPhone 4 (bought in the same region, ironically) in my bag for apps. Otherwise, the 920 is a wonderful phone.
Surface RT is just the worst form factor for use in bed; the iPad is 10 times easier to hold in portrait or landscape, not to mention the high res screen looks much better than the Surface for close up in-bed viewing (RT again, I don't have a Pro). The Surface seems to be useful for Office when on a table where the keyboard can be used, but that is not part of my usage habits.
I see how Surface is cool, but the iPad still provides a better experience for my personal use cases. Haven't tried the Pro, but I already carry a laptop around for coding.
> Flagship Windows Phone 8 (i.e. Lumia 920 or Lumia 928) is better than an iPhone.
My 920 lacks apps :( Even Facebook and Skype are missing from the market my phone is locked too. I keep an old iPhone 4 (bought in the same region, ironically) in my bag for apps. Otherwise, the 920 is a wonderful phone.
My 920 lacks apps :( Even Facebook and Skype are missing from the market my phone is locked too.
What market is that? My 928 has both Skype and Facebook installed on it from the Windows Store. I'm guessing you're outside the U.S. but I'm curious just where you are and why you don't have access to the standard apps in the Windows Store.
What market is that? My 928 has both Skype and Facebook installed on it from the Windows Store. I'm guessing you're outside the U.S. but I'm curious just where you are and why you don't have access to the standard apps in the Windows Store.
China. They came locked, weirdly enough, this is just the Nokias, the HTC phones can be set to any market the user wishes.
>Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was.
True and obvious among techies but not sure about the average joe.
>The new xbox is probably the most panned product announcement I've ever seen.
They really f#ed up on that one (not the concept but the way it was presented) and it got worse when Sony decided to throw in a few blows while they were still down.
>Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange.
Agree it wasn't the best Idea to go cloud. They just made it easy for their existing consumers to compare the pros and cons between them and Google's offering.
>Windows Phone has been a dismal failure in terms of actual customer traction - especially outside USA.
What? If anything Windows Phone and Nokia is growing exceptionally in the emerging markets specifically India and Africa.
>Surface Pro is not even in the same market segment as an iPad.
Yes it is. Surface Pro is a great mix of device. I already have a laptop/utrabook but wanted a tablet when travelling. The options were Ipad, Nexus 10 or Surface pro. I ended up choosing Surface pro because it offers everything I need in a tablet while letting me use my work apps on the go. Git, Visual Studio, Photoshop, you name it, if it installs on your laptop, it installs on the Surface. Can't emphasize how productive it has been ever since I got it.
True and obvious among techies but not sure about the average joe.
>The new xbox is probably the most panned product announcement I've ever seen.
They really f#ed up on that one (not the concept but the way it was presented) and it got worse when Sony decided to throw in a few blows while they were still down.
>Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange.
Agree it wasn't the best Idea to go cloud. They just made it easy for their existing consumers to compare the pros and cons between them and Google's offering.
>Windows Phone has been a dismal failure in terms of actual customer traction - especially outside USA.
What? If anything Windows Phone and Nokia is growing exceptionally in the emerging markets specifically India and Africa.
>Surface Pro is not even in the same market segment as an iPad.
Yes it is. Surface Pro is a great mix of device. I already have a laptop/utrabook but wanted a tablet when travelling. The options were Ipad, Nexus 10 or Surface pro. I ended up choosing Surface pro because it offers everything I need in a tablet while letting me use my work apps on the go. Git, Visual Studio, Photoshop, you name it, if it installs on your laptop, it installs on the Surface. Can't emphasize how productive it has been ever since I got it.
> >Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was.
> True and obvious among techies but not sure about the average joe.
I've actually noticed the opposite. Techies seem to largely think "eh, interesting but I'm not interested" while regular consumers nearly pass out ranting about it. That's my take-away from talking with coworkers/peers, and my extended family.
The sales figures probably bear this out.. it isn't techies avoiding Windows 8 that is causing those poor numbers.
> True and obvious among techies but not sure about the average joe.
I've actually noticed the opposite. Techies seem to largely think "eh, interesting but I'm not interested" while regular consumers nearly pass out ranting about it. That's my take-away from talking with coworkers/peers, and my extended family.
The sales figures probably bear this out.. it isn't techies avoiding Windows 8 that is causing those poor numbers.
> What? If anything Windows Phone and Nokia is growing exceptionally in the emerging markets specifically India and Africa.
Well, Windows Phone is. Nokia is declining in those markets; it's simply cannibalising its existing large Symbian market there with WP.
Well, Windows Phone is. Nokia is declining in those markets; it's simply cannibalising its existing large Symbian market there with WP.
> What? If anything Windows Phone and Nokia is growing exceptionally in the emerging markets specifically India and Africa.
Do people like it though? I'm in the EU and everyone, including me, who has Windows phones really despise them. Not only techies; one of my friends threw hers into the toilet because she couldn't bear that crap anymore. Which is stupid ofcourse, but it shows how deep the hatred goes. The thing just really doesn't work on many levels. We make apps for it because clients ask us too, but I would never use that thing in it's current form for anything other than that. I have done for a few months and it was a joke. So with aggressive marketing (which I see all around me here) they manage to sell a lot of these phones, but do people actually like them? I haven't seen anyone happy with it except a few people here on HN. I don't really understand how that works, but everyone who I meet in real life really hates it.
Surface I don't know; lot of people here on HN seem to like it. I tried it in the shop and the keyboard was annoying the crap out of me after about 5 seconds. I'm used to Apple chiclet keyboards now and I type blind and fast; it seemed to really not function that well doing that. Maybe I need more than 5 seconds, but the first impression was that it was a toy. And only a tablet is worthless as I need to write code.
Do people like it though? I'm in the EU and everyone, including me, who has Windows phones really despise them. Not only techies; one of my friends threw hers into the toilet because she couldn't bear that crap anymore. Which is stupid ofcourse, but it shows how deep the hatred goes. The thing just really doesn't work on many levels. We make apps for it because clients ask us too, but I would never use that thing in it's current form for anything other than that. I have done for a few months and it was a joke. So with aggressive marketing (which I see all around me here) they manage to sell a lot of these phones, but do people actually like them? I haven't seen anyone happy with it except a few people here on HN. I don't really understand how that works, but everyone who I meet in real life really hates it.
Surface I don't know; lot of people here on HN seem to like it. I tried it in the shop and the keyboard was annoying the crap out of me after about 5 seconds. I'm used to Apple chiclet keyboards now and I type blind and fast; it seemed to really not function that well doing that. Maybe I need more than 5 seconds, but the first impression was that it was a toy. And only a tablet is worthless as I need to write code.
I wouldn't bother arguing some people are in the Microsoft camp as a matter of religion. I work in a Microsoft shop and it's depressing how awful the offerings are and how helpless you become when you depend on something that's broken and have no power to correct it, fix it, or work around it. It's actually caused me to search for work outside of my day job just so that I can work with technology that's actually well-documented, workable, and supported by real, organic communities.
This!
The amount of brick walls I hit is horrible to say the least.
Windows by day, Linux by night.
Tables are turning though. First our cache layer with memcache on CentOS, then our SMTP servers, then our dev servers and repository, now a minor subsystem...
The amount of brick walls I hit is horrible to say the least.
Windows by day, Linux by night.
Tables are turning though. First our cache layer with memcache on CentOS, then our SMTP servers, then our dev servers and repository, now a minor subsystem...
I see many mid-size and larger companies deploying O365. They do it because it's familiar to their IT, it fits in with their existing policy systems, and it works well with their existing MS Office workflows (office web apps, and sharepoint in the cloud). In some cases, I know Google tried to win their business too.
Try google search autocompletion of "google apps vs" and the first result is office 365.
Whether O365 can "win" is another question, but it's definitely a credible competitor.
(Not to be an MS apologist -- we've tried Azure and had to hightail back to EC2, they screw up many other things, but O365 fits a purpose for many companies well)
Try google search autocompletion of "google apps vs" and the first result is office 365.
Whether O365 can "win" is another question, but it's definitely a credible competitor.
(Not to be an MS apologist -- we've tried Azure and had to hightail back to EC2, they screw up many other things, but O365 fits a purpose for many companies well)
> Try google search autocompletion of "google apps vs" and the first result is office 365.
"electric refrigerator vs." will get you autocompletes about propane refrigerators. This shouldn't be taken as evidence that propane refrigerators are taking off... propane refrigerators are merely the only sensible thing that could be compared to electric refrigerators. They are the only competitor of note, as uncommon as they are.
Or to put it more directly, what could "google apps vs" possibly autocomplete to other than Office 365 stuff? It is the only logical autocomplete.
"electric refrigerator vs." will get you autocompletes about propane refrigerators. This shouldn't be taken as evidence that propane refrigerators are taking off... propane refrigerators are merely the only sensible thing that could be compared to electric refrigerators. They are the only competitor of note, as uncommon as they are.
Or to put it more directly, what could "google apps vs" possibly autocomplete to other than Office 365 stuff? It is the only logical autocomplete.
> Win8 is hated/feared more than Vista was.
Not from what I have seen. Vista was hated with intensity, while Win8 is simply 'not necessary yet'/'not better enough to make me upgrade from Win7'.
About the Surface Pro vs Mac Air vs iPad: I expect to be able to use a dockable 2014 Ubuntu Tablet for all the tasks I could do with any of these in 2013.
Not from what I have seen. Vista was hated with intensity, while Win8 is simply 'not necessary yet'/'not better enough to make me upgrade from Win7'.
About the Surface Pro vs Mac Air vs iPad: I expect to be able to use a dockable 2014 Ubuntu Tablet for all the tasks I could do with any of these in 2013.
I am a forum/news-site technology massive lurker and i can guarantee to you that win8 is much much more hated that vista was and for obvious reasons: w8 is a totally new interface proposition while vista was just an "upgrade" over the xp ui, but still looks familiar.
That's a lot of blanket statements states as if they were the truth.
>Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange.
Uhh, why not?
>Azure is in no way a competitor to AWS/EC2 - it's more a competitor to Digital Ocean in terms of scale, and Digital Ocean is outperforming it completely.
Again, reference?
>You need to try and view the situation objectively if you want to understand why the MS share price is diving
Share price is diving? As compared to what? If you read the "article" you can see that the share price was ~28 just three months ago and today it closed at more than $31.
> ..and all your customers are hopping ship.
I am completely lost with the extreme hyperbole here.
>Office 365 and Hosted Exchange are not competitors to Google Apps, they're poor competitors to Office and Exchange.
Uhh, why not?
>Azure is in no way a competitor to AWS/EC2 - it's more a competitor to Digital Ocean in terms of scale, and Digital Ocean is outperforming it completely.
Again, reference?
>You need to try and view the situation objectively if you want to understand why the MS share price is diving
Share price is diving? As compared to what? If you read the "article" you can see that the share price was ~28 just three months ago and today it closed at more than $31.
> ..and all your customers are hopping ship.
I am completely lost with the extreme hyperbole here.
Share price is diving? As compared to what?
Well for starters let's compare MSFT to AAPL. Here's a chart comparing them over the last 12 months:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MSFT+Interactive#symbol=m...
If that link works correctly, any unbiased party will clearly acknowledge that in the past year Microsoft is up 15.5% (including today's slide) while Apple is down 30.0%.
So - the question becomes - precisely whose share price is diving? The clear answer is Apple, while Microsoft has done little but gone up over the last 12 months.
Well for starters let's compare MSFT to AAPL. Here's a chart comparing them over the last 12 months:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=MSFT+Interactive#symbol=m...
If that link works correctly, any unbiased party will clearly acknowledge that in the past year Microsoft is up 15.5% (including today's slide) while Apple is down 30.0%.
So - the question becomes - precisely whose share price is diving? The clear answer is Apple, while Microsoft has done little but gone up over the last 12 months.
That's because AAPL had something to lose. At their peak they were worth three DELLs more than MSFT.
Interesting.
At its peak, how much bigger was MSFT than Apple?
Hint: Lots.
At its peak, how much bigger was MSFT than Apple?
Hint: Lots.
We're only concerned with recent history here, though, aren't we?
Everything I needed to know about Steve Ballmer -- and Microsoft's future -- I learned when he laughed at the iPhone on national TV.
Everything I needed to know about Steve Ballmer -- and Microsoft's future -- I learned when he laughed at the iPhone on national TV.
Well, the market and the customers don't seem to agree on all of this:
The market share of Windows Phone 8 is extremely small and doesn't seem to pick up.
The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that. You can point to a 10 minute learning curve and while I agree that the new Windows interface is not hard to learn I still think it's an extremely bad user experience. The standard apps are just so incredibly bad (e.g. the mail app, the photo app, the video app, even the store itself) that I'm not using them at all. I spend 99.9% of my time on the old Windows desktop.
The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing.
I totally agree that competition is good for the customer (and might potentially be bad for competitors), but so far that doesn't help Microsoft.
The market share of Windows Phone 8 is extremely small and doesn't seem to pick up.
The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that. You can point to a 10 minute learning curve and while I agree that the new Windows interface is not hard to learn I still think it's an extremely bad user experience. The standard apps are just so incredibly bad (e.g. the mail app, the photo app, the video app, even the store itself) that I'm not using them at all. I spend 99.9% of my time on the old Windows desktop.
The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing.
I totally agree that competition is good for the customer (and might potentially be bad for competitors), but so far that doesn't help Microsoft.
The key point I was trying to make was:
With many of their new products, Microsoft seems to finally have viable offerings.
Your statement of:
Well, the market and the customers don't seem to agree on all of this
Seems to miss that point. Just to be more clear - it was only in the last few weeks that Verizon had a flagship Windows Phone 8 device available (Nokia Lumia 928). Has the market really had time to absorb that Verizon now has a Windows Phone 8 device that can compete with the iPhone? I don't think it has. As a former iPhone user, I was personally responsible for at least a dozen people buying iPhones. Now as a Windows Phone 8 user for the past couple weeks, I am responsible for someone returning their iPhone 5 to get a Lumia 928 and there are three additional people in my office who are now going to get a Lumia instead of the iPhone 5 they were planning on when they are next eligible for an upgrade.
The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that.
...and Windows ME was a failure, Windows Vista was a failure and Windows 8 is proving to be less than stellar. Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released. There are also a lot of people that bought iPads thinking it would fully replace their PC that are now sorely disappointed.
The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing.
Surface Pro is selling well. Don't judge it by Surface RT which was a desperate attempt at increasing market share to get more Windows 8-style applications developed.
With many of their new products, Microsoft seems to finally have viable offerings.
Your statement of:
Well, the market and the customers don't seem to agree on all of this
Seems to miss that point. Just to be more clear - it was only in the last few weeks that Verizon had a flagship Windows Phone 8 device available (Nokia Lumia 928). Has the market really had time to absorb that Verizon now has a Windows Phone 8 device that can compete with the iPhone? I don't think it has. As a former iPhone user, I was personally responsible for at least a dozen people buying iPhones. Now as a Windows Phone 8 user for the past couple weeks, I am responsible for someone returning their iPhone 5 to get a Lumia 928 and there are three additional people in my office who are now going to get a Lumia instead of the iPhone 5 they were planning on when they are next eligible for an upgrade.
The PC market is shrinking extremely and many analysts now point to Windows 8 as one of the reasons behind that.
...and Windows ME was a failure, Windows Vista was a failure and Windows 8 is proving to be less than stellar. Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released. There are also a lot of people that bought iPads thinking it would fully replace their PC that are now sorely disappointed.
The market share of the Surface again is extremely small and I don't see any indications of it growing.
Surface Pro is selling well. Don't judge it by Surface RT which was a desperate attempt at increasing market share to get more Windows 8-style applications developed.
Here's the funny thing. We have here a shining example of why Microsoft is becoming irrelevant.
You're making the case that Windows ME sucked, Vista sucked, 7 was good, and 8 sucks.
You're absolutely missing the bigger picture, which is this: nobody cares about operating systems anymore. Everyone, I think, finally gets that the function of the operating system is to get out of the way of the application that the user is running. iOS and Android are perfect examples of this. Everyone who argues about operating systems now talks about contextual menu this, flat button style that, driver update this, without realizing that the typical primary use of a computer these days-- desktop, laptop, tablet, whatever-- has nothing to do with the operating system and everything to do with HTML and JSON.
You talk about how a lot of people bought iPads thinking that it would fully replace their PC, and now they're disappointed. I would argue that, based upon the rate at which mobile web traffic is increasing, those people are anything but disappointed.
I have serious doubts that there will be a Windows 9. There will simply be no market for it. No kid today is asking their parents for a Windows Phone or a Surface. None. When those kids grow up, Microsoft will simply stop existing save for the Xbox.
You're making the case that Windows ME sucked, Vista sucked, 7 was good, and 8 sucks.
You're absolutely missing the bigger picture, which is this: nobody cares about operating systems anymore. Everyone, I think, finally gets that the function of the operating system is to get out of the way of the application that the user is running. iOS and Android are perfect examples of this. Everyone who argues about operating systems now talks about contextual menu this, flat button style that, driver update this, without realizing that the typical primary use of a computer these days-- desktop, laptop, tablet, whatever-- has nothing to do with the operating system and everything to do with HTML and JSON.
You talk about how a lot of people bought iPads thinking that it would fully replace their PC, and now they're disappointed. I would argue that, based upon the rate at which mobile web traffic is increasing, those people are anything but disappointed.
I have serious doubts that there will be a Windows 9. There will simply be no market for it. No kid today is asking their parents for a Windows Phone or a Surface. None. When those kids grow up, Microsoft will simply stop existing save for the Xbox.
I have serious doubts that there will be a Windows 9. There will simply be no market for it.
This one statement about Windows 9 speaks volumes as to your viewpoint. This statement is so colossally and obviously incorrect that it actually brings into question your every opinion on this topic.
Here's the thing - Microsoft has been working on Windows 9 since November of 2012. Here's just one citation on that:
http://www.windows9update.com/2012/11/windows-9-development-...
It's been speculated for a while that Windows 9 would be released in 2014. Did you not hear that Microsoft is more rapidly releasing operating systems going forward? In fact I've seen roadmap documents for both Windows 9 and Windows 10 and know that they have R&D departments working on features for both concurrently.
And this brings me to my main point... You know nothing about Microsoft of today. In your entire resume, you list one Microsoft technology - SQL Server. Can you just admit that you're completely ignorant about what they offer today? Your arguments are a mix of 1996 to 2011 rants and product complaints based on things you've heard and not experienced. It's intellectual dishonesty to be so critical of a company and their products when you have not used modern versions of what they offer.
Windows has a 92+% operating system market share as of July of 2013. The next release of Windows is going to be released in the next 12-18 months. So let me ask you - your honest opinion is that Windows market share will go from a virtual monopoly to low enough where Microsoft will just give up on operating systems and not release the next version? I refuse to believe that someone who can log into a computer can actually believe such a ridiculous thing as that.
This one statement about Windows 9 speaks volumes as to your viewpoint. This statement is so colossally and obviously incorrect that it actually brings into question your every opinion on this topic.
Here's the thing - Microsoft has been working on Windows 9 since November of 2012. Here's just one citation on that:
http://www.windows9update.com/2012/11/windows-9-development-...
It's been speculated for a while that Windows 9 would be released in 2014. Did you not hear that Microsoft is more rapidly releasing operating systems going forward? In fact I've seen roadmap documents for both Windows 9 and Windows 10 and know that they have R&D departments working on features for both concurrently.
And this brings me to my main point... You know nothing about Microsoft of today. In your entire resume, you list one Microsoft technology - SQL Server. Can you just admit that you're completely ignorant about what they offer today? Your arguments are a mix of 1996 to 2011 rants and product complaints based on things you've heard and not experienced. It's intellectual dishonesty to be so critical of a company and their products when you have not used modern versions of what they offer.
Windows has a 92+% operating system market share as of July of 2013. The next release of Windows is going to be released in the next 12-18 months. So let me ask you - your honest opinion is that Windows market share will go from a virtual monopoly to low enough where Microsoft will just give up on operating systems and not release the next version? I refuse to believe that someone who can log into a computer can actually believe such a ridiculous thing as that.
You had me until you mentioned HTML and JSON...
I think native applications still have advantages, no matter the platform. Specially for games.
I think native applications still have advantages, no matter the platform. Specially for games.
Yes-- but those native applications are using JSON as their data transport back to whatever servers.
But they're not, they're using binary packed protocols, /maybe/ BSON.
The thing is, the web is most valuable to me when there are stable parseable formats that I can push into my native infrastructure(voice and UNIX commands with clear, standalone graphics output), there isn't room for "apps" in my world, even if they're "webapps".
The reason I don't use webapps, is that using them for my essential tasks would cost me hours of time per week in waiting for buffer-bloated connections to deliver my miniscule control packets to finally update the view I'm looking at; One can spend several seconds waiting, where I could spend one framedraw waiting for the same result locally.
The thing is, the web is most valuable to me when there are stable parseable formats that I can push into my native infrastructure(voice and UNIX commands with clear, standalone graphics output), there isn't room for "apps" in my world, even if they're "webapps".
The reason I don't use webapps, is that using them for my essential tasks would cost me hours of time per week in waiting for buffer-bloated connections to deliver my miniscule control packets to finally update the view I'm looking at; One can spend several seconds waiting, where I could spend one framedraw waiting for the same result locally.
Do you think your experiences are typical? I get that MS does have some good offerings but at the same time I think the average consumer's perception isn't as good as it could be.
> Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released.
I'll be interested if the consumers even notice - is the average consumer clued up enough to understand the significant of a point release or what a new processor adds? In my (somewhat pompous) view, Apple's success is its focus on selling the consumer things they can understand the need for, not numbers. I see MS is taking this approach with the new Win8 marketing but it'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off with 8.1
> Let's see how it is when Windows 8.1 is released generally and people have time to react to Haswell processors having been released.
I'll be interested if the consumers even notice - is the average consumer clued up enough to understand the significant of a point release or what a new processor adds? In my (somewhat pompous) view, Apple's success is its focus on selling the consumer things they can understand the need for, not numbers. I see MS is taking this approach with the new Win8 marketing but it'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off with 8.1
is the average consumer clued up enough to understand the significant of a point release or what a new processor adds?
Haswell is significant because of the substantially lower power it requires which translates into significantly longer battery life. Consumers will notice that.
You might be unfamiliar with Intel's Tick-Tock strategy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock) but it does mean real world benefits to consumers that they will notice.
Haswell is significant because of the substantially lower power it requires which translates into significantly longer battery life. Consumers will notice that.
You might be unfamiliar with Intel's Tick-Tock strategy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Tick-Tock) but it does mean real world benefits to consumers that they will notice.
To be honest, it does only change the start screen a little and add the start button, though even that helps especially in RDP/VMs.
and don't forget: DR now provided by the NSA.
And MS is still (a bit more quietly) trying to kill off Open Source in general, and the GPL in particular.
And MS is still trying to control your data by locking it up in non-standard (don't start saying it's a standard if even MS doesn't follow it) in proprietary products.
And MS is still running embrace, extend, extinguish on every competing technology.
And MS is still (a bit more quietly) trying to kill off Open Source in general, and the GPL in particular.
And MS is still trying to control your data by locking it up in non-standard (don't start saying it's a standard if even MS doesn't follow it) in proprietary products.
And MS is still running embrace, extend, extinguish on every competing technology.
I made a joke once to my boss that the day is coming very quickly when a kid is going to enter the workforce, and on her first day she'll ask, "why does the company that makes the Xbox also make spreadsheet software?"
The reality today is that Microsoft does not have the engineering talent that they used to have, and their design talent has been completely drained. They simply are not a 21st century software company anymore. The marketplace perception of Microsoft now is that they are a dinosaur that also makes a gaming console. Period.
They may very well have a functional competitor to EC2, but I cannot think of one serious company that is choosing Azure over AWS, or Rackspace, or even Digital Ocean or Heroku. The Azure Case Studies page is an absolute joke, a mockery of what you would expect from a behemoth as Microsoft. The simple fact is that Amazon completely owns the market that Microsoft is trying to break into. (This is especially funny given the years 1992-1996)
They may very well have a functional competitor to Google Docs/Drive/Apps/whatever it's called now, but again, Google is totally dominating that market (crappy updates to Gmail aside). Microsoft is stuck on the outside looking in, and anyone who is starting a company, given the choice between Office 365 and Google Apps, they aren't picking Office anymore.
Windows Phone is a joke and I'm not going to devote any more words to it.
Windows 8 isn't even worth any discussion.
The reality is, is that as kids in college today enter the workforce with their Android or iPhone, and Gmail/Gdrive, and knowledge of AWS, the need for Microsoft (which you have to admit, MS has been coasting on for probably 15-20 years now) is evaporating. If all Microsoft ever tries to do now is play catchup to Amazon, Google, and Apple, they're won't necessarily be squashed, but they'll just become irrelevant.
The reality today is that Microsoft does not have the engineering talent that they used to have, and their design talent has been completely drained. They simply are not a 21st century software company anymore. The marketplace perception of Microsoft now is that they are a dinosaur that also makes a gaming console. Period.
They may very well have a functional competitor to EC2, but I cannot think of one serious company that is choosing Azure over AWS, or Rackspace, or even Digital Ocean or Heroku. The Azure Case Studies page is an absolute joke, a mockery of what you would expect from a behemoth as Microsoft. The simple fact is that Amazon completely owns the market that Microsoft is trying to break into. (This is especially funny given the years 1992-1996)
They may very well have a functional competitor to Google Docs/Drive/Apps/whatever it's called now, but again, Google is totally dominating that market (crappy updates to Gmail aside). Microsoft is stuck on the outside looking in, and anyone who is starting a company, given the choice between Office 365 and Google Apps, they aren't picking Office anymore.
Windows Phone is a joke and I'm not going to devote any more words to it.
Windows 8 isn't even worth any discussion.
The reality is, is that as kids in college today enter the workforce with their Android or iPhone, and Gmail/Gdrive, and knowledge of AWS, the need for Microsoft (which you have to admit, MS has been coasting on for probably 15-20 years now) is evaporating. If all Microsoft ever tries to do now is play catchup to Amazon, Google, and Apple, they're won't necessarily be squashed, but they'll just become irrelevant.
Office, Office, Office. While I would much, much prefer to be writing my data analytic reports in Markdown/LaTeX and formatting them beautifully, the need for people (sales people, damn you sales!) to quickly steal slides and put them in their own presentations requires me to use Powerpoint.
Given that i hate Apple much more than I hate Microsoft (because seriously, Apple are much more dangerous) I'm stuck on Windows (until I write some kind of Markdown/LaTeX to power point converter (unfortunately, I also have a thesis to finish, so that's a while away yet) for work, where the first thing I install is Cygwin (and the thing I miss most is easy X-forwarding) and yet I can't switch.
Additionally, Excel is a fine product for quick and dirty analysis, while being a nightmare for any kind of continued development, so I end up using that.
Please don't mention Impress and Calc, I use them but Impress just doesn't interoperate well enough with powerpoint to make it useful, and Calc is good (regex search) but not as polished as Excel.
Its so unbelievably depressing that I'm stuck with this on the desktop, but that's the power of network effects for you.
For another example, see Facebook.
Given that i hate Apple much more than I hate Microsoft (because seriously, Apple are much more dangerous) I'm stuck on Windows (until I write some kind of Markdown/LaTeX to power point converter (unfortunately, I also have a thesis to finish, so that's a while away yet) for work, where the first thing I install is Cygwin (and the thing I miss most is easy X-forwarding) and yet I can't switch.
Additionally, Excel is a fine product for quick and dirty analysis, while being a nightmare for any kind of continued development, so I end up using that.
Please don't mention Impress and Calc, I use them but Impress just doesn't interoperate well enough with powerpoint to make it useful, and Calc is good (regex search) but not as polished as Excel.
Its so unbelievably depressing that I'm stuck with this on the desktop, but that's the power of network effects for you.
For another example, see Facebook.
Too bad they're selling all your data to the government, and using what they haven't yet sold to sell more crap to you.
Agreed. After 10 minutes I was fine with using Windows 8 and don't see what the big deal is among people who are technical. With someone like my mom or sister i could see it being a bit more of an issue.
> Azure including their Virtual Machines are a great competitor to Amazon AWS and EC2. I've used both.
They may be for running Windows servers, but they're certainly not price-competitive for running Linux servers in most cases.
> Expect cheaper prices with increased competition - example being how Amazon just lowered their EC2 pricing by as much as 80%.
I suspect that's more to do with Google's EC2 clone, which is actually price-competitive with AWS. Also, that reduction was just on dedicated instances, which pretty much nobody uses; they largely exist for things like PCI compliance.
They may be for running Windows servers, but they're certainly not price-competitive for running Linux servers in most cases.
> Expect cheaper prices with increased competition - example being how Amazon just lowered their EC2 pricing by as much as 80%.
I suspect that's more to do with Google's EC2 clone, which is actually price-competitive with AWS. Also, that reduction was just on dedicated instances, which pretty much nobody uses; they largely exist for things like PCI compliance.
Your own experience (or mine) is not a good way to measure the potential of those products. It's all about the average consumers, what they like or not...
SurfaceRT is a $900-million mistake right now.
There are so many ways to make SurfaceRT a compelling product. If it supported Win32 API, IF it had domain-joining support, if it wasn't completely locked down to the Windows Store... maybe it'd be a compelling buy. But as it is, it has all of the disadvantages of tablets (locked down, proprietary API), with few of the advantages of Windows.
Then you've got XBox One mistake. So much wasted potential there...
Windows 8 has to happen though, the computing industry is evolving towards touch controls, and as primitive as Windows8 is with touch... its a step in the right direction for Microsoft. But they need to be more sensitive to their business partners.
There are so many ways to make SurfaceRT a compelling product. If it supported Win32 API, IF it had domain-joining support, if it wasn't completely locked down to the Windows Store... maybe it'd be a compelling buy. But as it is, it has all of the disadvantages of tablets (locked down, proprietary API), with few of the advantages of Windows.
Then you've got XBox One mistake. So much wasted potential there...
Windows 8 has to happen though, the computing industry is evolving towards touch controls, and as primitive as Windows8 is with touch... its a step in the right direction for Microsoft. But they need to be more sensitive to their business partners.
I feel like their biggest problem was confusion. Apple does this very well: their products aren't terribly confusing. As a consumer thinking about buying a tablet computer, you think OK there's the iPad, but what else? Oh, Microsoft has a tablet. Hey, it runs Windows, I know windows! But Windows RT? It doesn't run my existing card games? I thought it was Windows? Oh but if I buy the pro, it'll run my Windows stuff? How do I install my card games? But it's more money? What's different about that one?
Screw it, I'll just get the iPad.
Screw it, I'll just get the iPad.
Spot on. It's really strange that enormous companies like Microsoft can't see why consumers choose Apple. Maybe they do see it, but can't execute their plan, but I doubt that's the case with Microsoft. What would stop them? They have the money, marketing, talented people in place. There's no excuse.
Which is pretty sad given the answer is so simple:
1. Small number of products and product lines make it easier to explain where each one fits in your "digital lifestyle."
2. Mostly numerical differences within those product lines, amount of storage and overall computing power. Memory for desktops and laptops. Retina is an obvious exception to this, but most likely transitional.
3. Mostly self descriptive naming, no Sony style model numbers, no overly cute but inconsistant naming. (Apple reserves this for features, mostly ones that only developers ever see.)
4. Visible price points, value emphasised over price. (Same reason I don't expect a plastic iPhone outside of possibly China.) Price points match up with point #1, more storage costs more in mostly even increments.
1. Small number of products and product lines make it easier to explain where each one fits in your "digital lifestyle."
2. Mostly numerical differences within those product lines, amount of storage and overall computing power. Memory for desktops and laptops. Retina is an obvious exception to this, but most likely transitional.
3. Mostly self descriptive naming, no Sony style model numbers, no overly cute but inconsistant naming. (Apple reserves this for features, mostly ones that only developers ever see.)
4. Visible price points, value emphasised over price. (Same reason I don't expect a plastic iPhone outside of possibly China.) Price points match up with point #1, more storage costs more in mostly even increments.
Also, it was marketed as something that's a laptop replacement- it runs windows! it has a keyboard! Oh but it only has 15GB of available storage. Never mind, I guess I'll just get a laptop after all.
This hits the nail on the head. It isn't just that Apple do this well, very well, but Microsoft are just terrible at it!
The problem is that if you add all those compelling features to Surface RT, you end up with Surface Pro. Which brings you right back to the question of why Surface RT needs to exist.
(The answer: because Surface Pro is too expensive to appeal to the consumer tablet market, and because Microsoft wants to hedge its bets in case Intel can't catch up to ARM in the mobile space. But both of those are reasons why Microsoft would want Surface RT to exist, not why a customer would.)
(The answer: because Surface Pro is too expensive to appeal to the consumer tablet market, and because Microsoft wants to hedge its bets in case Intel can't catch up to ARM in the mobile space. But both of those are reasons why Microsoft would want Surface RT to exist, not why a customer would.)
Not really. Win32 API existed on MIPS machines back when Windows NT was ported over to MIPS. I'm not asking for x86 compatibility, I'm just asking for a way for Chrome / Firefox to be cross-compiled onto the SurfaceRT.
Win32 API is the only real reason why people use Windows. Take that away, and you've got... well... SurfaceRT.
Win32 API is the only real reason why people use Windows. Take that away, and you've got... well... SurfaceRT.
Yep. You literally need devs to be able to push a button in Visual Studio and their app is RT-ready. Or you don't have apps.
When Xbox One was announced, if I facepalmed harder my head would detach from my neck.
Then Sony and made their announcements, of features that are actually normal and expected since consoles exist, as if it was something totally new and awesome, in a very obvious way to give more ammo to Microsoft keep shooting themselves.
It was very entertaining.
Specially looking at the stock market (when Xbone wss announced, SONY shares jumped 8%) too.
Then Sony and made their announcements, of features that are actually normal and expected since consoles exist, as if it was something totally new and awesome, in a very obvious way to give more ammo to Microsoft keep shooting themselves.
It was very entertaining.
Specially looking at the stock market (when Xbone wss announced, SONY shares jumped 8%) too.
There was a very good comment I read about this that basically said, it's very telling of how bad the industry is screwing over their consumers when the most exciting thing you hear this year is that Sony just isn't going to mess with the status quo.
Exactly. To make Sony look consumer-friendly, you have to get up pretty early in the morning and make big mistakes before breakfast.
The surface RT was targeted at Consumers, I don't think the lack of joining active directory would be something most people would miss. I don't think most people would care about the Windows store lock down, provided that the store has good apps in it. They were trying to use the fact that it has a Real copy of Office on it as a selling feature, except that Office on the RT's ran really poorly.
> The surface RT was targeted at Consumers
There's the problem - it's not actually targeted at anybody properly. It's a business tablet (office pre-installed, heavily marketed with its keyboard and flip stand, all the ads show chic business people in suits dancing around). But it can't join a domain, won't run the line-of-business apps people actually need, doesn't support VBA (so your excel sheet will load but if it is at all interesting, it won't work), and the built-in office is not actually licensed for commercial use, so businesses who care about the fine details of that sort of thing can't actually use it anyway.
Ok, so its a consumer tablet. But it's not got essential things like a good gmail app (didn't even have outlook when it shipped), youtube appp, it sucks for viewing photos you plug in on a USB drive, can't run Chrome, has (or had) few games worth running and has a confusing new UI that is hard to figure out, so playing with it in the store usually results in frustration.
It's half awesome for each of its audiences, but its got showstoppers for both of them. It's a true first generation product, and if there was time and room for the second generation it could be awesome. But Haswell is here and the OEMs have no patience for waiting around for RT to improve when they can be selling something that actually meets everyone's needs.
There's the problem - it's not actually targeted at anybody properly. It's a business tablet (office pre-installed, heavily marketed with its keyboard and flip stand, all the ads show chic business people in suits dancing around). But it can't join a domain, won't run the line-of-business apps people actually need, doesn't support VBA (so your excel sheet will load but if it is at all interesting, it won't work), and the built-in office is not actually licensed for commercial use, so businesses who care about the fine details of that sort of thing can't actually use it anyway.
Ok, so its a consumer tablet. But it's not got essential things like a good gmail app (didn't even have outlook when it shipped), youtube appp, it sucks for viewing photos you plug in on a USB drive, can't run Chrome, has (or had) few games worth running and has a confusing new UI that is hard to figure out, so playing with it in the store usually results in frustration.
It's half awesome for each of its audiences, but its got showstoppers for both of them. It's a true first generation product, and if there was time and room for the second generation it could be awesome. But Haswell is here and the OEMs have no patience for waiting around for RT to improve when they can be selling something that actually meets everyone's needs.
There's lots of business people (a subset of consumers) who'd might consider buying a surface for their home if they could use it effectively for their work as a bonus. Unfortunately, no active directory support and terrible performance in Office means its not really compelling.
Just saying, not all consumers are "my mom" who just wants to play candy crush saga and check their email.
Just saying, not all consumers are "my mom" who just wants to play candy crush saga and check their email.
I'm of the idea that microsoft auto-killed the surface rt in the exact moment in which they decided to release it at the same time of the surface pro.
Maybe, if they had let pass something like 1 year or 18 months between the two (without annuncing at all the surface pro in this time), more people would have tried the rt and it would have gained some momentum in the market.
The RT had months to sink or swim on its own and was already something nobody wanted by the time you could order a Pro.
The market confusion between the two is enormous, and it's not going in the direction Microsoft wanted: I routinely run into people who are under the impression that all tablets with Windows that they see are crippled ARM devices and not usable computers. If tablets running Windows are Microsoft's future they badly poisoned the well with RT.
The market confusion between the two is enormous, and it's not going in the direction Microsoft wanted: I routinely run into people who are under the impression that all tablets with Windows that they see are crippled ARM devices and not usable computers. If tablets running Windows are Microsoft's future they badly poisoned the well with RT.
>IF it had domain-joining support
Perhaps Microsoft's problem is that features like "domain-joining support" make their products "compelling."
Perhaps Microsoft's problem is that features like "domain-joining support" make their products "compelling."
Keeping your files and settings synced between multiple machines is a huge problem, and frankly MS has the best implementation available today. Who cares if they haven't given it a sexy name?
The problem is that "domain-joining support" means nothing to me (and probably 99.9% of the world). It may be a really cool syncing solution, but I'd never get that out of the name.
I know its hard to believe, but most folks work at large enterprises.
I know it's hard to believe, but they really don't.
Here are some numbers, in case either of you would prefer to use evidence to back up your statements.
http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html
http://www.census.gov/econ/smallbus.html
Nice numbers. Would you like some for France? Or Germany? Or even some relevant ones?
Here are the European figures:
http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/sme/facts-figures-an...
Next time you should focus on providing evidence to support rational discussion, instead of being facetious.
Next time you should focus on providing evidence to support rational discussion, instead of being facetious.
Sorry. I guess you missed my point in the previous post though. I was trying to say that French or German figures would be equally irrelevant because most people don't live in the USA or EU.
I don't think most people in Asia work for large corporations. These figures seem to back that up: http://www.apec.org/Groups/SOM-Steering-Committee-on-Economi...
I don't think most people in Asia work for large corporations. These figures seem to back that up: http://www.apec.org/Groups/SOM-Steering-Committee-on-Economi...
thanks - i thought this was well known but i guess not. :)
You thought most people lived in the USA? You thought most people worked for US companies?
RT is a joke but what's wrong with XBox One?
Compared to the PS4, the XBox One hardware has 30% less shaders on the GPU, is using DDR3 RAM instead of faster GDDR5 RAM, and is using the same CPU as the PS4. All the while, it costs $100 more than the PS4.
So for the first time in XBox's history, the XBox is launching with strictly weaker hardware than its closest competitor. (XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU, and the XBox 360 also had faster RAM. PS3 won on CPU power... but lost out on everything else.)
There is terrible, terrible press across the whole internet about the XBox One-Eighty. Video Gamers overall have a negative impression on it.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/12 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/21
So for the first time in XBox's history, the XBox is launching with strictly weaker hardware than its closest competitor. (XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU, and the XBox 360 also had faster RAM. PS3 won on CPU power... but lost out on everything else.)
There is terrible, terrible press across the whole internet about the XBox One-Eighty. Video Gamers overall have a negative impression on it.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/12 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/21
>XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU [et al]
And did it matter at all? From what I remember of this current generation's history, if games looked any different on the PS3 than the 360, the developers blamed it on the tools and how difficult the PS3 was to program for, not on the weaker hardware. Developers made cross-platform titles for the Xbox first and ported to the PS3 because Xbox was easier.
When I was 16 years old I argued console hardware specs. These days I don't hear many experience gamers mention it at all, because when it comes down to it, minor differences in specs doesn't really matter.
And did it matter at all? From what I remember of this current generation's history, if games looked any different on the PS3 than the 360, the developers blamed it on the tools and how difficult the PS3 was to program for, not on the weaker hardware. Developers made cross-platform titles for the Xbox first and ported to the PS3 because Xbox was easier.
When I was 16 years old I argued console hardware specs. These days I don't hear many experience gamers mention it at all, because when it comes down to it, minor differences in specs doesn't really matter.
Why was the PS3 harder to program for? Because its GPU was out of date, its RAM was split, and its architecture sucked. Programming the PS3 "incorrectly" leads to extremely poor performance.
Certain memory transfers on the PS3 are just straight up broken: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1007286/ps3-hardwar...
The XBox was "easier" to program for because it was a more balanced system. Overall, the XBox360 was both simpler and more powerful.
By making XBox360 more powerful, previous soft-exclusives like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid made their way to the XBox360. Sony lost a lot of publishers because of the boneheaded hardware they shoved into developer's faces.
It is Microsoft that has made this mistake in this generation. Not only from a policy stand point against indie gamers (ie: Oddworld moving to PS4 exclusive title. As well as SuperGiant Games making Transistor PS4 exclusive), but also by launching with weaker (yet paradoxically more expensive) hardware.
The PS4 will be easier to program for, it has a simpler more unified architecture, and Sony's policies are more friendly towards developers.
While it barely matters for the end consumer, it is easy to see which systems producers will prefer in the coming generation.
Certain memory transfers on the PS3 are just straight up broken: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1007286/ps3-hardwar...
The XBox was "easier" to program for because it was a more balanced system. Overall, the XBox360 was both simpler and more powerful.
By making XBox360 more powerful, previous soft-exclusives like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid made their way to the XBox360. Sony lost a lot of publishers because of the boneheaded hardware they shoved into developer's faces.
It is Microsoft that has made this mistake in this generation. Not only from a policy stand point against indie gamers (ie: Oddworld moving to PS4 exclusive title. As well as SuperGiant Games making Transistor PS4 exclusive), but also by launching with weaker (yet paradoxically more expensive) hardware.
The PS4 will be easier to program for, it has a simpler more unified architecture, and Sony's policies are more friendly towards developers.
While it barely matters for the end consumer, it is easy to see which systems producers will prefer in the coming generation.
"The PS4 will be easier to program for, it has a simpler more unified architecture, and Sony's policies are more friendly towards developers."
The architectures seem near identical--the only big difference would seem to be that the XBO will have dedicated framebuffer memory, probably hidden behind a system call anyways.
As for being more friendly to developers, Microsoft has always had the best tools and documentation for developers (long live SGI, poor bastards).
I don't really see where you're getting this from.
The architectures seem near identical--the only big difference would seem to be that the XBO will have dedicated framebuffer memory, probably hidden behind a system call anyways.
As for being more friendly to developers, Microsoft has always had the best tools and documentation for developers (long live SGI, poor bastards).
I don't really see where you're getting this from.
Count the number of indie-developers on XBox One. Now count the 140 currently announced titles on the PS4 (most of them indie games). The current joke: PS4 has more exclusives than XBox One has launch titles. (slight hyperbole, but the number of PS4 exclusives almost gets there. 30 titles from Sony themselves, ~10 exclusive indie titles announced at E3, and all of a sudden the game environment for PS4 looks mighty tasty)
It is dead obvious which console has won the support of indie developers.
Microsoft may have superior documentation... but when you _require_ indie gamers to find a publisher before they're allowed to make an XBox one game, the number of titles on your system will suffer significantly.
A number of PS4 indie developers want to program for the XBox One, but they can't due to Microsoft's boneheaded policy. It doesn't matter how good the XBox One development kit is, if Microsoft fails to hand it off to innovative developers.
Again, XBox One _POLICY_ is bad for indie developers.
It is dead obvious which console has won the support of indie developers.
Microsoft may have superior documentation... but when you _require_ indie gamers to find a publisher before they're allowed to make an XBox one game, the number of titles on your system will suffer significantly.
A number of PS4 indie developers want to program for the XBox One, but they can't due to Microsoft's boneheaded policy. It doesn't matter how good the XBox One development kit is, if Microsoft fails to hand it off to innovative developers.
Again, XBox One _POLICY_ is bad for indie developers.
>XBox 360 at least had a GPU that was 2x stronger than the PS3 GPU
Eh? Where are you getting that? The Xbox 360 Xenos GPU was based on ATI's R520 and the PS3's RSX was based on Nvidia's G70 architecture. They were roughly equivalent to each company's flagship Radeon X1800 and GeForce 7800 lines at the time.
The real design win for the 360 was a shared memory pool instead of a split CPU/GPU memory architecture, but I've never seen anything to suggest that the 360 had a GPU anywhere near "2x stronger."
Eh? Where are you getting that? The Xbox 360 Xenos GPU was based on ATI's R520 and the PS3's RSX was based on Nvidia's G70 architecture. They were roughly equivalent to each company's flagship Radeon X1800 and GeForce 7800 lines at the time.
The real design win for the 360 was a shared memory pool instead of a split CPU/GPU memory architecture, but I've never seen anything to suggest that the 360 had a GPU anywhere near "2x stronger."
XBox360 crushes PS3 in virtually every microbenchmark:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071217224458AA...
2x faster Triangle Setup rate, 4x faster Vertex Shader processing, 50% faster pixel shaders, 2x faster Anti-Aliasing...
The PS3 makes up for it as they use all of those Cell processors basically as a GPU. But in terms of pure GPU Girth, the XBox360 was just straight up easier to use and more powerful.
--------------
Basically... despite all the major press about the PS3 "supercomputer", XBox360 was a simpler, better designed gaming machine. In in this upcomming generation, PS4 out-xboxed the XBoxOne. The PS4 is a dead-simple straightforward architecture that simply throws more hardware at the problem. (while somehow being cheaper...)
2x faster Triangle Setup rate, 4x faster Vertex Shader processing, 50% faster pixel shaders, 2x faster Anti-Aliasing...
The PS3 makes up for it as they use all of those Cell processors basically as a GPU. But in terms of pure GPU Girth, the XBox360 was just straight up easier to use and more powerful.
--------------
Basically... despite all the major press about the PS3 "supercomputer", XBox360 was a simpler, better designed gaming machine. In in this upcomming generation, PS4 out-xboxed the XBoxOne. The PS4 is a dead-simple straightforward architecture that simply throws more hardware at the problem. (while somehow being cheaper...)
A lot of that is a demonstration in why microbenchmarks are usually worthless for determining real world performance.
Xenos has a unified shader architecture while RSX does not. That means that during microbenchmarks, it can dedicate all of its shaders to that task, and put up relatively impressive numbers. In reality, that means that those shaders can't be used for anything else, meaning your real world performance will look nothing like the microbenchmark. AA performance is almost entirely due to the on-package EDRAM. While that was a smart design decision, it's not indicative of some huge overall power advantage.
Look, Microsoft made a number of very smart design choices with the 360 that have allowed developers to squeeze a lot out of the hardware, there's no doubting that. I think it's also fair to say that Xenos is a bit faster than the RSX -- as was the case with that generation of discrete GPUs from ATI and Nvidia -- but throwing around things like twice as powerful and "crushes" is getting into hyperbole territory if you're looking at actual performance from the hardware.
Xenos has a unified shader architecture while RSX does not. That means that during microbenchmarks, it can dedicate all of its shaders to that task, and put up relatively impressive numbers. In reality, that means that those shaders can't be used for anything else, meaning your real world performance will look nothing like the microbenchmark. AA performance is almost entirely due to the on-package EDRAM. While that was a smart design decision, it's not indicative of some huge overall power advantage.
Look, Microsoft made a number of very smart design choices with the 360 that have allowed developers to squeeze a lot out of the hardware, there's no doubting that. I think it's also fair to say that Xenos is a bit faster than the RSX -- as was the case with that generation of discrete GPUs from ATI and Nvidia -- but throwing around things like twice as powerful and "crushes" is getting into hyperbole territory if you're looking at actual performance from the hardware.
and not only this. The worst part is the total failure of the presentation of the console.
I know they now have deleted the big part of the main restrictions, but still they undermined the trust of the buyers.It is not a little problem
I think he is referring to the PR disaster the Xbox One had a couple weeks back with the only online requirement, Kinect always listening and other lockdown mechanisms implemented on the machines making sharing games or similar things more or less impossible.
I don't know it this will have much impact on the actual sale numbers, the release date is still quite some time in the future and the PS4 despite all the love it currently gets from the gaming scene also requires a Sony account you have to pay monthly to be usable.
I am pretty sure it will play out like it always does: lots of complaining and in the end it will get bought nevertheless. [1]
[1] http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6062/1258035395841.jpg
I don't know it this will have much impact on the actual sale numbers, the release date is still quite some time in the future and the PS4 despite all the love it currently gets from the gaming scene also requires a Sony account you have to pay monthly to be usable.
I am pretty sure it will play out like it always does: lots of complaining and in the end it will get bought nevertheless. [1]
[1] http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6062/1258035395841.jpg
Nothing per se at this point, but their previous stance on DRM allowed their main competitor to gain a large PR advantage.
However saying that the Xbox One will fail like the WinRT did is very premature; the PS3 had a slow start and still made a respectable showing this generation, and the 3DS was considered a debacle until a price cut and the right games came along and it suddenly exploded in popularity.
However saying that the Xbox One will fail like the WinRT did is very premature; the PS3 had a slow start and still made a respectable showing this generation, and the 3DS was considered a debacle until a price cut and the right games came along and it suddenly exploded in popularity.
I feel we'll see the same thing with the Wii U. Everyone is dismissing it right now and for good reason (lack of games). But Nintendo did announce at least 1 game for every major line they have running at the last E3 so I expect the Wii U sales will start to jump up right around we see the PS4 and XB1 releases.
I hope so; I bought one a couple of weeks ago. Nintendo seems to be getting ready for a major push, but I think it will need to make a price cut; not because the console is a bad deal, but because they need to generate positive headlines in the gaming press for the gaming community to stop seeing it as having no future.
WiiU is the only backwards compatible system, showing strong support for consumer rights. I frankly am most excited about WiiU this generation, but I'm holding off on buying one till more games come out.
But Earthbound on Virtual Console, and Pikmin 3 coming out make it a compelling buy already IMO.
But Earthbound on Virtual Console, and Pikmin 3 coming out make it a compelling buy already IMO.
OP might not think there is something wrong with the XBox One... however I there is no denying that it was a PR catastrophe with the it's always online stuff. Flip flopping after a product introduction does not bode well IMO.
Edit: OP does not like the XBox One ... my bad. :)
Edit: OP does not like the XBox One ... my bad. :)
Win32 should be in a nursing home right now awaiting death.
They should have just made a clean break from it. I can't understand why anyone would want to deal with that abomination in this day and age.
And given that it's ARM, you wouldn't be able to run any of your existing apps anyway, without the vendors recompiling (and quite possibly having to update their code in the process).
They should have just made a clean break from it. I can't understand why anyone would want to deal with that abomination in this day and age.
And given that it's ARM, you wouldn't be able to run any of your existing apps anyway, without the vendors recompiling (and quite possibly having to update their code in the process).
Win32 is the only official way to "side-load" applications to a Windows box (ie. not through their store). That's reason enough for me to reject Windows systems that don't have an open Win32 environment.
Every recent architecture change was used to lock down Windows: Windows on x86-64 enforces driver signing harder than Windows on x86. Windows 8 enforces Microsoft signed Modern UI apps.
Windows on ARM enforces full lock down (drivers, Win32 apps, Modern UI apps, bootloader). It also prevents those signed Modern UI apps to run their own JIT. While one could argue that this is for security (inability to mark data as executable code after the fact, and so on), it's not even possible to use the CLR JIT on your own dynamically generated byte code, which might be a crude workaround for other VMs (JS, Java, ...): add a CLR target.
If the CLR JIT is considered unsafe, Microsoft should disable it altogether (but that would slow down the platform even more), but if it's safe they should make it available to developers. This isn't about security, it's about their competition.
Open Win32 is what keeps Microsoft somewhat honest (since they can't simply lock it down that way, as long as they keep caring about compatibility). The only redeeming part of the Windows on ARM story is that it doesn't matter commercially. May it stay that way.
Every recent architecture change was used to lock down Windows: Windows on x86-64 enforces driver signing harder than Windows on x86. Windows 8 enforces Microsoft signed Modern UI apps.
Windows on ARM enforces full lock down (drivers, Win32 apps, Modern UI apps, bootloader). It also prevents those signed Modern UI apps to run their own JIT. While one could argue that this is for security (inability to mark data as executable code after the fact, and so on), it's not even possible to use the CLR JIT on your own dynamically generated byte code, which might be a crude workaround for other VMs (JS, Java, ...): add a CLR target.
If the CLR JIT is considered unsafe, Microsoft should disable it altogether (but that would slow down the platform even more), but if it's safe they should make it available to developers. This isn't about security, it's about their competition.
Open Win32 is what keeps Microsoft somewhat honest (since they can't simply lock it down that way, as long as they keep caring about compatibility). The only redeeming part of the Windows on ARM story is that it doesn't matter commercially. May it stay that way.
> Win32 should be in a nursing home right now awaiting death.
It is well tested, has high performance due to its heritage, and is really damn flexible. You rarely find yourself going "well that isn't possible" with Win32 given how many iterations the API has been through.
Unfortunately making a general purpose API of any sort tends to get ugly as more and more stuff is added to it, and then add in legacy requirements, and yes things are pretty icky at times.
But any other API that is capable of as much as Win32 is would end up looking almost as bad, minus a lot of the legacy cruft, except of course in the time it takes to develop such an all encompassing API, you'd end up with legacy cruft all of your own!
It is well tested, has high performance due to its heritage, and is really damn flexible. You rarely find yourself going "well that isn't possible" with Win32 given how many iterations the API has been through.
Unfortunately making a general purpose API of any sort tends to get ugly as more and more stuff is added to it, and then add in legacy requirements, and yes things are pretty icky at times.
But any other API that is capable of as much as Win32 is would end up looking almost as bad, minus a lot of the legacy cruft, except of course in the time it takes to develop such an all encompassing API, you'd end up with legacy cruft all of your own!
The same could be said of Cocoa.
Cocoa (like everything) has some rough patches, but overall is clean, elegant, and has a pretty consistent feel and vision.
Proof is that ARC exists. This is the only reason compiler tools like ARC are possible. If Cocoa were too inconsistent, ARC could not be exist.
Given that Cocoa's origins are from the 80's (NeXT) and Foundation is still with us today on iOS (and UIKit is very similar/familiar to AppKit), this is an extraordinary accomplishment and it has succeeded better and longer than any of its contemporaries.
Proof is that ARC exists. This is the only reason compiler tools like ARC are possible. If Cocoa were too inconsistent, ARC could not be exist.
Given that Cocoa's origins are from the 80's (NeXT) and Foundation is still with us today on iOS (and UIKit is very similar/familiar to AppKit), this is an extraordinary accomplishment and it has succeeded better and longer than any of its contemporaries.
> Cocoa (like everything) has some rough patches, but overall is clean, elegant, and has a pretty consistent feel and vision.
Exactly. Also, Apple has the courage to regularly deprecate and subsequently remove things from Cocoa/Core/Darwin, keeping it clean, focused and elegant.
Which bring us to the GGP comment:
> But any other API that is capable of as much as Win32 is would end up looking almost as bad, minus a lot of the legacy cruft, except of course in the time it takes to develop such an all encompassing API, you'd end up with legacy cruft all of your own!*
To which I disagree wholeheartedly (not just because of Cocoa, but every single sane API out there regularly deprecates then drops stuff). Win32 accreted features around a core of cruft like a black hole. The only solution for Microsoft is to relegate the 8/16/32bit heritage lying at its core and drop it dead as it's collapsing under its own weight. Which is what they did with the Win8 internal design, where Win32 is relegated to a gangrenous limb awaiting to be severed.
Exactly. Also, Apple has the courage to regularly deprecate and subsequently remove things from Cocoa/Core/Darwin, keeping it clean, focused and elegant.
Which bring us to the GGP comment:
> But any other API that is capable of as much as Win32 is would end up looking almost as bad, minus a lot of the legacy cruft, except of course in the time it takes to develop such an all encompassing API, you'd end up with legacy cruft all of your own!*
To which I disagree wholeheartedly (not just because of Cocoa, but every single sane API out there regularly deprecates then drops stuff). Win32 accreted features around a core of cruft like a black hole. The only solution for Microsoft is to relegate the 8/16/32bit heritage lying at its core and drop it dead as it's collapsing under its own weight. Which is what they did with the Win8 internal design, where Win32 is relegated to a gangrenous limb awaiting to be severed.
Ah, but what is Cocoa? :) In practice, Cocoa has had at least two major refreshes; a major overhaul of AppKit in the NeXT->MacOS transition, and the replacement of AppKit with UIKit for iOS (and I'd be sort of surprised if AppKit isn't eventually deprecated and replaced with a UIKit derivative on the desktop; UIKit smooths a lot of the rough edges).
Bits get added to Win32, but it hasn't really had much substantive change to existing stuff in a very long time.
Bits get added to Win32, but it hasn't really had much substantive change to existing stuff in a very long time.
Win32 will be around as long as COBOL or Java. It's one of those boring "forever" technologies that the world actually runs on.
Win32 is the only thing going for Microsoft on the windows side. They're far too late to the touchscreen party to dictate the tempo of UI design and thus they appear as a "me too" solution. The only thing they could possibly offer that Google/Apple can't would be to run windows-specific applications on your latest version of Windows. Throw that away and there's no reason why a Surface Pro 360 beats a Galaxy Tab 4 or iPad 4/5.
> Win32 is the only thing going for Microsoft on the windows side
And this is their key problem. They're stuck in the past, relying on previous successes and unable to come up with anything new that's sufficiently compelling for people to adopt.
Contrast to Apple, who made the switch to a modern, object-oriented API 13 years ago which has steadily improved, and their willingness to cut old technology (after a transition period - see Carbon and PowerPC).
iOS had zero compatibility with anything that came before, with the exception of the underlying frameworks. Microsoft needs to be able to demonstrate this level of innovation in order to survive in the long term.
And this is their key problem. They're stuck in the past, relying on previous successes and unable to come up with anything new that's sufficiently compelling for people to adopt.
Contrast to Apple, who made the switch to a modern, object-oriented API 13 years ago which has steadily improved, and their willingness to cut old technology (after a transition period - see Carbon and PowerPC).
iOS had zero compatibility with anything that came before, with the exception of the underlying frameworks. Microsoft needs to be able to demonstrate this level of innovation in order to survive in the long term.
I don't trust Apple. I can run Win95 programs on Windows8 still, and that is a good thing. If I'm building programs that last decades, I don't want to build them upon Apple's quickly changing landscape.
I mean, afterall, as much as Win32 is legacy code... Posix / SysV compatibility in Linux is an even bigger one. That doesn't make Linux a bad system, on the contrary, it makes me confident in building long-term solutions on top of those systems.
Microsoft has their new APIs: C# and .NET, which are all good and all for new programs. But their constant support of Win32 API is frankly one of their best assets. APIs with 30+ years of backwards compatibility are _good_ for the programmer.
I mean, afterall, as much as Win32 is legacy code... Posix / SysV compatibility in Linux is an even bigger one. That doesn't make Linux a bad system, on the contrary, it makes me confident in building long-term solutions on top of those systems.
Microsoft has their new APIs: C# and .NET, which are all good and all for new programs. But their constant support of Win32 API is frankly one of their best assets. APIs with 30+ years of backwards compatibility are _good_ for the programmer.
> If I'm building programs that last decades, I don't want to build them upon Apple's quickly changing landscape.
There's definitely a niche for "write once, run forever" (for a more extreme example, see the IBM 360/70/80/90/z/Architecture; a modern z/arch mainframe can run binaries made for a 360 half a century ago, unmodified), but it generally isn't that exciting to consumers, and even the enterprise market seems to be getting a little more cautious of it for internal stuff.
There's definitely a niche for "write once, run forever" (for a more extreme example, see the IBM 360/70/80/90/z/Architecture; a modern z/arch mainframe can run binaries made for a 360 half a century ago, unmodified), but it generally isn't that exciting to consumers, and even the enterprise market seems to be getting a little more cautious of it for internal stuff.
What is interesting is that over the last ten years microsoft has been unable to win markets with its time tested strategy: keeping at it until it conquers the market. It's because some very competent competitors have arisen that move faster and better than microsoft. consequently its late-to-market-but-persistent strategy fails.
Seemingly the only way a company can retain its leadership is by innovating and then leading the market. Microsoft hasn't been that good at genuine market innovation (we're talking revolutions), so unless it can use its strong stance in markets it leads currently, the future isn't looking all that rosy for microsoft..
Seemingly the only way a company can retain its leadership is by innovating and then leading the market. Microsoft hasn't been that good at genuine market innovation (we're talking revolutions), so unless it can use its strong stance in markets it leads currently, the future isn't looking all that rosy for microsoft..
This isn't entirely fair. Ten years ago Microsoft was just getting into the video game business, now they essentially own it (though they definitely fumbled the XBox One rollout). Ten years ago Azure didn't exist, now it's a $1bn/year business and a credible threat to AWS. In both these cases Microsoft started out with weak initial offerings and refined them into something people found compelling. There are other markets where this approach has not yet yielded fruit for them (mobile, tablet, search), but it's not really true that it just never works.
> Microsoft hasn't been that good at genuine market innovation (we're talking revolutions)
Microsoft has never been about revolutionary innovation. MS-DOS was just a rebadged version of Tim Paterson's QDOS. MacOS was the first OS to bring GUIs to the mass market, not Windows. IE came after Netscape. Etc.
Since the beginning of the business their approach has been to be a "fast follower" -- to let other companies take the huge risks of pioneering a new market, and then, if that market proves out, swoop in with a product of their own. Generally speaking this has worked out really, really well for them. Letting someone else do the pioneering isn't particularly heroic, but then, as the saying goes, you can always tell the pioneers because they're the ones with the arrows in their back.
> Microsoft hasn't been that good at genuine market innovation (we're talking revolutions)
Microsoft has never been about revolutionary innovation. MS-DOS was just a rebadged version of Tim Paterson's QDOS. MacOS was the first OS to bring GUIs to the mass market, not Windows. IE came after Netscape. Etc.
Since the beginning of the business their approach has been to be a "fast follower" -- to let other companies take the huge risks of pioneering a new market, and then, if that market proves out, swoop in with a product of their own. Generally speaking this has worked out really, really well for them. Letting someone else do the pioneering isn't particularly heroic, but then, as the saying goes, you can always tell the pioneers because they're the ones with the arrows in their back.
"Ten years ago Microsoft was just getting into the video game business, now they essentially own it"
The facts say otherwise:
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250111/2012-year-on-year-sal...
The facts say otherwise:
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250111/2012-year-on-year-sal...
Not that I disagree with your point, but I think it's worth mentioning that VGCharts is not a very reliable source for sales data. It's essentially made up, using sources such as guessing, and talking to store employees to estimate their sales at that location and massively extrapolating.[1][2]
[1] http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/06/analysis_what_vgchartz_d...
[2] http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/06/why-we-dont-ref/
[1] http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/06/analysis_what_vgchartz_d...
[2] http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/06/why-we-dont-ref/
Microsoft owns the video game business? They have a small fraction of the whole pie. They don't own anything. Their Xbox One screw-up and their embarrassing about-face showed how truly tenuous their position is.
Android, iOS, free to play, Facebook / web platforms, Ouya and the coming onslaught of embedded video game technology into TV's and other solo Android machines, Valve's console entry, Steam, Nintendo, Sony; publishers like Activision etc; indie producers like Mojang etc; and on and on and on and on. Microsoft is just one big player in a very large market.
Microsoft is in a position of weakness in gaming. If the Xbox One doesn't sell on par with the PlayStation 4, or if it doesn't sell in volumes at least on par with the 360, they're going to very quickly find themselves on the outside looking in just like in mobile (lackluster sales will also take down the Kinect platform).
Android, iOS, free to play, Facebook / web platforms, Ouya and the coming onslaught of embedded video game technology into TV's and other solo Android machines, Valve's console entry, Steam, Nintendo, Sony; publishers like Activision etc; indie producers like Mojang etc; and on and on and on and on. Microsoft is just one big player in a very large market.
Microsoft is in a position of weakness in gaming. If the Xbox One doesn't sell on par with the PlayStation 4, or if it doesn't sell in volumes at least on par with the 360, they're going to very quickly find themselves on the outside looking in just like in mobile (lackluster sales will also take down the Kinect platform).
> Ten years ago Azure didn't exist, now it's a $1bn/year business and a credible threat to AWS
"Credible threat to AWS"? That billion dollar figure includes all Microsoft cloud revenue, including revenue Microsoft earns from AWS: http://gigaom.com/2013/04/29/say-what-microsoft-azures-a-1-b...
"Credible threat to AWS"? That billion dollar figure includes all Microsoft cloud revenue, including revenue Microsoft earns from AWS: http://gigaom.com/2013/04/29/say-what-microsoft-azures-a-1-b...
> Ten years ago Microsoft was just getting into the video game business, now they essentially own it
Sony and Nintendo might disagree. Nintendo kicked serious butt for most of the last generation. Sony has been doing well, at least matching MS, in the last part of the last generation. The next generation still hasn't started much, though Nintendo definitely messed up on its start. It remains to be seen if there is much of a console market left; the winners of this generation just may very well be Apple and to a lesser extent, Google.
Sony and Nintendo might disagree. Nintendo kicked serious butt for most of the last generation. Sony has been doing well, at least matching MS, in the last part of the last generation. The next generation still hasn't started much, though Nintendo definitely messed up on its start. It remains to be seen if there is much of a console market left; the winners of this generation just may very well be Apple and to a lesser extent, Google.
That $1B nummer includes software sales to Amazon, Rackspace etc so it's not really comparable to Amazon (which also lumps AWS together with other stuff).
Generally though I find it interesting that there is almost no mention of it either here on HN or other places. When AWS has an outage, everyone notice because lots of high profile sites and services go down. Azure has had a few outages and we've barely heard about it.
I think the difference now in the new markets is that Microsoft has talented competitors, including Google which has copied the strategy you mention with the twist if giving their software away for free.
Generally though I find it interesting that there is almost no mention of it either here on HN or other places. When AWS has an outage, everyone notice because lots of high profile sites and services go down. Azure has had a few outages and we've barely heard about it.
I think the difference now in the new markets is that Microsoft has talented competitors, including Google which has copied the strategy you mention with the twist if giving their software away for free.
And it's almost funny--they've been hamstrung by being too far ahead of the pack in some ways. Look at all the trouble they had when they built Windows on top of the IE engine. In a way, that's one of the first steps towards a real use for the "cloud"--what should be different about browsing for a file on your computer and browsing the internet? And that ended up causing them some serious money.
They flubbed their early efforts at mobile OS development also. They had a real chance to corner the market before Apple was even making iPods, I believe. But they got too focused on beating Blackberry and didn't really look past them (in my opinion--I'm no expert).
Then the tablet: Microsoft was one of the first to really push tablet computers. Unfortunately, the technology wasn't there to support the idea. So they shelved it for awhile, then Apple came along ~10 years later and did it "right". And now Microsoft is trying to play catch up to a field where they did a decent amount of the early work.
They flubbed their early efforts at mobile OS development also. They had a real chance to corner the market before Apple was even making iPods, I believe. But they got too focused on beating Blackberry and didn't really look past them (in my opinion--I'm no expert).
Then the tablet: Microsoft was one of the first to really push tablet computers. Unfortunately, the technology wasn't there to support the idea. So they shelved it for awhile, then Apple came along ~10 years later and did it "right". And now Microsoft is trying to play catch up to a field where they did a decent amount of the early work.
That's not how any of these things went.
> Look at all the trouble they had when they built Windows on top of the IE engine.
They didn't build windows on top of IE. They showhorned IE in as a technical solution to a legal problem (How to abuse their monopoly without it being patently obvious to everyone). Just to be clear - At the time, IE4 was way better than Netscape4 - but it only became popular when it was available by default. And it was a successful solution, on all accounts - they killed netscape, they won the web (for a while), and they paid very little in damages eventually.
> Then the tablet: Microsoft was one of the first to really push tablet computers. Unfortunately, the technology wasn't there to support the idea.
The technology WAS there, but Microsoft's UI wasn't - they continuously tried (and failed) to make a desktop-OS touch-usable. I've never used one myself, but everyone I know who had a Newton said it was "just right". And the palm pilot worked very well too.
People underestimate what apple have done with the iphone and tablets - they've figured out the UI/UX. Hardware is an important, but lesser part of this equation. Microsoft, for 10 years, couldn't figure out that there even was a UI/UX problem.
> Look at all the trouble they had when they built Windows on top of the IE engine.
They didn't build windows on top of IE. They showhorned IE in as a technical solution to a legal problem (How to abuse their monopoly without it being patently obvious to everyone). Just to be clear - At the time, IE4 was way better than Netscape4 - but it only became popular when it was available by default. And it was a successful solution, on all accounts - they killed netscape, they won the web (for a while), and they paid very little in damages eventually.
> Then the tablet: Microsoft was one of the first to really push tablet computers. Unfortunately, the technology wasn't there to support the idea.
The technology WAS there, but Microsoft's UI wasn't - they continuously tried (and failed) to make a desktop-OS touch-usable. I've never used one myself, but everyone I know who had a Newton said it was "just right". And the palm pilot worked very well too.
People underestimate what apple have done with the iphone and tablets - they've figured out the UI/UX. Hardware is an important, but lesser part of this equation. Microsoft, for 10 years, couldn't figure out that there even was a UI/UX problem.
> I've never used one myself, but everyone I know who had a Newton said it was "just right".
Interestingly, a big part of the Newton's failure (along with the terrible v1 handwriting recognition, which was largely fixed later, and Apple's strained finances) was that they went for a complete break with the past; there was basically no developer familiarity. iOS was probably a sweet spot; new, purpose-designed interface bearing very little resemblance to MacOS beyond font choices, but almost the same under the hood.
Interestingly, a big part of the Newton's failure (along with the terrible v1 handwriting recognition, which was largely fixed later, and Apple's strained finances) was that they went for a complete break with the past; there was basically no developer familiarity. iOS was probably a sweet spot; new, purpose-designed interface bearing very little resemblance to MacOS beyond font choices, but almost the same under the hood.
The technology was there, several years before the iPad I had a PC with a capacitive touchscreen.
What Microsoft lacked was the insight to realize that just cramming a touchscreen and stylus on Windows XP wouldn't work.
Apple, perhaps with the hindsight of the Newton, realized that creating a completely new GUI optimized for finger touch was the way to go (or rather their experiments stemming from multi-touch trackpads showed them that it was _a_ way to go).
What Microsoft lacked was the insight to realize that just cramming a touchscreen and stylus on Windows XP wouldn't work.
Apple, perhaps with the hindsight of the Newton, realized that creating a completely new GUI optimized for finger touch was the way to go (or rather their experiments stemming from multi-touch trackpads showed them that it was _a_ way to go).
> They had a real chance to corner the market before Apple was even making iPods, I believe
They were so very, very insistent on "it has to be Windows!" which lead to the notoriously dreadful Windows CE/Mobile interface. This goes on to an extent, but now more as a confusing marketing thing; Windows Phone does not seem like a good name for a phone that doesn't have windows as a concept.
They were so very, very insistent on "it has to be Windows!" which lead to the notoriously dreadful Windows CE/Mobile interface. This goes on to an extent, but now more as a confusing marketing thing; Windows Phone does not seem like a good name for a phone that doesn't have windows as a concept.
They clearly think they own the market too despite the fierce competition from Sony and Nintendo, because the Xbox platform is now clearly about benefiting themselves and rather than selling a product to their customers. Hence the emphasis on things like digital sales with heavy DRM (although now that's gone, its an important point that they completely thought they would get away with that), Television, Kinect, Excessive amounts of Advertising, etc.
What's sad is how at E3 the best thing for a lot of the gamers was how they weren't going to get screwed by heavy DRM from Sony.
What's sad is how at E3 the best thing for a lot of the gamers was how they weren't going to get screwed by heavy DRM from Sony.
> now they essentially own [the video game business]
Not even close. And it looks like they're about to throw it away.
Not even close. And it looks like they're about to throw it away.
Actually, Microsoft has never been a "innovator"... but more a long term strategist. They copy, iterate and improve things.
One thing i always remember is that you should wait untill SP2 (service pack 2) to upgrade your windows version.
Windows Vista SP2 was Windows 7 (with again, slighter improvements), while Vista in the beginning, wasn't awefull. It was superior on SP2 and it got it's respect with a "new" release, named Windows 7.
Windows 8 is a lot of change, thanks to statistics, they'll improve again and as usual, i'll wait untill SP2 to switch. Perhaps even 8.1 if i really like it :-)
One thing i always remember is that you should wait untill SP2 (service pack 2) to upgrade your windows version.
Windows Vista SP2 was Windows 7 (with again, slighter improvements), while Vista in the beginning, wasn't awefull. It was superior on SP2 and it got it's respect with a "new" release, named Windows 7.
Windows 8 is a lot of change, thanks to statistics, they'll improve again and as usual, i'll wait untill SP2 to switch. Perhaps even 8.1 if i really like it :-)
[deleted]
On the surface, Microsoft seem to have tons of problems in management structure, product design, public relations, etc etc. However, at least in my view, all of this isn't really a big issue and companies can easily survive on this stuff. The key problem is a very simple one: Microsoft has forgotten why they even exist. The goal of a company is to sell products to customers by giving customers what they want.
Microsoft of 15-20 years back did they wonderfully - easier to use OS, better features in Office, fast adoption of new hardware standards, etc. Microsoft of today is actively trying to sell customers what they don't want. Metro. Kinect. Office Ribbon. Bing. ARM Surface. The list goes on to almost every product MS offers.
Microsoft needs to stop pushing products for the benefit of Microsoft. I'd recommend the following: put up a poll and let the general public decide on issues like Metro - and then follow those results, even if it means throwing Metro out of the desktop. Microsoft needs to listen to customers simply because other businesses are listening to Microsoft's customers, and those customers are leaving.
Business 101 - it still applies even when you're not a startup anymore.
Microsoft of 15-20 years back did they wonderfully - easier to use OS, better features in Office, fast adoption of new hardware standards, etc. Microsoft of today is actively trying to sell customers what they don't want. Metro. Kinect. Office Ribbon. Bing. ARM Surface. The list goes on to almost every product MS offers.
Microsoft needs to stop pushing products for the benefit of Microsoft. I'd recommend the following: put up a poll and let the general public decide on issues like Metro - and then follow those results, even if it means throwing Metro out of the desktop. Microsoft needs to listen to customers simply because other businesses are listening to Microsoft's customers, and those customers are leaving.
Business 101 - it still applies even when you're not a startup anymore.
>Metro. Kinect. Office Ribbon. Bing. ARM Surface. The list goes on to almost every product MS
I assume when you say Metro, you mean on Windows 8. Metro on WP and Xbox is really great, and I think 8.1 will fix a lot of problems with Metro on 8. Metro as a design language is, IMO, really good. Implementation on Windows, not so much.
Kinect? The fastest selling consumer device in history? The numbers speak for themselves.
Office Ribbon is a step forward in UI design for menu systems. Looking for a good resource on their thought process behind it, but you can see a partial explanation here. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2005/09/14/467126.as... The ribbon backlash seems more against the fact that the UI changed than that the ribbon is bad UI design.
Bing is a long term play and I think it's starting to pay off with FB, Apple, and Yahoo deals, not to mention the deep integratin of Bing services in Windows, Xbox, and Windows Phone.
Arm Surface was a disaster.
>Microsoft needs to stop pushing products for the benefit of Microsoft. I'd recommend the following: put up a poll and let the general public decide on issues like Metro - and then follow those results, even if it means throwing Metro out of the desktop. Microsoft needs to listen to customers simply because other businesses are listening to Microsoft's customers, and those customers are leaving.
Design by committee is terrible. Design by the general population is even worse.
I assume when you say Metro, you mean on Windows 8. Metro on WP and Xbox is really great, and I think 8.1 will fix a lot of problems with Metro on 8. Metro as a design language is, IMO, really good. Implementation on Windows, not so much.
Kinect? The fastest selling consumer device in history? The numbers speak for themselves.
Office Ribbon is a step forward in UI design for menu systems. Looking for a good resource on their thought process behind it, but you can see a partial explanation here. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2005/09/14/467126.as... The ribbon backlash seems more against the fact that the UI changed than that the ribbon is bad UI design.
Bing is a long term play and I think it's starting to pay off with FB, Apple, and Yahoo deals, not to mention the deep integratin of Bing services in Windows, Xbox, and Windows Phone.
Arm Surface was a disaster.
>Microsoft needs to stop pushing products for the benefit of Microsoft. I'd recommend the following: put up a poll and let the general public decide on issues like Metro - and then follow those results, even if it means throwing Metro out of the desktop. Microsoft needs to listen to customers simply because other businesses are listening to Microsoft's customers, and those customers are leaving.
Design by committee is terrible. Design by the general population is even worse.
>Microsoft has forgotten why they even exist.
Microsoft is an office supply company. They got their niche by being cheaper and easier for the office worker. Bill Gates became the richest man in the world by selling EVERYONE a box of paperclips.
This is not sexy growth times. It's a boring business. You know, like most businesses that just make a steady profit.
Win32 will be around forever. It'll be like COBOL and Java. There's always buckets of money doing boring work no-one else wants to. It doesn't get you sexy startup cred with dancing VCs; it does get you a long-term living.
Microsoft is an office supply company. They got their niche by being cheaper and easier for the office worker. Bill Gates became the richest man in the world by selling EVERYONE a box of paperclips.
This is not sexy growth times. It's a boring business. You know, like most businesses that just make a steady profit.
Win32 will be around forever. It'll be like COBOL and Java. There's always buckets of money doing boring work no-one else wants to. It doesn't get you sexy startup cred with dancing VCs; it does get you a long-term living.
While overall I agree that Microsoft is really missing the mark when it comes to creating products people want, I disagree on the premise.
The goal of a company is to profit from products that sell. It doesn't necessarily mean they're building for what customers currently demand, but knowing what customers will demand.
The canonical example is Apple. If you listen to tech reviewers, Apple never makes the product that people "want". Yet they continue to lead profits in almost every product category they market.
The goal of a company is to profit from products that sell. It doesn't necessarily mean they're building for what customers currently demand, but knowing what customers will demand.
The canonical example is Apple. If you listen to tech reviewers, Apple never makes the product that people "want". Yet they continue to lead profits in almost every product category they market.
What? Some kind of cognitive dissonance here, maybe. People do not queue up around the block waiting for hours on launch day for something they do not want. People very much want exactly what Apple is making. They build exactly what people want.
If you want an example of something that people do not want, would never queue up for, and should not have been made? Metro.
In regards to the comment above on Metro fitting well on Xbox? Not a chance - Metro is terrible and confusing to use on Xbox, and the adverts make it even worse. If the xbox had launched with Metro as standard, it would have gotten very negative launch reviews.
If you want an example of something that people do not want, would never queue up for, and should not have been made? Metro.
In regards to the comment above on Metro fitting well on Xbox? Not a chance - Metro is terrible and confusing to use on Xbox, and the adverts make it even worse. If the xbox had launched with Metro as standard, it would have gotten very negative launch reviews.
I think the point he was trying to make was that if Apple had issued a poll before launching the iPad, people would most likely said "it has to run my current OSX Apps and offer a way to switch back to OSX" because they would consider the iPad a computer. Re the loud complaints about lacking USB ports etc. when the iPad launched.
What Microsoft needs is someone in upper management with a vision about what products they want to make and the persistence to make them happen. That's a bit difficult to accomplish when there is a management shuffle with some top executive deciding to spend more time with their family roughly every year.
What Microsoft needs is someone in upper management with a vision about what products they want to make and the persistence to make them happen. That's a bit difficult to accomplish when there is a management shuffle with some top executive deciding to spend more time with their family roughly every year.
I think he means that Apple users, for example, weren't demanding an iPhone. That's not why Apple built it. They didn't ask the customers what they wanted and the resulting product was the iPhone.
Apple came up with the idea of the iPhone and built it. When the public saw it, we thought, "Holy shit! I've gotta have that!"
The point is that the people didn't know that they wanted an iPhone until Apple showed it to them.
Apple came up with the idea of the iPhone and built it. When the public saw it, we thought, "Holy shit! I've gotta have that!"
The point is that the people didn't know that they wanted an iPhone until Apple showed it to them.
Wasn't Steve Jobs the one that always said customers don't know what they want?
[deleted]
Over the past five years, their stock is up over $5/share or around 21%. Not bad for a company people keep expecting to fail.
Full disclosure: I always take the long view with tech companies, especially the big ones. Start ups can have the wheels fall off over a 10% drop. Big companies like MS, this is virtually nothing. I mean, look at Best Buy. Their profits were down over 80% last year and they're still out there hammering away.
Here's that BBY article I was alluding to: http://www.webpronews.com/best-buy-earnings-net-income-down-...
"Hubert Joly is the CEO now, coming in as the company reports a 90% profit drop thanks to less-than-stellar sales, and restructuring expenses."
Full disclosure: I always take the long view with tech companies, especially the big ones. Start ups can have the wheels fall off over a 10% drop. Big companies like MS, this is virtually nothing. I mean, look at Best Buy. Their profits were down over 80% last year and they're still out there hammering away.
Here's that BBY article I was alluding to: http://www.webpronews.com/best-buy-earnings-net-income-down-...
"Hubert Joly is the CEO now, coming in as the company reports a 90% profit drop thanks to less-than-stellar sales, and restructuring expenses."
> Over the past five years, their stock is up over $5/share or around 21%.
How much as the economy grown in the last year, or how much has the dollar inflated in the last 5 years. I'm sure there is some stock growth there, and it definitely isn't tanking. But for someone who bought 5 years ago, was it a good investment with respect to the market average for this sector?
How much as the economy grown in the last year, or how much has the dollar inflated in the last 5 years. I'm sure there is some stock growth there, and it definitely isn't tanking. But for someone who bought 5 years ago, was it a good investment with respect to the market average for this sector?
>>> But for someone who bought 5 years ago, was it a good investment with respect to the market average for this sector?
Yes, and here's why. . .
http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T052-C017-S001-wh...
MS tends to be in the sweet spot for investors. It's not grossly over priced, they hit their numbers on a regular basis, and no expects them to be successful. Therefore, if one of their products hits big, investors are happy, if they have a flop, no biggie, the shares are only $23.
Compare that to Apple. Their shares are in the $500 range and they are the homecoming queen in the tech sector. If they have a flop, and you have a sizable investment, you're hosed. If they hit their numbers, your large investment stays put. It's a lot more riskier.
Yes, and here's why. . .
http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T052-C017-S001-wh...
MS tends to be in the sweet spot for investors. It's not grossly over priced, they hit their numbers on a regular basis, and no expects them to be successful. Therefore, if one of their products hits big, investors are happy, if they have a flop, no biggie, the shares are only $23.
Compare that to Apple. Their shares are in the $500 range and they are the homecoming queen in the tech sector. If they have a flop, and you have a sizable investment, you're hosed. If they hit their numbers, your large investment stays put. It's a lot more riskier.
Actually I have to agree with this. I own a number of tech stocks and MSFT has a pretty stable price, but pays good dividends. Google and Apple on the other hand yo-yo like crazy on the stock price. If you are interested in short term bets on stock prices then GOOG and APPL are of course more interesting, but I'm currently happy to see the dividends rolling in from MSFT.
What you're talking is yield and volatility. When you're running a fund, you need to manage to benchmarks, and MSFT is a great position for exposure. IV is on the low end, there is plenty of liquidity should you need to raise cash, and with a dividend of right around 3% you have a nice predictable return, which is a big deal with institutional investing.
Additionally securities like MSFT, you can comfortably get 'aggressive' through call writing, and juice returns a little more without your risk metrics being outside your targets.
Additionally securities like MSFT, you can comfortably get 'aggressive' through call writing, and juice returns a little more without your risk metrics being outside your targets.
That strikes me as a really bizarre argument.
The price of a single share is utterly irrelevant to the risk of an investment. Whether you own 200 shares @ $25 or 10 shares @ $500, a 10% drop in the stock price is a 10% in the stock price.
Microsoft stock is up 25% over the last 5 years. The NASDAQ is up 56%. Apple is up 160%, even after the large drop over the past year.
Microsoft currently has a P/E of 16, Apple has a P/E of 10.
The price of a single share is utterly irrelevant to the risk of an investment. Whether you own 200 shares @ $25 or 10 shares @ $500, a 10% drop in the stock price is a 10% in the stock price.
Microsoft stock is up 25% over the last 5 years. The NASDAQ is up 56%. Apple is up 160%, even after the large drop over the past year.
Microsoft currently has a P/E of 16, Apple has a P/E of 10.
MSFT is keeping up with the S&P 500, but it's still doing pretty poorly compared to its biggest competitors (GOOG, AAPL, ORCL).
I don't understand. It's stock performance has been as good or better than those competitors in the very short term.
Are you talking all-time? Microsoft crushes those companies. And IBM crushes it.
My point is, to say that Microsoft is doing poorer than those competitors, you have to pick a very specific time period. Over the long-run, right up until today, Microsoft has been and will continue to be a wealth generating machine, albeit in a competitive market.
Are you talking all-time? Microsoft crushes those companies. And IBM crushes it.
My point is, to say that Microsoft is doing poorer than those competitors, you have to pick a very specific time period. Over the long-run, right up until today, Microsoft has been and will continue to be a wealth generating machine, albeit in a competitive market.
I used to work at Microsoft from 1996 to 2006. Here is a pattern that I've seen, which explains so much of the problem with Balmer.
The strategy in 1990's was that software was sold in stored (EggHead). People would compare the BULLETs or CHECKMARKS on two competing packages. Microsoft's goal was to always have more and better checkmarks. That sold more software in the 1990's.
Notice their newest re-org. They are making two big pushes DEVICES and SERVICES. The entire company is becoming "functional" (devs vs testers vs program managers, etc.). They all report to Balmer. Balmer is trying to be like Steve Jobs.
Balmer talked about having "efforts" selected by him and execs in his office. Those would be the major efforts of products. This is the same as picking FEATURE BULLETS for the back of packaged software.
Microsoft does NOT have a strategy. They focus on packing feature bullets, like it is a box of software. Watch them do that with XBox ONE, Windows Phone, Windows 8, etc. Until they pick a strategy, they won't find a way to use leverage to pull ahead.
The strategy in 1990's was that software was sold in stored (EggHead). People would compare the BULLETs or CHECKMARKS on two competing packages. Microsoft's goal was to always have more and better checkmarks. That sold more software in the 1990's.
Notice their newest re-org. They are making two big pushes DEVICES and SERVICES. The entire company is becoming "functional" (devs vs testers vs program managers, etc.). They all report to Balmer. Balmer is trying to be like Steve Jobs.
Balmer talked about having "efforts" selected by him and execs in his office. Those would be the major efforts of products. This is the same as picking FEATURE BULLETS for the back of packaged software.
Microsoft does NOT have a strategy. They focus on packing feature bullets, like it is a box of software. Watch them do that with XBox ONE, Windows Phone, Windows 8, etc. Until they pick a strategy, they won't find a way to use leverage to pull ahead.
This is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Just zoom out to the ten-year chart:
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT
That is scary for a different reason - you can see then that MSFT has actually barely grown at all in 10 years.
I think it's a good time to buy -- the re-org underway will be intriguing, and I'm very bullish on Windows (especially after 8.1)
I think they don't get enough credit for what they do really well (Windows Phone is phenomenal; Office is still the gold standard; Skydrive works just as well as Dropbox; SQL Server is key in many orgs; the offerings with the new Xbox to be the media centerpiece of the home will be very interesting)
Have they missed the mark for being so late with tablets and underestimating how much people would have shock at the new Windows 8 change? Sure -- but they have too many smart people to let the stock drop and for them to 'fail'...keep in mind that Apple was not far from here just a decade or so ago =)
I think they don't get enough credit for what they do really well (Windows Phone is phenomenal; Office is still the gold standard; Skydrive works just as well as Dropbox; SQL Server is key in many orgs; the offerings with the new Xbox to be the media centerpiece of the home will be very interesting)
Have they missed the mark for being so late with tablets and underestimating how much people would have shock at the new Windows 8 change? Sure -- but they have too many smart people to let the stock drop and for them to 'fail'...keep in mind that Apple was not far from here just a decade or so ago =)
One of Microsofts flagship products is Microsoft Office. It's a great suite of software, it's ubiquitous, people are familiar with it, etc.
But the selling point of it is that it's familiar. When we recently starting transitioning to google apps at my office, people damn near rioted.
It wasn't that MS Office offered something that GA didn't, it was that they were scared that they wouldn't know how to work the new interface.
So...think about that, Microsoft. People aren't holding on to your product because it is the best, people are hanging on to your product because it is the most familiar.
I think that time will erode that.
But the selling point of it is that it's familiar. When we recently starting transitioning to google apps at my office, people damn near rioted.
It wasn't that MS Office offered something that GA didn't, it was that they were scared that they wouldn't know how to work the new interface.
So...think about that, Microsoft. People aren't holding on to your product because it is the best, people are hanging on to your product because it is the most familiar.
I think that time will erode that.
Huh. We moved to GApps and our people cried tears of joy.
Mind you, that was moving from Lotus Notes for email and calendar. Fuck me, GApps is heaven by comparison. I wrote the Uncyclopedia article inspired by having to use the damn thing: http://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Lotus_Notes
Mind you, that was moving from Lotus Notes for email and calendar. Fuck me, GApps is heaven by comparison. I wrote the Uncyclopedia article inspired by having to use the damn thing: http://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Lotus_Notes
Time, and the Ribbon, and Metro...
Looking up MSFT at finance.yahoo.com, their stock is at the same level it was ~15 years ago. (I'm not quoting the bubble peak, but 2 years before it) This sounds more like a sloppy 15 years rather than a sloppy quarter.
Adjusting that for inflation, it's worth approximately 70% of that (based on 43% cumulative inflation 1998-2013).
Does this take 3 stock splits in to account as well?
The charts on Yahoo Finance (very good website, btw - I'm unaffiliated) adjust for splits. This is why you don't see any discontinuity on split dates.
Yes. No dividends for most of that period too, which usually compensates for inflation.
Most being the first five years of the fifteen year period? It looks like their dividends started in 03 and have only been increasing.
So look at total returns for the past 15 years. Would you have been a happy share or option holder?
[deleted]
Part of the demise of MSFT has nothing to do with MSFT, the landscape in which they operate is just changing. I haven't used Windows in years, yet I used to develop on the Win32 API, I gave up with it when they released all that OLE nonsense. Now that world is largely one big IUnknown interface. The web has democratized the consumer interface to technology, Apple has risen up from the days when MSFT loaned them $100M to keep going. The world is nolonger a Windows and Intel one. In the consumer world things have shifted, while in the backend world, any IT person that's using Windows over a Unix variant is laughed at. I remember the early days of IIS and even though NT had I/O completion ports, it still couldn't keep up with the Unix offerings. Today there are some viable server side offerings, Share Point is a decent product (especially when compared to Lotus Notes) but Linux has eaten the server side market, and Apple and Samsung have eaten the consumer side. I know nothing about gaming, so maybe the xbox is the best product ever, who knows...
I'm not surprised. Their time-tested strategy of blatant vendor lock-in is being disrupted by competitors providing the same kind of software for free - google docs, firefox/chrome, linux.
After the upcoming "adjustments," they should be able to survive at a somewhat healthy level, but they will have to accept lower revenue and margin as a persistent reality.
After the upcoming "adjustments," they should be able to survive at a somewhat healthy level, but they will have to accept lower revenue and margin as a persistent reality.
Revenue was up this quarter. The surface fiasco dinged profit a bit, but financially they're still in great shape. Microsoft is not really fundamentally about Windows anymore, they've now got a diverse portfolio of businesses.
Funny linking to a blog that's now down. Stock prices are public info.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT
That plot looks much less scary if you see the current data in a longer time-frame: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
I know a few people with Windows phones, and they all love them. Apparently it's actually a very nice phone. But every one of them laments the lack of apps, and considers it a reason to move.
The trouble is that "Microsoft" and "Windows" sounds to the consumer like "Monday 9am at the office". For the consumer market, they're tainted brands.
The trouble is that "Microsoft" and "Windows" sounds to the consumer like "Monday 9am at the office". For the consumer market, they're tainted brands.
Windows 8 Home Premium (upgrade) started to sell at $29.99 during introductory period last year. It was a time when I finally got licenses for all my PCs. And many other people around me in my country did as well. Even if we cheated a bit to install upgrade version on a clean home-made hardware. Previous pricing was too high for developing world. ~$200 for an OS? I do not even know for sure what was that price, it was too high to even care about it. What I am really interested in, is what they will do with the pricing of 8.1. I hope they do special upgrade pricing again for a couple of months. That's one way to hide the fact that new Windows price is much less now than it was 5 years ago.
Microsoft needs to pull out of mobile and tighten their grip on the desktop market. I can say anecdotally that the only reason many people stay with Windows is for games.
I'd like to see Windows rebranded as "The Gaming OS which does much more than just games". They need to keep the value of Windows tied to the value of Steam. This means bending over backwards to the needs of game developers and cementing the expectation that you need Windows if you want games before that expectation goes away.
This may even mean marketing themselves to Mac and Linux users as the OS you should dual boot if you want to play games. What a crazy thought.
I'd like to see Windows rebranded as "The Gaming OS which does much more than just games". They need to keep the value of Windows tied to the value of Steam. This means bending over backwards to the needs of game developers and cementing the expectation that you need Windows if you want games before that expectation goes away.
This may even mean marketing themselves to Mac and Linux users as the OS you should dual boot if you want to play games. What a crazy thought.
Pull out of mobile? Meanwhile the entire world is pushing mobile market making a lot bigger than the desktop pc market? Not a really good idea. It would be a suicide and they know it, that's why they are putting billions of money in windows phone and nokia, they NEED at least a minimum marketshare (10%) in the mobile market
There are also lot of people making a lot of money in the energy industry. Is it time for Microsoft to start drilling for oil, too?
"Mobile" has little overlap with the markets that MS has built 30 years of competitive advantage in. Phones and tablets are not general substitutes for PCS.
Microsoft's venture into the "mobile" market has resulted in them slapping the Windows name on products that are almost - but not quite - entirely unlike Windows, and this has brought a good deal of frustration to many people.
"Mobile" has little overlap with the markets that MS has built 30 years of competitive advantage in. Phones and tablets are not general substitutes for PCS.
Microsoft's venture into the "mobile" market has resulted in them slapping the Windows name on products that are almost - but not quite - entirely unlike Windows, and this has brought a good deal of frustration to many people.
> They need to keep the value of Windows tied to the value of Steam.
The same Steam who has done more than anyone else to make MacOS and Linux viable gaming platforms?
The trouble with games is that there's really no lockin, and porting is not that difficult, so if the publishers see MacOS and/or Linux becoming larger platforms, they'll put out more stuff for them (this is already happening, especially with indies and Valve), and few will stay on Windows because they really need game X from 1995 to keep working.
Microsoft's real strength is the enterprise, where people do need terrible internal app from 1995 that no-one has modified since then to keep working. You can't do that on Linux or MacOS easily; both are pretty happy to break binary compatibility when it suits.
The same Steam who has done more than anyone else to make MacOS and Linux viable gaming platforms?
The trouble with games is that there's really no lockin, and porting is not that difficult, so if the publishers see MacOS and/or Linux becoming larger platforms, they'll put out more stuff for them (this is already happening, especially with indies and Valve), and few will stay on Windows because they really need game X from 1995 to keep working.
Microsoft's real strength is the enterprise, where people do need terrible internal app from 1995 that no-one has modified since then to keep working. You can't do that on Linux or MacOS easily; both are pretty happy to break binary compatibility when it suits.
(drivebyacct2, it looks like it's time for drivebyacct3 to make its debut. You appear to be hellbanned.)
Articles like this make me wonder if one of the reasons Steam opted to open up Linux support was in the event that Microsoft imploded and Windows no longer was a viable gaming platform they would still have a decent target. Seems far fetched, but you never know these days. People sure do complain about Windows 8 a lot. I don't mind it, but I'm just one guy.
I don't immediately see how this would all happen in the short term, but stuff like this tends to catch a lot of folks off guard.
I don't immediately see how this would all happen in the short term, but stuff like this tends to catch a lot of folks off guard.
Innovation vs the world's worst CEO.
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
This comparaison is worthless. Here is an example of an extremly innovative company vs Microsoft.
Innovation vs worlds worst CEO part 2:
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
Innovation vs worlds worst CEO part 2:
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
They have the wrong Steve.
Is it weird that, given the surface, Windows 8, and the new xbox that I still think Microsoft is overvalued after the drop?
I dunno. Given the ability for Microsoft to just up their CAL licenses for their business buyers and pull revenue literally out of their ass... all the while shoving Windows 8 down their partners thoats??
Microsoft is still big. As a business, they remain profitable. They have plenty of time to turn the ship around.
Their business decisions may have been terrible these past years, but they're still profitable, still making money nonetheless.
Microsoft is still big. As a business, they remain profitable. They have plenty of time to turn the ship around.
Their business decisions may have been terrible these past years, but they're still profitable, still making money nonetheless.
The problem is the long term run. At the moment they are really profitable, but with the switching of the market from pc-leadership to tablet-smartphone-smartdevices leadershipt they are in big risks.
They could always do the IBM. Retrench, sell to corporate, cut costs. Apparently very profitable.
Kill your R&D and seed corn for short term gains? Very profitable today...but what about tomorrow?
they have still enough gains in the professional market and also the cloud service (azure, office365, ...) but... yeah. They have failed totally in the tablet market atm having like 0% of the marketshare, they have a really tiny marketshare in the phone market (3-4%) also if, in their defense, i must say that windows phone is a nice os, and windows8 is not helping at all in the consumer-pc market.
In the long term, at the moment, they are risking a lot.
Yes, because Windows and IEB are a fraction of Microsoft.
Technology companies today have to be sexy. There has be an innate desire for the products.
Just look at the resurgence of Samsung, that's sexy.
Microsoft? Some of their dev products might be okay, but Windows 8 and the new Xbox are downright awful. Horrible campaigns behind both.
Just look at the resurgence of Samsung, that's sexy.
Microsoft? Some of their dev products might be okay, but Windows 8 and the new Xbox are downright awful. Horrible campaigns behind both.
That's just confirmation bias. The number of very much unsexy tech companies that consistently make billions of dollars hand over fist vastly outnumbers that of the tiny handful of "sexy" tech companies. Is Foxconn sexy?
Also: Corporate customers don't like backdoors in their software. Expect more sinking.
I'm pretty inexperienced with stock prices, but I zoomed out a bunch and this drop doesn't look very noteworthy.
... And S&P closes at all time high.
Make Windows 8 more like Windows XP.
I said this would happen. Unfortunately I said it would happen four years ago which doesn't gain me any street cred.
edit: bah. im not here to educate you.
I don't understand how Ycombinator News works sometime. We have written this article http://wind8apps.com/microsoft-stock-down-11-percent/ and it was the FIRST here, it got on the front page, it got REMOVED and then somebody submitted a simple link to the stock page.
I mean, don't we deserve a little credit for being quick enough? Or we ALWAYS have to be the primary source of something. In this case, the google stock page is only a tool.
Please explain on how this works because I have previously submitted stories that I discovered and further developed.
I just need to understand how this community works to make the most of it.
thank you!
I mean, don't we deserve a little credit for being quick enough? Or we ALWAYS have to be the primary source of something. In this case, the google stock page is only a tool.
Please explain on how this works because I have previously submitted stories that I discovered and further developed.
I just need to understand how this community works to make the most of it.
thank you!
The guidelines and culture encourage submitting original sources: "Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter." In this case, raw stock market information from Google or another source would be the "original".
Also, the last time I saw one of your articles, a lot of people suggested running a basic spell check over your articles. I can tell that still isn't being done. More than "being first", your articles need to add meaningful insight and information. That isn't conveyed if you text hasn't been well-edited.
Also, the last time I saw one of your articles, a lot of people suggested running a basic spell check over your articles. I can tell that still isn't being done. More than "being first", your articles need to add meaningful insight and information. That isn't conveyed if you text hasn't been well-edited.
Thank you for replying!
I will make sure to add meaningful insight and information!
Thanks!
I will make sure to add meaningful insight and information!
Thanks!
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Why would we go to your link over the Google Finance link? Most of us are engineers here and don't want to sift through bs to find the info we need. The Google Finance link is straight to the point and gives us the info we need to have a discussion.
Not submitting links to your own articles is probably a good start.
Here's something to ponder: When Bill Gates retired as CEO in 2000, imagine that the board of directors hadn't chosen Steve Ballmer to replace him. Instead, they chose a CEO who stuck a sign on his desk saying "Windows and Office Development - nothing else" and then went to sip cocktails on a beach in the Bahamas for the next 13 years.
How much more would Microsoft be worth now?
I think Ballmer's alpha-male personality has blinded him to the 'do nothing' option. He loves the thrill and prestige of investing billions of dollars in new projects and is therefore biased against doing nothing and letting the shareholders keep their money.
And when he does 'do something' his execution is often flawed. Here he is in 2007 talking about the new iPhone: "Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? (Laughter.) I want to have products that appeal to everybody. Now we'll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." [1]
[1] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/20...