Why doesn't Microsoft out-innovate Apple?

http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/04/why-doesnt-microsoft-outinnova.html

by rockstar9 • 18 years ago

8 19 18 years ago

techblog.dallasnews.com

damon• 18 years ago

Innovation takes more than deep pockets...

sabat4• 18 years ago

Alan Kay (guy who invented the window and other GUI goodies while at PARC) once said that innovation really isn't that difficult to achieve -- you just need to rub smart people and money together.

rantfoil• 18 years ago

Speaking from experience, innovation is VERY difficult to achieve from within the Microsoft organization. It's not impossible. It's just hard. Microsoft is a collection of loosely related fiefdoms linked at the VP level, which is easily 8 or more reporting levels above the normal joe level of software engineers and PM's. You need to have the ear of some very important people to get things done, which just probably won't happen for most.

Innovative organizations seem to be of two types: a) top down design leadership like Apple, or more likely b) bottom up environment that allows innovation to happen organically. SteveB and most of the VP's don't have the product design gifts Steve Jobs has, so A is out of the question. Unfortunately, Microsoft is so large and un-agile that B is impossible as well.

tx2• 18 years ago

I wonder how did .NET thing worked out? Someone decided to bring Anders Hejlsberg on board and give him absolute freedom.

It was quite impressive for a company of Microsoft's size to create something like that from scratch.

markbao• 18 years ago

I'd absolutely agree with rantfoil and damon, but here's another reason why (and I own and love a Mac, for the record):

Fanboys.

I'm not kidding. Microsoft can innovate well (and they have in the past) and they'll always have an evil stigma around them. Apple, whatever they do, mostly has an "everything Apple does is awesome and good" while glossing over the things Apple has done wrong.

Granted, Apple's done some great stuff. But I'll say this: when Apple releases a Tablet PC, fanboys will praise it even though if it is with similar functionality to Microsoft's Tablet PC, and will cause the inertia to start and people start pointing out the obscure flaws in Microsoft's Tablet PC and talk about how amazing Apple's is.

I'm being absolutely serious here. It's something that's akin to the Google/Yahoo! competition also. Fanboys and the people that they influence have a great effect on a company's desire to innovate.

ardit33• 18 years ago

No they can't. I just bought a Microsoft Live camera, and I had to install 400mb worth of stuff to get it work, on a pretty patched up XP, and even a Vista!! (which came out a year ago). It should be able to just plug that thing and get going. Ah, and the button on top of it, works of course, only with MSN.

Oh, and it wont even work on my sister's computer, as she needs to install SP2.

MS = crap

And let's not even mention what sorry piece of OS Vista is. It is god aweful, and I regeret not wiping it out from my parent's computer.

tx2• 18 years ago

Good companies can create fanboys and not-so-good can lose them seemingly overnight. Believe it or not, there were quite a few Microsoft fanboys just 10 years ago, I was one of them: it was a great place to work in early 90s and they kicked everyone's ass on engineering battleground: Netscape, Borland and IBM can whine all they want, but the technology behind NN4, Borland compilers and OS/2 couldn't handle Microsoft's will to compete.

... while Apple was considered to be technically inferior (and it was) overpriced junk for seniors.

When you turn these tables around, that's called innovation: not just 100% technology, but design and marketing as well.

joao• 18 years ago

It isn't that Apple has better designers or programmers, but they have a culture that thrives on quality, innovation and just plain building better products than the competition. Here's a great post on that: http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2007/07/05/how-many-of-your...

"... [Apple] is a company with leadership who has the fortitude to take the risk, find the budget, and push the technology for the single cause of designing compelling user experiences. Apple got it right."

STHayden• 18 years ago

they just need a steve jobs like person. I don't even like apple but you need to have a guy who can make large decisions and also have a vision of the ways things need to work. If the people in charge are not already like that they will not jump at the chance to give up their power to some one else.

sabat4• 18 years ago

Steve Jobs summed up his opinion on why this is:

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is -- I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their products. And you say, "why is that important?" -- well, you know, proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea -- if it weren't for the Mac they would never have that in their products and so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success -- I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.

(from Triumph of the Nerds)

gscott• 18 years ago

There are a lot of people in Microsoft with a wide range of skills. Give MS employees 1 day a week to work on there own special projects and create a "Microsoft labs" page and they would get some great stuff created. But I believe that MS likes to have ideas flow from the top instead of from the bottom/middle. People at the top (likely) want to protect there position, so they do not allow people to "stand out" in any way.

shiranaihito• 18 years ago

My biased guess is that Microsoft is concentrating too much on forcefully extracting money from whereever it can.

Apple has obviously concentrated on making things that people would actually _want to_ use. The truckloads of money they're raking in is just an (intentional) side-effect.

The plan with Vista was to ram it down everyone's throat through Microsoft's monopoly position, but where is the added value for the users?

Leopard received a much warmer response. Fanboys, yes, and bugs, but still - it's something that people want to use.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

Yet Apple seems to deliver far more innovative products to market

Keyword: Seems.

Yes, if you're preaching to the converted, that's proof enough, but Apple has rebadged BSD and has gotten a large degree of success through a remake of a 1979 device, the Sony Walkman. But those aren't really innovations at all. Shiny object!=innovation. I don't know how else to put it.

Here's microsoft's research page,

http://research.microsoft.com/research/default.aspx

Here's, umm, Apple's

http://www.apple.com/education/research/

...or, at least, that's the 1st link for the search query, "Apple Research":

Hmm, the page you’re looking for can’t be found.

A 404.

alaskamiller3• 18 years ago

Upon Steve Job's return one of the many decisions he did was to axe the Research group within Apple. His explanation was simply: no one does R in the valley anymore. The sole survivor of that group was QuickTime while over the years what Apple has always excelled at has been development and an eye for seeing innovation and bring that home.

iPod: contracted.

iTunes: bought.

Most of the pro tools: bought.

Computers: integration of OEM parts.

Displays: rebadged.

And they've been able to gain marketshare like crazy and release products that people lust for. On the consumer front what has Microsoft presented to the world even with their massive research division? Talking Barney dolls? A house full of quirky tech they keep showing off every chance they get? Surface? Zune? Xbox?

sabat4• 18 years ago

"iPod: contracted."

The physical manufacturing, yeah, but I'm pretty sure the hardware designers are Apple employees.

"iTunes: bought."

The basis for it was purchased, yes. It was nothing like it is now.

The thing with Apple is that they tend to take germs of ideas and see them through to full realization. Mac OS, you could say, was just a clone of the OS that ran the Xerox Star. But the Star's OS was crude compared to the Mac's (even in the earliest versions).

alaskamiller3• 18 years ago

Speaking from experience, it's the ability Steve Jobs has to merge benevolence with good design. It's a mission and within the DNA of Apple to bring to the world good designs, intuition, and stuff that just works.

At the end of the day it's just computers but when imbued with the idea that through computers peoples' lives are easier, more efficient, and more fun, you just attract people willing to work harder and longer and wanting to change the world.

Sappy, yes, but it works.

henning• 18 years ago

A big part of Microsoft's R&D is paying people like Erik Meijer to not work for someone Microsoft is competing with.

Why doesn't Microsoft out-innovate Apple?

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