Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/has-microsoft-gone-nuts.html

by AdamJBall • 13 years ago

72 97 13 years ago

mobileopportunity.blogspot.co.uk

guardian5x• 13 years ago

Nokia has already stated that the Nokia Android phone (Normandy) was cancelled, even before the Microsoft take over.

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices.

Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.

pantalaimon• 13 years ago

Why do people repeat saying that "the personal pc landscape is […] moving toward mobile devices"? I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sure there is a decline in sales for PCs because the market is saturated and for the most people, unless they are gamers, their 5 year old computer will do just fine. Yet people keep shouting that the days of the desktop computer are over and everyone soon will write their eMails on their smartphone only.

thatthatis• 13 years ago

Hypothetical semi personal example:

I got an iPhone and suddenly about 40% of my Internet consumption went to the iPhone. Now, in that case most of the 40% was incremental, but it did supplant about 10% of my desktop browsing.

I got a tablet and suddenly about 30% of my Internet consumption is on the tablet, stealing about 10% from the iPhone, 10% incremental, and 10% from desktop.

I've reduced my desktop Internet use by only about 20%, but now desktop only makes up about 40% of my internet activity.

What sane mega-corp would sit there and say "well, we still dominate the desktop 40% so lets not worry about the other 60% that is now consumed by related products."

Computing is moving to mobile doesn't mean the mobile use has to come from cannibalization.

nknighthb2• 13 years ago

I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone.

Sounds like a highly biased sample set. I know several people who barely touch their PCs since getting a tablet, and there are an increasing number of children for whom PCs are just these weird things they see in school that, for some unfathomable reason, don't do anything when you touch the screen.

There already aren't a lot of reasons left for non-techies to not stick to tablets. Those reasons will continue to recede.

vertex-four• 13 years ago

My dad hasn't touched his laptop in well over a year, since getting his iPhone and iPad. I know several other people who use tablets and don't even own computers.

badman_ting3• 13 years ago

Do you know what a growth market is? And why that might be important to a business, particularly a gigantic one?

Jeez. Sorry for the tone but the continued head-in-the-sand attitude towards MS is driving me batty.

FigBug• 13 years ago

For Microsoft, it doesn't matter how many people are using PCs, it's how many are buying them. If usage is down, replacement time is up and OS price is down, how is that anything but bad for Microsoft? There are still a lot of XP users that have given Microsoft no money since at least 2006 and have still costed them money in support.

vinceguidry• 13 years ago

I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone.

My mom did. Switched to using her iPad last year. Occasionally tries to make her ancient PC retrofitted with Win8 work for her, then shrugs and goes back to her iPad.

felipeerias• 13 years ago

"the “computing” market in Q3 2008 was 92 million units of which Windows[3] was 90% whereas in Q3 2013 it was 269 million units of which Windows was 32%."

http://www.asymco.com/2013/10/10/the-five-year-plan/

simonh• 13 years ago

I wouldn't say they are smart moves as such, bearing in mind they are reversals of direction. Yes they are the right thing to do, but only because they did the wrong thing in the first place.

MS still makes plenty of money selling Windows licenses to PC manufacturers, so charging for an OS isn't going away just yet. Arguably the other dominant OS in the desktop space - OSX - isn't free either. Upgrades are now free, but you (well, certainly 'I' anyway) pay a big chunk of cash over the hardware costs when you buy a Mac, for the privilege of running OSX and the iApps.

MS isn't going to make much money on the WP App store though. Even Apple barely breaks even on the iOS App Store. Digital stores are essential to maintaining a viable ecosystem, but they're not profit centers. So if you have to give away your OS, barely break even on content sales (if that) and don't sell the hardware either where do you make your money?

Well, MS is trying to answer that by selling the hardware as well, but the problem is the main reason they're doing that is because otherwise nobody would be making hardware to run their mobile OS at all. That is how bad things are.

Even so, what are MS#s alternatives? They simply cannot afford to remain irrelevant in mobile. IMHO their best shot now is to go all-out with mobile versions of Office on WP, WinRT, Android and iOS. If they can manage to become relevant in mobile apps, there's a reasonable chance they might be able to leverage that into relevance in other areas.

ebbv2• 13 years ago

If Nokia's going to continue to exist they need to sell phones. Windows phones aren't selling. An Android one might. They have to take the shot.

Giving away Windows Phone/RT might encourage other hardware vendors to try it. Maybe they won't. But they definitely won't if Microsoft tries to charge them for it. Again, worth the shot when they have nothing to lose. It might be crazy if Windows Phone/RT were runaway successes, but they aren't.

Windows 8 is also a huge failure. Trying to go back and make it more like 7, which most people continue to prefer, is probably for the best.

This article is as poor as the design of the blog it's featured on.

dangrossman• 13 years ago

Microsoft nonetheless has to be happy that Nokia has blown past Motorola to become America’s No. 4 smartphone vendor. According to new data from Counterpoint Research, Nokia’s share of the American smartphone market has surged from a mere 1.4% in the second quarter of 2013 to 4.1% in the third quarter.

http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/nokia-us-smartphone-market-share/

ebbv2• 13 years ago

Going from being nearly dead to not quite dead is not the same as being healthy.

batmansbelt• 13 years ago

Hopefully when MS and Nokia make an Android fork they put up an Android port of Internet Explorer on Google Play. Firefox on android is a great browser (better than chrome), but it would be nice to have more choice.

Since the recent death of Opera there are only two browsers on Android.

csmuk• 13 years ago

I've suffered IE10 mobile for a bit now. It's a great browser but to be honest the entire mobile web is written for WebKit.

This makes it painful.

r00fus2• 13 years ago

It's not unlike the recent desktop browser days - where the web was written for IE6.

However, this time, WebKit is open-source, so at least there's no excuse for other browsers to not simply support it.

tptacek• 13 years ago

Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion.

Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that literally and clearly bets the company on it, is going to seem comical: Microsoft is a gigantic company that has no power in the mobile market. All their moves are big (because of their size) and pointless (because of their market position). Big pointless moves look crazy.

jfoutz• 13 years ago

They could make Visual studio better than XCode for iOS apps. They could make a really nice Android toolchain too.

If they could grab a good fraction of mobile developers (5-10% ?) they'd be in a good position to launch some sort of device.

Well, they could try.

jimbokun2• 13 years ago

"They could make Visual studio better than XCode for iOS apps. They could make a really nice Android toolchain too."

Wouldn't this just lead to more and better iOS and Android apps?

shin_lao• 13 years ago

I think you are underestimating the quality of Windows Phone devices.

We'll see what I happens, but I wouldn't write Microsoft off the mobile market yet.

Edit: market share is around 10% in five European countries according to this: http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/news-articles/Ap...

nine_k3• 13 years ago

While WM7 may be quite fine (I heard this multiple times from real users), it would take long time and much effort to acquire enough mindshare.

What WM devices lack is a killer feature. They are just another fine smartphone line, unfortunately incompatible with software for market leaders, Android and iOS.

With this regard, Jolla looks about as good, and it runs Android apps, too.

badman_ting3• 13 years ago

I am sure they are very nice, but quality is not a differentiator in that market. It's part of the entrance fee.

Microsoft has crazy amounts of money and influence, so we can all say "don't count them out yet". The point is they are huge and have no power in the most important market in the industry.

huxley2• 13 years ago

I seem to recall that Kantar does consumer surveys to generate their marketshare estimate, so it wouldn't be a direct measure of sales and there might be distortions depending on their methodology.

cylinder• 13 years ago

I think Surface Pro is an excellent device for enterprise, much better than the iPad. Problem with Microsoft is always their marketing and branding. They're making a huge push for consumers when they should instead be doing enterprise and education.

baruch• 13 years ago

That would be rather hilarious given that they were always touted as better marketers than anyone else in the market. At least that was the blame in every community I was involved in (OS/2 & Linux).

smacktoward• 13 years ago

The problem there is that the IT department may love Surface, but if all the VPs insist on bringing their iPads into the office, IT is gonna have to support the iPad. Then it's a question of "do we support iPad and Surface, or just iPad?" Because "IT says so" isn't much of an argument when it regards telling someone with power in the corporate hierarchy they can't do what they want to do.

In a way this mirrors the early days of the PC business, when people lugging their Apple IIs and Trash-80s into the office so they could run VisiCalc...

rayiner2• 13 years ago

The problem with Surface Pro isn't just marketing and branding. It's a poor point in the design space. It's as expensive as an ultrabook, but makes major compromises in screen size and keyboard quality in order to be able to pinch-hit as a tablet. Enterprise and education aren't the kind of forward-looking places where you want to be pushing a novel form-factor.

What Microsoft should have done was release a single Surface product based on an x86 Atom processor at the $500 price point, along with accessories like a mobile dock. That would've been a product they might've gotten Enterprises to buy into.

Of course, they're continuing the failed dichotomy to this day. The mantra behind Surface is "a tablet that can run your legacy apps!" but they still ignore the processor that's best-suited for hitting that design point: Bay Trail. You can run "real windows" in a tablet device that can retail for $400! They're leaving that whole market to HP, Dell, etc, who've proven over and over they don't have an innovative chromosome in their entire DNA.

nailer• 13 years ago

I think this is true, but before they missed mobile, they conquered it.

The main mobile computing vendor in the early 2000s was Palm. Microsoft destroyed the existing entrenched competitor with genuinely better products and a wider ecosystem.

And then forgot to innovate. Then got out innovated by competitors.

Just like with the browser.

tstrimple9• 13 years ago

It's a pattern I see over and over unfortunately. As soon as something is dominant, they put focus into something else allowing competition to eclipse their lead. Suddenly they are in a position of having to become relevant in the market again. I see the same thing happening now with Skype. Skype is/was the dominant voip platform, but it's stagnating under Microsoft. The mobile applications are terrible. The only "innovation" I've seen around Skype is the inclusion in Xbox One which is is actually very good in limited scenarios.

r00fus2• 13 years ago

Microsoft seems to only want to compete, and the existence of a salable product seems (from this outsider) to be simply a byproduct.

Joeri• 13 years ago

Microsoft / nokia are still likely to exceed iOS phone market share globally within two years as they are growing much faster. Nokia has been growing the market at the low end where there is no iOS and where android is a poor experience (and Windows Phone surprisingly is quite good). The US market is locked into high end phones due to the carrier subsidy model, but in the rest of the world the story is very different.

Microsoft's current moves are about the tablet space. They think the dominant device form factor will be tablets, not laptops, so they're trying to reposition windows to be a tablet-friendly OS, but have the problem that people don't care about win32 on a tablet, but they do want apps and those apps must be designed for mobile. A lot of what they're doing makes sense from the perspective of wanting to be a player in the tablet space : the unified OS and app store strategy which they are working on now, windows 8, windows rt, surface, the Nokia buyout, and so on.

huxley2• 13 years ago

Nokia has done a great job of building marketshare on the back of extremely-low-margin phones like the 52x series, but I would hesitate to declare it a victory for Microsoft/Nokia just yet, it might just be a dead-cat bounce.

Florin_Andrei• 13 years ago

Microsoft isn't nuts.

Yep. Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed, that's all.

Look, they've been great simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. There was an incredibly TREMENDOUS hidden demand for a PC and an operating system for it, and MS happened to be there at the time. A half-blind monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money too. It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time.

And that was a market that worked well if unified on a single standard. As luck would have had it, that was Windows. Okay, not entirely luck, Bill Gates is also a shrewd businessman. But from a technical perspective, MS has always been mind-numbingly mediocre and uninspired and anti-visionary. Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.

Well, now the tremendous hurricane lifting MS up is dying down, and it's becoming apparent that it really takes gale-force winds to keep flying an object with all the graceful aerodynamics of a brick.

With the tides of history turning against them, it's now obvious to everyone that they are really inept at innovation. What's funny is that this is considered "news".

Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long. You've probably cost us all perhaps a decade of progress. Nobody of consequence is going to miss you.

tzs• 13 years ago

It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time

Not impossible, as Gary Kildall demonstrated.

jimbokun2• 13 years ago

"A half-blind monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money too."

I guess that makes Gary Kildall a completely-blind monkey.

Edit: HA! tzs, I guess great minds think alike! :)

bluedino2• 13 years ago

> Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long.

Don't be so harsh. The industry wouldn't exist as we know it without Microsoft.

There'd still be 10+ different platforms.

pmelendez4• 13 years ago

"Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed"

me·di·o·cre adjective 1. of only moderate quality; not very good.

I beg your pardon, but there are people out there who think that Visual Studio, Office and even WP8 are vastly superior in comparison with the alternatives. Quality not always guarantee success (You can ask Apple with the original Macintosh but there are several examples of that in history)

spion• 13 years ago

They aren't really inept. Its just that they want to do everything themselves, disregarding others. "It runs on our Microsoft platform, works well with our Microsoft tools and you can even store your stuff on our Microsoft cloud, provided that you run the Microsoft sync tool on your Microsoft operating system"

They really need to learn to stop doing that, because they're not able to afford it anymore.

twoodfin• 13 years ago

Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.

Kicking and screaming? This myth has developed that Microsoft completely missed the Internet bus, and only billg's belated realization and just-in-time gamble saved them from market disaster.

Except billg's famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo was written in May of 1995! Netscape Navigator 1.0 had been released a whole five months earlier. Essentially nobody from the old PC guard saw and acted on the web's potential before Microsoft did.

mark_integerdsv• 13 years ago

Although I share your sentiment in this regard there is something you have overlooked IMO.

Now I can't put my finger on it exactly but... Spreadsheets.

Seriously.

Spreadsheets are most likely the original reason that anyone ever needed a PC.

MS certainly did not miss that boat and a large part of their dominance today is centered around Excel and more recently SQL.

The OS is almost incidental.

MS does understand that value of being able to store and exploit data.

I hope I have put my point clearly enough, I'm aware that I haven't articulated it very well at all.

Arnor• 13 years ago

They simply missed mobile.

This might be a bit premature. Mobile isn't done yet. There's still plenty of time for Microsoft to develop a successful strategy. I don't think we'll ever see Microsoft as dominant in the mobile space, but I doubt there was ever a strategy that would have led to long term mobile domination by Microsoft.

gfish3000• 13 years ago

Not at all.

Because Android achieved dominance, it's now starting to lock down how much its OS can be modified by other vendors and locking manufacturers into using either Google's services or having to make their own from scratch on top of an outdated OS shell. Microsoft is probably wondering how much appetite there is for vendors to make a break with Android and try to replicate their past successes with a new, more modern mobile OS.

At the same time, it's trying to take care of its legacy users and giving them what they want and what they ask rather than simply dictating to them "here's how you will be using your computers." Also, not what you'd call nuts, just listening to consumers and learning from their experiments.

Jemaclus2• 13 years ago

Microsoft isn't nuts, but black text on dark gray background is... yikes.

mcormier• 13 years ago

Try reloading the page. The server is taking a beating because this article has gone viral. There is a white background if the site loads properly.

Jemaclus2• 13 years ago

I tried a couple of times, so I wouldn't make a dumb comment, but it never did show up... I may stand corrected, assuming a white background ever actually loads. :)

dredmorbius• 13 years ago

Readability to the rescue: http://www.readability.com

Shouldn't be necessary, but sadly far too often is.

I'm also known to tweak site CSS. Rather compulsively these days (Stylebot / Stylish browser plugins help for this).

gdrulia• 13 years ago

I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.

LordIllidan• 13 years ago

If they can be resized and used as normal windows - I'm all for it - that's how I use apps on a normal desktop operating system!

MLR• 13 years ago

I'd assume they could scale fine but have a minimum resolution of 1024*768, I think that's what MS used as their base when designing Metro apps.

stordoff• 13 years ago

I've been using ModernMix [1] for a while to do exactly that. It's a bit janky at times, but I find it much more useful than having metro apps stuck outside of the traditional desktop.

[1] https://www.stardock.com/products/modernmix/

badman_ting3• 13 years ago

They have so much money and are well-entrenched enough in various ways that I expect they will flail around until they hit on something that can sustain their business long-term. Though I admit I have absolutely no idea what that will be.

What has been frustrating for me is how this way forward was missing for years now, but criticism of MS management was always shrugged off with references to Windows and Office. Criticism of Ballmer was met with "profits are up", and a sprinkling of "MS is a huge company, you think you could do better?" Mmmm, so helpful. Then the industry they depend on as the source of those profits is registering double-digit declines YOY and all of a sudden it's a crisis. So aggravating.

winslow• 13 years ago

Would Microsoft benefit from Nokia building an Android phone to help their argument in the EU over the android patent? They could argue that they are indeed using the patent in their own android devices and thus have a compelling argument to keep receiving royalties from other manufactures.

steven20124• 13 years ago

Microsoft should split up the company into smaller ones. This is something that should have happened with the anti-trust case a decade ago, but unfortunately it didn't happen. I said to myself at the time, it would have been the best thing for the software industry if we saw Microsoft split up into an OS company and an applications company.

Now, I think they should split off Windows, Applications, X-box, and Mobile. There are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft still, but they are all stymied with the culture of everything having to center around Windows. X-box was best when it didn't have Windows shoved down it's throat and the same goes for Mobile. Now, Windows is having Mobile shoved down its throat by an increasingly desperate and frenetic management that is drowning in incompetence, and they're taking everyone down around them.

What they need to do is just admit that the industry is changing on too many fronts too quickly, and this idea of having horizontal integration across multiple products is unfeasible. Having integration of Internet Explorer into Windows, or the same with Office worked. But they keep going back to the same well too many times. They need to let each market grow organically, and let their good PMs and engineers make the best products they can, not the best products that will keep selling Windows.

TylerE3• 13 years ago

XBox always ran Windows. Even the original XBox was running on a modified Windows 2000 base and kernel.

tstrimple9• 13 years ago

I disagree completely. That's essentially the way things were a few years ago. A big part of Microsoft's problems, both internal and external, come from the fiefdoms that sprung up around the different divisions. They were effectively different companies with the same CEO. They rarely communicated well and this lead to a lot of unnecessary duplication of work. Microsoft is now on a path to unifying the ecosystem and this is fantastic from a developer perspective. I can write an app for Windows 8, and the vast majority of code for it can be reused directly on a Windows Phone or Xbox app. That is significant. As much as people complain about Windows 8, unifying the UX across the platforms is a Good Thing. Using a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet and Xbox all feel very similar. None of that happens with different companies.

corresation3• 13 years ago

Using a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet and Xbox all feel very similar. None of that happens with different companies.

Why should a game machine, controlled by a gamepad, operate anything like a touchscreen smartphone, or a keyboard and mouse controlled desktop? There is absolutely no value to that, and it is exactly what is being pointed out as the problem with Microsoft: Everything hinges on trying to leverage and push other parts of Microsoft's empire (Windows 8 has been a relative disaster commercially because of this misdirected unifying vision, just as it would be if Honda gave their cars motorcycle handlebars to unify the product line), and the end result is that the few products that should do well are diminished because of it.

Microsoft is now on a path to unifying the ecosystem and this is fantastic from a developer perspective.

Microsoft has always been unifying the ecosystem, to largely disastrous results. DNA. OLE. WinFS. And on and on. Longhorn was a total disaster for exactly this reason, someone declaring "You know what would be cool -- if one single technology foundation served every one of our products. Let's call everyone into a meeting!", where suddenly the only superficially similar needs of Exchange, Access, Windows NT, and so on all have to try to come to some consensus (hint - it never happened. It was a disaster from top to bottom). Metro is more of the same, though Microsoft became committed to pushing it through. It was a gimmick for a short while, but is there anyone who says "Boy, I should would like an Xbox One because it works like the desktop I no longer use and is like the Microsoft tablet I will never own"?

steven20124• 13 years ago

It's great for people who want to be in the Windows ecosystem. The problem is, almost no one wants a completely Windows experience anymore. Microsoft is great at strategically leveraging their monopoly and creating a forced marriage between two separate experiences, and making both of them worse, much like forcing IE into Windows, Windows Mobile into Windows 8, etc. The problem for Microsoft is that this is no longer 1997. People have legitimate choices and are spurning Microsoft like never before. Their monopoly no longer buys them any strategic advantage anymore except in enterprise software.

They can keep trying to create a unifying UX experience, but no one cares. Their Metro UX in Windows 8 has been a disaster. The inertia that Microsoft counted on to make IE the #1 browser no longer works anymore.

The best thing to do for the engineers and for shareholders is to break the company apart and let each division fend for themselves. Let them make the best product they can, not stymied with one hand tied behind their back because they have to maintain this terrible lineage back to Windows.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

I think this is way off the mark, in general.

"But that’s not the roadmap we’re hearing from the Microsoft OS team. Instead, they’re talking about creating a single Windows code base that runs across all types of devices, something that’s technically appealing if you’re a Microsoft engineer but thoroughly uninteresting to customers."

If I wanted an Android phone, I'd go buy one of the bazillions of Android phones. If you're someone who isn't just going to buy go a Samsung phone, you're probably, like me, not invested in Google's ecosystem. You don't want a phone that plugs into Google's "cloud" but rather a phone that runs Outlook and Office, and can interface with your company's Exchange Server, Windows-based CMS, etc. That has value; being yet another crappy Android vendor does not.

Microsoft's strategy is just fine, it's their execution that sucks. Windows on Phones and Tablets should have featured tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem from Day 1. Instead, they botched Surface RT by releasing it with a half-baked buggy version of Office on a tablet that didn't integrate with Active Directory. Windows Phone 8 has no synergy with Windows on a tablet or a Windows PC, and oh, the roadmap to a proper touch-optimized version of Office includes the phrase "when pigs fly." Microsoft comes consistently late to the party with products that are little better than MVPs, and that's sinking them.

0_o• 13 years ago

With Start8 installed, the Windows 8.1 is actually the best Windows OS I have ever used. Looking forward to a native start menu!

duwease• 13 years ago

Isn't this just a continuation of Microsoft's recent-years strategy of waiting until other peoples' innovations created a market, and then trying to drop their entry into it? Zune, Xbox, Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, etc.. hell, didn't Ballmer explicitly state that was his strategy?

tstrimple9• 13 years ago

I don't think that's true at all. Zune, Windows Phone, Windows Tablets and Xbox are all more innovative than the competition. The phone and tablet are suffering from being so late to the game, and Xbox is "suffering" from grossly incompetent marketing and PR. All of those products get fantastic reviews from people who actually own them.

coderguy123• 13 years ago

I don't know guys, I just picked up dell venue 8 pro. this thing is nice. the whole Metro things works really well and it is fast and smooth. The quality of games/apps I am seeing is already better than my kid's Nexus 7 (long way from ipad tho). If they market this thing right, I can see it(windows tablets in general) gain some hold in pure tablet world.

drcode• 13 years ago

Luckily Windows 8.1 is just barely capable enough for me to run virtualbox with an ubuntu image.

How people can get by using Windows 8.1 as their main OS (beyond using it merely as a shell to launch virtual machines) is beyond me. Microsoft deserves to lose big time in the marketplace for their half-assed attempt to glue a phone interface onto desktop PCs.

pmelendez4• 13 years ago

Haters gonna hate.

I installed Windows 8.1 on my laptop (2008 model so no touchscreen) and the experience has been great so far. I do spend more time on the desktop side than in Metro side but even then in overall is faster, more reliable and with nicer features (i.e win+x, universal search, etc.) than windows 7.

skywhopper• 13 years ago

The author says Metro is the new OS/2. I think the correct metaphor would be Microsoft Bob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob

ar7hur• 13 years ago

Very well written.

Excerpt: Microsoft could ship a hamster wrapped in duct tape, label it Windows, and a lot of OEMs would bundle it.

pmelendez4• 13 years ago

"I think a more interesting licensing strategy for Microsoft would be forking Android"

Sure, what we really need is having another flavour of Android. That wouldn't be confusing to users at all and will make developers happy (specially because it will be ditching the easier development environment for mobiles )[/sarcasm]

mortyseinfeld• 13 years ago

But today, Android has huge market momentum, so a phone vendor switching off it would be abandoning most of the available customers, something they are extremely reluctant to do

Wrong, consumers aren't attached to phone OS's like they are to windows on the desktop.

You'll be betting wrong, if you bet that windows mobile is just "going to go away".

Has Microsoft Gone Nuts?

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