Microsoft is Dead (2007)

http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html

by sharjeel • 12 years ago

182 175 12 years ago

sekm• 12 years ago

IMO Microsoft is still one of the scariest companies when it comes to the gaming industry. I'm overjoyed to see tricklets of sanity rise up (the PC market)through Valves efforts, but MS is still a very big, very scary beast in AAA gaming.

kendalk2• 12 years ago

My guess is that Valve is being watched by every other game maker. I wonder what is being said behind closed doors in meetings with a lot of suits. If Valve is successful, I don't think they will be alone for long.

paulScholes• 12 years ago

'Microsoft's biggest weakness is that they still don't realize how much they suck. '

right on the spot.

adamconroy2• 12 years ago

It is an insightful piece but nothing annoys me more than sensationalism. Its click bait and I am annoyed I got sucked into reading it and annoyed that I feel compelled to waste time commenting.

Anyway, if it isn't obvious, the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead. Microsoft clearly isn't dead it just isn't the biggest player on the internet, and isn't really a player in the start up space.

caiob• 12 years ago

Microsoft isn't dead. ------ . They aren't big players on the web, start up space, mobile nor hardware.

A bit contradictory, no?

Ironballs• 12 years ago

Not really. They're still immense players in desktop and corporate IT. That alone accounts for an immense amount of revenue, a sizeable chunk in the whole world of computing.

On top of that, Azure is competitive and is gaining more and more traction, and the person who headed the Azure department is now the new CEO. Their gaming division (Xbox) is profitable, which is mostly a hardware field, and they're slowly getting a foothold in mobile and have purchased a big mobile hardware manufacturer.

Their development tools (Visual Studio and .NET) are immensely popular and they've managed to capitalize on the whole JavaScript thing by making it easy to develop with VS.

They're anything but dead.

Of course things like Bing aren't a success yet but if MSFT figures out what do with that they'll have something other than people just Google stuff on.

ddeck• 12 years ago

I don't see why. Microsoft had $77bn in revenue last year, with net income of ~$22bn. Revenue has grown every year for the last five years and last year's was their highest ever.

Not being large players in the areas mentioned doesn't imply that they are somehow "dead".

jey• 12 years ago

PG addresses this criticism here: http://paulgraham.com/cliffsnotes.html

tshile2• 12 years ago

Yeah, he was right, people that design software no longer had to worry about Microsoft.

Except that it's 2014 and Microsoft is still relevant. The techy bubble on the west coast may all be using Mac's but microsoft products can still be found throughout the rest of the world.

I like PG, and love his essays, but this one was just bad. I'm not even talking about his prediction, just the way he puts it out there. It's just a very pathetic read.

For ~20 years Microsoft was a bully and received much criticism for it. Now they're just another tech company that's successful at the end of the day and has a lot of products out there being used by a lot of people. Now they're dead?

Give me a break. The whole Microsoft-hate bandwagon is absolutely pathetic to watch. It's just like the Apple-hate bandwagon.

spaceborn2• 12 years ago

the article's credibility is killed by the use of the word dead

How? The author clearly doesn't mean "out of business" when he says "dead". He means that what Microsoft once was, or what it represented, is dead. The idea once conveyed by the word "Microsoft" is dead. It's not sensationalist clickbait, it's a metaphor.

TwoBit2• 12 years ago

Well he may mean that, but that's not what comes to mind when most people think of the word "dead." And picking that particular word to use as liberally as he does comes across as overly dramatic.

adamconroy2• 12 years ago

If they were really dead he wouldn't need to say it, it wouldn't be of interest to say it, and he wouldn't have bothered saying it. Microsoft only needs to be concerned when people stop banging on about them.

It would have been better if had said he wished they were dead because he doesn't like them, or because he thinks they are bullies or he thinks they are ruining the web or something of that nature. I would respect that.

ballard3• 12 years ago

Reduced to not fearing is dead. Computer Associates eeks out a living on obsolete enterprise apps that some people. And the city of San Francisco contains a direct current power utility. Edge cases are the opposite of dominance.

APPL may soon be the next MSFT if they don't have another full-sized iPad up their sleeves to wow us with very soon. A solar powered flying watch that reads your mind and predictively orders groceries. :)

mehwoot2• 12 years ago

Microsoft as the concept of an all powerful dominating IT company is dead, and nothing has or will replace it. The company itself is still doing fine- they still make roughly twice the profit google did last financial year.

yzzxy• 12 years ago

Is that just net profit, or does it account for growth? Net profit is not always a good metric for a large company's performance, as there are a lot of incentives to keep that number down and invest money back into the business (such as taxes). Amazon, for example, almost always operates near or at a loss from a quarterly or yearly perspective, but makes huge growth as business.

mehwoot2• 12 years ago

True, I haven't looked deeply into the financials so I don't know what they are doing with their money. Microsoft's profit margin looks a lot better than google's so maybe google is reinvesting a lot.

codeulike2• 12 years ago

This Ballmer slide from a few months ago compares Microsoft financials to some of the other big players.

https://twitter.com/janettu/status/380824535714377728

Pretty interesting: they are still big, and they are arguably much more diversified than any other the other big players.

eldavido2• 12 years ago

It's really interesting how in 2007, I believed (as did pg, seemingly) that the web would eventually overtake desktop software.

Fast forward seven years, and some of the biggest names in software (Instagram, Lyft) have completely abandoned the web for "desktop" (really, native) software.

That so much code ships directly to mobile devices says a lot about the power of centralized app stores and truly sandboxed installations where one app can't trash the entire system. We've come a long way.

anoncow• 12 years ago

Will there be a move towards decentralization of apps again or are we locked in? The inertia that app store and play store have is formidable. If Windows Phone fails, some part of the blame will be on the availibility of apps.

joeguilmette• 12 years ago

Instagram and Lyft are the biggest names in software?

blntechie2• 12 years ago

It's not. But clearly there is a momentum towards native apps again. Surprising is that this momentum is happening even in desktops. You just have to see how many popular services one used to do from browsers are being done from mobile/tablet apps now. Email, chat, social, weather etc.

And I'm not even including non-web apps like Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, Uber, Lyft etc. here.

beefman• 12 years ago

The critical characteristic of the desktop here isn't its use of native code. It's more the local filesystem. Many mobile apps use network data. From this perspective they have more in common with web apps than with desktop software.

Despite this, I'm inclined to agree that the web is threatened. The desktop may be defined by local files but the web wasn't defined by remote ones. It was more about the culture. More about anyone-can-publish. To me, that's the baby at risk in the mobile bathwater.

That, and any aspect of personal computing that can't be performed on a phone. Which is most of them. I'll stick with the hemorrhoids and circadian disruption, thanks.

My wife and I were talking about this the other night: It's not that people who learned to compute on the desktop are abandoning it for mobile. It's that most people couldn't handle desktop computing in the first place. It's too abstract (dare I say difficult?). So the mobile revolution is really about the unwashed masses computing for the first time. Perhaps that's why mobile apps and operating systems eerily remind me of soap operas and reality TV.

schuke• 12 years ago

It's not that people who learned to compute on the desktop are abandoning it for mobile. It's that most people couldn't handle desktop computing in the first place.

Totally agree. For most everyday scenarios, using Windows is like flying a Boeing 737 for your daily commute: it's a huge overkill, requiring way too much setting up and maintenance and when you incidentally touches one switch the whole thing stops working.

Windows 8 didn't take off because what MSFT did was in addition to all the panels of the 737, they put an iPad in the cabin. For those familiar with Windows that's no big deal: this is why we see people shrug off all the Win 8 hate, saying "it's just Windows 7 plus touching interface". But for those had trouble coping with Windows in the first place, it's now doubly confusing.

code_duck• 12 years ago

Facebook has been steadily building a website for Instagram since they acquired it. You can now view, comment on and like photos from a browser.

gaius2• 12 years ago

It is not surprising at all. "The Cloud" is really "the mainframe" and "native software" is really "client-server".

The cycle takes 10 years or so but once you've seen a few you'll realize that the same things come round again and again. The only progress is through better hardware. Software guys, with their (our) fascination for the new and shiny and disdain for "legacy code" means we just reinvent the wheel over and over again.

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

I was only thinking this yesterday. It is very very true. All of it is client-server, just with different transport protocols. In the end, it is just interfaces to databases basically!

forgottenpaswrd2• 12 years ago

Well, in my opinion web programming and native are blending together.

The web approaches native, with asm.js and webgl. It is not just a document anymore.

Native approaches web, just look at what Apple, or Dropbox are doing(they use native code for giving you network capabilities).

eldavido2• 12 years ago

I sincerely hope this doesn't happen.

Web software basically runs anywhere and doesn't have to be updated; it has minimal platform dependencies.

Native code, on the other hand, is a 25-year-long story of install/uninstall, sophisticated package/dependency management, chroot jails, and viruses.

I fear that, if web software continues its crawl out of the browser sandbox, we'll get all the disadvantages of native code (security exploits, dependency problems) without any of the advantages (speed, high-performance graphics)

rmc• 12 years ago

Fast forward seven years, and some of the biggest names in software (Instagram, Lyft) have completely abandoned the web for "desktop" (really, native) software.

But don't those software only work by connecting to their cloud servers? Could you use Instagram if Instagram Ltd turned off their servers? That means it's inherently web software.

visualR3• 12 years ago

Web and internet are not the same thing. Web generally refers to a browser client.

nazka• 12 years ago

We shouldn't fool ourselves. Even with technologies like AngularJS, webGL, or D3.js ; desktop applications will always be there. You will always have software that need the maximum of power and will be native. Even if you think that because in 5 years computers will be much more faster, it won't change the fact that some applications will need to have every ressources available.

The only place where I can see we would avoid to do native apps is for mobile apps. Because in the future mobiles will be faster but they stay limited by their small screen. So you will use higher level tools to do your "simple" app that doesn't require thousands buttons and stay more productive.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

That's because the web disrupted native desktop, and native mobile is disrupting both web and native desktop. Native mobile is certainly not the same as native desktop. It's a completely new paradigm. The web might disrupt native mobile yet again in the future. And then perhaps native-glassware or whatever will disrupt web on mobile, and so on.

LordHumungous• 12 years ago

Ehhh Microsoft still has a lot of talent they are just plagued with entrenched bureaucracy.

SwellJoe2• 12 years ago

And, what do you imagine will solve the problem of entrenched bureaucracy? Given that bureaucracy tends to expand itself as a primary feature...saying a company is "just plagued" with it, is a pretty damning statement.

beerglass• 12 years ago

(sorry if I sound like a phony or worse suckup when I say this, but) PG is one of the smartest, ahead-of-his-times guy of our generation!

djulius2• 12 years ago

Yes you do, but nevermind, you're just like the vast majority of commenters here.

Btw thanks for your contribution, very interesting.

primitivesuave3• 12 years ago

The most common form of Microsoft-hate usually centers around how a company of such gargantuan size makes such gargantuan fuck-ups. But this is to be expected of companies of gargantuan size, and is certainly not limited to Microsoft alone (although recently they've had more than their fair share).

My qualm with Microsoft is all the little things that they let slip through. Little things like having a control panel with 100 different links with nondescript names. Is it really possible that not a single person at Microsoft tried changing a setting on their Windows machine and realized how difficult it was to even find the setting? Were they so entrenched in the Microsoft way of doing things that they were accustomed to a shitty user experience? Or did the aesthetically minded engineer have his voice drowned out by the bureaucracy?

If the higher-ups were yelling down the food chain, "build an Apple-killing UI!", I can see how they would settle on what became the app-centric look of Windows 8. But blatantly idiotic decisions around the little things like control panels, choosing wireless connections, and the sheer difficulty of navigation, make me realize that somewhere at Microsoft something is really fucked up.

nitrogen• 12 years ago

I for one preferred the old control panel, and disable category view on any Windows machine I have to use.

ballard3• 12 years ago

Oh god, a million times yes. I really like the old windows way and prefer the osx pref panes. It seemed like MSFT confusing churn to say we changed something (and therefore "fixed" something) without knowing what made sense or what/if there was a customer problem. Instead it created a bigger problem of customer confusion (relearning). All companies including Apple have done this, but the takeaway is that not caring about customer impact is inevitably a recipe for strategic failure as others that do take marketshare (Zappos). It's also a dick move antithetical to providing quality product|service.

Wohui• 12 years ago

I thought he was criticizing the icon view, fair enough.

blntechie2• 12 years ago

Wasn't control panel decently organized even in Windows XP SP2? Honestly, I don't see much difference between Mac's System Preferences now and Control Panel of Windows XP era.

Searching these settings sucked in XP but Windows 7 resolved that.

Windows 8 is one thing I can agree with you. It made using the PC unnecessarily hard for mouse and keyboard users.

xarien• 12 years ago

For my windows partition, I actually quite enjoy the move from win 7 to win 8. Here's a few things that I've taken a liking to:

1) Boot into desktop mode. This was introduced in 8.1 and definitely better for my uses than having to open a desktop from the metro UI in 8.0.

2) Win-f, I used to use win-r quite a bit to run programs quickly. However, with the changes MS has made with caching, win-f is just as fast and saves me from having to remember the commands for system preferences and the like.

3) Powershell. Win 8 ships with powershell and it's actually decent.

4) I have personally found it to run faster than win 7 as it shifts more UI load to the graphics card.

primitivesuave3• 12 years ago

Honestly I loved Windows XP, although I really only used it as a teenager because it was the only OS that could run Civilization III. I remember that blue control panel that neatly organized all the settings - it is astounding that it was considered more user-friendly to just make a big three-column list of every subcategory of settings.

One thing to note is that for someone who knows what they're doing, the structure of settings don't make much of a difference, because you'll find things eventually. It makes a big difference when technology-inept people like my mom have to fix problems like "how do I make the computer screen not hurt my eyes?". They just don't connect the phrase "display settings" to the concept of brightness, so navigating settings becomes a nightmare for them.

mbruce• 12 years ago

One can classify sw development companies into dev centric or UI centric. Microsoft is the former. Tivo, Apple ( more to apple than this though) and some others are User centric.

It refers to where the seat of power is in the company which defines strategy and envelops products. A dev centric company like Microsoft does not become User centric by hiring a UI designer..

Hence, Windows UI will always be sub par. USer centric design is very deep, not superficially changeable, and can't be simply bolted on.

sgarman• 12 years ago

Things like you are describing are not always designed from the ground up the way you see them in the end. It's quite probable it built up over time starting with just a few controls ending in many. It's easy in retrospect to see this error but it's been built and shipped and probably lower priority for a company of that size. This is a pretty common issue for large companies or projects with many people aka design by committee.

weixiyen3• 12 years ago

In terms of UI (flat content based UI) at least, they did not copy Apple, it was the other way around. Apple just did it better.

wtallis• 12 years ago

It seems like you're referring to the visual style, but I think the comment you were replying to was about the structure and behavior more than mere skinning, and about differences that far predate iOS 7. There's a reason the term is "look and feel", not just "look"; that second half is where Apple so often distinguishes itself.

coldtea5• 12 years ago

That's just graphic design. UI is about how it's designed to work, what controls are where, what labels, what feedback it gives, etc.

The same UI can have different themes easily.

pancakesown• 12 years ago

System Configuration (msconfig) for me was a huge, huge disappointment product after product by Microsoft. Sure it's for "power" users, but I think a lot of people want to make certain applications not start up at boot, and not all software makes it easy to do in application. For more than a decade I have waited for them to allow resizing the damn window so I can read something more than the first few letters of an application name, path, etc. Nothing!!!

anonymfus• 12 years ago

In Windows 8 they moved this functionality to new Task manager, and it's window is resizable.

angryasian2• 12 years ago

I thought all the microsoft hate came from the anti competitive behaviour like - embrace, extend and extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish , along with documented anti competitive behavior http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft and similar patent trolling against linux and most recent android.

jessedhillon• 12 years ago

People born when the antitrust lawsuit was prosecuted would now be in college. So I would expect that if what you said is true, going forward, MS hate explained by those reasons would decrease. It would be like people in their 30s today holding a grudge against IBM for their role in the PCs v. clones battle.

Edit: I suspect the problem for MS is not lingering hate from the early-mid 90s, but more one of fading into irrelevance among people who are today 18-25 y/o

codeulike2• 12 years ago

All of those things that Microsof were hated for in the 90s are just mainstream tech business practice in 2014. For better or worse, they were trailblazers that big tech companies since have copied, not just a one-off bad guy. Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are all doing exactly the same stuff, where they can and where they calculate they can get away with it.

gnaffle2• 12 years ago

Here's a good story about the shutdown menu in Vista, and how it came to be:

Original rant by Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

Answer from the guy working on the shutdown menu: http://moishelettvin.blogspot.no/2006/11/windows-shutdown-cr...

Another response from the guy that implemented the OSX shutdown menu: http://arno.org/arnotify/2006/11/the-design-of-the-mac-os-x-...

primitivesuave3• 12 years ago

This is an excellent set of reads for shedding light on why things at Microsoft are the way they are, thanks for digging them up and sharing!

guardian5x2• 12 years ago

On every Microsoft topic a lot of old stories come up. I think many people at Microsoft know that things have been going wrong during the Vista development, and a lot has changed since then.

tanzam753• 12 years ago

It's simply astonishing that the "Vista shut down menu" meme continues to come up after all this time, and that the wrong lessons continue to be drawn.

Between Windows Vista and Windows 7, Microsoft changed exactly one thing. They replaced the two icons with a single text label that said "Shut down."

Nothing else changed. There was still a fly-out menu. There were still half-a-dozen options that users vaguely understood. They still had strange labels like "Hibernate" and "Sleep." There was still a "Log out" option. There was still a "Lock" option.

Turns out, none of that was the problem. The problem was that people didn't understand what the power icon did. Replace the icon with text that said "Shut down", and suddenly they knew what it did, and started clicking on it. They stopped opening the fly-out menu, and the "Paradox of Choice" went away.

The lesson is not that you should stop offering choices to your users! You can offer simplicity and choice at the same time. Just stop replacing text labels with confusing icons.

Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000 had a "Shut down" text label. Windows XP had both an icon and text. Windows Vista had an icon but no text. Windows 7 went back to just text. The only design that caused confusion was Windows Vista.

lurkinggrue2• 12 years ago

"This highlights a style of software design shared by Microsoft and the open source movement, in both cases driven by a desire for consensus and for "Making Everybody Happy," but it's based on the misconceived notion that lots of choices make people happy, which we really need to rethink."

Unfortunately we are down this road and I'm unhappy with software taking away features I use. I can't wait for chrome to be one white screen with no buttons.

okwa• 12 years ago

In XP, when connecting to a wireless network, you are required to type the network's password twice. How the UI team came to that decision I'll never know.

_delirium• 12 years ago

Is it really possible that not a single person at Microsoft tried changing a setting on their Windows machine and realized how difficult it was to even find the setting?

Reportedly Bill Gates was one such person: http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/2008/06/24/full-text-an-...

dspeyer• 12 years ago

Is it really possible that not a single person at Microsoft tried changing a setting on their Windows machine and realized how difficult it was to even find the setting?

When I was at MS, we usually used the command line to change settings. It was horrible. It used GUIDs. Literally GUIDs. But it was a stable target. You didn't have to relearn it every nightly build. And you could script it.

We sort of assumed that if the control panel would sit still we could learn it easily enough, but that assumption couldn't be tested until it was too late.

djulius2• 12 years ago

tl;dr

PG thinks the web/startup scene == the world. 7 years proved he's wrong.

weixiyen3• 12 years ago

It's almost as if he had a stake in the web/startup scene or something.

spiderPig• 12 years ago

So are these the same thoughts the hacker community will have with Apple's iOS in the future (there'll inevitably be some missteps)? Or even OSX for that matter? I fail to see why in-principle the community that is so vocal about FOSS gives them a pass.

visualR3• 12 years ago

Stallman doesn't. Apple did open source WebKit, which made the browser experience good.

Mustafabei• 12 years ago

I guess they don't see themselves as the community sees an all round and productive IT company. They had and do still have an abundance of market penetration (considering the business world in Europe and Asia and so on). They couldn't (maybe didn't) kill the desktop by replacing it with surface. They really could have, and the whole business world may be on tablets today, but they didn't do it. (and please don't tell me that the business world are on tablets today, tablets are still accessories to laptop and desktop computers)

I understand if anybody says "hey! MS is not a company as you or others would prescribe to be and you don't get what surface is and what it is for!" Maybe that's true. But they had lots of chances of coming back as a competitive, innovative actor and they keep grounding their chances with products like Windows 8. Last month, may father, who is an author and do not get along well with any computer called me and said: "I just could not work with this Windows 8." To note, he barely learned to cope with the old fashioned windows interface. Loading a considerable amount of cognitive load to consumers upon whom your market penetration depends does not seem like good idea. It at least is not "innovation".

We will see what the concept will be like in 5 to 10 years or so, when the planned obsolescence time of the currently available MS running hardware (and software for that matter) comes. But to replace things like Word, Excel? Quite possible, but difficult. When those can be replaced, I think we will see whether the company stands over a house of cards or not.

Beltiras2• 12 years ago

I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted) and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid (http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm). Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest. His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money.

Apple is no longer hungry, nor foolish.

fredsted• 12 years ago

Apple has a long history of doing a 180 and releasing products Jobs said publicly he didn't like...

vacri• 12 years ago

A hardware designer I used to work with noted that Jobs was against putting a radio in the iPod, and sure enough it appeared during a spell when he was off sick.

insaneirish2• 12 years ago

The first iPad mini was introduced on 2012-10-23. Steve Jobs died on 2011-10-05. It's certain that Steve both knew about the iPad mini and supported its development. Apple's hardware development takes time and does not shift on a dime.

"Apple is no longer hungry, nor foolish" is such a facile statement that means absolutely nothing.

Beltiras2• 12 years ago

I was actually rephrasing my point, using the quote. Sheding money as dividends means Apple is not hungry. Having no visionary guide to quell the aversion of risk, Apple is no longer foolish. I'm a bit embarrassed having to explain it.

coralreef• 12 years ago

If you've read Steve Jobs bio and know enough about him, you could surmise that he is "full of shit". He changes his mind, absorbs other people's ideas as his own and doesn't give them credit.

The iPad Mini actually sells really well, and Steve was around to ship the hundred iterations of iPod (nano, shuffle, etc.)

lutusp• 12 years ago

If you've read Steve Jobs bio and know enough about him, you could surmise that he is "full of shit".

I knew Steve, I happen to agree, but de mortuis nil nisi bonum, as they say. :)

valleyer• 12 years ago

Jobs resisted plastic iPhones? Did they have to drug him to get him to introduce the iPhone 3G and 3GS?

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

I'm perhaps not a reliable source, but I will say Yes.

Or perhaps No?

There's a lot of plastic on a Mac. Look at the G3 desktop.

coldtea5• 12 years ago

I predicted Apple's death some months after Steve Jobs died. Why? Two things (both of them decisions of the CEO): Plastic iPhones*

You mean like the plastic Cube, G3, G4, Macbook and iPod's that preceded them during Jobs tenure? Only with even better and novel quality plastics used?

and the iPad mini (both products Jobs had resisted)

Jobs probably knew about the mini all along, it takes more than a year to prototype and ship such a device. Besides, what jobs "resisted" or not is mere speculation, unless there are actual sources of him rejecting them. But even then, Jobs, according to witness accounts, changed ideas about lots of things he once rejected (e.g the iBooks).

and the more damning fact that for the first time a dividend of a serious size was paid. Jobs was adamant about growing the warchest.

At a time when the warchest was still small. When Jobs died it rivalled the US economy. After some point it's silly to ammass even more money.

His assumption was that if a stockholder thought his/her investment was better placed elsewhere, stock could be sold and reinvested. The act of paying a dividend states that the board thinks the investor can do better elsewhere with that money.

Only, whatever the board thinks, the invester CAN go elsewhere with that money, and that would have an effect on stock, morale etc. Better throw a bone and keep investors happy too.

kendalk2• 12 years ago

Apple has increased the number of MBAs since Jobs passed. See: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/05/24/apple-tim-cook-ceo/

This may indicate a corporate shift from a visionary outlook to a managing perspective. Someone on the inside would have better insight, but as an outsider I have to wonder.

jaseemabid• 12 years ago

Good news for Satya Nadella to start with

CmonDev• 12 years ago

Do you enjoy your life-style of reading news delayed by 7 years?

jmnicolas3• 12 years ago

It's a good thing Microsoft is "dead" so now when appropriate we can use MS tech without having to endure the critics.

As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS.

SwellJoe2• 12 years ago

"As far as evil goes, to me, Google is much more scaring than MS."

You've said more about your knowledge of the history of computing than you have about Google or Microsoft.

Edit: I think it would be interesting and amusing to know the ages of people downvoting this. Microsoft has such an incredible history of anti-competitive behavior that I'm surprised anyone believes Google is even in the same league of evil as Microsoft.

jmnicolas3• 12 years ago

I don't think you are downvoted because your answer is wrong but because it looks like a bit condescending.

But let me explain why I fear Google more than I would fear Microsoft if it was still "alive".

When they were at the top (let's say 1995 to 2005) Microsoft was always about controlling people's software (everybody should use Windows and Office ...).

However Google is about controlling people's information : the information you give them knowingly (in your Google Docs, Youtube videos etc) and the informations they gather in your profile / "dossier" (what searches are you doing, what videos are you watching, how long are you connected ...) whatever they call it.

And to me, my data is much more important than the computing platform I'm using. I can't delete what Google know about me but I can still wipe my hard-drive and install any BSD or Linux I want.

polymatter• 12 years ago

I think you mean "Google is much more scary than MS". The gerund doesn't make a lot of sense in this context.

For bonus fluency points, it reads better if you say "I fear Google much more than MS".

I apologize if feedback on your English was unwanted.

---

On another note, I generally agree. Google has a lot more scope for evil than Microsoft does. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish applies to what appeared to some Google properties too (eg Reader).

jmnicolas3• 12 years ago

Oh well I wrote "scary" at first then I thought "no it must be 'scaring'".

No need for apology when you give me a chance to improve my English.

Thank you.

dchichkov• 12 years ago

It would not be optimal for Microsoft to die. And it is kinda sad that DEC and Sun are no more. I liked that http://altavista.digital.com. It was good.

royprins• 12 years ago

That is not the definition of death that the article uses. He argues that Microsoft died as a monopolist, as the bully of the schoolyard. DEC and Sun never had that position to lose. IBM did, but now I keep paraphrasing the article. Read it :)

LeicaLatte• 12 years ago

Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch. Xbox took gaming to next level, especially online gaming and managed to build a great ecosystem for games.

The younger ones, in the last line, are all actually playing on Xbox. Microsoft has greater identification among younger people as brand than say, Apple given their decade long presence in console and PC gaming.

coldtea5• 12 years ago

Pretty terrible title considering Xbox 360 had taken off in 2006. Not one mention of Xbox in the whole post, indicating how much PG is out of touch.

Yes, clearly he's not a 17-something gamer.

He also focused on things that matter. In Microsoft's bottom lime, the Xbox is marginal at best. For ages it has not even be profitable.

Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft.

To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry, compared to IT/mobile sales.

ksk• 12 years ago

To put it in another way. Gaming (put together): not much of an industry, compared to IT/mobile sales.

Why are you comparing gaming to IT/mobile? It should be compared to other entertainment industries. It has already surpassed Hollywood in terms of revenue in the US ($17bil vs $9bil in 2011). Having a dominant product in the gaming industry begets a lot of influence.

Worldwide, The VG industry generates around $70 billion in revenue (excluding mobile gaming). In comparison the movie industry - (all countries combined, not just hollywood releases) generates around 120 billion.

Every gamer could as well only use an Xbox, and it still wouldn't matter much for the kind of discussion we're having about Microsoft.

Please explain what you mean..

sz4kerto• 12 years ago

In Microsoft's bottom lime, the Xbox is marginal at best. In other comments people argue that Microsoft is dead despite their bottom line, because bottom line is not what matters. (pg essentially says the same)

Now you say Xbox does not matter because it produces marginal income only?

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

Gamers are fickle. Enterprise not so much.

Pulling out all of your infrastructure and software systems and logical processes and replacing it is hard. Swapping your console and signing up to another service is not.

Just an observation.

sharemywin2• 12 years ago

The XBOX also cannibalized PC sales. Pre-XBox you bought a PC to play the latest games every 2 years. Now you buy an Xbox.

ygra• 12 years ago

There are also a lot console-exclusive games which you would otherwise play on a PlayStation.

us0r2• 12 years ago

2007 - $51.12 billion

2013 - $77.85 billion

I'd love to die like that.

forgottenpaswrd2• 12 years ago

Giving the inflation levels of the years in between, I wont say they have grown so much.

FleshGordon• 12 years ago

Adjusted for inflation they started at 59,03$bn. That's not startup levels of growth for obvious reasons but the growth is very real.

simonh• 12 years ago

People were saying that about BlackBerry right up until a few years ago. Where are the true mobile versions of Office or Outlook? When will Windows 8+ become anything other than a painful mess for ordinary users? Will anyone ever ship a Metro app anyone cares about?

The old Microsoft isn't part of the computing platform of the future, mobile and services, but the server division is. For the division Nadella is from, their competition aren't Apple or Yahoo or even Google, it's Rackspace and AWS. For them Apple etc are customers and allies. The old Microsoft is dead in the water, but can a new Microsoft fully emerge from its shadow to take a valuable place in the future of the computing industry?

EpicEng• 12 years ago

Do they need a mobile version, really? I wouldn't use it at work, and we all seem to get along with the native versions just fine. It's the corporate clientele that pays the big bucks for these products, and I'm not aware of them clamoring for a mobile version.

(PS, I've only actually worked at startups which have grown into larger companies. At no time did I or anyone else I was aware of feel the need for mobile Excel.)

chaz• 12 years ago

As long as businesses keep buying Office for desktop, does that matter? Is there a mobile platform that is displacing Office or Outlook/Exchange that they're failing to compete with? http://www.tannerhelland.com/4993/microsoft-money-updated-20...

rjzzleep• 12 years ago

maybe so, but did microsoft own indian, and us politics as much as microsoft?

tonyedgecombe• 12 years ago

Please don't bring facts into this discussion.

forgotAgain• 12 years ago

Their revenue numbers were impressive but how much of that change was from new products and customers and how much was from increasing licensing costs to existing customers?

ilaksh• 12 years ago

Its a natural tendency of the system for proprietary efforts to grow in power and centralize. We need a more evolved paradigm because there is a fundamental antagonism between business (in its current form) and technology.

One of the things that is starting to force this evolution is the growing realization that we must move from a server-based internet to a distributed data-based internet.

We need to popularize new or better ways of achieving cohesion while maintaining decoupling, diversity, and freedom to evolve different solutions.

I think there are a lot of ideas but the newest and best ideas for fundamental structural changes are not well known or tested. We need to test some radical changes to societal structures.

BlobbyLaMouche• 12 years ago

I tend to think the exact opposite to the "Microsoft is Dead". I'm nobody important (well not a PG anyway), just a consumer and a developer. And if anybody cares, I'm quite excited by Microsoft at the moment.

As both a developer and a consumer, I have a complaint against Google. It's going in every direction. Google has no stable, coherent, ecosystem on which you can build your products. You don't know where they are going between Android and Chrome OS. Or between DART and javascript. Or Java and Go. Microsoft is trying to attack exactly that by trying to create, brick by brick, a coherent software ecosystem. Coherent from a development, design and user experience point of view. This direction makes sense to me. I'm just not buying at the moment as the quality and experience is just not there yet. But I could buy.

Also I just watched Nadella speaking, and he says he wants to address the separation between consumer and business software. I think that's pretty cool. If you couple that with the fact more and more people work from home, or remotely, and the fact we have more and more devices around for both work and private usage, that begins to make sense.

You could argue that we are tired of Microsoft trying. But they are moving all their products together, and it takes more time, obviously. And some skills in the execution. Hence Nadella's new role. Well that's my interpretation anyway.

Now imagine he succeeds to make all these products marginally better. Microsoft doesn't need much, it's almost there. This could become an Apple-like come-back before even being gone.

ajcarpy20052• 12 years ago

Microsoft is lumbering and beurocratic but they do actually ship a lot of code and support the developer community. Xbox is also very successful obviously. Windows 8 was a huge flop in most people's opinion due to terrible user interface, despite the welcome creation of a Windows app store.

They still have a lot of momentum behind them because of all the PC applications that only work with Windows.

It's an interesting reality that Apple has their OS locked "officially" with their own hardware. In that respect, Microsoft seems more open to hardware competition. (IMO)

72deluxe7• 12 years ago

The strange thing is that with Windows XP, you could go online and search for software from within it. You could "get software" from within XP (somewhere in the Control Panel I think?)

Perhaps it didn't take off due to the lack of wide-ranging Internet connectivity at the time. But they did at least attempt an online shop/store at the time. But everyone forgets this.

ajcarpy20052• 12 years ago

Ah, I think I know what you're talking about. Was this where their games like "Motocross Madness" were available for trial or purchase? I see the convenience of a nice searchable, organized app store but the decision to bifurcate Windows 8 into two completely separate desktop environments and then hide all the useful controls off of the screen (in corners) seems completely asinine. There's probably keyboard shortcuts that make navigation easier but there needs to be a good GUI for those users who are used to using their PC that way.

sparky_z• 12 years ago

Funny how the links to the footnotes in the article are intercepted by the numbered list near the bottom. You'd think somebody would have caught that bug by now.

The first time through, I thought they were the footnotes, and, oddly enough, they sort-of made sense. Especially the 2nd one, which came off as a strange joke (as in "We better make sure Microsoft doesn't catch the Apple bug").

mamby• 12 years ago

Keywords:

- Web - Google, Apple - Startup

Insight: Web: Infrastruture (Cloud) + Apps (HTML&co, Native) Are Apple & Goog better than MS @this ?

ppradhan• 12 years ago

this sounded like pandering then, it sounds like pandering now. he's in business, of course he's got a solid marketer in him!

ddmma• 12 years ago

why every time something new good happens some old sh8 must pop-up?

dandare• 12 years ago

Huh, sir, are you a prophet?

This is clearly amazing :D

sharemywin2• 12 years ago

A lot of start ups are making OSs, browsers, web servers, email clients or servers, productivity suites, game consoles,document servers. Nope. Sorry, still avoiding Microsoft's territory. And if Google or Apple gets kicked in the balls from the justice department they would become low key as well.

smoyer• 12 years ago

From my experience, girls liked Barry Manilow in the mid-to-late '70s ... he was hard to compete against in middle school.

Nilzor• 12 years ago

"no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway."

That was a false statement in 2007 and is still today. I'm the evidence, if no one else. And I don't think I'm alone, although it does puzzle me when I see Microsoft evangelists at conferences holding speeches from Apple computers.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

I do think Windows will become pretty irrelevant over the next 5 years, as Android and iOS get owned by billions of people. However, I agree that right now and for the past few years, there's a very strong bias towards Apple computers in Silicon Valley and in media offices, and they might think "Apple is everywhere", even though it's not.

fauigerzigerk• 12 years ago

If Apple keeps curling up in their luxury niche it will be iOS that's going to be irrelevant in 5 years.

And Microsoft will start to decline if they don't go after SAP's and Oracle's enterprise applications business before their server-side stuff becomes a low cost cloud based commodity.

I think both Apple and Microsoft are going down. Linux will rule the server side and the client side in the shape of Android/Chrome OS.

NAFV_P• 12 years ago

Nearly all the people we fund at Y Combinator use Apple laptops. It was the same in the audience at startup school. All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's anyway.

Well, Apple's laptops, like their whole hardware range, look really nice and well made. My Toshiba Satellite is dusty, covered in bagel crumbs and stinks of roll-ups. I would be really embarrassed turning up in a public arena with a pig ugly piece of kit that looks like it has been used in a sewer.

Windows is still used by many businesses in the UK. That is the main reason I still have it on my laptop, most CV's are only accepted as .doc/.docx/.txt files.

The desktop no longer matters? Hell, the CLI is still alive and kicking. I find Vim works better in tty than in xterm.

dschiptsov• 12 years ago

Is this still a news for anyone?)

Thiz• 12 years ago

Microsoft wanted to destroy the web, and they lost.

They tried to destroy linux, and they lost.

They tried to destroy apple, and they lost.

They tried to destroy android, and they lost.

That's why we, web, linux, apple, android fans hate microsoft with a passion.

While they succeeded in destroying so many other companies and technologies, we were there and we fought those fights.

We never forget.

jader201• 12 years ago

But seriously, aren't all competitors just trying to destroy each other?

rivd• 12 years ago

You're right of course, but the tactics they used (especially against oss/linux and the web) pissed off a lot of people.

If destroying meant: making yet a better product and marginalizing the competition (with the product or through marketing) it would be business as usual, but it seems microsoft didn't understand that their embrace-extend-extinguish method would backfire in the internet age.

guardian5x2• 12 years ago

I remember that they even saved Apple from going bankrupt back then. Its true that they dominated Apple, but i wouldn't say that they wanted to destroy them.

us0r2• 12 years ago

"They tried to destroy android, and they lost."

Actually they make more on Android then Google. I would call that #winning.

dclara• 12 years ago

You made the point. Although it was not that explicit, from IE destroyed Netscape, I can see the other intentions. Fortunately, Linux, Apple, Android survives. MS tried to play monopoly which hampered the competition. The same for Google now. Maybe once you are no.1, you will be like that, but it's near eye sighted.

headgasket2• 12 years ago

C# and .net killed MS. The same virus killed Sun and will kill oracle. Technologies that try to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface are inherently flawed because the HW evolves faster than the software.

shadowfox• 12 years ago

Technologies that try to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface are inherently flawed because the HW evolves faster than the software.

By that count, web apps would die even faster?

billyhoffman• 12 years ago

You are seriously saying somehow that languages which abstract away hardware details are bad?

"Assembly? Bad! you should know the instructions op codes."

"C? Bad! you should know assembly! What are you trying to do? Write an operating system that is portable beyond the PDP architecture?"

"Java? Bad! You should manage your own memory! And the STL should be good enough for anyone."

Abstraction, by reducing complexity or making assumptions, allows developers to work faster or do more. Does this have negative side effects? Sure (see Joel's leaky abstractions article), but the benefits out weight the costs by several orders of magnitude. My evidence? The entire computer industry for the last 74 years.

headgasket2• 12 years ago

Sorry I did not formulate my though properly. Let's try this:

Companies that try to use a language/platform combination to isolate the coder from the machine by creating a funnelled dumbed-down common interface and executing environment are pursuing a loose-loose path.

1. the HW evolves faster than the software 2. the coder wants to hack the most out of the hardware 3. the OpenSource community is a paradigm shift for software companies, you can't put the cat back in the bag.

Cheers

tzury• 12 years ago

At the time this was written, it seemed as if Microsoft was dying, so calling it dead might be a "safe" prediction.

However, even a dying wounded can get intensive care and get back to life...

shliachtx• 12 years ago

"One of the reasons "Web 2.0" has such an air of euphoria about it is the feeling, conscious or not, that this era of monopoly may finally be over."

While it seems that there is no longer the complete monopoly that Microsoft had, the new monopoly that Google has is functionally similar. While not fully there yet, they are heading towards near-complete lock-in to Google services. Web 2.0 may have raised the bar for monopoly (or lowered the bar for competition), it definitely didn't do away with it altogether.

whistlerbrk• 12 years ago

Why can't people just acknowledge these things are cyclical?

You love something, then everyone loves it, then it's not as cool and special, then people start to hate it, then they tear it down and find something else to love. Microsoft has completed that cycle and is now potentially going to be loved again, whereas Apple is nearing the end of their cycle and is started to be hated.

outside1234• 12 years ago

The most amazing thing about this essay is that even the smartest people amongst us (Paul Graham) can be bigoted and see things as black and white when they are grey.

Microsoft has done some well documented evil things but imagine if IBM had won the OS wars? Talk about locked down and monopolistic! And has the ascendance of Apple and Google been uniformly good? I think not - we are in less control over our software and our data than when Microsoft was in charge.

It kinda seems crazy stupid to not invite a company that makes $24B in income a year to your demo day. But then again, Microsoft has never been a company that is bamboozled by Nest Labs-style startup overvaluation bullshit, and maybe you knew that.

yread• 12 years ago

I don't think they are dead. Just look at design. WP7 brought forward the flat style. First everybody laughed at it. Now it's the new hip. iOS got converted into flat. Lots of websites are being redesigned for flat. How many examples of flat design would there be if MS didn't have any mindshare?

kbutler• 12 years ago

Paul Graham isn't saying that MSFT isn't a viable, powerful business, just that it no longer has the potential to use technology to change the world.

As a dominant monopolist, MSFT had little incentive to change the world, and as a large, mature company, it is much more likely to be reactive to change than to be the source of change.

There more interesting question to me now is, "Is Apple 'dead'?" Apple has similarly been reacting to change, rather than driving it since the iPad (yes, others may view this differently). Will they be able to create something new and revolutionary? Or will that be left to new, scrappy "startups"?

wernercd• 12 years ago

Microsoft is Dead! LONG LIVE MICROSOFT!

Apple is Dead! LONG LIVE APPLE!

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

Sometimes I wonder if people who write this stuff actually understand how businesses operate.

Microsoft is dead because of competition? How does that even make sense? Like I've said many times before, competition actually makes a company and their products better, not make them die. MS has had to turn their huge ship around and its a slow process.

Sure, they're making baby steps and getting there, but the hatred for them is beyond what I've seen for other companies. It's not just that they dominated and killed a bunch of competition in the 80's and 90's. Even now with the new products they're bringing to market, people are still hazing them and won't let them get off the mat.

It's almost fashionable these days to hate MS. They can't do mobile like Android and Apple, they can't do cloud stuff like Amazon and Salesforce. .Net is dead, everybody loves Ruby. MS can't do anything right, blah, blah, blah.

Nobody wants to see the small victories, they just want to pile on enough dirt and hope they go away.

VikingCoder• 12 years ago

Wow, reading an article saying that MSFT is dead, with this line, "And of course Apple has Microsoft on the run in music too, with TV and phones on the way."

ON THE WAY. This article is before the iPhone came to dominate. Wow, did Microsoft miss that boat.

ohjeez• 12 years ago

Oh my. I remember reading this when it first came out in 2007. Does that make me an old fart?

Microsoft is Dead (2007)

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