Things Microsoft Still Does Well

http://techland.time.com/2014/02/06/4-things-microsoft-still-does-well/

by cl8ton • 12 years ago

32 48 12 years ago

techland.time.com

us0r2• 12 years ago

5) Make money.

gschiller• 12 years ago

*Thing

-> Enterprise

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

Microsoft's enterprise software is really, really good. Active Directory, SQL Server, Azure, C# and Visual Studio are all amazing. They also make tons of money, and MS is really good at managing them as cash cows over time.

Not coincidentally, they just put the Cloud and Enterprise guy in charge of the company.

rtfeldman• 12 years ago

I keep hearing this, but it's just such a foreign concept to me. The idea of - for lack of a better term - surrendering my entire development stack to a single company rings just about every alarm bell in my head.

What happens when (say) .NET isn't the best tool for a particular job? Just close your eyes and use the inferior tool anyway? Or use the right tool and just throw the hard-won Microsoft ecosystem synergies out the window? I'm constantly using different technologies for different projects; doesn't this come up a lot in the enterprise world, too?

Granted, I'm not an enterprise developer. I've never worked on a code base that more than 20 people were working on at once. But I don't understand what makes large organizations see a walled-in ecosystem like that as a plus rather than a trap.

Einstalbert• 12 years ago

"Oops we developed our product on Silverlight because we're an MS-kit company and now Silverlight is crap. Now what?"

lelandbatey• 12 years ago

I started programming in C# this past month entirely due to a new project I'm working on, and at first I totally felt the same way. I honestly felt like Visual Studio had a higher learning curve than any other tool I've ever used, and I've been using Vim for the past year : )

What made it worse was that prior to this I'd never really programmed anything for Windows.

However, as I've been using it more and more, I'm beginning to see why it is the way it is, how all this abstraction and scaffolding comes together to make programming easier.

Seriously, having everything a developer could ever want accessible through one interface has some nice upsides, and I now completely see how Microsoft makes so much money off this product.

Also, I think one of the things that makes. NET so attractive is that it seems to have features or libraries for everything and the kitchen sink. C# has excellent support for "business-y" things, to a degree that makes worrying about it not a problem for many companies.

mbesto• 12 years ago

(just try to paint some perspective here not disagreeing)

Imagine all you've used is Microsoft's products and all of sudden some hotshot programmer comes along and says "we're going to use this software that a bunch of people wrote for free" Now that is a foreign concept.

blntechie• 12 years ago

Enterprise IT departments are diverse as well. They are not monolithic as we portray it to be.

I've not seen any big non-tech company totally dependent on one programming stack. They spread their bets. One can see people sitting next to each other working on Node.js and Visual Basic.

If anything to go by what I've seen and provided competent people are making the decision, they try to use right tools for the right job.

us0r2• 12 years ago

Look at it from a Fortune 500 perspective (yes obviously exceptions and I'm not saying I agree or disagree). Do we want to run all or part of our business on an open source tool/project which may or may not have a large community around it and may or may not be around tomorrow or do we use the company who is financially committed to X tool and has virtually unlimited money in the bank?

This doesn't just apply to Microsoft... look at the money Oracle, IBM, SAP, etc. bring in. As the saying goes "No one has been fired for using X software before".

"What happens when (say) .NET isn't the best tool for a particular job?"

So like when you need to write something in Python (http://pytools.codeplex.com/) or Node.js (http://nodejstools.codeplex.com/)? Yea that is all supported in VS by Microsoft. Most people don't realize at some point over the last few years they changed from the MS or screw off attitude to a more let's support what we can one. They have also started opening sourcing a lot of their stuff.

I came from Unix/Linux/PHP and Perl at the time and once I got the hang of C# and Visual Studio I have not looked back.

rbanffy2• 12 years ago

Funny how nobody mentions SharePoint ;-)

nahname2• 12 years ago

Active Directory, SQL Server, Azure, C# and Visual Studio are all amazing

What else have you tried? IMO, it is very hard to find anyone that worked on the MS stack, moved to something else and wants to go back to Microsoft.

stinos• 12 years ago

It's not that hard. For me at least, since as a Visual Studio user I'm definitely a fit answer for your question. For C++ for example I tried XCode, KDevelop, NetBeans, Eclipse just to name some. None of those are bad, some are even good, and at some points maybe even better than VS, but none offers the complete integrated development environment VS gives me. And if I'd had to guess: I'm not alone.

nemothekid• 12 years ago

I guess this is consumer focused as it missed some of the real MS Gold - Azure, MSSQL, Visual Studio, C#.

However, on the consumer path this interested me:

As the console gaming industry evolves (dies?), Nadella needs to convince America that the Xbox is truly a living room feature, not simply a gaming device. If he can sell that concept, Microsoft will leapfrog Sony and recapture the lead.

Despite the claims of the "living room console" being made for years, I really can't find any evidence for it. I can't see why a $499 console will beat out an $99 Apple TV for OTT entertainment in the larger consumer market. I still think this idea that the gaming console will become "the box" is an idea that has roots in the early 2000s, where people only have 1, maybe 2 televisions at home. If "John Jr." is playing video games for 4 hrs/day, I commonly see he does it in his room, not in the living room where he can impede on "John Sr."'s decision to watch the Netflix. Sure they could buy 2 Xbox Ones, but John Sr. doesn't really need all that gaming power.

tdicola• 12 years ago

Agreed--I think the living room 'hub' is DOA in a world of smartphones and tablets. Why would I want to mess around with some clunky 10 foot interface when I can just pull my phone out of my pocket or pick up the tablet on my coffee table?

uvTwitch• 12 years ago

You may be content with a 10 inch screen, but I live in a flat of 24-28year olds, and my xbox sees more use as a youtube player than it does as a gaming device. My flatmates are content to search for things using the awful controller text input to play them on the tv rather than use the laptops sitting right in front of them. I'd tell them about SmartGlass, but I doubt they'd use it.

Svip3• 12 years ago

Yes, the Xbox 360 has been a success in the US (beating the PS3), but in every other market than the US, the PS3 has beaten the Xbox 360.[1] And the article in question is very US-centric on that regard. I am not saying the Xbox is necessarily bad, but is it better than the PlayStation? I think that's rather subjective.

Although I hear that neither Sony nor Microsoft has made a lot of money from their console adventures.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_...

pimeys• 12 years ago

My problem with Xbox 360 is it's selection of games. My wife bought the console for us two years ago and the only games we've played with it have been Skyrim and GTA V, which are also available for PS3. Almost all of the games available are in this so called 'dudebro' category: fps, sports etc.

What are missing are the japanese weird and arty, or colorful and playable games that are available for Playstation or Wii. The games I remember from my childhood (Mario, Zelda) or some absolutely mindblowing ideas like Journey.

AdrianRossouw• 12 years ago

agreed.

i went through the library again recently, and I could not find a single exclusive worth owning either of the xboxes (although galleon was nice, and jet grind radio eventually got re-released on PSN).

There is an exception to that of course, namely xbox live arcade. There are still a handful of XBLA exclusives that were worth it, but most of those have been re-released on PSN or steam too.

gtirloni2• 12 years ago

The table you link to shows Xbox 360 and PS3 with ~80mi each. There around 37mi units not accounted for in the Australia, Canada, Japan, US and Europe. Are you assuming the same trend holds for Latin America then? How does that translate to 'every other market'?

In Brazil, Xbox has sold more than PS3 according to the local game industry association. And with the PS4 prices being 2x that of Xbox One, some are predicting Sony will be too late when it finally can make PS4 cheaper. The same happened with PS2 (people could only get them bringing from Japan) and it essentially boostrapped Xbox here. It's happening again.

Svip3• 12 years ago

Wait. I thought the PS4 is $100 cheaper than the Xbox One. I mean the PS4 is cheaper here (Europe) and it is in the US. So I wonder why the PS4 is so much more expensive in Brazil then.

TheCondor• 12 years ago

Not to rile the fanboys but Sony went out late with a more expensive device that had a much more radical and challenging to program architecture and it looks time an awful lot like a tie and far from a victory for either device. That's a win? Don't get me wrong, they are mixing it up but of we are really honest, Nintendo outsold both of them decisively that round.

Is that the victory they aimed for and planned on?

Svip3• 12 years ago

I completely agree with the PS3's problems. But I am quite amazed by the fact that despite its higher price tag, its difficulty for programming, etc., the PS3 did rather well. And equally well compared to the Xbox 360. But Sony have learnt the lesson, and thus made the PS4 a far simpler (and cheaper) machine.

asadotzler• 12 years ago

It's time to stop joking about IE like that. IE 11 is a fine Web browser these days. Yes, it took them a while to catch back up, but they have and they're a genuinely modern browser today. Firefox is still a better browser, for a good number of reasons, not the least of which is Mozilla's mission to put users and the health of the Internet first, but Microsoft engineers working on IE for the last few years deserve more credit than they're getting. Shouldn't we be cheering for them to build the best they can instead of insulting them?

beagle3• 12 years ago

Shouldn't we be cheering for them to build the best they can instead of insulting them?

No, we shouldn't. Do you have any reason to believe that if IE became dominant again, Microsoft would not abuse its position once more? I don't. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice ....

(And I wasn't fooled even once, but the Internet at large was).

The onus of proving that they mean well is on Microsoft this time, and they're not living up to it. Ok then, I guess IE11 is an ok HTML5 browser (don't have windows, can't even test). But they fought against introducing WebGL (and lost), and they're still reluctant to introduce WebRTC.

veidr2• 12 years ago

I think Asa is focusing more narrowly than you are. Both arguments are valid.

As a browser, MSIE 11 is vastly better than previous versions. They took what was just about the shittiest browser on earth, and made it more or less OK. (Although Firefox and Chrome are both better.) From that limited perspective, kudos to them.

As a corporation, though, Microsoft is still a toxic entity with poisonous effects on the ecosystems it participates in. It actively, brazenly works against the interests of the Internet user community as a whole, and those of its own customers. Microsoft the company is a bad actor on the scale of Oracle, Monsanto, Halliburton. So you're right, too.

rbanffy2• 12 years ago

Microsoft has the best programmers money can buy. Mozilla has the ones money can't. ;-)

The IE team deserves credit for their technical and managerial achievements - it's not easy to actually do something on a company that large.

slaman• 12 years ago

I really don't see a multi-billion dollar company finally 'catching up' after years of standards and security abuse worth any praise, and I still find IE's UI to be terrible to use.

I'm glad they're finally starting to take some stress off of me as a developer, but there are still too many people running IE8 and 9 for me to like IE with any sort of passion..

daniel-levin• 12 years ago

The article misses a very important thing Microsoft still does very well: makes money [0]. Irrespective of one's opinion on the quality of their products, they still produce software the provides value for real people. They employ a ton of people, all across the world [1]. Microsoft may have lost a decade in the visible consumer segment (mobile phones, tablets), but they still make boring, profitable, enterprise software that helps them on their way to $22B in annual profit. They're not shrinking either, according to their fast facts page [1]. Microsoft still does business very, very well. Even though I personally don't like most of their products, I'm genuinely excited by the change of CEO, because Microsoft has the resources (perhaps not the culture) to build awesome new technology in the next few years.

[0] http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx

mbq• 12 years ago

0) Keyboards.

chestnut-tree• 12 years ago

This article mixes two things - things that Microsoft does well from a UX perspective (like Windows phone 8) and things it does well in terms of sales and profitability, like Microsoft Office (which arguably is not very well designed in terms of UX).

This is true of other large software comapnies too: Adobe with their Creative Suite and Google with Android - both successful in terms of sales, but arguably very uneven in their usability (in my opinion).

randomafrican• 12 years ago

Do we all agree that their only hope in consumer mobile is making Office cross-platform ?

smoyer• 12 years ago

It's a good article, but I'm not sure about one line used in describing Microsoft Office users:

"extremely loyal user base"

Is it really loyalty? Or is it inertia (people learned it once upon a time) combined with lock-in (everyone else is sharing documents in this proprietary format)?

kabdib• 12 years ago

Microsoft might be /okay/ at doing a Mobile OS; they are, however, at the mercy of the platform drivers, and this recently drove me away from my perfectly-fine-except-for-one-killer-bug Nokia 920.

Something deep in the Nokia 920 was turning on and spinning the CPU like mad; the unit would heat up and drain the battery by mid day. Nothing I could do fixed it; I waited through two system updates and it was never fully addressed. (AT&T was never very quick about releasing updates, either; separate problem). I finally downgraded to an iPhone a few weeks ago. I can use the iPhone all day without worrying about the battery, but the mail client (which I use constantly) is a lot more clumsy to use than the one on the Windows phone.

Microsoft is at the mercy of bad little code monkeys who write drivers at the BSP (Board Support Package) level, which are usually done at contract houses like BSquare. The code I've seen some out of these places has been . . . marginal. In the cases I've had to use it, I've usually wound up rewriting a lot of it. You get code that passes tests, but that's about the only bar for acceptance; internally the code is usually badly organized spaghetti whose mission is to pass the tests, and that's it.

You want the driver-level code in your system to be ROCK SOLID. If you contract this work out, you're going to need a great acceptance system [code and design reviews, because automated systems like WHQL are inadequate and get gamed anyway], a way to update drivers in the field so that mistakes can be corrected quickly [phone releases seem to happen every 9 months or so, so nope], and you want to be able to get good feedback from customers [looks at AT&T . . . sighs].

A phone is a top-to-bottom thing; blow one level and you've got a bad product. Microsoft hasn't really figured this out yet; maybe with the Nokia purchase they'll have a full stack and finally do everything right.

piggybox• 12 years ago

The very first things came into my mind when I saw the title were MS ergonomic mouse and keyboard, then xbox the second.

Things Microsoft Still Does Well

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