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Feb 04, 10 - 10:54 am Comment from: MacTony

I'm not sure what the problem is at MS........ cough...... Ballmer

Feb 04, 10 - 11:01 am Comment from: Connor MacBook

MS must be burning through a pile of cash employing those thousands of engineers. And what do they have to show for it?

to be fair, without Microsoft, a lot of the companies that are "cutting edge" today wouldn't exist

Microsoft's software, no matter how flawed, did entice the public's imagination and gave additional fuel to the personal computer revolution even beyond the fuel that Apple gave

Yes, I think Unix and Linux and Mac OS are superior, but Microsoft takes some credit for fueling the personal computing revolution and putting a lot of power in the hands of a lot of people, No, not without flaws, but power to imagine nonetheless

Feb 04, 10 - 11:04 am Comment from: VAL4Mother

Bill Gates circa 1999:

http://www.archive.org/details/BillGate99

Feb 04, 10 - 11:05 am Comment from: Macromancer

MS is what happens when you let the salesmen run the show.

Apple is what happens when you let the designers run the show.

Feb 04, 10 - 11:07 am Comment from: Macromancer

@Planar

I agree, their products gave the masses something to work with, although flawed. It doesn't mean I have to respect them for it.

What you said, MDN. It's even worse: the only program in the Office suite that MS even developed in-house was Excel -- which they were only able to accomplish with lotsa help from Mac programmers, as it originated as a Mac program. I still remember, after I had been using Excel on my Mac for years, when Excel first limped out the door on the dark side: it ran on MS-DOS with a runtime version of Windows. It was beyond pathetic.

Actually, I should qualify my first comment: I don't recall exactly the provenance of Word, although I do recall how MS used their "accidental monopoly" to screw Word Perfect.

High jumping the Apple way: Jobs et. al. put the bar at a certain height, and only allow a product to be released if it clears that threshold.

High jumping the MS way: Try to trip the other competitors (sometimes other MS products), so that only one product even tries to make a high jump.

"Wake up, Dick"

That's what she said....

Coca-Cola?? Bleccch!!! Battery acid!
So are the rest of the sodas, Unfit for human consumption, but excellent for cleaning bug goo from your car's windshield.

I'm not sure I agree with the assertion that Microsoft was never an innovator. Microsoft got its start with the Altair 8080 way back in the 70's; it was an effort completely independent of the Apple I/II line of computers. When the Macintosh came out, Microsoft made Word and Excel exclusively for the Mac, at least initially. (This is easy to see; there's no way Word or Excel could run on MS-DOS.) The early versions were actually a pleasure to use (probably because they didn't have all the cruft that's in more recent versions).

Of course, the contracts that Sculley signed on, giving away the Toolbox, were definitely a blow to Apple. I would imagine that getting such stuff on the cheap (QDOS, later to become MS-DOS, and Apple's Toolbox, and later the Internet Explorer debacle) probably helped establish the precedents needed for the pirate mentality that has permeated MS's management for the last two decades.

but excellent for cleaning bug goo from your car's windshield.

There's a rum you can buy in France called St. James: it's undrinkable unless cut down with juice or coke, but - if you've done several hundred miles driving through the German autobahn system in the height of summer - it will dissolve the bugs that have toasted onto your bonnet (hood as Americans would have it).

And when I say dissolve, I mean dissolve.

Feb 04, 10 - 11:32 am Comment from: almux

One day the world will express all its gratefullness to Steve Balmer, the man who brought the M$ dynosaur to ground!
Long stay Ballmer as master of the dark side!

If they fire him, i propose Zune Tang to take the head of the beleaguered M$.

Feb 04, 10 - 11:33 am Comment from: RicMac

Excel started life as "Multiplan" Didn't change the name to Excel until a year or two later. On the Mac you could get Word, Multiplan and File all on 400k disk. Those were the days, and yeah, back then when they had to program tight programs to get them on 400k disks - they were pretty good.

Feb 04, 10 - 11:44 am Comment from: Famous Grouse

Just read the whole thing over at NYT without MDN's interruptions. A scathing indictment, there's not much that needs to be added. MS shareholders should be afraid. Very afraid. The rest of us can live in hope of a day when MS Office is a distant and painful memory. Windows already falls into that category...

Feb 04, 10 - 11:48 am Comment from: DogGone

M$ has reversed the recent trend of dropping revenue and profit so unfortunately it still as a lot of cash to mess around with.

Their monopoly will still be good for a while. Most companies are entrenched in Windows and Office so the revenue from them will still continue.

I can't see M$ innovating anything in the future but I also can't see them losing money for a while yet. Windows 7 looks like it has bought them more time.

The future for PC makers looks more bleak though. There is minimal profit in the business unless you are Apple. Dell are in trouble, HP could soon be hit by the notebook competition.

Apple are well positioned to take advantage of this. As they sell more Mac, their cost of goods goes down and they can price their products more competitively. Just like the iPod, Apple can squeeze the competition from the top down. This take time because PCs are not replaced as quickly as MP3 players but it is happening already for sure.

At some point the base Macbook will drop down $50-100 in price and put even more pressure on the low cost market. No-one gets it other than Apple how to make a profitable business in the PC world.

Micro$oftopoly knows none of these. Apple knows what it wants to build, what they want it to do and who will be using it. MBA's, lawyers, accountants and sales people are not going to have what it takes.

It's vision- not girth that rules in the long run. Disruptive technologies and revolutionary thoughts/concepts rarely come out of guys who live in the corporate bubble and wear suits to work. Unfortunately, that's who end up running most American businesses, organizations and governments. Notice the results?

It's not the conformists or the anarchists that end up doing the real changing of the world- it's people who go their own way, follow a clear vision, act on their convictions and stick it out over the long haul. Those types don't get MBAs at Ivy League Schools and then move into the gated communities of slumbertown with their country club memberships.

Sadly, the death of America's innovation kind of tracks the rise of the MBA in American enterprise and has killed or stunted countless bright prospected startups. Apple even came close to death at the hands of a succession of these types. It took Steve Job's audacious methods to give Apple the swift kick in the ass and a couple of double down bets to change a bloated, complacent and inefficient company into the lean innovator that it is today.

MS is a technology company like Dell is a technology company. Case closed.

Just last night I showed up to make a PowerPoint presentation at a meeting. I plugged in a simple Windows formatted flash drive into the USB port on the Dell laptop connected to a small projector.

I got maybe 12-14 various messages in little windows issuing notices and warnings and providing 'information' that only those world-class engineers at MS could possibly understand.

It took exactly 25 minutes before I had a picture on the screen. By the time I started talking, the audience was ready for me to be finished.

What crap.

Wonder if Steve is reffering to Microsoft downfall everytime he plays Dylan's Rolling Stone.

"Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all.... kidding you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud"

Feb 04, 10 - 12:15 pm Comment from: Wade Smith

" only three spring quickly to mind: iPod, iTunes Store, and Coca-Cola."

Coke 'best in class'? Sorry. Sure, it's okay, but Moxie is the best soft drink.

Feb 04, 10 - 12:17 pm Comment from: Demon

Microsoft's culture goes way back into Microsoft's past. Bill Gates was famous for stealing the best employees from departments and groups to join what ever pet project he was working on at the time. He'd often start a group with just employees he hand picked for a project that team would be about 50% to 70% done and Bill would move on to something else and then take some or even all the employees on the previous project to start a new project then browbeat the project leaders that he just stole staff from on why the project was stalled, late or finished poorly. It has always been Microsoft's culture to do things incompletely and poorly. It was not that they had bad engineers or even engineers that were bad, Innovation at Microsoft does not and is not accepted from outside project managers and the sales staff, other employees at Microsoft are just there to make the sales and project manager's ideas a working product. Ballmer is famous inside Microsoft, a for telling engineers to shut-up and do it the way the sales team wants it done because they (the sales team) are talking to the customers and know what the customers want, better then the engineer that should be spending their time working and not thinking about how something should work.
It's just how Microsoft has always worked and I don't see it changing in the future.

@MDN – "When was Microsoft ever considered "cool" or "cutting edge?" Never.

Actually, there was a time day when I thought that Microsoft was cool and cutting edge. I think it was on a Friday.... yes, Friday the 15th of June 2007.

They presented "Photosynth". A very cool 3D photo mapping software tool thinghy.

But that was pretty much it...

Feb 04, 10 - 12:30 pm Comment from: WriterGuy

Actually, I remember a time I thought Microsoft was cool. It was back in the early days of Windows, when they were working with IBM's engineers. Apparently, the IBM guys were judged on how many lines of code they wrote per day (or something like that) and the MS guys were trying to write code as tight as possible. The difference in corporate cultures was profound, and the MS guys came off pretty well in comparison. Of course, that was roughly 25 years ago. A lot has changed since then.

Feb 04, 10 - 12:41 pm Comment from: zmarc

All I can say is: I wouldn't want to work there.

No matter how much money they paid me, it would be like selling my soul to the Devil. Eventually it would kill me.

Feb 04, 10 - 12:42 pm Comment from: Basil Ganglia

Microsoft's accidental success was assured when DOS was chosen as the IBM operating system (greatest mistake in IBMs history was not creating their own OS). IBM's gold plated reputation in those days, and dominance in the enterprise ensured the success of DOS and Microsoft. I was there. Apple had a head start but never had a chance in businesses and therefore in the operating system competition -- not that Apple didn't screw it up after Jobs left, and by giving allowing Microsoft permission to copy its OS in Windows.

I disagree that Office was not better when it was first released. Again I was there and bought Office 1.0.0. WordStar and WordPerfect were the leaders and innovators in word processing and VisiCalc was the innovator in spreadsheets, but Microsoft Word was the best word processor the day it was released and it was one of the first integrated into a suite of programs. It gained market share initially on merit (later by monopolistic practices)

Lastly, let me say that while I generally admire MDN's "Takes" I find it astonishing that he refuses to admit that Bill Gates, whatever he may think of him as a computer executive, is not doing great things as a philanthropist. I know the Gates Foundation and the things they support well in my position as a senior medical professor at a major institution. There is no question that Bill and Melinda Gates care deeply about what they are doing and are making a great difference. To argue that they are doing this to "buy their way into heaven" is stupid, repugnant, repulsive, illogical, reprehensible, reproachful, ridiculous and beneath the dignity of this blog. It is shameful when animosity reaches the point that everything the other side does is evil just because their doing it.

I don't mind if Microsoft and Windows stays in the corporate world as long as they allow for other alternatives to be offered. I just don't particularly like the idea that a few IT managers can force 50,000 employees to use Windows and Windows PCs without them having a choice. It makes it far too easy for certain companies to gain impenetrable footholds in the corporate realm and they may not even be the best solutions.

I suspect and it's entirely understandable from Microsoft's point of view to make their back-end software as locked down as possible so that nothing but Microsoft software and hardware will be compatible. I just don't think that it's in the corporation's best interest to have a system work like that. I wonder how far this support for 40-year-old legacy hardware is going to go and is it really even necessary. I would figure it would slow down corporations from making faster transitions into a rapidly changing, ever more mobile society.

So I completely understand Microsoft doesn't want to give up a nice comfy position running the corporate desktop world. Some company is going to have to come in and make the desktop less relevant in order to weaken Microsoft's grip. Show corporations that there are other solutions other than just the Microsoft way.

What Brass has missed - - despite his reference to GM - - is that the handwriting has been on the wall for not just months or years, but for DECADES.

I can recall my father telling me that GM was in decline and that its days are numbered .... back in the 1970s.

Since 1974, roughly 3/4s of their vehicular purchases haven't been from Detroit; I think their last Detroit product was a first generation Chevy Lumina APV ('dustbuster') which dates from a decade ago.

The handwriting is on the wall for MS too. Like GM, it still might take another 20 years, but thre's already been a clear shift in the US Consumer market, which is narrowing MS's product base to just corporate Enterprise.

In the meantime, Mom & Dad's kids are increasingly getting rid of their Windows PCs at home and going to Apple...its now down to "One to Go". So for how much longer do you think that the kids who maintain Mom & Dad's Windows ME machine are going to keep that as a Windows PC?


-hh

@WriterGuy: Sorry, 25 years ago windows didn't exist, and as far as I know MS never worked with IBM on anything Windows-related. By 1985 MS had pilfered all the help they needed for Windows by looking over the shoulders of Mac programmers, but it wasn't until years after that that they actually shipped a barely-functioning version.

@Kevin J. Weise: As I said, MS had lots of help from Apple in creating Excel (don't remember much about Word), and it's work on the Altair amounted to porting a version of Basic to it. For a considerable time MS had a fine reputation for developing programming environments, which was their core strength (and Gates' & Allen's background). But application programs? Not so much, and never without someone else showing them the way.

Feb 04, 10 - 01:09 pm Comment from: The Other Steve

"Its image has never recovered from the antitrust prosecution of the 1990s."

It wasn't the prosecution that hurt Microsoft's image,
it was their antitrust execution.

Here is hoping that the brilliant engineers from Microsoft all find jobs in truly innovative companies.

Actually, it won't be the lack of innovation that will kill Microsoft. Rather, it will be how they compensate their personnel. When Microsoft succeeded in their early days, it was in part, because they compensated their best and brightest with fast growing stock options. That mechanism allowed their employees to benefit enormously - thus the Microsoft millionaires. But all that is now gone. Microsoft will never be a growth stock again and stock options are all mostly under water. Where is the incentive for a really bright software engineer to join or stay with Microsoft? The best always are the first to go. And they take their best ideas with them. Sad really. But inevitable.

Microsoft was a great hope for me back in '93. But boy did they squander that hope.

I have rarely felt the need to be outspoke about a business and the people who promote it, but MS is the exception.

That piece was incredibly kind to you. I really want to see you truly broken.

It's really quite amazing (well not really), but all of a sudden eBooks and tablets are the cool new thing and Microsoft isn't even in the game. They keep skating to where the puck was 5 years ago. Don't they ever just look at where we are now and say to themselves,"gee, wouldn't it be great if we had..." and then build it?

Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer... I guess an IVY LEAGUE Harvard Ed is not all that it's cracked up to be!

@Basil Ganglia: I agree with you that Bill (and Melinda) Gates deserves a lot of credit for his philanthropic work, which to all appearances reflects a genuine commitment (albeit with a little nudging from his father years ago).

It's also true, as you say, that Microsoft's fortune was set when it got the contract with IBM to produce DOS (although, again, they bought one, spruced it up, and delivered it as their own). The signal act of Gates' genius ("innovation?) was to structure the IBM contract such that they retained the right to sell their own version of DOS to 3rd parties. Of course, IBM didn't really care at the time, as they didn't really see a future in "home computers."

The dominance of Windows in business is partly generational; many large and small companies are still led by men who grew up uninvolved with computer technology. The joke about CEOs who have their secretary print out their emails because they don't know how to access them is not a joke. These men are helpless at the hands of IT departments who are afraid that they will lose their power and jobs if they introduce technology that everyone can use without constant problems and hand-holding from IT. Because they don't themselves use computers much, they don't understand how much productivity is lost through the wrong choices of hardware and software. They look at front end buy-in cost and really don't know how much they lose further along through inefficiencies, break-downs and security issues. They are not, for the most part, willfully stupid; they really don't see it, in part because the IT staff doesn't want them to see it. I worked off-site for a company that required me to use a Dell craptop with Windows. I kept my Mac beside so that I could actually get some work done. It was not unusual to spend several hours a week on the phone with IT when projects had to be done with the PC. I was one of 5000 employees. Any CEO who received correct data from IT managers about the impact of this foolishness on the bottom line would not hesitate to make a change. As top positions are filled with people with hands-on technology skills it will be easier to break some old habits. But the IT won't give up without a long fight.

You can take this one to the bank!

Feb 04, 10 - 01:31 pm Comment from: chaz

HEY MDN

How About Heinz Ketchup Market Domination?

I'd guess bigger than coke.

"Puck? What puck? WTP!?!?"

Feb 04, 10 - 01:48 pm Comment from: ChrissyOne

@ chaz

They also forgot Q-tips and Kleenex.

People are forgetting, for various excellent reasons, that Ballmer debuted not one, but three tablet-type devices at his CES keynote. And the world shrugged. See "Ballmer shows HP slate/tablet PC in CES snooz-athon" here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/jan/07/ballmer-ces-2010-keynote-microsoft.

My friends and I used to call people who used were once hugely popular but not on their own merits, and who now are past their freshness date, "was-beens" instead of "has-beens." Microsoft is now a was-been.

@Basil Ganglia: I don't agree Gates is doing anything wonderful. He just sees his medical philanthropy as the fastest and most likely way to get him the Nobel Prize–the goal he's set his sights on. If he really wanted to make a difference in the world he'd do something like buy up half the US Pacific coast's ancient forests and turn them into a National Park or the Amazon or even make all Microsoft's plants and offices energy self-sustaining.

Some future stuff from MicroSoft of the past:

Remember Teddy?:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7071413

Got time?:http://www.epill.com/spot.html

Whoops!
Some future stuff from MicroSoft of the past:

Remember Teddy?: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7071413

Got time?: http://www.epill.com/spot.html

Damn him for making me thing of that nauseating ass-wiggling TV commercial again!! If only I'd never seen it, talk about being scarred for life...

Ouch! Ha ha.

Feb 04, 10 - 03:28 pm Comment from: Deus Ex Technica

What is Microsoft's hedgehog? For decades, it's been "leveraging their dominant position" It's the only thing they know how to do.

Unfortunately, smaller companies have been able to stake out smaller markets and dominate them over time. This has lead to an erosion of MS's dominant position in several of their key markets.

And because of their culture they just don't know how to deal with it. There's nobody left in management who has any vision, or inkling of how to motivate the troops toward quality.

Unless the stockholders get wise and put new blood into the organization STARTINGFROM THE TOP-DOWN, there will never be the culture change needed at MS to stop their slow, but relentlessly inevitable, decline.

Feb 04, 10 - 03:54 pm Comment from: Big Als MBP

@ Planar,

"Microsoft takes some credit for fueling the personal computing revolution and putting a lot of power in the hands of a lot of people, No, not without flaws, but power to imagine nonetheless"

Close Planar, but no cookie. Let me fix it for you.

Microsoft takes all of the credit for fueling the personal computing revolution by putting all of the power in the hands of IT people. A lot of flaws but no way to get rid of Microsoft with IT's Microsoft trained grip on enterprise.

Remember IT's motto, "No one gets fired in an all Microsoft shop, we need the manpower."

Microsofts existence is very important!

If the comp industry has no ms, ppl couldn't compare and realize how beautiful apple is.

On a side note, if MS wasn't the big tough guy back in the late 90s making apple to troubles, Apple probably won't be as successful as today bcoz they knew they had to work their ass off, to innovate like crazy, to do a damn good job to fight for existence.

In a way, thx Ms.

Oh and the excerpt from steve jobs interview2004 is so true:

1. MS was at the top, no real incentives for them to innovate.
2. Sales ppl leading the company.