Has Microsoft failed?

[Keith_W]

This article argues that Microsoft isn't failing, it argues that it has already failed: http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed/

TL;DR: Microsoft has stagnated for far too long and completely missed the boat on a number of occasions, most recently by failing to recognize the transition to mobile computing. As a result, it now holds 2% of the market it once dominated, before the launch of iOS and Android. Windows 7 for mobile was incompatible with all previous apps developed for Windows Mobile, and Windows 8 again obsoletes Windows 7 which is barely a couple of years old.

He calls Windows 8 "the laughing stock of the OS world [...] for use on a desktop computer the experience is miserable, you need touch. Unfortunately, touch does not work on a vertical surface, there have been decades of studies that show this". Damn straight! I don't think I would want to lift my fingers off the keyboard to touch the screen to do work! I have NO touch on any of my computing devices (save phone and tablet) and I do not miss it at all. Do I, for one moment, think that my desktop computer could be improved by having the ability to touch the screen? Not one bit!

MS has traditionally never been first to the market with new groundbreaking technologies. The GUI was invented by Xerox way before MS belatedly entered the market with Windows. Those buttons that you see on MS Word first appeared on Ami Pro. MS Excel is a latecomer - before that was Lotus 123. MS Word itself was late to the game, back in the days of DOS it was outsold by WordPerfect. There were generations of Ataris, Nintendos, and Playstations before MS entered with XBOX. Palm pioneered the PDA industry before MS entered with Win CE. MOSAIC and Netscape dominated the browser industry before MS entered with Internet Explorer. Creative Labs pioneered portable media players before MS finally entered with the Zune (the laughing stock of the PMP world). And nobody needs reminding of how Apple and Android have stolen the lead on smartphones and tablets.

Ah Microsoft. I have a love-hate relationship with them

 

[GaryProtein]

This article argues that Microsoft isn't failing, it argues that it has already failed: http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed/

. . . . MS has traditionally never been first to the market with new groundbreaking technologies. The GUI was invented by Xerox way before MS belatedly entered the market with Windows. Those buttons that you see on MS Word first appeared on Ami Pro. MS Excel is a latecomer - before that was Lotus 123. MS Word itself was late to the game, back in the days of DOS it was outsold by WordPerfect. . . . Ah Microsoft. I have a love-hate relationship with them

What I wouldn't give to have the Windows 3.0 version of WordPerfect run on a MAC today!

That old version of WordPerfect was WONDERFUL. it destroys any recent version of MS Word.

The only reason MS Word became so popular was MS was rich enough to practically give it away for free, which effectively killed WordPerfect, and now we have to pay for it again.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

This article argues that Microsoft isn't failing, it argues that it has already failed: http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed/

TL;DR: Microsoft has stagnated for far too long and completely missed the boat on a number of occasions, most recently by failing to recognize the transition to mobile computing. As a result, it now holds 2% of the market it once dominated, before the launch of iOS and Android. Windows 7 for mobile was incompatible with all previous apps developed for Windows Mobile, and Windows 8 again obsoletes Windows 7 which is barely a couple of years old.

He calls Windows 8 "the laughing stock of the OS world [...] for use on a desktop computer the experience is miserable, you need touch. Unfortunately, touch does not work on a vertical surface, there have been decades of studies that show this". Damn straight! I don't think I would want to lift my fingers off the keyboard to touch the screen to do work! I have NO touch on any of my computing devices (save phone and tablet) and I do not miss it at all. Do I, for one moment, think that my desktop computer could be improved by having the ability to touch the screen? Not one bit!

MS has traditionally never been first to the market with new groundbreaking technologies. The GUI was invented by Xerox way before MS belatedly entered the market with Windows. Those buttons that you see on MS Word first appeared on Ami Pro. MS Excel is a latecomer - before that was Lotus 123. MS Word itself was late to the game, back in the days of DOS it was outsold by WordPerfect. There were generations of Ataris, Nintendos, and Playstations before MS entered with XBOX. Palm pioneered the PDA industry before MS entered with Win CE. MOSAIC and Netscape dominated the browser industry before MS entered with Internet Explorer. Creative Labs pioneered portable media players before MS finally entered with the Zune (the laughing stock of the PMP world). And nobody needs reminding of how Apple and Android have stolen the lead on smartphones and tablets.

Ah Microsoft. I have a love-hate relationship with them

I don't think the last paragraph means much. Being first to market with an idea is rarely as important as being first to make it really useful for and marketable to lots of people. But the premise is spot-on. The early days of Microsoft and the bad choices of IBM gave MS a near monopoly of operating systems for personal computers. They leveraged that monopoly (often using anti-competitive practices that should have gotten them in trouble) to drive competitive products out of business and dominate key software categories. But while their business practices were ruthlessly successful, their product execution has always been inconsistent to poor. The products they drove out of business were often better than the MS replacements, and the operating system, as it evolved from DOS to Windows, was notoriously unstable. Seems like only every second or third major release of Windows was successful. There were a lot of bad products, bad errors in there.

They've failed quite a few times over the years, and if they hadn't managed to gain their OS monopoly, I think they would have failed finally, many years ago. Who else/how else could have survived all the failed versions of their signature product, the consistent inability to bring market products better than their primary competitors' in so many categories, the gaping security holes in Explorer? Really, their only consistently successful product in years, the only thing they've made that has survived, gotten better with each release, and managed to always be equal to or better than their primary competitor is the XBox. Everything else has been hit or miss, with lots of misses. But the XBox rocks. There must be something completely, culturally different going on there.

Tim