Malcolm Davis's Blog: Redmond's One Big Vista Mistake?

Several years ago, Apple's Tiger team was under pressure to ship an operating system that would kill Longhorn. Many of the promised features for Longhorn shipped on the Mac's new Tiger OS.

At that time, Longhorn was right around the corner, or so everybody thought.

Now, studying the comments coming out of Redmond, there might be yet another schedule slip in Vista. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060728/tc_nm/microsoft_tech_dc

"Ballmer admitted recently that one big, wrong decision led to all the Vista delays. They took a "Big Bang" approach and tried to overhaul all of the OS core components at the same time. That strategy eventually led to a fiery development crash." - Read more from WserverNews newsletter http://www.wservernews.com/index.cfm?id=588

Yet, there are more problems with Microsoft than delays in Vista.

In May, Sony's PS2 outsold the Xbox 360 by approximately 11K units. [Among other things, the 360 is not backward compatible with the previous gaming unit, and does not support BlueRay].

Microsoft's business model is based on selling software and not selling business services. [Software As Service (SAS) has been around for a while. The last 2 commercial companies where I was employed, and the one I am involved with now, all have a Software As Service business model].

Products like word-processing, spreadsheets, mail clients, etc, are all commodities. Hence, what is MS really providing? [People continue to migrate basic office type functionality to FOSS applications.]

Alternative development languages, tools, and environments are continuing to grow in popularity.

In the past, Microsoft stock options were a huge magnet, and motivation for Microsoft employees. However, with the continue dropping of stock value over the last 5 years, many employees inside the organization are becoming disheartened.

IMO: Microsoft does not have a staffing problem, but a problem in organizational structure, mindset, and ego. Dropping Java to create a new language and technology base was a perfect demonstration of the ego. Billions spent on a lawsuit, developing and marketing new technology, and not to include all the time spent that could have gone into creating the ultimate Java platform. When IBM went through their ego trip, IBM acknowledged the problem, hired a new president, and re-focused the company. Is Microsoft ready to do the same?

Special thanks to Daniel H Steinberg.

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Comments

Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first) | Post Comment

On the issue of .NET being an "ego trip," the following quote by Steve Jobs comes to mind: "I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do." I think this is true of many companies, including Microsoft (and Sun), that has the resources to afford this.

At least these days, companies can adopt opensource as a primary technology that their products depend on, since opensource by definition cannot controlled by a competitor, eg. to deliberately stifle their competition. As an example, Apple adopted FreeBSD to build on. IBM have not wasted any time adopting opensource, whether as a commodity eg. Linux, and/or a platform on which to build value eg. Apache. Opensource is "out of control" in positive ways ;)

It is a pity that Sun and Microsoft could not collaborate on Java. Possibly there were ego's trips happening on both sides? Anyway, it is difficult for such competitive companies, not to compete on "primary technology." It seems to me that Microsoft had no control over Java, and Sun had total control, so...

Posted by: evanx on August 06, 2006 at 01:41 PM

$ products like spreadsheets and word
$ processors are commodities

as far as i know, microsoft makes a pretty penny from
every computer sold anywhere, regardless of the end user's
intent of using windows or any other piece of preinstalled
commodity software in the first place.

when a company makes money by forcing hardware
manufacturers to charge for a product that the consumer
may not even want or use, where's the incentive to innovate?
if i were microsoft, i wouldn't even bother employing anyone.
or maybe i'd send the employees home and just send them
checks each month.

what saddens me is that consumers are forced to
send bill gates a check *for nothing*. and no one
in government even cares.

Posted by: eitan on August 06, 2006 at 10:06 PM

I'm not sure how Microsoft 'forces' hardware manufacturers to charge for anything.
I'm guessing you mean more along the lines of HP and Dell charging for Windows (I would consider them more assemblers myself)? For starters very few computers come with Office pre-installed (which is one of MS's major cash cows), and while you may not be able to get a computer from Dell without Windows (not sure) it's trivial to get one from a local computer store (which will usually be heavier on the hardware and lighter on the price).
Personally I haven't sent a dime to MS for many years. I build my own systems and run Linux. I build help my close family get systems built, and for them the latest Windows just might be the easiest choice (although I'm working on that).
It bothers me to see unsupported claims of 'consumers are forced' and 'government' should be doing something about, when consumers have plenty of choice and the government has no place in it. If Dell (for example) doesn't want to sell Linux (or blank) machines that is their business. The incentive to innovate comes from people choosing not to buy Office, or computers with Windows pre-installed, and from competition producing better products. The move to ODF for one will bring some real competition into the office software space.
Sorry for the long off topic rant, but it bothers me when some person starts invoking the government to come to the aid of the consumer because the consumer isn't making the choice that person wants.

Posted by: smbell on August 07, 2006 at 02:11 PM

walk into an electronics store such as best buy or compusa. you won't find a single machine that you can buy without having to pay for a windows license, except for macs. again, no linux choice. ok, so i guess i could walk into fry's and buy a motherboard and some ram and a power supply and a case and a monitor and put it all together and not pay for a windows license. what if i want to buy a notebook computer? let's not be so naive and think that companies that manufacture pc's such as sony and dell have a choice to offer both linux and windows desktops. i recall reading a few years back how microsoft threatened compaq with terminating their windows contract if they sold anything else. i've read the articles about dell trying to sell linux desktop computers in europe using a subsidiary company and having their chain yanked back by microsoft. i for one am not so naive to believe that business is conducted with white gloves, that vendors who do business with microsoft have a choice. the fact remains that if tomorrow i want to buy a branded (toshiba, sony, dell, hp, gateway, ...) notebook computer to run linux on it, redmond will be receiving a check for it.

Posted by: eitan on August 08, 2006 at 07:27 AM

Well, Dell have Linux machines in their online store. They also have OS-less ones for sale. However, you cannot strip the OS from any model, the set is predefined.

That is a kind of control that is being forced upon us.

Posted by: mr_dronski on August 08, 2006 at 10:52 AM

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