6 Responses

1. John Naughton

   09|Apr|2007 1

   Of course Microsoft has a future! But Paul Graham’s comparison with IBM is spot on. Like IBM, it will continue to pursue its corporate objectives as ruthlessly as any other big corporation. (IBM’s adoption of Linux — and its behaviour as a ‘good citizen’ in the Open Source world — has given it a cuddly image; but try dealing with IBM patent lawyers and the cuddly image evaporates quickly.) Corporations are corporations, period.  They do what they have to do.  Big corporations don’t disappear.  But I think that Graham is right in one sense — that the shadow casts by Microsoft is shortening, not lengthening. In a way, this was bound to happen. For as long as the platform was the computer, then Microsoft’s dominance was always going to be hard to challenge (that’s the logic of network effects). But we’re moving into an era where the network is the computer (to borrow an old Sun Microsystems mantra), and so a monopolistic grip on the platform (the PC) is bound to be a wasting asset. The really interesting thing is that there are people in Microsoft (like Ray Ozzie) who understand this perfectly well; but it looks as though they are finding it difficult to turn the supertanker round — hence the difficulties with Windows Live. Interesting times!

2. Dan Oblak - MacBigot.com

   10|Apr|2007 2

   Every holiday, I show up at the home of one relative or another, and fully expect to see a pile of PCs (and digital cameras, VCRs, an occassional television, and an odd inkjet printer) waiting for my attention — and for the last twelve years, I’ve never been let down.

   What is happening for those families who haven’t had opportunity to marry in some geek blood?

   Some of my observations this Easter weekend that may be relevant to this discussion:

   1) Microsoft (and most other software publishers who follow their lead) ASSUMES that customers have broadband connections, OR don’t mind frequent trips to a VAR to add updates and bug fixes that can’t be reasonably sucked down the meager pipe provided by an analog phone line. If you call in and are in need of a working product (after all, that’s what you paid for, right?), you are given the choice between connecting for large downloads or ridicule by the technician on the other end of the phone.

   2) Complexity is considered to be a necessary evil — such that the market’s competitive nature precludes the ability of software authors from making simple software that simply works. This, of course, is a heap of crap — but if the simple software that works is never heard of by my relatives, and what they do hear about is that one must have $450 worth of Microsoft Office bogging down their hard drive, they will choose between paying for it or pirating it; rather than between Office or a more reasonably-scaled (and realistically priced) application suite.

   3) The IT professionals that advise their employers are also drawn upon by their relatives, church congregations, scout troops, civic organizations, and neighborhood retirees. Left without time to foster a knowledgebase outside of the Microsoft spectre, most of these ‘IT Professionals’ are little more than ‘MS Professionals’; thus furthering the ignorance, complexity and needless spending.

   My take on our current world of tech is that we have indeed made considerable progress (Mac users no longer need panic about whether Microsoft Office for MacOS will continue development, since the free NeoOffice is such a clean build of OpenOffice), it’s still going to be several generations of users before we can bask in the light that flickers at the end of this tunnel. Assumptions that the work is tipping over some sort of crest, requiring less diligence, effort, and vigilance is a dangerous state of mind in a market where billions of dollars can turn on a dime (or with the wave of a patent application).

   Education, support, and development need to increase, not level off — until software is once again viewed by ALL users as the stuff that empowers people and businesses, instead of the ball-gag-and-butt-plug feeling it gives us now.

3. John

   10|Apr|2007 3

   Apropos Dan’s observation that “The IT professionals that advise their employers are also drawn upon by their relatives, church congregations, scout troops, civic organizations, and neighborhood retirees”, I’ve been struck when visiting my extended family how their MS systems have generally become corrupted by malware, and how few of them have access to anyone who knows anything about this technology. One of my sisters has a PC which had over 600 distinct pieces of malware on it when I checked. My feeling is that, while it’s perfectly possible to run an MS system with good technical support, most non-corporate consumers are not in that happy position, and so they accept — as a fact of life — that computers are things that get infected and degrade over time.

   But — interestingly — they don’t like hearing that they made the wrong choice of OS, so I’ve learned not to say that any more. I just make sympathetic noises.

4. Edseverripit

   11|Apr|2007 4

   Well, sure, MS has done a few suicidal moves in marketing their products, but they will heal one way or another, very, very slowly.

5. Dave

   15|Apr|2007 5

   Quentin has written about this topic here.

6. Andy

   24|Apr|2007 6

   Is MS dead? Well, there’s still a pulse, but it’s slowing and they’re looking pretty sick…..

   Their two main products are an “”OS”" and an office suite. Both are now smack in the middle of commodity-land.
   Operating systems are commodities. Office suites are commodities. With the exception of Apple, only pointy-haired bosses pay for operating-systems and office suites now.

   Linux and the BSDs are free, more secure and more robust than anything MS can produce. The same can be said of OSS office software. The OSS Gnumeric spreadsheet has every function found in Excel, plus another 154 that aren’t in Excel!

   Vista is an absolute joke. Expensive, flimsy, bloated and insecure. It will be Microsoft’s version of the Edsel.

   Yep - time for MS to get out the ol’ rocking-chair and reminisce about Win 3.1 …..

   - Andy