Microsoft's Forgotten Mistakes 700
seattlenerd writes "In light of all of the hype about how much cash Microsoft is sitting on, it's good to be reminded that they do fail. A lot. This piece in Seattle Weekly points out some of the many failures -- from ActiMates Barney to Microsoft at Work to pending disasters in smartphones and interactive TV (despite recent PR-worthy announcements). But like most litter, the failures are swept under the rug in the hopes people don't remember that many 'new' Microsoft ideas are recycled from its own history." Of course, like any big company, Microsoft is not a monolith.
Re:What about Bob? (Score:3, Informative)
How about OS/2 and IBM (Score:3, Informative)
Nice flamebait! (Score:5, Informative)
in the hopes people don't remember that many 'new' Microsoft ideas are recycled from its own history."
Microsoft's try-try-again philosophy and focused determination are why it is at the top of the heap of software companies and why they are sitting on the 45 billion in cash now.
This being Slashdot, people will say that the reason Microsoft is so big is because of its monopoly position, but that is a (rather silly) chicken and egg argument. They'd have no monopoly if they weren't big to begin with -- they certainly weren't a government granted monopoly like AT&T once was.
Re:MS Failures... (Score:0, Informative)
Then again, it's pretty clear that Gnome and KDE would never intentionally make such ugly default themes if Microsoft failed to invest so much in R&D. Luckily, there are other themes available where you can work in an environment completely free of Microsoft-grown ideas!
Re:MS Failures... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well, there IS the XBox.... (Score:3, Informative)
So, even with a LOT of Xboxes only being sold since they can be modchipped (Gamecubes cannot) and run pirated games aswell as functioning as media-servers or emulator-hosts - AND is being subsidized by Microsoft (latest figures I've seen place that around $100 per unit) - it still fails to sell as good as the Gamecube.
The Gamecube, being good at
Gives credit to MS for other companies product (Score:2, Informative)
read these
Steve Kirsch
My Life History On One Page
http://skirsch.com/misc/stklife.html
Of Mice and More Mice
http://peripherals.about.com/library/weekly
Re:MS Failures... (Score:5, Informative)
UI design isnt about putting important stuff in order, it's about making important stuff easily accessible and putting unimportant stuff out of the way.
How about the crap that MS pulled by placing the minimize/maximize right next to the close button (whereas in previous UIs the close button had been on the left so that it would be nearly impossible to exit an app accidentally while trying to minimize)? I would hardly consider that an improvement in ordering and accessibility.
Bob... (Score:4, Informative)
Glad it failed...
Monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
Without MS monopolistic cash income stream they would have suffered serious blows screwing up like they have. That is why I wish that part of the settlement MS would have been prevented them from buying technology but force them to "innovate" from scratch and compete.
Re:MS Failures... (Score:3, Informative)
The eyes of people who read top-to-bottom, left-to-right will naturally gravitate first to the top left corner of a rectangular object containing text. Check out some usability [acm.org] studies [pfonline.com] to see what I mean.
Re:Abe Lincoln: failed at being President too... (Score:3, Informative)
Abe didn't fail at reaching the non-military solution, the generations that came before him that created the problems failed. When he was elected president, he did not declare war on the South, but the South declared war on him (Ft. Sumter). Lincoln was not responsible for the lives lost during the Civil War. Every man in the United States (North and South) had an opportunity to fix the rising tensions between the two sides with their ballot and their attitude. They did not, Lincoln fixed their mistakes and restored the union.
Sherman gave ample warning to towns before buldozing them. And sadly, war does involve restless boys who desrie to rape people, but that cannot be considered the leader's fault.
Now I understand that even the greatest men have their flaws (and Abe certainly wasn't the perfect leader), but our nation needs more men willing to fight for justice, and I'm damn proud when I look on the Lincoln memorial.
Re:MS Failures... (Score:1, Informative)
MS Backup - my favorite forgotten mistake (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, that horribly unrobust waste of 800k that comes with Windows. In my case, Windows98.
I needed to transfer files from my fiance's old computer from college to her XP desktop. I just loaded up MS Backup in Widows 98, created the handy QIC file across several 3.5" floppies (as there was no NIC or CD-R installed).
What I found amazed me
When trying to restore in XP, I found it couldn't read Win98 backup files! In fact, after reading post after post on the web, I found that ONLY WINDOWS 98 CAN READ QIC BACKUP FILES.
How healpful is this feature? WHY would you provide a backup tool, knowing a primary use for backup is system restore after upgrade, and only have it work on one VERSION of your OS? (recall that Windows XP is just another version of 98, not like trying to, I don't know, open a Word Perfect file with MS Word)
Meanwhile, I own a PowerBook G4 [apple.com]
Re:MS Failures... (Score:3, Informative)
However, like most character-based languages, Chinese can also be written left to right from upper left hand corner and then progressively downward as well.
It all goes to show the the original poster has no idea what he's talking about.
Re:MS Failures... (Score:5, Informative)
Consequently, I have accidently closed windows in Windows numerous times (even though I use Windows rarely), while I have essentially never done so in OS X (which I use all the time).
You're exactly right (Score:2, Informative)
Greg Palast covered this issue thoroughly in the revised for the United States edition of "The Best democracy Money Can Buy". [gregpalast.com](gregpalast.com)
Re:Nice flamebait! (Score:2, Informative)
Short term investments are liquid investments...
Here's how "Short Term Investments" are determined:
The Company considers all liquid interest-earning investments with a maturity of three months or less at the date of purchase to be cash equivalents.
What does this mean - the KEY here being INTEREST-EARNING. Do you think MSFT keeps 40 - 50B in a bank or in investments?
Re:MS Failures... (Score:3, Informative)
I have menu,minimize,maximize:close
the ':' defines the split between left/right.
Win-G Anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
Win-G was the predicessor to Direct X... It was a game development library that was created by MS that was developed under Windows 3 when game programmers were wanting to make the big switch from DOS games to Windows games. The library was so bad, that very few books were ever published on how to program for the API, and there were VERY few games released that utilized it beause it was so hard to program for, for as weak and slow as it was.
About a year after it's release, they saw it wasn't catching on AT ALL and yanked all references to it from their website, and never spoke of it again. They dropped the Win-G name completely when Direct X was released, and never spoke of it again.
They've done such a good job covering it up, that it usually doesn't even make lists like this.
Re:MS Failures... (Score:2, Informative)
try this*..
1. right click on the desktop
2. click properties
3. click the appearance tab
4. under font size, select 'extra large fonts'
if you're still missing the button, well you can try setting your resolution to 640x480 but you probably have some serious hand-eye coordination problems
* instructions for Windows XP
Re:Some things *are* worth dying for (Score:3, Informative)
All they had to do was eliminate the Fugitive Slaves Acts which _forced_ northerners to send escaped slaves back to their owners... once slaves knew that if they got to a northern state they'd be free, slavery would have been impossible to sustain. The US government was the only thing keeping slavery viable, and could have ended it peacefully at any time.
Lincoln's war was an utter disaster which destroyed constitutional government and created the hideous racial relations which have existed ever since: had slavery simply become non-viable and faded away there would have been no reason for the south to have such a chip on its shoulder over being defeated in a war with the north.
"the slaves, you could say, were imbedded among the white slave owners, and in some areas probably outnumbered the whites."
Why do you think that all slave owners were white? Free black people in the south owned slaves, and also fought for the south against Lincoln's armies.