Microsoft's Unique Innovation 575
Anonymous Coward writes "The way John Carroll sees it, Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for all the technology it invents. The company's understanding of the marketplace, argues Carroll, has proved fertile ground for many of the inventions, however incremental, that Microsoft produces on a regular basis. That awareness is that all software markets, however "unrelated" they may seem, have linkages to each other. And it's an awareness that open source will have a hard time matching. Another reason many fail to appreciate Microsoft inventiveness, continues Carroll, is because most inventions are pieces of larger puzzles."
What the..... (Score:5, Funny)
Nope... it's not April 1st. Did I miss something?
Re:What the..... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What the..... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Funny)
*Browses Microsoft's product list*
Hmmmm... nope.
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Insightful)
(The blog is here if you're interested: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/default.aspx [msdn.com])
I don't know how others feel, but my impression of Microsoft is that they're always *trying* to innovate, whether or not they happen to succeed.
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Funny)
I know! Just like Apache copied IIS, Sendmail copied Exchange, BSD copied their old network utilities, and Mozilla copied IE. I tell you, it's amazing they ever let us have any of their new toys, since we're just going to steal them right out from under 'em.
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the standard litany of why OSS is great (most of which I agree with) timely innovation is not often mentioned. And as an example I give you OS X. It beats the hell out of anything in the linux or freebsd camps, and it didn't take them very long. The underpinnings (openstep, freebsd) have always been there for the taking by anybody in the OSS community yet it took Apple to produce what I think (and many others do, too) is the first decent version of UNIX for the desktop.
Anyway, it's funny that this kind of thing is even debated. There was a time before the brainwashing when it was considered patently obvious that you get better product when you pay people to build it. Thank god the OSS true believers haven't turned their attention to civil engineering. Hasn't anybody else noticed that the slope of progress on linux is far less than for Mac OS X, or even Windows? Even if Microsoft gets Longhorn out in 2008, it will still beat linux. And by that point Apple will be selling something that makes both look like a Speak 'n' Spell.
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Funny)
I get paid quite a bit to write Free Software, as do a lot of my friends. The teenage hacker in his mom's basement is terribly '90s; you really need to update your cliches.
Even if Microsoft gets Longhorn out in 2008, it will still beat linux.
Yes, Longhorn '08 will probably be spiffy compared to Linux '05. I don't plan to be running Linux '05 then.
Re:What the..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Jokes aside, Windows has *always* been ahead in terms of user experience. Sure, it's the target of viruses and mal/spyware. Sure, it's got a bad security model. Sure, it was produced by a company which could for most intents and purposes be considered evil. But at the end of the day, it's beating Linux out, and in 3 years, it will still be beatin
Xerox PARC and real innovation. (Score:5, Funny)
Slope of progress? Like, do you measure that in utils, or what? Lines of code? Eye-candy? How many OEMs include it? Or do you measure it in reliability, security, standards-adherence? The underpinnings (openstep, freebsd) have always been there for the taking by anybody in the OSS community yet it took Apple to produce what I think (and many others do, too) is the first decent version of UNIX for the desktop.
Always there for the taking? Nice corporate attitude. Well, that sentence speaks for itself. Apple benefits from the hard work of the folks at Berkeley and KDE, then adds some polish, calls it innovation. 'cepting they wouldn't be where there are now had it not been for open-source. And by the way, if you search the Slash archive, you'll see Apple is not exactly a self-respecting member of the open source community. They see far, by sitting on the shoulders of giants. But don't contribute anything back, unless they get their hands slap. Read up on Safari's roots in KDE's KHTML.
Even if Microsoft gets Longhorn out in 2008, it will still beat linux.
NOW you're talking crack. What an inane statement first of all. Still beat linux in what way? Again, what are your criteria? Besides, the Linux development pace has forced Microsoft to entirely revamp their glacial development process to the 'Agile' process of the Linux crew. Read up on the article in WSJ recently about how sloooooow it took to get builds from Microsot.
Just look at GNOME. It's practically got a [bleep] start menu.
The start menu. Oh, thank you very very much Msf. What a wonderful contribution. But they stole the entire user interface for Windows, and Windows 95, from Macintosh, who stole it from Xerox PARC. Xerox Parc built the GUI interface. Msft contributes a button. Thanks.
Re:Xerox PARC and real innovation. (Score:3, Insightful)
I measure it in the amount of time it takes me to configure a new printer. Isn't that how everybody does it?
NOW you're talking crack. What an inane statement first of all. Still beat linux in what way? Again, what are your criteria?
It will be self evident when you use longhorn and then use linux, the same way its self evident when you use OS X and then use linux. (Or in most people's case, not use linux.) Remember, you're part of a brainwas
Re:Xerox PARC and real innovation. (Score:4, Informative)
It's not hard - I remember such times easily. However, in those days, we complained about having to edit text files called "INI files" in C:\WINDOWS, and "CONFIG.SYS" in C:\. Eventually, that avenue was taken from us, and we had to resort to using a graphical tool to change settings in a binary data-store, which was called the "Registry", which contained the exact same entries as the old "INI files", but without the ability to edit them in DOS mode.
Just because they're not stored in
Re:Xerox PARC and real innovation. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the..... (Score:5, Insightful)
bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
And many of the features you may think of as open source copying from Windows weren't actually invented at Microsoft at all--a Microsoft product is simply the first time you happen to have seen them.
Re:What the..... (Score:3, Funny)
Bill Gates' haircut.
Re:What the..... (Score:3, Interesting)
MiniBar? (Score:3, Funny)
Hotels have had them for years... so where's the innovation?
Now, I know as well as the next pro-Windows shill that Open Sores copies everything Windows does, so give it a year or two and I'll have unlimited free beer, whisky, chocolate and peanuts.
All they have to sort out is free hookers and I'll be sorted.
Re:What the..... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't tell me we'll have to pay each time we use an item...
Re:What the..... (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, I use Abiword.
Re:This piece reminds me (Score:5, Interesting)
This guy works for Microsoft, and had released an article with a rather defensive tone to it. I laughed the same way when I heard Mrs. Bush chastising the American public for picking on her husband.
MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy is pretty amazing in his energy applied to convincing the world (and himself) Microsoft is an inventing kind of company. He even uses a bizarre example:
Wow! I'm not sure in this universe what comparison is being made. But I infer he is saying Microsoft is getting accused of being non-innovative because they're making the Formula One racers. I'm not sure this is a metaphor I can accept for the stuff I've seen coming from Microsoft, unless a Formula One racer:
I would however cede their metaphor in these regards:
There are also some specious arguments and claims:
Regardless, it's kind of fun to see the periodic article pushing yet again to tell the world Microsoft is innovative. In Microsoft's case, it is actually possible saying so makes it so.
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:2, Funny)
Burn! (+1)
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hey, all you entrepreneurs working on technologies to satisfy actual human desires: STOP. Give us money so we can show the Ruskies where it's it."
Then later:
"Hey, some of what we did can, coincidentally, satisfy human desires outside of getting to the moon. Hey consumers! Look at all the goodies we produced for you. Please TOTALLY IGNORE what the entrepreneurs, who were trying to directly satisfy your desires, rather than satisfying them by mere coincidence, accomplished. Just focus on what we did, not what could have happened."
Then later, their court intellectuals say:
"If you opposed the space program, you must oppose insulated lunchboxes. Luddite."
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, you need to go back to the 40s. If you will remember, World War II was the advent of a lot of technologies. It's doubtful we'd have weather tracking RADAR systems if it wasn't for the advent of Brittish scientists playing with radio waves. It's likely we wouldn't have satellite communications if it weren't for the German's V2. And while you may argue that all of the things that got spun off from the different space agencies may have been invented anyways, it's likely they wouldn't have been advented nearly as quickly, and wouldn't have gotten any government money to do it.
NASA has given back to the Americans plenty of things we all take for granted, but it seems there is a larger and larger group of Slashdot readers who are revisionist historians and want to forget that WWII is what caused the Cold War, and thus, what caused technologies to explode into what they've become today. America is the country we are today because of War, and because of the spoils that war has brought to us. Hell, it can be argued that its the reason that Innovation has slowed down so much here in America; we haven't had a real need to. Our government no longer feels the need to compete with any other world governments.
Let's stop being ignorant and realize that Space technologies have been relatively safe (in comparison to every other industry, ever), that they've generated billions of dollars in jobs, technologies, and pathways for science. And no, I won't list them here (these are all things you should have learned in high school, and a simple google will catch you up to speed). There's simply too much that NASA and the US Military has been involved in coming together for us to simply turn our heads on militaristic and aerospace innovation.
Oh, and if it weren't for NASA's supersonic experiments, cars probably wouldn't be as fast as they are now either; Carbon Fiber, high heat resistant materials, metal alloys, aerodynamic profiles, and more, came from strenous testing and retesting at the hands of engineers using technology adapted from NASA.
You'd better bet if the government needed some awesome software to defeat cyberterrorists or something, there'd be a boom in the market
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:3, Interesting)
But the thing is, that's the way technology has worked. The technology of war always trickles down to the populace, from the technology to create crossbows and trebuchets, to radar, electronics, robotics...all the result o
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:5, Funny)
Actually it's wrong on both ends, not only does engineering in the automotive world generally work from racing down to the consumer level, Microsoft hasn't turned an Escort into a Formula 1 racer. A better comparison would be that Microsoft bought a Ford Escort, put a new coat of paint on it, raised the price, fired all the engineers that built it to start with and tried to convince everyone it was actualy a Formula 1 car.
They do deserve a lot of credit.
SALES!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:2)
But, thats the display department Mr. Dent.
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:3, Insightful)
Sheesh! If he can't give a straighforward example of MS innovation, perhaps there's a reason for that?
Standarize on CORBA? What? (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, KDE standarized on DCOP, GNOME on Bonobo (CORBA?), that blows away his argument that nothing like that exists in the open-source world. Microsoft's advantage is copying an existing standard (CORBA), and
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:5, Funny)
Guess you missed the US Grand Prix this year...
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MS keeps innovating in their spin (Score:3, Insightful)
Witness the Quicktime player that used a volume "knob" that required rotation -- knobs are great and easy to use on physical companents, but liner sliders are much easier (both to control and judge) on-screen, whether controlled by mouse or keyboard.
Heck, witness the confusing mess of technologies that MS put out for kiosk/home threater computers and palmtops in the 90s -- they were all based on the same metaphors that the
The problem lies in connecting them. (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm. (Score:5, Funny)
Riiiight. I work in an almost all MS shop, and if everything suddenly started working seamlessly, I'd have a friggin' heart attack.
Re:Hmm. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hmm. (Score:3, Funny)
Haha (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Look... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hey Look... (Score:5, Funny)
Please, go to www.blogblogblogblog.com and sign up for your own blog today, and begin blogging the exact same things you blogged about 10 years ago. Except now it's all bloggy. Sign up this month and you get a free "Blog it!" t-shirt (aka blog-shirt).
Sincerest regards (and blogs!),
Zip Zorroski
Blogs, Inbloggerated, CEO
Co-founder of Blogging Consortium of Blogs
Frequent Rebooting (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Frequent Rebooting (Score:5, Funny)
What has Microsoft ever invented? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know a very long list of technologies that MS claims to have invented... but buying a company that invented something and inventing something isn't the same thing.
Re:What has Microsoft ever invented? (Score:5, Funny)
AKA "Clippy"
Re:What has Microsoft ever invented? (Score:4, Informative)
Let's face it, Microsoft is a technology reseller. They take what already exists, or at most aid in the planning of some new standard, then turn around and screw with it just enough to assure that competitor products don't do as well as its own. That's not innovation, that's anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior deserving of punishment, not kudos.
Re:Seriously? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
1. The "taskbar". Before Windows 95 there was a concept of a window being "iconized", where the "icon" vanished if the window was open. It appears that Microsoft first made an "icon" that stayed there even if the window was open.
Err, both NeXT and OS/2 did this. Furthermore, there's a very good reason almost nobody else uses the "task bar": it's a terrible user interface.
2. Also in the taskbar, the realazation that words are more important than icons, and shrinking the icon to a more appropriate 16x16 size and making the text visible.
In OS/2, you got the entire text. Even for Modal Windows (which don't show up on the Win95 task bar). For NeXT you got a tool tip of the full text, and never an amended version (like you'll see in Win95).
3. Eliminating the artificial dividing line between the window border and the contents, so that a window displaying a uniform gray rectangle of the right color blends cleanly into the border. Although I wrote something like this myself quite a few years earlier for the NeXT, I hardly publicized it, and never saw similar graphics design until Windows.
Wow. Many MacOS and OS/2 applications did this exactly, and NeXT did it one better by getting rid of the window border itself.
4. "Combo box" where text input and multiple selection are done by the same widget. Having worked with NeXT before this, I'm pretty certain it did not have this, and never saw it on any other system either. (crappy popup implementation with the scroll bar is irrelevant to the innovation, although I really wish they would fix that...)
NeXT most certainly did have it, and so did Motif. They were uncommon with Motif, but SGI used them quite a bit.
5. Scroll wheel. The idea of having another control to scroll data on the mouse was older, but Microsoft seems to have realized that a 1-D version would provide most of the benifit without the confusion or flakiness of older attempts that tried for 2 or even more degrees of freedom.
Wrong again fanboy, both Kensington and Logitch did it with a knob, and Logitch even did it with an actual toothed wheel that was much easier to use than the Microsoft bastardization.
This is exactly why Microsoft has a patent on using a scrolling wheel as a z-index instead of as a scrolling device.
6. Having all files be "commands" in that if you double-click it examines the file (even if only the filename) and opens it with the correct program. The Mac does not count because it relied on imbedded metadata in the file, rather than an outside deciding program. Nor does #! notation in Unix exec of files, as it still requires the execute bit and does not work for files that lack this. I think a very important detail is that this idea could have been implemented 20 years earlier, it does not rely on GUI, and no CLI system ever did. A useful idea that is not realized until long after it is possible is a real indication that it is an "innovation".
First of all, MacOS doesn't work that way; the "type extension" is 4 characters (instead of three), but it's basically the same mechanism. Furthermore, multiple programs that support editing a file type are all accessible (as the creator is additionally available as another 4-character extension).
Why are these things invalid when they're clearly part of the file name?
So even if you refuse to let the Mac count for other reasons, why don't GEM, OS/2, OSF/Motif, CDE, or NeXT count?
Re:What has Microsoft ever invented? (Score:4, Informative)
"So more than twenty years ago, Apple II graphics programmers were using this 'sub-pixel' technology to effectively increase the horizontal resolution of their Apple II displays." -- Steve Wozniak
This guy works for Microsoft... (Score:5, Informative)
seriously ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Both very fine pieces of technology innovation.
Everything else -- I mean *everything* else -- was a copy of the successful work of a more deserving 1-in-a-thousand startup that suffered through all their hard times only to get stomped by the monopoly in the end.
Sam
Re:seriously ... (Score:5, Informative)
Szo
Re:seriously ... (Score:2)
Re:seriously ... (Score:2)
Re:seriously ... (Score:2, Redundant)
MS Didn't invent the wheel mouse (Score:3, Interesting)
The wheel wasn't clickable as a third button, but the spiel on the box was all about how it would make scrolling that much easier.
So Microsoft didn't invent the wheel mouse, but they did re
With this article I'm sure.... (Score:5, Funny)
Innovation? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Innovation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Inventors? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Inventors? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's Not That Microsoft Doesn't Innovate (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's Not That Microsoft Doesn't Innovate (Score:2)
s/Windows 95/around 1992/
Yes. 1992 was a very good year. :-) (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlike DOS GUIs like GEM, PC/GEOS, and others which preceded it, OS/2 was demonstrably better than Windows in almost every way you could think of except in three areas:
* It required more RAM than Windows did (OS/2 was usable in 8MB while Windows was
There's a difference between good and evil.. (Score:2, Informative)
I suppose I just prefer unconditional love, than a
And the basis of his arguments are? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeahgoodluck.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that there still isn't a consensus as to what the P in LAMP stands for, I don't know if I'd hold my breath on that happening. Not that I'm so optimistic about the LSB either, but at least they know what it stands for!
Anyway, Microsoft -- the place where they excel is this: They make something that isn't very good. They make a version 2 that's better, but still not good. 3 isn't bad, and by 4 it's 90% there.
Their competitors (Sun is a perfect example) can frequently make a better version 1, but then Microsoft is still there and competing with them, they get bored and go on to something else. The open-source projects have trouble doing the boring 30% that gets you up to 90%, and start adding translucent menus and XML feeds instead.
Oh, and that's why I'm a Mac user, given the choice...
Unique Innovation? (Score:2)
LS
MS shill. (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth noting that John Carrol is a Microsoft employee, who also writes for ZDNet. The journalistic integrity here is absolutely zero.
Now I don't blame him for his obvious slant. He's paid by Microsoft. Hell, he probably wants to think that his work, and the work of his co-workers is innovative. Who doesn't?
Personally, the fact that ZDNet brought him aboard as a writer is where the real problem lies. I remember at one time how ZDNet used to try to defend themselves against accusations of being MS-shills; but now they seem to embrace it whole-heartedly.
So, coming from this source -- can anybody be surprised by the conclusion? It's worth just what we've paid for it: absolutely nothing.
Yaz.
Redefinition of innovation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently, innovation isn't developing new technology. It's noticing new technology coming out of obscure companies and the academic community and then re-implementing it for Windows and backing it with 8,000 metric tons of advertising hype.
The real reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
-Rick
Come on. I dare you... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) 1,000 monkeys typing = Shakespeare, yadda yadda
2) Broken clock right twice a day, blah blah
3) Every other thing that's always said about buying innovation rather than... what, mining it? Every employee that works there is "bought" every week when they get paid, and sometimes they're bought in a group from somewhere else. Same as anyplace else with a lot of irons in the fire.
But - surely people aren't going to pretend that Excel doesn't exist, or that Active Directory isn't actually pretty damn effective. And Visual Studio actually has its moments (me: old timey VB6 fan, but what do I know).
If you actually work with MS's server products all day long, you'll find that there really is a sum of the parts that actually scratches quite a few itches. And don't forget their hardware... given my choice of a anything from Logitech, MS, or several others (especially for the money), for some uses I'd probably reach for the MS stuff more often. Strictly on touchy-feely-reliability merit, no brand loyalty whatsoever in that area. Unfortunately, they don't make the asbestos products I'll need for this comment.
John Carrol (Score:5, Informative)
Now, years later, after having trolled incessantly for Microsoft for years, he finally got a job with them and a blog at ZDNet where he, surprise, trolls for Microsoft.
I actually do think that Microsoft does innovate in places (xmlhttpobject for example)but I don't think I'd listen to John Carrol when I wanted impartial advice on Microsoft or th IT market.
The tablet pc has never been tried before? (Score:2)
I had a NCR 3125 in the 90's. It was tablet-shaped, it had crappy handwriting recognition, etc. http://www.pencomputing.com/TabletPC/pen_history_
Try again, M$!
just sad (Score:2, Funny)
Invent (aka steal) (Score:2)
This should read all the technology they steal or buy. Microsoft's stance has always been to "borrow" steal or buy any technology the produce as their own.
Well, he's right, although not directly. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but no. (Score:3, Informative)
You see, there was this company called "Go" a few years ago. Read about it here. [amazon.com]
They were working on a Tablet PC before MS fucked them over - at least that's the way they tell it.
The Rules of Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently some of you have forgotten the Golden Rules of Slashdot.
Here they are:
Rule 1: If you're discussing a problem with Windows:
Blame the monopolistic, capitalist monstrosity which is the root cause of this problem. If Microsoft weren't a bunch of money-grubbing, back-stabbing pigs your problem would never have occured.
Rule 2: If you're discussing a problem with OSX:
It isn't Apple's fault. Maybe its your fault. Or maybe its that third party software you're using. Most likely your problem is the result of incompatibilities with MS Office (see rule 1). Apple doesn't make mistakes. Apple loves you.
Rule 3: If you're discussing a problem with Linux:
Agree that there *is* a problem. Then state that the hardworking heroes of the opensource community are hard at work making this problem go away. The message has to be that "We're on it". Remember, one shining day in the future these problems won't plague our people any more. It doesn't matter that your system is losing data, we proudly wear the banner of responsibility in this matter, and we are slavishly addressing your problem.
Any questions?
----------
judge a man by his wallet [jfold.com]
Re:The Rules of Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a deep breath, step away from the computer, and go for a walk outside. The big s
MSFT information value (Score:5, Insightful)
And I mean besides being open-source alone which is pretty innovative... It
marginalizes existing industries and makes software cheaper + it provides jobs and opportunities without having to shell out $$$ for official certification programs.
A lot of what we like is *NIX apps and utilities... linux is not entirely innovative in this way. Sun with Java? Is a JVM innovative? I can say that in
academia there were previous VMs around.. Apple with Aqua? perhaps... but seriously... most people take what works and make it a little bit better and in many cases a little bit cheaper (or expensive by adding/increasing value). Apple
did this with OS X. It makes *NIX more valuable. DirectX? Is that innovative or a complete smash up of OpenGL? Visual Studio? Visio? SQL Server? MSFT buys good tech... SQL Server may get slammed by many here, but for a small-medium business that needs advanced data analytics to query financial data and export it to XLS/PPT for the executives to make decisions I think it works pretty well and is way cheaper than the alternatives. Big companies use Big Iron and Oracle. MSFT has largely been medium user to end-user desktop based. That is because there is a lot of money in those areas. Follow the money and
you will find MSFT.
For businesses that don't need that, such as web2.0 companies there is little incentive to go with MSFT on the backend since it is pure cost than value. Plus you can tweak and extend your linux implementation freely. Linux is more customizable and that helps in many instances and it is cheap for building a server farm. But for data analytics, for integrating information, and providing information value for cheap MSFT is the way to go. They own the corporate information pipeline. That is where value is. Information is valuable. Making it easy to create, get, and use information. Open source hasn't done that yet, except in limited cases where programming gurus go off and start there own companies (Yahoo,Google) etc... and even then they scale to large company size and then will buy Oracle and other large-scale data analytics (or write there own). Google makes then NET valuable. Ebay makes garage sales valuable.
I think open-source will continue to marginalize infastructure, but as long as MSFT keeps providing information value it will always have the lead. Here information value is provided by the solution and not necessarily the product.
Re:MSFT information value (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, of course it does. Here are just a few examples.
Zope, Xen (paravirtualization), GFS, reiserfs, parrot, loadable stored proc languages in postgresql, user definable operators in postgresql, selinux, XML-RPC, XUL, SVG, APT/YUM, zeroinstall, git, are just a few which pop into my head right away.
"QL Server may get slammed by many here, but for a small-medium business that needs advanced data analytics to query financial data
I have moments of agreement with TFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
There alone, explains the author's lack of grasp on the subject. The Open Source movement is riddled with people that once upon a time, made Microsoft a great company. And I will give credit, even as taboo as it may be on Slashdot with the large followers of Microsoft *cough cough*.
Microsoft's ability to innovate does not lie at the OS level, or the application level. It lies at a fundamentally different area, one that's not related to software in and of itself. Microsoft's brilliance is simple -- they made it possible for a business to conduct complete workflow thru their software, from beginning to end. Businesses will always mandate what the future of consumers will buy, and their decisions. If you work for a finance firm and they tell you "Okay Johnson, we are switching to Linux to save $2523432!".. do you think that Johnson is going to go home and buy another Windows PC for his home? He will need a Linux PC to mirror his work environment. Then he will have a friend who comes over and says "wow, what's that?", where Johnson will explain the benefits (as explained to him by his company) of Linux on his desktop, and will thus propogate the use of Linux on the desktop.
Microsoft made Windows -- arguably a crap OS, arguably not. But with the combination of Exchange, Biztalk, Sharepoint, the Office Suite and Windows working in (relative) harmony under Active Directory well.. I'll argue it takes some vision to bring a company that far, and innovation to boot.
But I wouldn't count out Linux as the author did... the people who made MS what it is are who are working in Open Source, working at Google, working at Yahoo, working at IBM. And they will tell us how innovative open source can be, or hell, not even Open Source... but MS alternatives
What about the Recycle Bin? (Score:3, Funny)
big bang? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has made a lot of very small innovations (often called "soft innovations"). Whether it's the ease of use of VB or the elegance of C# or the xml grammars used in the speech SDK. They are not huge, "big bang" style innovations, but they are not insignificant.
Microsoft slowly advances the state of the art and we're all better off as a result. Sure it's not flasy like the industrial design of an iPod or the first space walk or the Polio vaccine, but added up they are a huge force of progress.
Re:big bang? (Score:3, Informative)
i might even concede your point - microsoft has indeed made several small innovations that by themselves are not much to look at, but in their entirety can make up a totally new style of working and collaborating...
but IMHO your examples suck!
Microsoft's Innovation (Score:3)
there should be a standard ..that works everywhere (Score:3, Interesting)
Standards? Works everwhere? Hey dude -- you're working for M-i-c-r-o-s-o-f-t... you know, the people who don't like standards, who won't use open standards (OpenDocument), tweak standards so they are not compliant (Kerberos), invent their own "standards" and not share them (MS-Word format), and then finally try to patent everything (FAT filesystem) so that other people (that would be us, the open source community) can't use it.
Maybe you should read your own article and think about those things, eh? Maybe a lot of people at Microsoft should think about those things...
Their own fault (Score:3, Interesting)
There's also the fact that they don't play well with other. People at Microsoft deserve a big share of the credit for inventing XSL — and it would be hard to overstate the importance of that. But, as they always do with any activity they can't control, Microsoft gradually withdrew from the XSL working group. So whenever you hear about XSLT or XSL:FO, it's in connection with somebody else.
Is there a word.. (Score:3, Funny)
The Registry(TM) (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony is that the Registry reflects Microsoft's company structure, i.e centralised, as compared to any OSS OS where there are hundreds of competing config files in different formats which ensure that the OS won't become unusable if one of them goes down. And that is probably why OSS is inherently stronger than Microsoft. No matter what Microsoft does, Linux is simply too broadly based to die. Microsoft will pay one idiot like John Carrol thousands per month to blog about how he loves Microsoft (he's been developing for 11 year and that's why he *knows* Microsoft is better than OSS or anything else, according to him. He doesn't realise that there are people who have been coding on other platforms for over 20 years and have the exact same opinion about their favourite OS for the same reason).
Still, his zealotry paid off in that he got a well paid job to troll about Microsoft, even if he has become more defensive about it over the years, which makes me laugh, to be honest. The guy's like a little kid trying to win a fight by shouting the loudest.
Re:The Registry(TM) (Score:4, Informative)
Dude, you're to young. The Window's Registry was preceded by the OS/2 Registry, which was equally hated and villified for years before Redmond picked up on the 'idea'.
My biggest beef with Microsoft is that when they do claim to innovate, it turns out that what they've done is either steal someone elses bad idea, or reimplement a good idea poorly.
Re:Article Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
Just think about all the people out there who call themselves "web masters" and "publish" their sites with Microsoft Word on Windows 95 with Personal Web Server and you'll see where I'm coming from. Sometimes it's better to leave things to people who actually were trained within the problem domain. Trying to make them spread their reach may not be a good thing in every case.
Re:Article Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft basically was the VHS or IDE of the computer world during the 90's when Windows took all of the market share from superior operating systems, primarily the Macintosh. Problem is there is now a superior technology with a lower pricepoint in Linux. Microso
Re:But they DO innovate (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lets talk about server-side (Score:3, Interesting)
MS colicensed SQL Server from Sybase, way back in NT 3.5 days, and eventually forked it about SQL Server version 6.0.
CLR? OK, let's allow other languages to "compile" to the JVM, eh, Sun? Let's not even think about the USCD p-code system...
SQLCLR? What about Java JRE embedded in Oracle?
Exchange? Hmm... Lotus Notes. GroupWise. CHMS (if you have worked in US military hospitals, you know full well about CHMS... but I would posit that it is internally what Exchange wishes it could b