Is Microsoft Silent Before a Deadly Storm? 492
M$FTjack writes "Discussions about Microsoft are all over the place, esp. with its recent delays to Vista. Some consider Microsoft to be doomed, while others say Microsoft is silent before a deadly storm. According to the article on CoolTechZone, the author believes that Microsoft will unleash an abundance of next-generation applications that will take everyone by surprise. From the article: 'So why am I citing all these examples? Simply because I think Microsoft is itself poised for a big leap. Despite all the rumors about Google and how it will topple Microsoft, I don't see that happening in the near future ... people (and I don't mean technology enthusiasts) will continue to purchase Microsoft products simply because of the sheer familiarity and comfort levels (BSoD et al) that they have with Microsoft software.'"
I doubt it (Score:5, Insightful)
maybe stormy silence before a Death? (Score:4, Insightful)
Key moment in the slashdot article:
I think the user community along with the technical community approaches the tipping point with Microsoft, especially with more and more alternatives like web based applications. Microsoft may join that fray, but they've sandbagged themselves, and they may not recover so nimbly this time (though I'll never count Microsoft out).
Microsoft has spent so much ill-will capital, the collective technology users' almost (almost) want Microsoft to go away. Microsoft is still powerful, but a lot of that power today is inertia as Microsoft tries to think of ways to re-invent itself yet again in time to maintain its control. I hope it doesn't.
Meanwhile, users (though they don't quite yet know it) are offered virtually every function as a web application, at least for ninety percent, and in many ways the new applications surpass the old resident application paradigm for convenience, service, and ease of use and maintenance.
Where's the picket sign? DOOM (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really being said (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:2, Insightful)
What if MS is actually learning something from Apple's success and trying that strategy out?
Re:maybe stormy silence before a Death? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wouldn't agree. The collective users minus the knowledgeable community are just happy that the "media center edition windows" that came equipped with their dell lets them do all this "new" cool stuff. don't count out a dazzling UI, fancy-sounding jargon or some other gimmick to win back the ignorant hordes, because I really doubt that true innovation will come by and kill or beat some of the great products already out there.
Either that, or look out for a deadly string of buyouts. Honestly, I love using Visio because it feels so different from the rest of the Office suite. Things just work sometimes -- made me finally give up xfig. If I'm not mistaken Visio was a company that made ...Visio...and then got bought out by MS.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. To quote computerworld from 1995:
This has always and continues to be their strategy. As far as I can tell, this time their entire marketing plan is
"Don't buy a Mac or install Ubuntu or else you might miss out on Vista's similar UI candy".
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:3, Insightful)
AFAIK, Vista wasn't delayed six years. That seem to rather match the time it has been in development.
But yes, it was likely delayed more than a "few months" at least due to them deciding to throw out the XP kernel and base it on Server 2003's instead.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you seen Office 2007? They actually tried this time. It has new features, and it's actually way better to use.
This whole thread (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't remember MS promising to deliver Vista in 2001, and I doubt you have proof to the contrary...
Re:maybe stormy silence before a Death? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:5, Insightful)
That probably wouldn't work because of their sales strategy. They sell companies expensive 3-year subscriptions with the promise that they'll get Microsoft's latest and greatest when it's ready; to make the sale, naturally, they have to hype the products in the pipeline.
If I recall correctly, Vista/Longhorn was supposed to be out in 2004, 3 years after XP. Some corporations paid a lot of money for a lot of nothing in 2001 and the following years, based on empty promises and grossly miscalculated shipping dates.
Re:Where's the picket sign? DOOM (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, while they have to be as open as they can about Vista, Office, and other corporate necessities, consider projects like the Origami, or a rumored XBox handheld. They could really benefit from an Apple-style buzz and launch.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not mispelling, it's "misspelling"
Back on topic, I have been amazed at big a deal everyone is making about the Vista delays. How often are software projects late? Um, always?
Indeed, system vendors will be irate, but the idea of Microsoft being "doomed" as the Slashdot article states is patently absurd. Microsoft is such a massive empire; their fall would take decades and a long and consistant string of terrible screw-ups. A few products being late, even years late, might scratch their bottom-line, but it will hardly lead to their demise.
Re:No, that's not it (Score:3, Insightful)
The argument is that people are fed up with Windows and the market is ripe for something that will replace it. Boot Camp makes the transition much easier on people because they don't have to quit Windows cold turkey.
People no longer trust Microsoft as they did in the past (right or wrong, most users blame Microsoft for viruses and spyware.) While Macs are not immune to them, the default security policies on OS X (have to enter a password to install anything) make it a lot harder to fool users into running attachments which install anything to their machine.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Windows Vista = "Meh" (Score:3, Insightful)
Get it strait: The new interface is nothing more than a bonus, and a much needed upgrade of a bonus at that. Look under the hood, and you'll be surprised. Now, stop regurgitating the same old BS we've been hearing for years, and tell us something that's of value.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:4, Insightful)
Still can't open open document formats.
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means, all the MS haters/flamers posts will get modded up as insightful or interesting (and will by in large be neither), anyone saying anything contrary will be left untouched or modded down. Nothing new or valuable will be said, all the same flames will be rehashed yet again.
And I'm sorry, love them or hate them, but to say MS is doomed and going to fold is beyond stupid, with no basis in reality. If you have any sense of the scope of their software suites and the size of their user base, no one in their right mind would say that. You might WANT it to happen, but hope and reality are not the same thing
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:3, Insightful)
AFAIK, Vista wasn't delayed six years. That seem to rather match the time it has been in development.
Yeah it was. They called it Longhorn back in 2000, then renamed it as vista. Calling it new is disingenuous - everyone knows MS is working on the next version of their OS. The actual project name is irrelevant.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:2, Insightful)
How do the words "failed" and "late" suddenly have the same definition?
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows 2000 and ME to XP was a 2 year release cycle.
NT4 to 2000 was a 5 year release
Windows XP to Vista will be at least a 4 year release cycle.
So the Vista timeframe is in line with previous product releases. XP, OTOH was short largely because it was what they promised in Windows 2000, just 2 years late.
Howecer compare with:
Windows 95 to 98: 3 years
98 to ME: 2 years
ME to XP: 2 years.
XP to Vista: 4 years
So XP to Vista shows a slowing release cycle in an area which has traditionally had a fast turnover.
Now there are two more things to note. XP is the unification point between two different MS operating systems. They consolidate their offerings and lengthen their release cycle on the consumer side to match the business side. This indicates that Microsoft is trying to cut costs, not that they are trying to release next-gen products with a great wow factor.
Microsoft is doomed, but Google is not the cause.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's hope Microsoft embraces and extends Linux sometime in the near future.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would want my company to diversify and nost just in other areas. If a microwave oven can run on my software, damn it, i'm gonna get someone to write software for it.
Why did they stop supporting their media player for Mac? Why did they stop at Media Player 6.4 for Linux?
I seriously think that Microsoft coders can't code at all. Whatever politics are behind them from not fulfilling their career goals need to go by the wayside because it's crippling effects are felt everywhere.
Re:Windows Vista = "Meh" (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it just me or is Microsoft actually catching up to where *nix has been for twenty years with Project Athena from MIT.....
Directory services, Kerberos, automated maintenance pushed out to workstations (via GPO's in Windows).... Now if we could only deal with insane file locking strategies that WIndows uses, add symlinks, etc. we would have a real OS. Alternatively, if they could add the really cool clustering capabilities VMS had, that would be cool too.
Right now, Windows is sort of a VMS-lite with a nicer GUI but lacking all the enterprise management features that have existed in the enterprise OS world for twenty years.
The *Only* reason what Microsoft is making inroads here is because UNIX/Linux geeks don't really know what their OS is capable of.
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only when they are managed by incompetents, the kind of losers who think that working longer hours is something other than a euphemism for low productivity.
No software project I have managed has been late by more than 10% of the total schedule. It just isn't that hard to deliver quality software, on time, every time. I've done it with research-oriented projects, whole applications, and feature upgrades, in Java and C++, working alone and managing largish (~10 developer) teams. I have been involved in very late, very large projects that I accurately predicted would be very late using basic quantitative estimation practices. Large projects are even easier to estimate than small projects because they average over so much diversity. Any two large projects are more similar than any two small projects.
There are two major factors that cause software projects to be late: technological optimism on the part of developers, and faith-based management and estimation practices. I hardly need to write about technological optimism here--we've all at one time or another gotten so enamoured of a new technology that we thought it would solve all our problems in half the time and not contain any gotchas.
Faith-based management practices are based on what people want to be true rather than what is true. They are the epistemology of a bible-believing Christian applied to logistics. We've all seen managers who want badly to believe that the schedule will be met, and so they lie to themselves and everyone one around them, and punish anyone who disagrees with their faith.
Quantitative estimation and management practices are not hard to learn or apply, but they continually come up with the "wrong" answers--ones that the bible-believers don't want to hear. When this happens the bible-believers characteristically make exceptionalist claims: "This is the chosen project! It is not not like all those other projects you based your estimates on! This project is special! It is outside the laws of time, space and logistics!"
Needless to say, like all bible-believers, they are impervious to facts, and so their projects crash merrily through deadline after deadline without any response except ill-conceived attempts to force their minnions and themselves to work ever-longer hours.
The solution to all of this is the Law of Common Humanity: We are just like Them. If industry data from the past century across a dozen different fields shows that working more than 35 or 40 hours a week results in significantly lower productivity, then that is probably true of us as well. If the quantitative estimation practices described in Rapid Development gave reasonable values for others, they probably will for us. If the causes of failure identified in Stephen Flowers excellent book Software Failure: Management Failure caused other projects to fail, they will probably cause ours to fail if we let them.
It is clear that Microsoft has never learned this lesson. They have been famous for late projects since Word1.0 two decades ago, and yet like bible-believers everywhere, they keep to the faith of their forefathers despite the wreckage it produces. On this basis, the odds of Microsoft being poised to unleash a river of innovation is simply not plausible.
How do you tell? (Score:4, Insightful)
More to the point, how often has Microsoft really come out with something innovative that took the world by storm? It's released rehashes of products it bought from other people, but I can't think of many cutting edge, out-of-nowhere advancements that have come from them. It's not really their core competancy is it? Which isn't to say they can't produce some slick stuff when they want to, but rather they're more often riding the coat tails of smaller trailblazers (who they either crush or swallow in the following years).
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft.. sooner rather than later? WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
I read the whole article, but knew as soon as I read this sentance that I didn't really need to. When has MS *ever* been "sooner rather than later" to the next big thing? Historicaly they have been the ones slow to the punch. One rather outstanding example... the internet.
Nothing Indeed. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to ignore such crap myself, but I know I'll be hearing it over and over again. The upgrade train is building up steam again. Because so many people have been burnt before, M$ is having to crank up the volume more than usual. The article is a sorry apology for M$'s glacial six year OS pace and inability to do anything innovative. Just the same, we are going to hear more of the same. M$ might be deadly, but they are never silent because hype and anti-competitive tactics are all they have. People speculate they are dead because that's how you describe a listless company with mediocre product in a competitive market.
It's nice to see the typical, loud M$ build up to their next release. I can remember the idiots who bought and echoed all the XP hype without ever having run it. "It's based on NT Technology so it's like solid," I overheard some marketdroid in a supermarket. That's the level of penetration M$ achieves with billions of dollars worth of advert budget. Similar stupid things could be heard a year before the release 2000, 98, "the end of DOS, USB support", 95, "the 32 bit computing and the end of DOS, a real multitasking GUI.." Some people still believe these things.
Oh yeah, like Origami... (Score:3, Insightful)
At a recent Korean demonstration showing off Origami hardware, the software hung and choked many times.
or... how 'bout the TABLET PC??
Re:Microsoft is never silent before the storm. (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, how do you factor Server 2K3 into this? I think that Vista has nothing from 2K3, but I could be wrong about that. Personally, I'd say that the XP development cycle should be traced from NT4. Why? Because 2K was the technology behind XP. The next year was spent turning it into a consumer OS, so let's say about 5 years (I think NT4 came out around 1996, but maybe it was 1995). Therefore, Vista is about on par with that (5.5 year from August 2001 when XP was released to OEM to January 2007; my guess is it'll be delayed again, so let's say an even 6 years from XP to Vista).
Therefore, it's about on par with their last release. But when it comes to delays, I don't think any other Windows product was delayed this long (Win95 slipped about a year, I think; if XP is what 2K was supposed to be, then 2K also slipped a year, you could argue).