APCMag interviews Microsoft’s Craig Mundie. “Bill Gates has left the building – almost. In July 2008, the self-made billionaire will make his final exit from Microsoft, and his role will be taken over and shared by two Microsoft veterans: Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. Ozzie will be Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, looking after technical strategy and product architecture, but Mundie has the role of setting Microsoft’s strategy across the board as well as heading up all of Microsoft’s research and development.”
Bill Gates will go down as one of the smartest people of our age. He was a great software inventor and businessman.
Too bad Obi-Wan Kenobi was not able to turn him back from the dark side of the source before he left.
Thats a pretty big pair of shoes Craig Mundie has to fill.
Edited 2007-09-12 20:34
A great businessman ? undoubtedly. A great *inventor* ? I guess it’s a joke.
That’s part of why they split it into two roles — business side, and technical side. This could be bad, as traditionally when this sort of split takes place, the business side fails to listen to what the technology side is able of doing, and manages to both not live up to their technology side’s potential, and demand the impossible of them; things could be getting risky at Redmond soon.
And commenting on the article:
“We have been working for the last few years to add the service component to both the platforms in almost every single Microsoft software product.” Prediction: So when Microsoft’s products get open-sourced (whether by giving in, by third-party reverse-engineering, or by EU mandate), Microsoft still has something to sell.
“Now, Microsoft’s business is not to control the platform per se, but in fact to allow it to be exploited by the world’s developers. The fact that we have it out there gives us a good business, but in some ways it doesn’t give us an advantage over any of the other developers in terms of being able to utilise it.” Thus the shift to .NET, Live, and other platform-independent technologies?
“Well they [massively parallel programming tools ]are out there although most of them are not public yet. We have been very focused on this in our research organisation for the last five or six years and we’re increasingly optimistic that there will be tools that will facilitate the construction of highly concurrent systems. In short: Get ready for .NET 4.0?
“Admittedly though, since I work in the technical area, I don’t read very many books. Almost none in fact.” That’s a suicidal admission in the geek world!
“We are always seeking to maintain the home with that edge right where it doesn’t scare people away, but makes them think that they haven’t seen anything yet.” Such is the curse of development.
(Jeez. Even in an article about Microsoft, APC puts pictures of Linus Torvalds, Con Kolivas, and Mitchell Baker above the article…)
Beats having to see MS’s mudslinging campaign in every OSAlert talkback.
For more accuracy remove “software inventor” from that sentence.
For more accuracy remove “software inventor” from that sentence.
If you think Bill Gates and his Microsoft made no software “inventions” in the 80s and 90s, you definitly need to read up on history.
QDOS could not even read/write to hard drives when Microsoft took over. They turned it into one of the greatest operating systems ever.
Then Bill and Microsoft made the home computer usable by the average population. They made operating systems so easy, there was no need for a computer education to use them. Likewise with development tools.
Why do you think there are so many applications for Windows? Sure it has a huge market share… but thats not all. Microsoft made it so easy to write applications for windows with their development tools, even kids make advanced applications.
Windows is also well documented. Not only for end users, go take a look over at Technet and MSDN. The amount of available documentation available for developers is _huge_.
Another reason Windows is so huge, is that it cares for people who dont hold Phd. in computer science.
Such as the Gamers. DirectX is a major “invention”.
Directx saved developers tons of work, and gave us true 3d gaming. Its superior to OpenGL in all aspecs (Something i hope will change, as im a huge supporter of OpenGL).
Sure, Linux is great and all that. But it has a long way to go before it achieves close to what Windows has. I honestly hope it does, i use Linux extensivly.
Nothing would please me more than to be able to play WoW, Counter Strike, BF1945 and others natively on Linux (No wine, officially supported). In the mean time, I gladly pay for XP and Vista. XP has cost me 10 cent pr day since the day it came out.
Soulbender, I’m sorry to hear you lived under a rock for 20 years. (cmon, vote me down, i honestly dont care).
“They turned it into one of the greatest operating systems ever.”
DOS was never the greatest operating system. Ever. It was constant struggle against stupid design decisions and technical shortcomings.
And no, Windows as we know it today does not build on DOS but on VMS which was in no way at all invented by Gates.
“Then Bill and Microsoft made the home computer usable by the average population. They made operating systems so easy, there was no need for a computer education to use them. Likewise with development tools.”
Since when did Gates write those tools? Since when does making computer hardware affordable make you a *software * inventor?
DOS wasn’t exactly easy to use either, especially not in comparison to the likes of Apple and Amiga.
MS own development tools was inferior to the ones made by Borland and Watcom for a vey long time.
“DirectX is a major “invention”.”
Not invented by Gates.
I’ve never contested that he’s a skilled business man (and perhaps even visionary) but he was never a great software inventor.
“Soulbender, I’m sorry to hear you lived under a rock for 20 years.”
Uh yeah, whatever dude.
Edited 2007-09-13 12:09
QDOS could not even read/write to hard drives when Microsoft took over. They turned it into one of the greatest operating systems ever.
You don’t know much about operating systems, do you?
Then Bill and Microsoft made the home computer usable by the average population. They made operating systems so easy, there was no need for a computer education to use them.
Are you talking about the third-class copy of MacOS called Windows? Their greatest innovation in Win95 was putting everything you knew from MacOS in the opposite corner of the desktop. Actually the copy was so bad that MS can be blamed for the fact that most people think a computer is something which is difficult to use, behaves unpredictable, needs frequent repairs, update and fixes, that it is normal that software all of sudden stops working, that the internet is a dangerous place, that it is normal to pay for bugfixes (Windows98, anyone?), etc.
Steve, is that you?
As a linux user and advocate, I must congratulate bill gates on such a successful company and what he’s done for computing worldwide.
Some of microsoft’s original success can be attributed to right-place-right-time and more recent success can be attributed to the already-existing monopoly, but I do feel that overall they wouldn’t be the company they are without bill gates’s business genius.
With all the rapid advances in linux over the past few years I think Bill has chosen a good time to “retire”. He’s done very well for himself and also given Microsoft a very good public image. No one knows who steve ballmer is, and one wonders if he and bill’s replacements will be able to keep the company moving forwards…
For the first time in many years microsoft faces real competition on the desktop. I’m not suggesting linux is as good for the public or anything like that. But just consider what it takes to build an operating system good enough that 3-5 of the worlds top OEM’s are now pre-installing it on their PC’s. A further 3-4 of the world’s biggest IT/server companies either fully endorse it or have developed their main product line around it.
Say what you will about Linux, but no other product has been able to achieve what it has. And its got a long road ahead too.
It’ll be interesting to watch microsoft under completely new management alongside the still-rapid growth and adoption of linux.
Remove “inventor and” words from your claim, and I think everybody will then agree with it.