“Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries – the lost decade of Microsoft – two-time George Polk Award winner (and V.F.’s newest contributing editor) Kurt Eichenwald traces the ‘astonishingly foolish management decisions’ at the company that ‘could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success‘.”
I work at Best Buy so I know a bit about this stuff, and I can tell you that we sell roughly 20 Microsoft computer for every Apple computer. Microsoft never had a “downfall”, as far as management goes they have the creme de la crop, and anyone who says otherwise is just a hipster trying to be contrary.
Edited 2012-07-09 02:17 UTC
“as far as management goes they have the creme de la crop, and anyone who says otherwise is just a hipster trying to be contrary.”
Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had all week. I’ve got tears in my eyes. As if working for one of the worst retailers out there suddenly makes you qualified to spout unfounded claims on Microsofts management.
I wonder how many of those ’20 Microsoft computer’ were wiped clean and had something else installed?
Edited 2012-07-09 02:34 UTC
Probably none given Best Buy is one of the last retailer. That say a lot about its audiences. Who buy at non-specialized big surface retailer anymore?
That said, the 20/1 ratio is probably accurate. M$ is still a desktop monopoly, but they could have been so much more by now.
Thanks god they failed
I also wonder whether that’s a representative sample. Apple does have The Apple Store and there are independent specialty Apple resellers.
It doesn’t seem that hyperbolic to ask “What self-respecting Apple user buys a computer at Best Buy?”
While I understand this being used as an argument here, I failed to see how someone buying a product somewhere else the *official* stores is less self-respecting.
Since when buying in brand stores is like going to church?!
AFAICT, your iPhone came packaged is exactly the same wherever you get it. Don’t tell me it’s about having a Apple’s sanctified sale ticket, please!?!
Allow me to shed some light here: Very many Apple users will ONLY by Apple products from Apple Stores. Why? Simple. When you’re in an Apple store, you’re surrounded by tons of stuff that’s been certified to work together by Apple, so you never have to guess about the compatibility; after all, isn’t that one of the main reasons people (myself included) by Apple products? So, why would we go to stores like Best Buy (or any other such store) that’s bound to have tons of crap that not only isn’t totally compatible with our stuff, but also isn’t really compatible with each other??? That’d be rather stupid of us. Me personally, I have Apple products & products that run Windows. I can’t stand shopping for Apple stuff in any other store besides an Apple Store. I don’t like being bombarded with crap. Also, they don’t really bother you too much in the Apple Store, they let you shop in peace without hovering. But they’re there when you need them. Conversely, stores that sell Windows products are generally staffed with hovering salesmen who’re spend a lot of time trying to get you to buy any old piece of crap, even when it’s rather obvious that they don’t know what they’re talking about & that you know more about the subject than they do. So, there you have it. That’s why no self-respecting Apple user will be caught dead buying Apple gear from Best Buy (or any other such store) unless it was utterly dire & the very, VERY last resort!
But you said “computer”, not extra stuff.
As I assume that an Apple user will only buy a computer made by Apple and nothing else, that product is exactly the same whatever the way you get it: a shiny white box with a fruit logo on it, a picture, a few letters and a barecode beside green-washing logos.
How can it matter from which store you get that box, when it’s clear they’re all the same anyway?
Sure, if you don’t know exactly what’s your computing device needs are, you’re better in the hand of Apple than anywhere else. After all, Apple is *the* brand that knows what’s better for anyone…
He’s right though, Apple users prefer Apple stores.
Near me I only have an Apple premium reseller, but I buy my Apple stuff either there or on-line. Buying it somewhere else doesn’t feel right.
You are right, it’s the same box and same contents, but not the same setting. A large part of using Apple stuff is the experience and that includes the buying process.
Funny enough, I quite understand. Price being higher, you want as much as you can from your money. For the same box and content, if you can have high profil feeling during the buying process than the usual customer’s one get by clicking some “order” button on an e-shop, it’s indeed bonus.
Does it worth it is not relevant.
Does it change that much things may be more, but who care.
Beside others stores and, well, non-monopolistic guys?
Very many Apple users know exactly what they want & need. They just go for the total experience. In the same way that we like the total experience provided by Apple products, we also like to have a good overall experience when we go shopping. We won’t be going to Best Buy for those products, because buying Apple products from a non-Apple Store site is very much similar to using Apple products with Windows machines – it’s very dissatisfying.
To summarize, you’re after experience luxury.
Technically speaking, there is absolutely no reason that an iDevice from an Apple sanctified box assembled at an oversea Apple sanctified manufacture behave differently whatever was the sale store.
The proof being the amount of iPhone worldwide that wasn’t sold in an Apple store and *still* works perfectly, and without which Apple will never reach the place there are today. And that was way before they opened stores worldwide.
You don’t need to have a branded store to sold a very good product. Being very is good is far enough.
You need a branded store to reinforce your trademark’s image, to make it hype for instance.
Let’s hope for Apple that their products will stay very good, or the hype could produce counter-effect fast.
And then their world is disrupted by powers-that-be in such mean ways as, say, adding mouse buttons… (and having to accept that the new-old way is better after all)
Yes because people like you and the other Apple users are just too good to shop at places like Best Buy.
Let me tell you something about me. I’m no Apple fan-boy. I use many systems & I’m also a core member of an alternative OS team. I know the value of using the strengths of systems while avoiding the weaknesses. To be honest, I don’t by electronics from those types of stores anyway. However, when I buy from Apple, I know that I’ll have a great shopping experience -so, I go to the Apple store. It also gives me a chance to play with some of their new stuff that you don’t seen in Best Buy. So, YES, I’M TOO GOOD TO SHOP AT BEST BUY! I learned about computers back when there was no such thing as chipsets. I know more about computers than most salespeople. I don’t need some dumbass trying to “assist” me in my shopping when he has no idea of what I need & what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m not someone who can be “sold to”. I know what I want when I go in. You can’t show me an Apple product at Best Buy that I can’t also see in an Apple Store, but the reverse isn’t true! There’ll always be products in an Apple Store that aren’t in Best Buy AND I can actually interact with them without some idiot disturbing me while I’m evaluating them. If you can’t understand that, then you’re the perfect customer for Best Buy -the low end store that it is.
Seriously? Best buy is run terribly and most employees are utterly clueless when it comes to technology. They don’t understand the most basic features of their devices. Now, best buy sells many more products than apple does, making it more difficult for them. Come to think of it, my last time in an Apple store they also were pretty clueless when it came to basics like ” micro usb charger”. Which is sort of like walking into burger king and asking for a big mac, but still sad.
So I guess what I’m saying is that bet buy is pretty bad place to shop in most cases. But Apple can be just as bad, if not buying something they absolutely know about.
If you want to buy an apple product and there is an apple store near by, I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t buy from them directly. What kind of customer thinks of best buy as a place to buy apple products? They aren’t any cheaper. In other retailers that are now out of business, I often saw older generation products( macs, ipods, ect) sold at current generation prices.
Now having said that, many people do buy iphones at their carrier stores, but they often do a better job with more complicated phone plans than apple.
From web stats ( http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-201107-201207 ), 20/1 seems about right …yeah, 7% is a bit more – but, remember that Apple owners are more likely to be in countries overall most active on the web, and are also probably a more web-active demographic within their countries.
But generally, there’s hardly anything “representative” with the few places where Apple machines have much of any presence, also where there are any significant numbers of Apple stores or independent resellers.
Edited 2012-07-16 22:29 UTC
It is. But:
http://www.asymco.com/2012/07/04/the-building-and-dismantling-of-th…
What do you think Microsoft has failed at exactly? Are you unaware of how deeply involved they are in our education system, goverment, and even military? Microsoft caters to consumers like you and I, but they have a whole other side to their business and it’s massive.
It gets old hearing people ramble about how Microsoft is finished, when they couldn’t be farther from the truth. They aren’t going anywhere any time soon so you may as well get over it.
They failed to integrate computers deeper in our life. All they did in integrate themselves deeper in our life. There is a huge difference
Which other computers were better at integrating into our life, and how?
Thanks for proving my point.My colleague friend and I are having a good laugh about this (IT hipsters are a running joke around here). Microsoft’s success is proof of it’s managerial prowess.
Maybe there’s a reason you work at best buy and not actually in the IT field….
Eh, dream on… http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ww-monthly-200807-201207
See that green line over there? That’s the 3rd popular consumer OS worldwide, the “failure” Vista …half decade later, still a bit more than all OS X combined, and an order of magnitude more than all Linux combined.
Edited 2012-07-16 22:35 UTC
What’s a microsoft computer?
Either the poster was trying to be funny…Or we just witnessed the brilliance of the average BB/Geek Squad employee. I run a small local computer shop, and I have to deal with these peoples’ eff-ups every day! Sad.
I hope that they continue to hire people of that quality. Much like your case, fixing their screw ups keeps the lights on and food on the table.
Last year, I sent them a christmas card thanking them for their lack of knowledge and dedication to killing everything they touch.
Edited 2012-07-09 14:38 UTC
Yay for service economy running on broken window fallacies?…
And back in 2004 ( http://www.asymco.com/2012/07/04/the-building-and-dismantling-of-th… ) it used to be almost 60 “PC’s” by every mac. Do you now see the trend and realize why the term downfall is used instead of “extinction” or “end”?
So what? Even if Best Buy sold 100 Microsoft computers for every Apple computer, I would not be impressed. Today, people buy smartphones and tablets.
I have no problem believing that Best Buy sell 100 PCs per Apple. Where I was working in Africa I would think the number is more like 1000. Here in the UK I was working today and expressed surprise with a head of IT at a large school, that all UK schools ran Windows servers and was told that was needed because Windows is what was run in the commercial world and that their applications they needed ran on Windows, I mentioned virtualization but let it pass. The point here is that Windows is still well intrenched and still has a monopoly or near monopoly on the desktop.
Does this make MS well run? – I would say not, although MS have managed to protect their OS and Office monopoly for the time being, they have singularly failed to see whats coming. MS on mobile devices, smart phones, cloud computing etc all is a conspicuous failure. The success of Metro and Windows 8 is of real importance to MS, many observers are sceptical about how well this product will be received.
A potential tipping point is being reached where MS might find it has a monopoly in the obsolete and even MS is beginning to see that this might be the case.
Being well run is more about future potential and security than current sales.
What goes around comes around. It’s a poetic justice, that a company with abusive market practices and monopolistic goals will eventually loose ground. And if you want to put a different perspective to it – Ballmer is not Gates at all.
Edited 2012-07-09 02:54 UTC
By that measure, Apple should be going down the tubes any day now
Time will come and it’ll go down.
As with everything… we all have our seasons in the sun. Google will likely descend into insignificance one day too.
Even Linus says that “Microsoft Hatred is a disease”, oh well.
Linus also says nonsense, while being reasonable other times. Microsoft didn’t repent yet, to be respected.
Edited 2012-07-10 15:53 UTC
Your fanatacism really knows no bounds does it?
When stupid ideas such as stack ranking is adopted then quite frankly all hope for management is lost in the process. I swear there are managers out there hoping there is this silverbullet that allows them to do sweet f-ck all yet achieve the same results. Managing people is hard work, it requires long hours, hands on management and quite frankly half-baked short cuts like stack ranking politicise your work place to the point the nothing gets done because people are more worried about climbing the greasy pole of power.
Stack ranking, formally known as decimation was championed by GE. I worked for a company that tried to use that model some years ago and it is true that your colleagues who once were like friends just became the people who put the knife in your back once peer reviews were added to the mix.
I finally had to file suit as the process was targeted mostly at those over 40 years old. fortunately that backed them down after they had to hand over some cash. It does destroy a company from the inside.
A yes, the Jack Welch who would stack rank the employees then summarily fire the bottom 10% of the workforce. To me Jack welch embodies the very worst aspects of capitalism – short-termism, ignorant of human relations and their wider implications, corner cutting that eventually result in it coming back to bite one in the backside.
Unfortunately there are managers who actually believe by getting workers to f-ck each other over that it will motivate them to work harder and be ‘more productive’ ignoring the fact that eventually workers wise up and favour their friendships over short term gain. Too bad, unfortunately, that management is no longer managing and understanding people but reducing people into little more than an interchangeable commodity with no feelings, emotions, lives etc. What happened to the days when management understood that the employee was also a potential customer too?
Edited 2012-07-09 16:05 UTC
You know that movie “Glennery Glen Ross”? It’s about salesmen in a company with the same system.
Quote: “First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”
Reminds me of this:
hehe
That was back in the days where managers were senior employees, instead of clueless guys out of some management school.
MBA happened.
It’s interesting that Valve also uses Stack Ranking but apparently manages to avoid the major downsides other companies encounter.
I think the real issue is *strict* stack ranking, where you must have a certain number of people in each competency pigeon-hole.
How?
They don’t have a hierarchical management structure…
According to their employee handbook they do a peer review type system. It’s only used to determine remuneration though. In that type of set-up I think Stack Ranking can have some value.
Now that hardware and software choices are starting to filter back after the stranglehold of the 90’s/00’s Microsoft doesn’t understand what to do. The things that worked aren’t working any more.
The old steam train that was Microsoft has been replaced by faster quieter and more reliable models.
-They can’t afford to muscle anyone out with cash because they waited too long to understand the threats.
-They aren’t cool because they pissed everyone off over the last 20 years.
-They are beyond saturation point with everything they produce so marketing doesn’t work anymore.
Surface had a week of mad press coverage and now it’s all Apple rumours again, there’s nothing Microsoft can say or do that will make people care.
These days it’s three things that are certain in life; Death, Taxes and Microsoft products.
Nobody wants them.
These recent articles say otherwise:
Microsoft Is the Most Exciting Company in Tech, Hands Down
http://gizmodo.com/5889659/microsoft-is-the-most-exciting-company-i…
Microsoft Is Suddenly Cool Again For Interns Looking At Tech Jobs
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-interns-love-microsoft-5000-a…
Aging Microsoft ^aEUR~feels cool again^aEURTM to young tech interns
http://business.financialpost.com/2012/06/12/aging-microsoft-feels-…
You Heard It Here First: Microsoft is Cool
http://www.blackbookmag.com/good-night-mr-lewis-1.109/you-heard-it-…
Edited 2012-07-09 04:42 UTC
Hmmm… All relatively small magazine sites. Check. Titles using almost identical verbiage. Check. I didn’t bother to read the articles in question, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see that they all cover the same bullet points in the same order and with the same emphasis. Smells like a viral marketing campaign to me.
I think the 2nd and 3rd articles are the same source, though written differently and one is much longer. The first article is not related to the others (and is from a prominent tech site (not sure why you dismissed it as small) that is generally an “Apple – Rah! Rah!” site), and the 4th is 6 months older than the others, so I don’t think it’s part of a campaign.
Astroturfing? By Microsoft?
Impossible! /s
comment to be “Inaccurate”, “Troll”, or “Off-topic” (last I was here, my comment was +3, now it’s -2). Not sure how my comment fits any of those characterizations, but whatever.
Here’s another comment the anti-Microsoft crowd might feel necessary to mod down: If Microsoft is so “uncool” and “nobody wants them”, how come the Microsoft forum at The Verge has more posts than the Apple forum and more than the Android forum? In fact, the Microsoft forum has more topics posted than any other forum at The Verge.
Edited 2012-07-09 10:40 UTC
Yeah, that’s pretty lame. But hey, at least your post did not get deleted, eh?
Well, there’s not necessarily a correlation between the number of users and “cool” and there’s even less correlation between # of users and how good a company is to work for.
As for your linked articles, sure it may be popular with interns but that’s not really a good measurement of how cool a company is or how good it is to actually work there. I’m more inclined to to believe the reports from actual long-term employees rather than some blog/article somewhere that has very little meat on the bones.
In a time of economic uncertainty people value stability over excitement – looking cool again for interns or interns realising that having a stable job in a big organisation is better than taking a risk with a start up that could go belly up tomorrow? I can assure you that if I was a university graduate I would be flocking towards Microsoft, Oracle, IBM or one of the other big names if for no other reason than job security – in my books job security during an insecure time make any place an exciting place to work.
Edited 2012-07-09 16:27 UTC
i disagree on you relative to the marketing point. It doesn’t work because MS and whoever they contract to do the implementation are atrociously bad at it. Not specificly saturation of the market.
A good point, as you said, was the recent surface announcenment. They could have made a brilliant show on the fall with the launch but they “announce it” 3 to 6 months ( http://www.maccouch.com/2012/06/three-to-six-months/ ) before if not more, without any specifics including price and then just pack their stuff and go home. If some one can explain this to me, please do.
Edited 2012-07-09 13:38 UTC
Microsoft OS division has no consumer loyalty (unlike Google or Apple), and their brand image has been crushed by too many failures. Most people still use Windows out of need and could care less about new products they push.
Their only brand with some value left is XBox, but it seems that division is alienated in it’s own world..
I disagree there. I would say that the only brands with value are Office and the Exchange and Outlook communication suite.
Windows always was a tool for the use of Office. It’s a shame that Microsoft got captured by Windows.org and let that message got reversed.
Those are not consumer but enterprise brands.
Exchange and Outlook i agree with you, but Office is “everyone’s brand”.
Every time i recommend some other OS to peoples (either in a mac latop or a linux distro for their old desktop) the main question that pops out is, always: “can i open .doc/.xls from other persons/my workplace/the government?”
Just a minor correction, it is “I couldn’t care less”. If you could care less then pray tell why aren’t you caring less? it appears that you do care about the very subject that you were talking about.
Regarding Windows – it is a means to an end for many people. There really isn’t the buzz there like one observes with Mac OS X from the enthusiast community with Windows at this point being a means to an end rather than something to get excited about. With that being said, Windows is so normalised to the point that it would be next to impossible to really get things moving unless Microsoft made a really big change such as ‘We’re dropping win32, creating a Metro and traditional desktop applications using WinRT etc. etc.” then you would see the enthusiasts take note.
The problem with Microsoft is everything they seem to do is the bare basic and never addressing the issues I’ve outlined; the constant dependency on GDI, the fact that we’re in 2012 and they’re still hauling crap such as common controls and dialogues from the 90’s with all the shitty bugginess that comes with the territory, the lack of a coherent end to end C++ framework so that developers don’t create frankenstein horrors of usability, the fact that you can open up half a dozen bundled applications that come with Windows and each one of them is written using a different set of GUI libraries and each with different user interface guidelines. The problems exist but the lack of willingness to fix these issues pretty much put a lot of people like me in the situation of ‘ho hum, same old shit’ every time a new version of Windows is announced.
Windows Live Essentials, ‘managed code’, WPF, Zune, Windows Phone, Metro
The pile of crap coming out of Redmond since Ballmer is at the helm keeps growing…
What is so crappy with managed code or WPF?
They had a lot of managed code in Vista which they ripped out in the next version because it turned out to be not so good an idea…
Ever tried to do a real application in WPF? Where are those great WPF applications after all those years?
They lost 10 years in replacing MFC with something better.
Yes. Yes, I did. It’s called Stoffi Music Player.
But maybe you don’t consider it real enough.
Sure, but I believe he means a complex multiwindow,complex app (good media players should be streamlined by design) like photoshop.
I do have a (single) example, which is Visual Studio 2010 (onwards?). That is the only one I can think of. WPF is not bad per se, but MS completely mismanaged their rollout and evangelism of WPF.
Add to that the competition of Silverlight, similar but not compatible and you have massive confusion.
One single solitary application of minuscule proportions. Call me back when their whole application portfolio is written in it – they’ve had 10 years to do it so think they’ve had long enough.
What is the benefit of rewriting applications for the sake of it?
Don’t spend money destroying things that work.
There are benefits of moving from Direct2D/DirectWrite over GDI just as there are benefits to getting all the components of Windows using the same GUI toolkit with the same look and feel guidelines. Consistency in user interface implementation makes the operating system easier to use and more enjoyable because there is consistent behaviour rather than each component of Windows do a different thing because there is no effort to bring everything into line.
Then there is a lack of replacement for Win32 – why isn’t WinRT expanded so that you can write Metro and traditional applications using it? are Microsoft really that delusional that they can replace every instance of traditional desktop applications with the Metro paradigm? Whilst Apple have provided a vibrant alternative to Carbon we have Microsoft who have provided nothing to developers – and developers are now standing asking themselves why they’re in the same place they were 20 years ago with Microsoft shovelling the same crap out there with no effort to bring about a coherent set of frameworks to replace the disjointed clusterf-ck that exists today.
I would take Microsoft tools over Apple ones everyday.
How can people live with XCode as IDE, or use something like Objective-C when compared with the set of Microsoft languages.
And yes, I do have development experience in Mac OS X as well, but I am immune to the operating system fanboy effect, as I use whatever OS or languages our customers require.
The fact that you think that you can only programme on Mac OS X with objective-C tells me you don’t have the slightest clue of what you’re talking about. When was the last time you used a Mac? same old crap that I keep hearing over again: “Oh, 4 years ago I ran a Mac and tried XCode and it really sucked blah blah blah blah”. Same crappy tired whining – different tune.
WPF didn’t take off (I believe that Visual Studio itself is a WPF app that’s in pretty wide use, as well as accompanying apps like Blend), but where are the Java/FX, Adobe Air, and Google Gears apps? I remember articles written for each of those where those frameworks were going to take over the world (particularly the Google Gears thing, which Google finally killed off). You act like putting together a new app API framework and getting it widely adopted is easy. It ain’t.
JavaFX is brand new (but it won’t take off). Air or Gears have nowhere near the power or penetration that WPF potentially has via MS.
Microsoft just didn’t do anything with it. Most of their own applications don’t use it so why should anybody else?
Actually, Microsoft’s newer apps do use it (I pointed out two of them). No, they didn’t rewrite Office in .NET/WPF. It would be stupid to do so. As for “Why should anyone use WPF?”, developers analyze the frameworks, analyze what their benefits are, and decide what framework is best for their particular app. WPF allows for fancy/shmancy designs, but most .NET devs (which I believe are corporate devs) were satisfied with WinForms, probably because WinForms is closer to the old pre-.NET VB model, and coporate devs are used to that.
As for commercial apps (i.e. non-corporate apps), I really don’t know what apps use what frameworks, and don’t particularly care. I don’t think a user is supposed to care or know what framework an app uses. I only know that VS2010 is WPF because Microsoft said so. There could be many other WPF apps around that people don’t realize are WPF apps. Anyway, WPF is more successful than Java/FX, Adobe Air, and Google Gears, combined.
I’m probably going to get hate mail for this, but it seems to me like a lot of the developer stuff they have made in the last decade is filling in where Visual Basic left off, but with a more serious “software engineering principles” side to it.
So … If you’re dead serious these days about writing a high performance Windows app, do you choose the new platform or do you still code in C/C++ ???
It seems like a lot of important legacy apps have yet to make the transition. So I wonder?
Does Metro complicate things now too?
I always worried about getting too involved with writing Microsoft specific stuff (e.g. C#, WPF, etc.) because I felt they changed tact too often. Before you knew it, everything you bothered to learn about was deprecated again.
WPF was geared as an alternative to the old frameworks hence the comparison between WPF and those other frameworks is asinine at best. Amazing how Apple has been pushing and pushing Cocoa and how the hard work is paying off where as Microsoft has done nothing and as a result you see nothing happen by way of a modern API to replace win32 on which traditional desktop applications can be written.
There are still a few Apple applications written in Carbon.
Oh by the way, when do we get a proper Finder?
Finder still isn’t proper, BUT it is written in Cocoa.
AFAIK the last Apple Carbon app left is Itunes (but that is something of a Hybrid).
Of third parties, many of the big complex apps are still carbon.
But the point that needs to be taken into account is the fact that Apple has Cocoa frameworks and organisations are moving over where as Microsoft provided no replacement framework for win32 (for traditional desktop applications) hence there is nothing for organisations to move to hence we have the craptastic API stack that exists today.
I do have my issues with Win32, but when I compare it with the OS/2 API, Xlib, VMS API, OS/400, …, I find many other apis that are no better.
But like I said – we’re seeing it occur as we speak vs. Microsoft where nothing is happening.
What is wrong with Finder? apart from features missing that power users want, the vast majority of ends users I know are pretty happy with it and I know I’m happy with it when compared to the constant hanging POS that it used to be back in the days it was a Carbon application.
Edited 2012-07-10 09:53 UTC
True. It kind of went the way of Silverlight which was built on WPF. I’m not sure that it was solely dependent on .NET functionality, but needless to day it probably didn’t get the attention it deserved. That said, I haven’t used it, and have moved on to non-Microsoft stuff…Linux and Qt.
I could believe that VS 2010 and later are WPF apps. But from what I hear they’re mighty slow.
Win32 has been around since roughly 1993-1994 when they releases Win 3.1 Win32s – a 32-bit port of Win3.1 that didn’t get much attention; Win32 API wasn’t widely used until Win95/NT4.
Then came MFC/ATL to build on top to make applications easier – but not really.
Then came .NET which was suppose to replace MFC/ATL, but that didn’t work – too many people wanted the performance of a native program.
Then they added WPF and a number of other layers on top of .NET, but that didn’t pull people in.
So now they’re scrapping .NET and going to a new API – WinRT. If you want to write native apps for Win8 that runs on all Win8 platforms you have to write it for WinRT – no Win32 code except for the small bits that made it into WinRT, so MFC/ATL is out. .NET can be used but you’ll probably have to refactor it to ensure it only uses the part of .NET that runs on WinRT – e.g. no DLL/COM/DCOM/ActiveX plug-ins that make use of Win32, etc.
We’ll see how that one goes. Not likely any better.
You heard wrong.
Yeah, and concurrently to (the effect of?) that many application categories largely moved to Win – Mac is really no longer the stronghold of music mixing, photo and video editing, or DTP, like it was.
Plus there’s still some important applications from Apple done in ~Carbon.
This weekend I tried to reinstall Windows XP on my daughters laptop. Coming from a Linux background, I was shocked to see what a complicated and time consuming process this turned out to be…….Especially if you do have a legitimate license, but not the original CD (lost). Simple jobs made very complicated, that is what Microsoft seems to excell at……
Is it incompetence? Or – worse – was this intented to be? Are there really developers with Microsoft whose job it is to complicate stuff beyond compehension?
Have you ever tried installing any other operating system besides Linux?
Windows has its issues, but for sure it is much easier to install than many other commercial operating systems.
Of course WinXP is a pain in the butt to install. Download any linux distro from 11 years ago and tell me how easy that is to install.
Redmond Desktop Linux was a breeze to install. You even got to play solitaire while it did its thing.
And yes, I installed that around the same time I did a test install of WinXP. Neither survived – WinXP because I couldn’t stand it, RDL because it didn’t have any developer tools so it wasn’t of much use.
if you don’t have the cd then it’s pretty sure that it will be difficult and time consuming. Apple for example provides a way to do that now with Lion but before you would run in the same issues you did with Microsoft.
Either you pay for your OS and you need to have the media and license, or you don’t and then you can just download it. Windows install is a pain i agree, but your specific case was not their fault.
“Have you ever tried installing any other operating system besides Linux?” Yes, besides many Linux distros I have (re)installled various Windows versions and some OSX-versions. Oh – and DOS in the past
Linux has great online repositories. OSX at least gives you the CD. Windows you often get pre-installed, that is: legal, with license codes, but without (!) a CD. Yes it is possible to re-install even without the CD, but why for Wodan’s sake does it have to be so complicated?
Well, it’s a Microsoft thing. I installed an MS Office version on a friend’s PC. Next day he calls: his Outlook doesn’t start. Turns out that MS Word is the editor (wtf?) for Outlook, and that his Outlook (Dutch language version) does not play nice with the new MS Office (English language version). We’re talking new, year 2010, 2011 software here. The concept “language packs” is common practice in OSX, Linux etc. But Microsoft want to complicate things here….. sigh…
On repositories, usually dependency hell.
When I asked that I had Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, OS/2, OS/400, VxWorks, QNX, …., in mind.
TBH with XP you should patch the ISO with n-lite before installing. Otherwise you are in for a painful trip.
I love how Linux folk, who posture as the most tech-savvy people God ever created, are always the ones that struggle to do simple things (especially when those things involve software made by companies that they consider a hated enemy; funny coincidence, that).
Although in all fairness the XP installation is rather complicated compared to a modern Linux distro (and maybe Windows 7/8, I dunno about that).
On the other hand, if you compare the XP installation with a Linux distro from the same time XP was released….yeah, Linux does not fare so well in that comparison.
What this really mean is that both Linux and Windows has made great progress since and complaining about the XP installation process today is a bit pointless
Windows 7 installation is about 3 or 4 steps. TBH I haven’t needed to do one regularly.
Also the Win 7 update process isn’t nearly as painful even from RTM to Latest patched version. The only crappy thing is that the Graphics card needs to be manually updated, it will download the right driver, but it will be hilariously out of date.
I don’t think Microsoft did anything terribly wrong as much as they became stodgy in protecting their turf. So they missed the next big thing to come along (handhelds in the forms of smartphones and tablets).
Even now they are busy protecting their turf — eg, insisting on “one Windows to bind them” — when they should be moving ahead.
Having one Windows for handhelds and laptops/desktops is not smart and will hurt them. Also, the idea of introducing their tablets 6 months in advance of availability — well, that freezes the market when you own it (like with their desktops) — but only makes them look incompetent when really competing (with Apple for tablets).
Microsoft’s biggest problem as I see it today is that they had a goal of dominating the entire OS market. As a result, people started building Linux which turned out to be really good for servers. Its also really cheap. Now the Top 500 all run at least some Linux in their server rooms. 2011 was the first year that Gartner saw Linux outpace Windows. While many suggested this before, tracking Linux servers is difficult. But now Linux is so prevalent that people are buying servers with Linux pre-installed more than they are buying Windows servers. The world has figured out that they don’t really need Microsoft. And if Android or iOS or Chrome take off on the desktop, MIcrosoft is going to be in for a world of hurt.
Wishful thinking in the guise of objective analysis. lol
And what part do you think is wishful thinking? The Gartner report? Or the fact that pretty much all the major innovation around the cloud and the web are happening in other people’s OS’s?
Did anyone read the article by Paul Allen at Vanity Fair (see http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul-allen-2011…).
Wow. Allen gets cancer, so Gates and Ballmer see it as their chance to swipe away his equity in the company. With that kind of behavior it’s no wonder MS was unable to successfully evolve beyond Windows & Office.
Ya gotta work with your partners in a company to succeed. Pretty simple principle, but apparently “too nice” for the softies to grok.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/07/04/the-building-and-dismantling-of-th…
Microsoft was selling almost 60x Apple at it’s peak, now it’s 20x and 5x if you include the iPad (which you should, even if you don’t think an iPad is PC, because an iPad competes with PC’s at the same price point).
Well, yeah. Today’s world is Apple’s world, and everyone else is just living in it. There are still lots of other companies making bundles of cash anyway, even if they don’t rule the world like Apple does.
This link has already been posted 2 times in the discussion, before you came in …you could at least have the decency to glance over it, instead of just dumping stuff like that.
And, suddenly, iPad is not a post-PC device – more, it of course suddenly doesn’t matter how you like to include iPads when comparing with Android.
Generally, the changes in rates tell more about Apple not being any more an essentially failed company, than anything about fortunes of MS.
I had to do a Windows 7 installation the other day. It was done from a usb stick and took all of about 30mins with no problems, hassles, or magic involved.
People whining about installing Windows XP in 2012 is pointless. People whining about installing Windows 7 period is pointless.
For the record, I also did a Debian install recently and it was easily more “complicated” (using that word loosely) due to asking me several more questions — nearly all of which shouldn’t require user input.
Debian isn’t exactly known as a newbie’s distro, so…
The two primary reasons why Microsoft has been in a downfall since 2001 are:
1) Product Activation
2) .NET
Both these technologies were introduced at about the same time and they have been the reason why many (including me) have avoided Microsoft products.
Prior to 2001, I was a Microsoft fanatic, loved their products, thought Windows 2000 was the greatest OS ever made, etc…
I had to laugh at this.. Microsoft has been in the exact opposite of a downfall since 2001. The fact is their profits have been in the billions and steadily increasing since about 1994. They did take a dip from 2000-2001 but easily made it back in 2001-2002.
If a company is considered in a downfall, or dead as some people claim, when their profits have more than doubled in the last 10 years, what does it take for you to consider a company a success?
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