Microsoft, Creativity, and Innovation

[jhu]

But what is it that Microsoft really innovates? Nothing. They do very little in-house research and developement, if you don't count the people Microsoft has bought with the aquired products. Sure, they seem to find good companies to be bought, but I would not call that innovation.

you may want to reconsider that statement since they do more research and development than your statement would imply. whether or not they bring their innovations to market is something else entirely.

 

[Dane D.]

Timepass:

What made halo so great was that it was the first FPS on a consele and it work really well plus it multiplayer was 2nd to none for that. It was the first one where you could get 16 people playing at one time and that is what made the game what it was.

I don't know what you are talking about. In 1999 Unreal Tournament came out, I believe Halo came later, a couple of years. It supported 16 players in multiplayer mode. I still play that game online.

I hate to say it but if it came out on the mac it would of more than likely been a failed game for a long list of reason. one of the largests is simple fact iwas on the mac only. At the time it would of been less than 5% market share total. And the people who play halo on computers would of been even less. what made halo so big was the Xbox and the market it was in.

Wheres the long list? Either backup your statements with fact or don't brother posting. Nothing worse than reading somebody's opinion without facts and figures to backup said opinion. Oh, and learn how to spell and write it might help you someday.

 

[whooleytoo]

Long gone, sorry. But I still do have the information, which is 7-8 years old now unfortunately. Here's the section on products with the Microsoft name on them which were developed by others.

[snip]

Fair enough, though just in the interests of balance it should be noted many of Apple's technologies have been bought in/borrowed from too -

OSX, Cocoa & development tools, Final Cut Pro, Shake, DVD Studio Pro, iTunes (SoundJam), Sherlock (Watson) etc. etc.

Funnily enough I was pretty sure Quicktime was based on technology bought in from SuperMac or Radius, but I can't find any reference to it now.

 

[IJ Reilly]

While not completely innovative, Microsoft did show how a GUI could change the way people worked with spreadsheets when they made Excel for the first Macintosh.

Of course the Excel deal had strings attached... like getting Apple to agree to them using Apple code and ideas for making a GUI shell (called Windows) for the DOS version of Excel that came out later. While Apple mistakenly thought the agreement was Excel specific, it was actually referring to Windows and allowed Microsoft to continue to use what Apple agreed to in all subsequent versions... which was why Apple lost the copyright case against Microsoft over the release of Windows 3.0 (Apple didn't seem to have very good legal counsel back around 1983 judging from that agreement).

The 1985 agreement for Microsoft's use of Mac interface elements went beyond Excel. Apple thought they were licensing for Windows 2.x as well, but not beyond. When these elements appeared in Windows 3.0 (the first Windows to matter), Apple sued Microsoft in what became the infamous "look and feel" lawsuit. This suit was whittled down bit by bit by the judge until in the end it was dismissed.

The main reason this occurred, from what I've read, was the ambiguities of the 1985 agreement. Later, John Scully would call this one-page license agreement the dumbest thing he ever did as CEO of Apple.

It was probably handled pretty informally at the time, but as everybody was to learn in subsequent years, you can't give Microsoft an inch unless you expect them to take a mile. As the CEO of AT&T once said, Microsoft can be your best friend and worst enemy all at the same time. It seems that every one of Microsoft's "partners" has had to discover this on their own. Apple certainly learned it the hard way.

 

[whooleytoo]

It was probably handled pretty informally at the time, but as everybody was to learn in subsequent years, you can't give Microsoft an inch unless you expect them to take a mile. As the CEO of AT&T once said, Microsoft can be your best friend and worst enemy all at the same time. It seems that every one of Microsoft's "partners" has had to discover this on their own. Apple certainly learned it the hard way.

The TrueType/TrueImage debacle would be another example of this.

 

[IJ Reilly]

[snip]

Fair enough, though just in the interests of balance it should be noted many of Apple's technologies have been bought in/borrowed from too -

OSX, Cocoa & development tools, Final Cut Pro, Shake, DVD Studio Pro, iTunes (SoundJam), Sherlock (Watson) etc. etc.

Funnily enough I was pretty sure Quicktime was based on technology bought in from SuperMac or Radius, but I can't find any reference to it now.

I don't know about QuickTime, but most technologies rely on prior technologies in some form. The mouse, for example, didn't start with Apple. It didn't even start with Xerox. The concept of a rolling pointing device was developed by Douglas Englebart in the 1960s. But Apple deserves credit for being the first to design an OS for a consumer computer around the mouse, and by so doing, changing the direction of computing. It's not like this was an obvious thing to do in 1979, when the Mac project started. Even after the Mac was delivered in '84 a lot of people were asking whether this "mouse" thing was something computer users wanted or needed.

I had an other section to what I called "The Microsoft Hall of Innovation." I asked readers to nominate technologies that Microsoft claimed were innovations, and then collected comments on the prior art. Suffice to say, none of the claims withstood much scrutiny from people with historical knowledge. It became very difficult to find a single area where Microsoft had advanced the art far enough to call it an "innovation."

 

[whooleytoo]

I don't know about QuickTime, but most technologies rely on prior technologies in some form.

That's fair enough - though (if I'm right) QuickTime wasn't just 'inspired by' another technology, rather a further development of it.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The TrueType/TrueImage debacle would be another example of this.

And when Microsoft announced their ClearType technology in the late '90s (itself a rip-off of earlier sub-pixel rendering technologies), they tried to take credit for TrueType, though the technology had been developed at Apple in 1989, and Microsoft didn't even adopt it until several years afterwards.

 

[RacerX]

[snip]

Fair enough, though just in the interests of balance it should be noted many of Apple's technologies have been bought in/borrowed from too -

OSX, Cocoa & development tools...

The problem is that many of the people at NeXT came directly from Apple. NeXT went in directions Apple had decided not to pursue, even though they had started down those paths.

Other examples of technologies that started with Apple are tablet computers and PDAs. Part of the problems with the Newton when it first came to market was the fact that those two projects ended up being merged which forced the Newton to be larger than the original PDA design in order to package the computing abilities originally intended for the tablet system.

But this thread really doesn't need to be balanced by looking at Apple... Apple doesn't attempt to justify it's antitrust violations by claiming innovation. In almost 20 years of litigation Microsoft has been fined over a billion dollars, all the while claiming that it's practices were needed for innovation.

In reality, Microsoft has taken the stance that it is easier (and in the long run, less expensive) to watch and wait for new technologies, and then buy their way into any new market. Once in that market their most common practice is to embrace and extend any established standards to pollute the environment for it's competition.

Examples are easy to point out... Java, HTML, MPEG4, MP3... and now PDF is in Microsoft's sights. And it seems no amount of fines will ever match the profitability of these tactics.

And it isn't like they don't know what they are doing. They knew they were doing this while claiming innovation. And now they are even outlining what they need to do differently... claiming that (like their claims of innovation) they are going to self impose these changes which they have fought against all these years, and which over a billion dollars in fines hadn't been enough to get them to change.

Funnily enough I was pretty sure Quicktime was based on technology bought in from SuperMac or Radius, but I can't find any reference to it now.

Both these companies worked closely with Apple to provide hardware solutions for video capture on Macintoshes. Apple didn't have any hardware ability to capture video early on in QuickTime, and these companies help solve those issues. I have a SuperMac Nubus video capture card from 1993, which predates Apple's first Mac with built in capture abilities released later that year (the Quadra 840av).

Apple has a long history of working closely with third party hardware venders. Apple didn't create SCSI, nor did they create Nubus (that was from Texas Instruments).

Odds are that you are mistaking Apple working closely with third party hardware suppliers with how Apple developed QuickTime. But Apple had to also work closely with both Adobe and Avid to produce the first major pieces of QuickTime authoring software, and I don't see anyone claiming that Apple bought QuickTime from either of them.

__________________​

The 1985 agreement for Microsoft's use of Mac interface elements went beyond Excel. Apple thought they were licensing for Windows 2.x as well, but not beyond. When these elements appeared in Windows 3.0 (the first Windows to matter), Apple sued Microsoft in what became the infamous "look and feel" lawsuit. This suit was whittled down bit by bit by the judge until in the end it was dismissed.

But from Apple's point of view at the time, Microsoft's intentions seemed innocent enough... Windows would provide a shell to let Excel run on DOS systems. And from Apple's point of view (again, at the time) the idea of firing up a shell to run Excel or any other GUI app in DOS hardly made DOS competition for the Mac. And the benefits of Microsoft software on Macs seemed to out weigh the benefit to PCs.

When Windows started to be a user environment beyond running a handful of apps, that was what woke Apple up to the mistake.

I mean, do you really think that if PCs were running MS-DOS 2006 Professional and all the apps had to use a shell to run in GUI mode today that Apple would have had any problem with that? Of course not.

The main reason this occurred, from what I've read, was the ambiguities of the 1985 agreement. Later, John Scully would call this one-page license agreement the dumbest thing he ever did as CEO of Apple.

...Apple certainly learned it the hard way.

But Scully (though in charge at the time) shouldn't take the full blame. The reason companies have legal counsel is for things like this.

 

[whooleytoo]

The problem is that many of the people at NeXT came directly from Apple. NeXT went in directions Apple had decided not to pursue, even though they had started down those paths.

Which just shows how incestuous the computer industry was in its infancy (and still is, to some degree). Still, the NeXT technologies were, as you say, not the direction Apple had travelled - hence the need to buy them (or Be).

But this thread really doesn't need to be balanced by looking at Apple... Apple doesn't attempt to justify it's antitrust violations by claiming innovation. In almost 20 years of litigation Microsoft has been fined over a billion dollars, all the while claiming that it's practices were needed for innovation.

Fair enough, I just prefer threads which are balanced, rather than focusing entirely on the flaws of one company to the exclusion of the rest. But you're absolutely right though, for a company the size of Microsoft, they've contributed surprisingly little new.

I think an important consideration though is the value Microsoft placed, from very early on, in keeping backward compatibility. As the runaway market leader, it is in their interest to preserve the status quo. If they introduced new APIs, and features, which required developers to recode their apps and users to re-learn the interfaces and (possibly) buy new PCs and peripherals, Microsoft would in an instant lose their most compelling competitive advantage, their pre-existing dominant market position.

Odds are that you are mistaking Apple working closely with third party hardware suppliers with how Apple developed QuickTime. But Apple had to also work closely with both Adobe and Avid to produce the first major pieces of QuickTime authoring software, and I don't see anyone claiming that Apple bought QuickTime from either of them.

I can't find it either now, so perhaps it was my imagination. Last time I'll trust THAT voice in my head..

 

[dpaanlka]

After the Windows 3.x lawsuit died down, look how massively different Windows 95 ended up, and how much closer to a Mac it was. Essentially, some sort of navigational bar at the bottom instead of at the top, and icons moved from the right side to the left side, plus the addition of the Recycle Bin - which was included in Apple's series of ads about Windows 95 (below).

I hightly doute that.

Please use a spell checker. Control click or right click into the text editor, and select Spelling -> Check Spelling as You Type.

 

[RacerX]

I think an important consideration though is the value Microsoft placed, from very early on, in keeping backward compatibility. As the runaway market leader, it is in their interest to preserve the status quo. If they introduced new APIs, and features, which required developers to recode their apps and users to re-learn the interfaces and (possibly) buy new PCs and peripherals, Microsoft would in an instant lose their most compelling competitive advantage, their pre-existing dominant market position.

Good point... Microsoft has also been known to kill or cripple new technologies that threaten it's markets.

But at the same time they also learn the lesson of using their position to force upgrades. While they may have been keep backwards compatibility alive in their application environment, within their applications they have been making their formats less and less backwards compatible.

(note: old story that I've given before... if
it looks familiar, skip to next paragraph)​

Back in 2000 with the release of Office 2000, Microsoft saw a drop in Office sales. As it turned out, many of their customers found that Office 97 did everything that they needed and they had no reason to upgrade. After attempting to push a subscription based idea (in Australia with Office 2000, which failed), they decided on making sure that new Office document formats would not be compatible with previous versions of Office... forcing older users to upgrade to read the documents of newer versions of Office.

This file format plan has two major advantages, first was format lock in (which was reached early on) and second is herding users to make upgrades.

One of the reasons Microsoft is so set against ODF (OpenDocument Format) is that it is an open standard (without proprietary lock in ability) which will always have future interoperability (today's standard can be used in the future even if the companies of today are long since gone).

And I would credit Microsoft too much with backwards compatibility... one of the major issues around Office 2007 was that it wasn't going to be compatible with Windows 2000 (which a lot of government agencies and businesses still use). And the new formats in Office 2007 are not going to be compatible with previous versions of Office.

 

[MisterMe]

....

Apple has a long history of working closely with third party hardware venders. Apple didn't create SCSI, nor did they create Nubus (that was from Texas Instruments).

....

SCSI was an open standard when Apple adopted it for the Macintosh's high-speed parallel port. Read more about it here. NuBus was developed at MIT as the expansion bus for the NuMachine artificial intelligence workstation. MIT licensed the NuMachine and the NuBus to Texas Instruments. Apple adopted the NuBus for its new Macintosh II during the same time frame that IBM adopted the MicroChannel Architecture in its attempt to regain control of Intel-based personal computers. Apple urged the IBM-clones to go with NuBus, but they declined. Instead, the Gang of Nine got together and developed the EISA bus which has since faded into obscurity.

 

[IJ Reilly]

But from Apple's point of view at the time, Microsoft's intentions seemed innocent enough... Windows would provide a shell to let Excel run on DOS systems. And from Apple's point of view (again, at the time) the idea of firing up a shell to run Excel or any other GUI app in DOS hardly made DOS competition for the Mac. And the benefits of Microsoft software on Macs seemed to out weigh the benefit to PCs.

When Windows started to be a user environment beyond running a handful of apps, that was what woke Apple up to the mistake.

I mean, do you really think that if PCs were running MS-DOS 2006 Professional and all the apps had to use a shell to run in GUI mode today that Apple would have had any problem with that? Of course not.

But Scully (though in charge at the time) shouldn't take the full blame. The reason companies have legal counsel is for things like this.

Oh sure, Microsoft's intentions always look innocent "at the time."

Have you ever read Jerry Kaplan's book "Start Up," about his efforts to capitalize Go, Inc. and get the product to market? (The first tablet computer, circa 1990, for those who've never heard of it.) The chapters of his book about his encounters with Microsoft are priceless. They came in as Go platform application developers, and turned into competitors, stealing Go's ideas left and right. Microsoft is one of the reason Go failed. Microsoft never released their pen-based OS, because by that time they'd spirited away most of Go's application developers. Go was dead, so they didn't need to release the product.

As to Scully, he was willing to take the blame as the man in charge. This speaks well of his character.

 

[RacerX]

MIT licensed the NuMachine and the NuBus to Texas Instruments..

I didn't know that MIT had licensed that technology to Texas Instruments... special since I was under the impression that NuBus II was a TI development (NuBus II was only used in the Power Macintoshes as I recall from the developer notes for the 6100/7100/8100).

Have you ever read Jerry Kaplan's book "Start Up," about his efforts to capitalize Go, Inc. and get the product to market?

I haven't... but I'll be adding it to my to read list.

 

[SC68Cal]

I can't believe that Microsoft did that to Office 97 users! I can't believe that they are going to do it again!

I'm currently about 50/50 on my dependency on Microsoft Office. I have it for mac and it's been an easy way for me to transition into the Mac. Open Office has me excited about what it can become, and the ODF stuff makes me even more interested.

I just need to do an actual paper or something in Open Office and see how it compares to writing a paper in the MS Suite. If it's relatively painless and picks up on my mistakes then it's a no brainer for me.

 

[MisterMe]

I didn't know that MIT had licensed that technology to Texas Instruments... special since I was under the impression that NuBus II was a TI development (NuBus II was only used in the Power Macintoshes as I recall from the developer notes for the 6100/7100/8100).

I gave you a link to read more about the NuBus and its history.

I can't believe that Microsoft did that to Office 97 users! I can't believe that they are going to do it again!

...

You are concerned about the Office 97 to Office 2000 transition? The Office 95 to Office 97 transition was worse. Many of those users found themselves unable to open their old documents in the new suite. They were forced to convert their files to plain text and then open them in Office 97 where they could redo the formatting.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I gave you a link to read more about the NuBus and its history.
You are concerned about the Office 97 to Office 2000 transition? The Office 95 to Office 97 transition was worse. Many of those users found themselves unable to open their old documents in the new suite. They were forced to convert their files to plain text and then open them in Office 97 where they could redo the formatting.

But just remember, "it's the standard."

 

[jaxstate]

Go to the top of you Mac, choose another account and switch to it. You'll see some very good and much needed Microsoft innovation.

 

[jaxstate]

I watched the NExt demo on youtube, when steve job is doing a demo. It's funny how much OSX look like the NExt OS. It cool to see how advanced this OS was. To me, this is where Apple go pretty much everything for OSX. It was even funny to hear Steve say, "You see this, you can't do this on a Mac or a Windows PC."

 

[RacerX]

I gave you a link to read more about the NuBus and its history.

You gave links to Wikipedia... before I trust anything there I generally need a lot more outside sources. Having seen the amount of errors in Wikipedia on subjects that I know like the back of my hand, I'd be naive to believe that those are the only areas with flaws.

I'll look into it further... but with more references than just Wikipedia.

 

[wwooden]

They probably didn't invent it, but I think the side tilt scroll wheels on their mice are pretty innovative.

 

[RacerX]

It's funny how much OSX look like the NExt OS. It cool to see how advanced this OS was. To me, this is where Apple go pretty much everything for OSX.

That is where most everything in Mac OS X came from. The OS lineage is as follows:

NEXTSTEP -> OPENSTEP -> Rhapsody -> Mac OS X​

Which is why many of the things we take for granted today in Mac OS X existed (in some form or another) in earlier versions of the operating system.

Today's Dock grew out of the original NeXT Dock. Todays Finder windows grew out of NeXT's Workspace Manager windows (including the sidebar which functions very much like the original shelf). And many of the bundled apps function pretty much the same... TextEdit works very much like Edit in NEXTSTEP (and even more like the original TextEdit from OPENSTEP). Spotlight takes the concepts of the Digital Librarian quite a few steps further, but the relationship between the two is evident. And Dictionary is (sadly) almost identical to the Digital Webster from NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP (Apple could have learnt from the Omni Group and Nisus in this area).

For me, moving between my OPENSTEP, Rhapsody and Mac OS X systems is pretty easy. They all work pretty much the same, and in my case I have mostly the same application titles on all of them. The only issues I ever have is the scroll bars in OPENSTEP (the vertical bars are on the left hand side of windows ).

 

[dpaanlka]

Go to the top of you Mac, choose another account and switch to it. You'll see some very good and much needed Microsoft innovation.

Fast user switching is simply an obvious feature evolution (not revolution) of multiple users... which Macs had much much longer than Windows (At Ease).

I'll give Microsoft 1% credit for taking the idea of Multiple Users, taking absolutely forever to implement it properly, then coming up with the idea of having more than one user logged in at a time before anyone else.

 

[jaxstate]

I'm just saying, it seems to me, that all the big companies take basic ideas from smaller companies and implement them into their OS with some minor tweeking. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that they all do it.

Don't want to stray too far off topic or hijack the thread, but here is the video of SJ demoing the NExt OS. I was blown away at how advanced it was.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A&search=Steve Jobs demoing Next