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Satya Nadella Appointed Microsoft CEO as Bill Gates Shifts from Chairman to 'Technology Advisor'
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And that's the problem. They certainly exist, and you can find out about the things their doing with a bit of internet research, but it's rare to see anything they experiment with end up in the consumer market.
Want a good example? How about the Courier?
A tablet that uses capacitive multitouch, a stylus digitizer, and sports a pretty spiffy UI. This was demoed roughly a year before the iPad was unveiled, and if MS actually released it, it would've blunted some of Apple's momentum in the tablet space. I mean hell, this is how I want to use my iPad now.
...but they killed it, and released the Surface RT in its place 3 years later, which made them look like they were caught off guard, and trying desperately to scramble and catch up to what Apple and Google had already been doing.
That's MS' biggest problem. They don't capitalize on the things they make, and instead tend to stick to their tried and true IPs. The Courier wasn't exactly a direct competitor with the iPad, since it was designed more as an organizer than a multi purpose tablet. But they could've used the tech here to grow it into something great, and MS would currently be competing directly with Apple, instead of playing a current distant 3rd behind them and Google.
The biggest difference between Apple and MS isn't one of innovation and creativity. It's that MS comes up with a lot of ideas they take forever to capitalize on, while Apple focuses and commits.
Edit: oh, and if you think their journal UI looks a lot like Paper by 53, there's a reason for that. 53 is made up of the people who bailed on MS after they shot down the Courier.
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You guys are imagining things and missing what's actually being said.
He's already spoken about his plans for the company - what's basically happened is that about a year ago, with Windows 8, Microsoft rounded a corner. This was painful for the company, financially, but was an important thing to do. It represented a sea-change in their outlook and philosophy. Nadella mentioned it today in a web conference at noon - Microsoft is focusing on USERS. A User-Centric Microsoft is what's behind Windows 8, the Modern UI, and the increasing success of Windows Phone. They've been patient with something that is actually innovative, and that patience is beginning to pay off. What Nadella said today is that their plans are to increase the speed at which Microsoft brings these innovations to customers. This is a tacit admission that they moved too slowly in the past - and that it cost them dearly. They're learning from this mistake, and focusing on users. He seems to get this, and he seems passionate about innovation and a user-focus from Microsoft in the future.
To me, this heralds good things from the company.
He's already spoken about his plans for the company - what's basically happened is that about a year ago, with Windows 8, Microsoft rounded a corner. This was painful for the company, financially, but was an important thing to do. It represented a sea-change in their outlook and philosophy. Nadella mentioned it today in a web conference at noon - Microsoft is focusing on USERS. A User-Centric Microsoft is what's behind Windows 8, the Modern UI, and the increasing success of Windows Phone. They've been patient with something that is actually innovative, and that patience is beginning to pay off. What Nadella said today is that their plans are to increase the speed at which Microsoft brings these innovations to customers. This is a tacit admission that they moved too slowly in the past - and that it cost them dearly. They're learning from this mistake, and focusing on users. He seems to get this, and he seems passionate about innovation and a user-focus from Microsoft in the future.
To me, this heralds good things from the company.
I agree, Flyover is a piece of censored and Apples mapping data is probably the worst in the industry. Flyover would be useful if only it worked reliably, but load times are still too long. It does not look good only after a few seconds after all movement has stopped.
But why don't you answer my actual argument, that it isn't a direct copy of Street View and that Apple isn't going for Googles revenue stream. Apple does maps, because maps and navigation is essential for mobile devices, like fonts and word-processing have been essential for office computers. But no one at Apple said, look Google makes so much money with location-based search, we need to be in that business too. Instead they said, look Microsoft keeps losing all this money at numerous failed attempts to create a tablet computer, we will show them how its done.
IIRC, the Courier was a concept, not a real product (or even a mockup), but it did show that Microsoft can come up with the ideas, but they just seem to choke on implementation.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Gates' vision for Microsoft is very outdated. He is still in a '90s mentality, when Microsoft enjoyed its monopoly, and the traditional desktop computer was still dominant. I don't think Microsoft understands the mobile device revolution, and it is sticking to its traditional guns, which will hurt the company more than help it. Microsoft has an intense fear of adapting to the new landscape...
Gates' vision for Microsoft is very outdated. He is still in a '90s mentality, when Microsoft enjoyed its monopoly, and the traditional desktop computer was still dominant. I don't think Microsoft understands the mobile device revolution, and it is sticking to its traditional guns, which will hurt the company more than help it. Microsoft has an intense fear of adapting to the new landscape...
Pre-HP, Compaq's BTO division was once the envy of the tech world. A cautionary tale for every tech company...
At one point I believe there were a handful of actual honest to god Couriers floating around the MS offices people could play with. But since it never saw the light of day beyond that, it's all kind of a moot point.
Also, I wouldn't say they always choke on implementation so much as it takes them two tries to get things right. Windows Vista and 8 are good examples of what I'm talking about. They release a product good enough to work with, but still not entirely complete to see how people play with it, then make drastic improvements with their next version. The upside to this off/on method is that they eventually end up making something solid. The downside is that they always end up taking a hit to their reputation every time they try.
Back before 2007, MS could get away with it. Most everything ran on Windows back then. They didn't have antyhing to worry about. But now, with so much competition, they can't quite afford that reputation hit.
You are just trolling.
It doesn't matters if you think the Magic Mouse sucks even more than the Hockey Puck Mouse. The whole market of computers operated with a pointing device was created by the original Macintosh. So everything comes back to Apple. And don't bore me with your stories about the Xerox Alto.
Yeah, don't bore you with information that points to the use of a mouse before Apple came out with one. Do you get bored by things that prove you wrong all the time?
When Azure went down because of a simple datemath problem generating certificates, we were compensated one day's Azure fees for every day they were down. If your definition of "mission critical" can take a hit like that, it's a very useful platform.
Still waiting for some sort of feature parity between SQL Server and
Heck, Microsoft Research has an open website where you can download a lot of their work.
http://research.microsoft.com/
Yeah, Ballmer should be burned at the stake for killing the Courier project and disbanding the skunk works that created it.
Microsoft also had things like the Surface multi-touch table, which only went to high priced niche markets.
However, a good example of an R&D project that DID go to market, is of course Kinect (aka Project Natal).
He would be wise to create new markets and gain first mover advantage - a strategy that has served Microsoft and Apple very well historically. Reinventing the company as the leader in consumer robotics is a ripe market. Smart robots are a lot more appealing than smart devices. Almost all the technology exists and everyone wants one whether they know it or not.
Getting it, is not enough. Ballmer pretty much did get everything right, the integration of software with hardware and services and the importance of developers, developers, developers. Still Windows Phone ended up with the smallest developer base and lowest device sales.
I believe Microsoft when they say, they want to be a user-centric company, because they identified it as a reason of the success of their competitors. But they didn't give a poop about the user experience, when it still looked as if they were winning against Apple.
For decades the OEMs where their customers, not the end users. In all that time the corporation has learned to ignore the users interest. It needed a usability disaster like Vista to bring them to Windows 7. And with 8 they have thrown out the baby with the water again.
Very early on, iCloud was hosted on Azure, but now that Apple has many of its own datacenters online, iCloud is now hosted on Apple's platform, most likely running on WebObjects, as one other MR poster has suggested...
Where is the market the Xerox Alto opened up? If it doesn't matter that your product is successful, we could as well name Franz Reichelt the inventor of human flight. Screw those Brothers Wright only because their machine left the ground, they can't claim invention of motor-flight. So many losers did it before, therefore the iPad can't be the first tablet.
They haven't thrown anything away with 8 - they've solidified the UI across platforms, something that no competitor has yet to achieve. They did keep the desktop UI in addition to the Modern, for people who needed it for whatever reason, or just liked it better. ...and that's fine - I use both the Start screen and the Desktop on my Win 8.1 computer. I'll tell you one thing though - I never used the "launcher" or whatever the iOS lookalike pasted into Mac OS is...
You also missed the whole part about moving quickly. Ballmer didn't get that, and MS operated extremely cautiously for too long - what they've figured out is that being overly cautious and reactive rather than bold and running with innovative new ideas is that waiting too long can be just as bad as running ahead and failing. They HAVE done things that are really innovative. ...now if they run with them more rapidly, and in an environment focused on the end user, it seems to me they've got a very strong position.
I'm glad you understand how reality works, even if you're saying it sarcastically. The Xerox Alto was first sold in 1981, by the way as the Xerox Star. That is still before the original Macintosh.
Nothing, except usability. Please read this scientific study:
Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users
Summary: Hidden features, reduced discoverability, cognitive overhead from dual environments, and reduced power from a single-window UI and low information density. Too bad.
All of their products solidified under one UI with disappointing usability. Maybe that's the problem.
Headline of the first paragraph: Double Desktop = Cognitive Overhead and Added Memory Load
And I tell you, the rest of the world is avoiding Windows 8 as if it is Vista 2.
Ballmer isn't as stupid as he appears on video. Of course he wanted to move quicker, but all the weight. Microsoft is still Microsoft and can't move faster than it moves. And it can't be user friendlier than it is. The company has grown to what it is now, not what it wants to be.
It's as though they believe sheer will can force the merger of desktop and mobile to be successful.
No one ever disbelieved that many basic technologies behind the Macintosh were invented at Xerox PARC. Maybe only the high price stopped the Xerox Star or that it was a closed system without the ability to write third-party software.
„A few years later, Apple launched the Macintosh, which borrowed many concepts from PARC and is considered the first commercially successful GUI/mouse-equipped PC.“ (Link)
Successful also marks the fine line between what the Brothers Wright did and all the others before them. The world is full of commercially failed attempts to build a tablet computer. Which one do you wanna pick as the first tablet?