

Is Microsoft Actually Innovating? - Deadly_B
http://blog.villainousmind.com/2009/06/is-microsoft-actually-innovating.html

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calambrac
_For example, no one wants an iPod. They never have. What people want is to
hear the right song at any given moment in time anywhere they are at without
any device whatsoever._

That's an adorable bit of engineer-brain reductionism, but I don't think it's
right. Having some kind of device in the loop is useful as a symbol. It tells
other people that you're listening to music, that you spent a certain amount
of money to do so, or that you do or don't pay attention to what's popular. If
you bought a certain color, you probably did so to convey (or to avoid
conveying) something about yourself, etc. People like to carry around and
display tokens of their interests.

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netsp
People like things.

~~~
rudyfink
This certainly seems to be true of some people. I have lost count of the
number of times I have heard the phrase "retail therapy" used.

~~~
netsp
It's hard to give someone "the right song at any given moment in time anywhere
they are at without any device whatsoever" for Christmas.

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icey
I do feel like Microsoft has been listening to what its consumers are asking
for more than it used to. I think they got humbled by Vista more than they'd
like to admit.

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aswanson
Microsoft needs to stop this genuine validation shit before they get a class
action against them on it. I paid for a PC two years ago that worked up until
last night when I got greeted with this:

[http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-
US/genuinevista/thread...](http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-
US/genuinevista/thread/ad67b60b-5f33-4d04-8d8d-5a42a4bb5d46/)

Never mind the recovery process now that they don't even ship some computers
with the OS disk.

~~~
aswanson
Update: The bastards are magnanimous enough to allow a special mode where a
browser can be used to go to pay for a genuine liscense, but no way to restore
_what you already paid for_. So not only do they accuse customers of theft,
they hold your pc hostage to extort more from legitimate users. I despise
them. Do not trust MS with any data you have.

~~~
zcrar70
So did you actually have a genuine copy of Windows on your PC? Why did it
suddenly stop working, was it due to an upgrade or something?

As an aside, I don't actually think it's unfair for MS to block access to
Windows to users who are using illegal copies of Windows. It's their product;
it stays their property so long as you haven't pay for it. If you don't like
that, use something else instead (like Linux for example) or pay for the
license.

Please note I'm not accusing you in particular of using an illegal copy of
Windows. I'm just expressing surprise at people getting outraged when their
PCs stop booting up into Windows because they have invalid licences (there was
a story in China recently, which as I remember it was reported with glee by
one of the Mac sites.)

(PS you could always load up the hard disk on another machine and copy the
data from there)

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aswanson
I have a valid liscense that came with the OEM HP computer. Still have the
receipts. Vista worked for 2 years until last night when it became invalid and
accused me of theft.

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anigbrowl
Ray Ozzie certainly seems to be changing their corporate culture for the
better. On the provided examples, Natal looks like an unambigious winner if it
delivers; Sideshow looks more in the pattern of MS delivering an awkward
implementation of a basically good idea.

Let me rephrase that. Sideshow looks stupid and the name invites mockery. Make
it a tablet touchscreen and say it's the future of the mouse, and then please
send me one if this turns out to be profitable.

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sp332
Microsoft Research has some very cool stuff. But that technology gets into
consumer products very slowly, if ever.

<http://research.microsoft.com/apps/dp/pr/projects.aspx>

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mattmaroon
"For example, no one wants an iPod. They never have."

Obviously this guy has never watched a television. Apple spends hundreds of
millions each year making sure people do want an iPod.

~~~
incomethax
Apple doesn't spend its money making sure people want iPods, they spend their
money making sure people want to listen to "the right song wherever they are,"
and making sure that the iPod is the device that lets them listen to "the
right song wherever they are."

~~~
mattmaroon
No offense, but that's stupid. Apple doesn't need to spend a dime "making sure
people want to listen to 'the right song wherever they are'". People have
probably wanted that since wars were fought with sticks and have expected it
since the Walkman in the '80s. That's like saying Coke's ad budget is an
attempt to convince people to drink something when they're thirsty.

They spend their money on branding ads, to make sure that when people think
about "listening to 'the right song wherever they are'" they associate that
with an iPod. That's the only explanation, since everybody has known what an
iPod is for years and yet they still spend literal hundreds of millions per
year on ads for them.

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phatboyslim
For those unfamiliar with Johnny Lee, I highly recommend is YouTube videos on
Wii Hacks ... he is a well recognized genius int the field and was recently
employed by Microsoft after graduating Carnegie Mellon university. His
involvement in this project ensures that it will have a better chance at
survival.

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joel_feather
It's easy to sing to the choir. It's also boring and badly written.

Microsoft has made a LOT of innovations. A massive amount of modern computing
is based of how accessible microsoft made computing - if we still had to
recompile our kernel to enable sound, I don't think we would be near as far as
we are.

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sundeep
> _Microsoft has made a LOT of innovations. A massive amount of modern
> computing is based of how accessible microsoft made computing - if we still
> had to recompile our kernel to enable sound, I don't think we would be near
> as far as we are._

Sure , they've _enabled_ innovation. How much have they actually done ...

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tybris
There are many innovative companies like Philips, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Sun,
formerly AT&T, but Apple and Microsoft are not among them. Their core
competencies are quality and marketing. There's way more money in that.

Apple did not invent the phone, mp3 player, video player, application store,
etc. They just perfected and skillfully crafted hypes around them. Microsoft
did not invent the Office suite, IDE's or the hardware acceleration layer, but
they did perfect and deploy them through aggressive business strategies.

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jameskpolk
>Apple did not invent the phone, mp3 player, video player, application store,
etc. They just perfected and skillfully crafted hypes around them. Microsoft
did not invent the Office suite, IDE's or the hardware acceleration layer, but
they did perfect and deploy them through aggressive business strategies.

Is your claim that a company must invent something from whole cloth to be
"innovative"?

~~~
tybris
No, but that's not how they run their business. You shouldn't expect Microsoft
or Apple to be innovative, you should expect them to make a better product
than everyone else and/or market it better than everyone else.

Amazon.com did invent Cloud Computing, Philips did invent the CD, Sun did
invent Java, Toyota did invent the hybrid, AT&T did invent the cell phone,
Xerox did invent the GUI. Those are the companies that run on innovation.

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philwelch
"Philips did invent the CD"

A refinement on the laserdisc.

"Sun did invent Java"

A refinement on C, C++, and Smalltalk.

"Xerox did invent the GUI"

A refinement on Doug Engelbart's work at SRI. (Edit: Though many of the
researchers working for him later went to PARC, I find no evidence that
Engelbart himself ever did.)

Now here's the real question. If inventing a new type of laserdisc that's five
inches wide is innovation, why isn't inventing a GUI-based computer system
that costs half as much as a Star and a third as much as a Lisa? If inventing
a new object oriented language with C style syntax is an innovation, why isn't
inventing a smartphone with a multitouch screen and unprecedented amounts of
storage space?

~~~
10ren
Doug Engelbart was working at PARC (Xerox PARC).

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Tichy
I think it is just dumb to claim that Microsoft doesn't innovate. Comparing
them to Apple is also a bit like comparing Apples and Oranges (pun intended).

