
Microsoft’s Monopoly Hangover - darwhy
https://stratechery.com/2017/microsofts-monopoly-hangover/
======
mark_l_watson
I am a big fan of Office 365. We currently have no Windows machines in our
home but for macOS and Linux, Office 365 provides great value also.

Microsoft 365 is probably a good idea, but Microsoft is missing one consumer
product: a great cellphone running Windows and seamlessly working with other
Windows devices. Having phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops all seamlessly
working together is something that I now insist on. For now, this makes me an
Apple customer because iPhone/iPad/MacBook devices work really well together.
If Microsoft had a fantastic phone with handoff, they could compete better.
(BTW, I briefly owned a Windows 10 laptop a few years ago - bought it just to
play with Windows 10. I thought Windows 10 was quite good.)

~~~
remir
Microsoft strategy with Windows 10 was to encourage developers to write UWP
apps so they could eliminate the app gap in Windows 10 Mobile.

Good strategy in theory, but looking at the Windows Store today, it seems like
developers are not that interested in UWP and frankly, who can blame them?

If you want to write a tablet app, you target the iPad because it's the best
product in that category. If you want to write a phone app, you target Android
and iOS because that's where the money is today.

Is there good money to be made writing UWP at the moment? In my opinion, UWP
apps on desktop are inferior to "classic" Windows apps. Windows 10 Mobile is
pretty much dead at this point, so what's the point of UWP, what's the true
benefit?

~~~
ralphie02
This is probably where Windows 10S (pushed in education) comes into play. It's
a version that offers "secure & superior" performance over normal Win10. Since
10S can only install from the Store app, devs are `forced` to port their app.

Only time will tell how effective this strategy is. I for one would love for
this to succeed if it means better security for users (especially on older,
technologically challenged folks)

~~~
remir
Well, I don't see how Windows 10S helps push adoption of UWP since you can
already distribute Windows Forms, WPF, or Win32 desktop apps on the Store
today. At that point, why bother making a UWP app?

Also, Edge only have a handful of extensions. If they want to compete against
Chrome, they have to do something about that, otherwise people will just use
Chromebooks.

~~~
pjmlp
Win32 apps run with full thrust, instead of the actual UWP container, so
ideally one should migrate to a proper UWP app.

But we all know how users and many devs, actually value security.

~~~
maxxxxx
The devs may value security but they need the tools to actually build a
working app. From what I have seen UWP is way too limited for a lot of apps.

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ksk
With so many major vendors of professional software switching to the software
rental model, I'm hoping for an open source renaissance from the bottom-up.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
I very much doubt it. This is akin to "hoping" that there would be renaissance
of of VPS/Dedicated hosting.

Open Source typically requires people to manage everything themselves,
including update.

For those who see IT as cost-center/necessary evil, they want to have as less
investment and as short-term as possible.

~~~
ghthor
OSS lags behind in the UX category because we frankly just don't have UX
designers in abundance. Then tend to follow the other UI/US designers.

~~~
cjsuk
I'm not sure this is a major issue. End users are mainly concerned that when
they wake up in the morning, lots of stuff hasn't moved. What it looks like
and where it is to start with doesn't seem to matter as long as the UI is
discoverable to some extent.

~~~
ygra
End users are also concerned with not being frustrated at every corner with
arcane and weird UI choices or a user experience that plainly mirrors the
implementation choices underneath. Worrying about whether features have been
moved around the UI usually comes after they've already used a program for a
while. There's lots of open-source software that, for non-technical end users,
doesn't get to that point because they've ditched it already.

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urs2102
Post monopoly business model reminds me of RIM holding back BBM from iOS and
Android devices before Whatsapp and other inter-operating system messaging
platforms ate their lunch.

Would be interested in seeing companies that similar to IBM as Ben mentions,
kept similar assets, but built new business models around them to accommodate
a changing marketplace.

~~~
tracker1
Which is a shame really... Blackberry could have been much larger if they'd
released a paid app tethered to their services on the backend for Android and
iOS, provided the app was at least as good as the BBM experience to their
users.

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Analemma_
I knew Gerstner pulled off a minor miracle at IBM, but I had no idea that he
also basically described AWS years before AWS (see the footnote at the end of
the "IBM's cloud miss" section). That's another corporate what-if for the
ages; IBM must still be kicking themselves for letting him go.

~~~
foobarian
Occasionally I like to reread the introduction in the Corbato, Vyssotsky
Multics paper from 1965. It's amazing how long these kinds of ideas were
around.

"Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) is a comprehensive,
general-purpose programming system which is being developed as a research
project. The initial Multics system will be implemented on the GE 645
computer. One of the overall design goals is to create a computing system
which is capable of meeting almost all of the present and near-future
requirements of a large computer utility. Such systems must run continuously
and reliably 7 days a week, 24 hours a day in a way similar to telephone or
power systems, and must be capable of meeting wide service demands: from
multiple man-machine interaction to the sequential processing of absentee-user
jobs; from the use of the system with dedicated languages and subsystems to
the programming of the system itself; and from centralized bulk card, tape,
and printer facilities to remotely located terminals. Such information
processing and communication systems are believed to be essential for the
future growth of computer use in business, in industry, in government and in
scientific laboratories as well as stimulating applications which would be
otherwise undone."

~~~
macintux
There are some amazing ideas from that era. In 1985 Jim Gray described how to
create hardware and software with a MTBF of decades, yet other than the few
people using Erlang those ideas have been ignored ever since.

[http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/tandem/TR-85.7.pdf)

~~~
hedora
I gotta point out that Jim was roughly one era after Multics. His career
ramped up during the mass replacement of navigational databases with
relational solutions.

Industry and academia were pretty terrible about giving the navigational
people credit, or even citing/preserving their work (try getting a copy of a
paper from the CODASYL proceedings to see what I mean).

Gray strongly disapproved of all that, so I doubt he would want credit for the
previous generation's contributions.

Anyway, the old hierarchical/navigational/codasyl stuff was mostly forgotten,
then reinvented (poorly, at first) as key value stores turned into document
databases, etc.

Something similar happened with containers, etc. I think the end product of
the current generation will surpass the old stuff in most ways, but it is
painful to know the history and watch train wrecks of obvious implementation
mistakes.

~~~
macintux
Reminds me of Bret Victor's Future of Programming talk.

[https://vimeo.com/71278954](https://vimeo.com/71278954)

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DonHopkins
Micropoly!

[https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.microp...](https://web.archive.org/web/20010615183227/http://www.micropoly.com:80/micropoly-
board-med.jpg)

~~~
toyg
Wow I'd never seen this. They should have gone a little bit further though
(who builds "houses" in IT? Just turn them into "apps", with hotels turning
into "servers" maybe).

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shmerl
MS culture changed in some ways for the better (their support for Alliance for
Open Media is one such example), but in others it remained as bad as it was
before (DirectX lock-in, Windows tax and etc.).

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duncan_bayne
This is exactly why I think monopolies are awful, but at the same time not a
concern for legislation. Monopolies only persist in the long term - i.e. exist
as _true_ monopolies - when enforced with the force of law.

~~~
ghshephard
...Excepting of course, Natural Monopolies - which are probably rarer than you
might think For example - "Gas" delivery might be considered a natural
monopoly - but I know people (in fact, pretty much everyone I know) doesn't
care about having a Gas Hookup - they just have someone carry large containers
of gas into their kitchen. The things last forever.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)

~~~
duncan_bayne
I'm not even sure most of those count. Look at energy distribution as an
example - I grew up in New Zealand, the country cited. If the monopolist
drives prices too high, that'll just encourage people to abandon the grid for
alternatives like microgrids.

~~~
ghshephard
Right - like I said, even "Natural Monopoly" is less frequent that you might
think. Though, in a dense urban area - you don't have a lot of choice over who
delivers your power, water, and removes your sewage. Very difficult for
competitors to come in and add new distribution lines for each of those in
heavily built urban areas (unlike Comms, where lots of ability to add new
fiber, new RF, etc...)

