
Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft? - petewailes
Short version: I've been asked to compile a document that will go to various people at MS, including Steve Ballmer (before anyone asks, no I'm not giving you his or anyone elses contact details).<p>As such, what would you guys like to see from Microsoft in the future? Suggestions can cover anything from IE9 to Windows 8, your thoughts on 7 (desktop or mobile), Xbox, Zune... Also, thoughts on competitors and their movements would be welcomed too.<p>Please note that this isn't just a feature request list, so anything to do with the strategic direction of MS and/or any of its divisions would be great.<p>Fire away!
======
unexpected
Personally, I think Microsoft needs to make the strategic "pivot" to selling
experiences - not necessarily operating systems.

They've done a great job of this with Xbox and Windows 7. I was incredibly sad
when the Courier got cancelled. This was a big _head pound_ moment for me. At
it's core, MS sells software, but increasingly, it seems apparent that
consumers are going to spend their dollars on hardware/software combos (this
is primarily a nod to Apple, but look at the care that Google invested with
Android - the G1, the close relationship to Droid, and Nexus One, and RIM
making all their devices). It's no longer enough to say "here's an operating
system, do what you want with it." This was the previous mobile strategy, and
now it's gotten them into the position their in.

Mobile seems to be figured out already - MS will be fighting for 3rd place (at
least for the next 5-7 years). Tablets is still a potential area for
innovation - the iPad leaves a lot to be desired, ChromeOS seems to be dead,
Android Tablets have yet to really take off.

Overall - there seems to be an inherent political culture at MS. It's
intriguing that Apple has a higher market value with 10% of the employees. I
know so many brilliant, smart people that work at Microsoft, but I haven't
heard from them in the past 5 years - they seem to all be cogs in a big
machine.

Encourage employees to start their own companies. Maybe have a blanket policy
of providing seed money to any employee that wants to - YC style. Take a lot
of smaller risks instead of few big ones. Zuckerberg would have taken $10,000
for 10% when he first started - now 1.6% cost you $240,000,000! You could have
invested in 200,000 ideas for that price. Let your people run with their own
ideas, without having to sit through 80 million meetings and having their
ideas suffer death by 1000 PM's.

~~~
listic
Care to explain how come Chrome OS is dead?

~~~
siglesias
Because netbooks are not the future of ultraportable computing; tablets are,
and Chrome OS is primarily part of a mouse and keyboard driven paradigm. Also
it is making increasingly little sense for Google to support two divergent
operating systems.

~~~
points
That's just ridiculous. Is this theonion.com ?

Step outside the bubble for a second. Most people don't have tablets, and
don't want tablets.

~~~
rakkhi
I think he is probably drawing on sources like this:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1698213>

That has best buy saying tablets are cannibalizing their netbook revenue. This
does not mean that netbooks or laptops are dead - personally for the current
price I find something like an ACER1215N a lot better value for my usecases
than an ipad. This is primarily due to the the HDMI out, USB input for
storage, rich client gaming and the fact that I can run any VM for any OS I
want. For running MS office / Openoffice also the tactile keyboard is handy
without paying for additional accessories.

If there are others like my netbooks/laptops may decline but not die
completely, I would suggest a 60/40 split in 3 years tablets/laptops
respectively.

~~~
points
Ridiculous. You can't even type on a tablet properly or angle the display.

Again, I would say that in 99% of cases, people who buy a tablet are not
buying it _instead_ of a laptop, but as well as.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
If you're pointed at data which suggests that laptop sales are declining
significantly in parallel with the increase in tablet sales, I think you need
to provide an argument a little more substantial than bluster.

There would seem to be some evidence that some of the people who have to
choose now are migrating to tablets but the real test will be when they come
to replace them having experienced both. Do they stay tablet or return to a
laptop?

------
makecheck
Microsoft's advertising still doesn't do it for me. Frankly, most commercials
makes me think more about their lameness than the product.

The exception is Xbox ads. As 'rakkhi' noted, the Xbox product line is
actually great, and I think its advertising is one reason for its success.
Xbox ads, everything down to the cool logo/sound thing in each one, make me
think about the _product_ , instead of making me feel sorry for the company
that made the commercial.

Start by throwing out all the copycat stuff. ("I'm a PC"...I get it. Stupid.
Is that the best you can do?) If you're going to copy anyone, copy yourself:
take Xbox ads, and extend their style to the rest of the product line. Then go
even further.

~~~
thwarted
I think PlayStation ads had the logo and a sound at the end of commercials for
licensed games since the original PlayStation (although there was a voice that
said "play station"). Even Wii ads have that though with the bowing i's in Wii
and a sound effect. It seems to be a requirement for video game ads for
branding. It's a good branding method, but it isn't distinctly Microsoft and
they didn't originate it.

------
jodrellblank
Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use
- improve them.

Far too much of my Microsoft using experience is of a solid technology which
is idiotically annoying, and a new version which ups both desirable features
and irritation at the same time.

I mean the remote desktop client which has a ton of user experience flaws
which hasn't improved for years, then developed another security warning to
pass through every new connection.

I mean the mess of software licensing which got no better, then worse with
KMS/MLK keys.

I mean the web browser which is now a web browser with a first time startup
wizard full of pestering questions.

I mean the event log viewer which was basic and fiddly, and is now massively
complex looking and still fiddly.

I mean the scheduled task list which is now a scheduled task maze.

I mean the Control Panel which is now a Control Panel Advent Calendar.

I mean the Exchange Management Console which morphed into a Half-a-management-
console-half-a-scripting-language.

I mean the Windows Explorer which locked up a Pentium 4 when accessing an
optical drive or network still locks up a Core i7 920 when accessing an
optical drive or network only now it tries to hide the optical drive first.

I mean the IIS6 tree which became an IIS7 "lets arrange everything inspired by
our favourite abstract artist!" mess.

On and on and on, they sell me on industry leading desirable features like
Branch Cache and Outlook Anywhere and yet my everyday experience is Microsoft
the Bully.

"Come here, jodrellblank, we have a brand new system for you to try with
$newfeature!"

"Wow! _run run run_ "

 _Security warning tripwire_ , Are you sure checkbox, Did you notice the
information bar? Would you like to move or copy files from this location?
Error 0x28003210D ha ha! F1 for help? Sorry, we removed that help system in
this version. Online search? Ours is awful, you'll never find that error.
Helpful utility? You no longer have rights to run it, "admin".

Want $feature? Why don't you just come and get it then? It's right here...
FOREVER OUT OF YOUR REACH.

 _cries in a corner_

~~~
gaius
_Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to
use - improve them_

The bits of MS that do do this (e.g. the Visual Studio team) produce extremely
high quality.

Tho' I can't imagine that the Word or Excel teams use any other word processor
or spreadsheet...

~~~
rakkhi
> "Word or Excel teams use any other word processor or spreadsheet."

Reinforces your point and his. Word and Excel are best in class, nothing else
comes close - OpenOffice, Google Docs, Documents to go on mobiles are ok
substitutes but not as good as the real thing. This as real impact on your
productivity which is why I use office.live.com, can't believe that is free at
the moment.

~~~
gaius
I'm not sure it's comparable: the work of making Visual Studio is much the
same as the work that people would do with Visual Studio. But if you are a
Word developer, while you'd use it to write a letter, you might not have much
experience of using it for a truly large document, like an entire book.

~~~
rakkhi
Maybe not an entire book but might you not read/write a large requirements or
design document, set of test scripts before it goes into Quality centre for
example. Write-up a lessons learned document or review a threat model for a
security push before the new version gets launched?

~~~
gaius
Even so you would not be the typical Word user, who may be very smart and an
expert in their field, but know nothing about computers.

------
fauigerzigerk
I would ask Steve Ballmer whether he is aware of the fact that Microsoft's
licensing for Windows and SQL Server makes scaling out impossible and hence
knocks their platform out of the race for cloud computing, at least when it
comes to web apps.

I would ask him whether he really thinks that SQL Azure with its $100 per
month for 10GB price tag is anything but a sad joke.

I would ask the people who design the Microsoft partner programs why their
programs as well as their websites are so incredibly bureaucratic and
complicated.

As a Microsoft shareholder, I would ask them to show me growth or raise the
dividend so I can participate in the slow but still profitable decline that is
the inevitable consequence of their current strategy.

~~~
aphexairlines
What decline? Microsoft reported $62.48 billion in revenue and $18.76 billion
in net income for their FY 2010.

~~~
loewenskind
If all you ever look at is raw bottom line numbers, life is going to be one
surprise after another for you.

~~~
aphexairlines
That's an odd way of advocating hype over facts. And it's a bit of a stretch
to pronounce Microsoft's decline if they're not #1 in a couple of trendy areas
(cloud computing, smartphones).

~~~
fauigerzigerk
Their problem is that cloud computing is the successor of Windows. It's not
just some trendy area.

~~~
_delirium
"The network is the computer", eh?

~~~
nailer
Isn't it? It wasn't back in Sun's days, but I've got more apps open in my
browser right now than my dock, and so does the person beside me.

------
seltzered
I recently got a windows 7 machine. Some things that bug me as a programmer
using it, and make me wish I just paid up and got a mac:

1) WPF - I am trying to use this in my work life. It scares me when I hear
your ex-product manager twittering that it's dead. I now feel like I should've
done my app's front-end in qt or swing.

2) Will microsoft create in-built, tested, virtual desktop support already?
More people use laptops that need it even more. I use virtuawin, but things
just don't work elegantly. Mac OS X supports virtual desktops natively, and it
works without a hitch.

3) The one thing I actually do like that comes out of microsoft are your
office products. I think as people actually go paperless now, it's a good time
to double down on investing in OneNote as a platform used across tablets,
phones, and PC's. Also allow for one to sync it to say, their windows home
server, and let one define tags to be whatever they want -- and you may have
something that will make me committed to the platform.

4) It's 2010 and I still use cygwin or a virtual instance of linux just to
have a console with the commands I want. Windows PowerShell came wayy too late
for me to want to bother spending time learning it. Mac users don't have this
problem.

5) Start defining some rules for say "windows experience" PC's. This can be an
upper-tier for laptop makers to try and not be cheap. This comes from my
frustration last april when trying to buy a new laptop. Go into any b&m store,
look at the windows machines - feeling like cheap plastic, glossy screens, and
meh build quality - then walk over to apple's corner. It's a night and day
difference. There's high-quality PC laptops made (ex: lenovo T series, HP
envy), but they're hard to find in stores, and are typically only found
online. Microsoft needs to define some rules on what a great PC has, similar
to what they're trying to do with windows phone 7.

~~~
rodh257
What do you want microsoft to do about number 4? Appears to me that short of
going back in time and making it sooner so you'll learn it, they can't do much
now...

~~~
Zak
I suspect seltzered wants first-class user-level *nix compatibility. The fact
that Cygwin exists demonstrates that something along those lines is practical.

------
david927
To Ballmer: Steve, you've done a great job. You have enough money. You have
nothing left to prove. Now is your time to enjoy your life. Step down.

To replace you, choose someone no one would suspect. Choose someone young,
with a fairly strong technical background and mainly with a lot of vision.
(And make sure that person can communicate that vision.) Choose someone who
can inspire. Line up (in-house and acquire) some really great technologies and
launch them with this person's takeover.

Shed whole divisions; trying to do too much has distracted you.

People have stopped being in awe of Microsoft. Restore that. And then go enjoy
yourself.

------
dstein
Microsoft absolutely needs to completely drop the whole "do it our way, or hit
the highway" attitude. It may have worked to build MS into the giant it is,
but it will absolutely be their eventual undoing. It is because of this
attitude that Microsoft has already lost the mindahare of today's young
developers. I have never met anybody under 25 years old that is a Windows
software developer. At the very least Microsoft needs an internal hippie
movement.

Here's some steps that could right a sinking ship:

1) Stop integrating IE deep into the operating system, port IE to Mac, and
Linux -- non Windows developers need to develop and test IE, period

2) Stop leveraging your operating system as the sole way to compete and crush
competitors (you should know this already)

3) Develop non-Windows software (you need to hire software engineers that
aren't drinking your own Kool-aid, ones that are willing to stand up and say
"hold on maybe we shouldn't be such assholes")

4) Learn from Apple's OSX strategy -- start developing a "clean-room" Linux or
BSD-based mobile operating system, make it a skunkworks project, make the sole
aim of the project to one day entirely replace the Windows OS

5) Embrace altruism - provide funding for open source projects that directly
conflict with your business model (something like fund development of the Hurd
kernel)

A more radical strategy would be to consider breaking the company up into 3 or
more separate companies. OS & Mobile, Software & Web, Xbox & Hardware. This
would allow each group to innovate without the Windows-only and MS culture
hamstrings.

~~~
mattmaroon
1) might hurt you more than it helps. Firefox is on Windows and Mac, and
unfortunately you cannot assume that what works on one will work on the other.
Same with Flash. The only way to really test what your site looks like on an
OS/Browser is to just get a comp running it.

------
loewenskind
The company needs to split in two internally. One side can be the "MS Stack"
side that continues with the current strategy milking it for every last penny
while it dries up, but the other side needs to become a software company again
(as opposed to a stack company). Start bringing your software to other
platforms. Why was Office canceled on Mac while Mac is gaining market share?
Don't you want money from all the people that are switching their OS but still
want your office tools?

Make your products for Linux as well. You could really innovate here because I
don't know of any players selling home user level software on Linux. You could
even make your own distro to make Linux friendlier without having to take it
on as a long term maintenance project (make it open source almost from the
start). Then you could even put little stickers on your Linux software that
says "Runs best on MS Linux".

The peasants have tasted freedom, you're never going to be able to herd
everyone back onto Windows desktops. Those that are gone will stay gone so
stop trying. You _have_ a platform to easily be everywhere if you wanted to.
Port .Net everywhere and then releasing your products on different platforms
becomes extremely cheap. This is really something you could have over all your
competitors.

I really think this stubborn insistence that everyone be on _your_ operating
system is hurting you. It should be obvious by now that you're not going to
out-innovate Apple or even Google so stop trying to. Let the big dogs fight.
Get back on everyone's minds again by making sure there is no platform out
there where you don't have a best-of-breed, highly talked about product. Make
money off them both. Go back to your roots.

~~~
nailer
Why bother making new desktop products (other than browsers) for Windows, Mac,
Linux, Android, iPad?

Why not just make them for the web?

~~~
loewenskind
It's not clear how long it will take for web applications to completely
displace desktop apps, if this ever completely happens at all (it can't today,
and HTML5 still isn't enough for it to completely happen either). They've
already got a big investment in .Net, they should leverage it.

------
martin
* Dual-monitor remote desktop! Please??!!

* What are you guys doing with Windows Installer (MSI)? You create this installation standard which everyone adopts, then you stop supporting it yourself, making people install Office 2007 and Silverlight with BS desktop startup scripts. WTF?

* As alluded to by others here, stop making stupid UI changes for no reason. I've been using Windows since 1992, upgraded to Win7 a couple months ago, and STILL can't find anything. I'm in support, and it's basically impossible to lead a user through anything over the phone anymore, because (for example) getting to the screen where you uninstall a program looks different on almost every Windows version I support, often with multiple variations per OS.

* The .NET runtime gets corrupted ALL THE TIME for our users. This is at least partially because you release patches that fail to rollback upon unsucessful install (see [http://blog.usabilitythinking.com/2010/06/root-cause-for-cor...](http://blog.usabilitythinking.com/2010/06/root-cause-for-corrupted-net-framework/)). This was enough of a problem before you started bundling .NET with Windows so that now I can't even have a user uninstall/reinstall it without really messing with his OS.

* This may make me sound silly, but I miss VB6 -- not the language itself, but rather the ease with which you could easily throw together an executable and send it to a user and have it just work. Now, I have to build a whole installer unless I want to have issues with missing .NET versions or weird .NET security issues.

~~~
fname
_Dual-monitor remote desktop! Please??!!_

You need the RDP 6 client (>Vista), but it's there. Open Remote Desktop
Connection, Click Display Tab, check "Use all my monitors for the remote
session"

~~~
martin
You just blew my mind. Thanks!

------
Zak
Windows needs proper package management. Having each application be
responsible for its own installation, uninstallation[0] and updates is so last
millennium.

Debian and its derivatives have done a good job of it in the Linux world,
though they haven't done as well as they could at convincing third-parties to
integrate. Google Chrome is an example of how to do integration right: the
download is a .deb, and installing it adds Chrome's repository, so you get
automatic updates through apt. A repository containing almost every library
dependency that's likely to show up along with automatic dependency resolution
and updates makes life better for both users and developers.

MS could provide similar functionality for Windows. The lack of an (almost)
everything is open source culture on Windows would, of course make some things
harder, but it's also a huge opportunity for MS: they could integrate an app
store. How best to run an app store is still being explored, but here's what
I'd do if I were in charge of such a project at MS:

* Make the standardized packaging format very preferable. Make the tools for creating packages open-source and easy to use. Make the question asked of the user clear and friendly ("Do you want to install Foo app from Bar company?", not "This requires administrative privileges..."). Make verifying your identity as a developer to sign apps with a MS-issued key free and easy.

* Allow side channels: packages installed by other means could add their own repository and use the central update mechanism. Allow them to hook in to the payment mechanism too, otherwise we'll see annoying in-app payments.

* Avoid any attempt to lock in developers to your store as the sales channel: developers will prefer it because users will prefer it. If users don't prefer it, make it better.

* Allow anything non-malicious, but tag things that would offend a large percentage of users. Hide those by default.

[0] Yes, there's a centralized UI for uninstalling well-behaved applications,
but that's not the point

~~~
blasdel
It's called MSI, the downloaded files may behave like they're standalone exes,
but they're really just bundles of data and scripts for the Windows Installer
to take care of. Apple's PKG / Installer.app setup on OS X is very similar.
Both are clear platform defaults, with nearly all non-legacy shit using them.

In Vista Microsoft implemented a central update mechanism / repository for
third-party drivers, but it's fairly hidden from the user. Apple did something
similar in 10.6 for on-demand printer drivers (which previously took up 3gb in
the default install) and optional OS features like Rosetta.

Neither could realistically get away with implementing anything that looked
like a desktop App Store, no matter how many convenient side channels and
alternate repos there were. The amount of drama that would go down just isn't
worth it to them.

~~~
Zak
People whining about it is probably a good indication that it's worth doing.
If Microsoft fails to do things that are good for all of its users and most of
its developers because somebody might bitch about it, the company is as good
as dead.

------
Tyrannosaurs
An understanding that if you're asking us for ideas like this, that if you
don't already know what's wrong despite everything that's been written and
everything your developers could tell you, you're in deep trouble?

More constructively, I'd like to see Microsoft taking more risks and leading
more. Kinnect and XBox Live are good examples of Microsoft being first in or
coming up with the best thing out there. You could make a case for elements of
Bing too.

So be more ambitious. Too many MS entries into markets now seem me too relying
on the MS brand to prop up an otherwise ordinary product (Zune?). You need to
either be better on day one or moving with such momentum that you're confident
that you will be very quickly. How are you going to move with that momentum?
I'd suggest less management and less marketing. Yep some of projects which
don't have the current level of guidance are going to bomb out heading in
totally the wrong direction, but the ones that succeed will be better than
what you're producing now and get there a lot faster.

Your historic approach of watching markets develop and muscling into them
using Windows and Office as leverage won't work any more. Windows isn't an
effective lever in the new markets and the competitors (Apple and Google)
don't shift as easily as they used to. You need to be in earlier and better.

Your developer tools are pretty good but your licensing is a quick route to
insanity. I've honestly recommended Oracle in the past because for a proposal
I had to put together very quickly, working out the licensing cost for a
complex SQL Server implementation was simply too time consuming.

Mobile - you seem to have become obsessed with the iPhone where frankly you're
ill equipped to fight. Aim at corporate, go for RIM. You're strong in
corporate and if you can't do a better integration with a corporate
infrastructure (which is likely based around Exchange) then you shouldn't be
playing at all. Once you've got that sorted, then look at the consumer market
building on that.

But also good luck. Though I don't think you'll ever be what you were
historically, I honestly believe MS could be a company turning out great
products and the more competition in the market the better.

~~~
matrix
Excellent observations. I agree that a major strategic shift is required and
that means thinking long and hard about their reliance on owning the Windows
platform as their primary competitive advantage.

If I were Microsoft, I would port .Net to other OSs, and aim to own the VM
space. With the JVM in Oracle's hands now, there's an opportunity for a new
player to take the lead. It's corporate infrastructure, it's a platform play,
and it's developer focused, something they're historically good at. As a
bonus, it helps them get products like SQL Server on more platforms, and into
more customer's hands.

------
bad_user
I would like Microsoft's Developer Division to start supporting Linux more ...
Windows servers are too expensive for me making scale-out strategies a PITA
and IMHO technically inferior to Linux from a startup perspective.

Biztalk/Webspark are nice initiatives, but not enough.

And I would totally shell out the cash for a MSDN subscription / Visual Studio
if I could choose Linux for deployment.

Better yet, collaborate more with the Mono project from Novell. Open-source
more of the .NET platform.

The few open-source projects from Microsoft built around .NET don't really
have an open-source development methodology ... let others contribute to the
DLR, IronPython and IronRuby. Don't fear getting your property tainted ... how
many projects from Apache have had such problems, or not getting used by the
Fortune "whatever" companies?

~~~
MetricMike
Collaboration with Mono on .NET would be the "killer" news for me. With Java
looking increasingly shaky, it'd be nice to have a second "write-once, run-
everywhere" paradigm.

While this may not end up being the greatest of reasons, a lot of my
classmates shy away from .NET languages/MSFT technologies because they're more
difficult to develop in Linux. Getting rid of that complaint would be super
awesome.

~~~
hasenj
> it'd be nice to have a second "write-once, run-everywhere" paradigm.

You can use python or ruby.

~~~
nailer
He could, but CPython and Ruby are single language VMs.

DN and Java have a larger amount of classes accessible from any language,
including Python and Ruby implementations.

------
crad
When it comes to Internet related technologies, Microsoft should stop trying
to innovate in a Microsoft centric view of the Internet. Of couse this view
does not help Microsoft promote their operating systems and tools but it does
open them up to be more about standards everyone cares about and not just the
Microsoft circle. There is so much innovation in web development in an ongoing
basis, it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to always be playing catch-up or
keeping their developer base only in their sandbox.

A good example of a Microsoft centric view of the web is when I was lobbied by
Microsoft to add IE8 specific code for enhanced IE8 specific functionality to
my site. "Other browsers will just ignore the tags" was the reply to my
question about cross-browser compatibility. This is a wrong-headed view of the
Internet. Make open standards that are valuable enough for everyone to adopt
and lead in that area. IE8 only functionality doesn't help anyone but people
who will only ever service IE8 users.

Their adoption of jQuery for use in their tools and participation in the
community is a good example of where they are doing what I am advocating.
Silverlight, on the other hand is an example of a Microsoft only view of the
web.

I find my very smart, very talented Microsoft focused web developer friends
are often late to the latest trends in web development because they're so
focused on what Microsoft is doing and not where the Internet in general is
going. I'm sure this is not representative of everyone who is a Microsoft
focused developer, but it does seem to be a case with a majority of people I
speak with in that area.

~~~
ern
I would say that Microsoft-focused web developers' attitudes have changed a
lot in the last few years.

I was at a DevDays event a few years ago, when ATLAS beta (now ASP.NET AJAX)
was demoed. There was much snickering when it failed to work perfectly in what
the speaker derisively called "the other browser" (Firefox).

Today, I can't see that happening. If a Microsoft web framework failed to work
on a non-IE browser, they wouldn't dare demo it, because most of the audience
would blame Microsoft, and not the browser.

------
jacquesm
You want strategy? Ok, here is strategy:

Do something bold for a change, really bold. Open source windows or office, do
whatever scares you most and then make a go of it. With the talent pool you've
got there you should easily be able to out-compete the market when you've done
something like that, it will go a long way towards getting forgiveness for
deeds done in the past and it will align your goals with the world much better
than where you are today.

If this scares you realize that in the longer term this is where software is
going to be. Developers have wised up to lock-in and other tricks and
corporations are more and more moving to solutions that they control. The
writing has been on the wall for years.

Oh, and stop funding stooges to attack third parties.

~~~
bad_user
> _Developers have wised up to lock-in and other tricks and corporations are
> more and more moving to solutions that they control_

Yeah, you can see that with the iPhone, the Apple Store, and all the various
clones that pop into existence like mushrooms (hello Kindle).

Sometimes I believe developers live in la-la land, totally disconnected from
reality.

~~~
jacquesm
There are plenty of attempts at the creation of new walled gardens, but I
don't think they will have a very long life.

The examples you give are all tied to very specific hardware, microsoft
thrived on open hardware making tools and supporting those tools.

Look at where IBM is going for what microsoft could be like.

~~~
bad_user
I would really like to believe that, but more and more I think we're heading
for a closed/industry.

The App Store isn't the only example, how about all those developers
integrating their apps with Facebook, Twitter or the Google apis.

~~~
jacquesm
Github.

<http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/github.com>

Really, open source is growing faster than it ever did before, the products
are getting much better, they're slowly wising up to the fact that open source
does not mean 'shitty support' or 'no need for marketing'. More and more
people are finding ways to make money in open source projects.

Drupal got a very large amount of funding based on software they're giving
away (ok, not my personal choice, but still).

And so on. Open source is maturing, and microsoft could do a lot worse than
set a trend for a change instead of trying to hold on to the brakes as hard as
they can.

------
edanm
The biggest thing Microsoft should do is make the desktop king again. This is
possible - users _don't care_ whether they are using web applications or
actual apps, but there are huge benefits (in terms of what you can do) to
desktop applications. This is evident in the amazing rise of Apple's App
Store.

But there's a problem. Web programming, while allowing generally crummier
applications, has some benefits that far outweigh this. This is why startups
tend to focus on web applications - they're just so much better for startups,
for a few reasons. Find a way to give these benefits with desktop
applications, and you'll have people rushing back to Windows programming,
because you _can_ give a much richer use experience.

The benefits of web apps are:

* Not having to worry about deployment.

* Not having to worry about versioning (because the deployment forces everyone to have the latest version).

* Being able to collect feedback almost automatically, ala Google Analytics. Preferably all kinds of different feedback about exactly how people are using your application.

* Making life easier for the end user - no install, no configuration of things like which folders files are saved in (all the data is saved online automatically), etc.

At the end of the day, all of this is achievable outside of the browser - it
just requires a completely new framework for creating applications, which
gives all these benefits for free. Not all desktop applications will be able
to use it, but this will allow rich applications to be made without
sacrificing the amazing benefits written above, which is why so many people
turn to the web.

P.S. I don't know much about Silverlight, which _might_ be Microsoft's attempt
to do just what I've outlined above. If so, then good going, but it still
isn't being pushed hard enough since developers like me don't really know
enough about it.

~~~
rakkhi
I just really disagree with this: "Web programming, while allowing generally
crummier applications"

With HTML5 and AJAX technologies a web application these days can do
everything a rich client application can with the added benefit of
accessibility everywhere from any endpoint.

"The biggest thing Microsoft should do is make the desktop king again" ....
keep flogging that dead horse with your buggy whip

~~~
jmulho
"With HTML5 and AJAX..." Show me a good web app and I might agree. Your point,
for now, is theoretical.

~~~
nailer
GMail. 280Slides. My favorite spread betting site. The web version of the
shitty BMC Remedy app I used at work, which was less shitty than the Win32
version. What do you want? Do you you not think any of these are good apps?

------
rakkhi
Interesting if real. Ok lets go for benefit of the doubt, starting with the
highest priority items:

Mobile technology - The Windows phone 7 will not succeed. Sure you will sell a
few phones but for the marketing and sheer executive brainspend on this you
will not get a profitable return within 5 years. I had a good debate on Quora
about what sucess looks like for Microsoft and I don't think this is
realistically achievable: [https://www.quora.com/Will-the-Windows-
Phone-7-succeed-Why-o...](https://www.quora.com/Will-the-Windows-
Phone-7-succeed-Why-or-why-not)

So the best decision would be to give up on the OS and focus on applications
such as MS Office and XBOX game centre for iOS and Android devices.
Alternatively buy RIM - it is such a good synergy with the current MS business
and getting cheaper by the minute.

Consumer operating systems - The days of big desktop being a true star are
dead, it is a cashcow at best. Why do you really need more than a XBOX / PS3
and a tablet & phone now? Focus on building from scratch an OS like Chromium
that will run on a tablet, boot in under 3 seconds, have IE 9 as the browser
and run office.live.com with proper offline mode. Use the Wintel partnership
to get firmware optimization with this and use Dell, Acer and HP to get this
new OS out on a powerfull (maybe dual screen) tablet by Q2 2011.

Browser - IE9 looks promising but it is a straight up rip off of Chrome no
questions. Where is the real innovation - hire some people that will really
think outside the box on a browser e.g. how about something like Cardspace
from WebOS - organize browser and OS activities by task rather than by tabs
and applications

XBOX - This is the one shining light in the last 5 years for MS for me. Focus
on leading the industry not following it - how about a true cloud gaming
service using optimized RDP or equivilent to allow full 3D rich client
emulation gameplay on tablets, TV's and phones

Zune - must support full cloud based music streaming service - do it before
Google music.

Augmented humanity - do something to lead and the define to way to private and
secure augmented humanity: [http://rakkhi.blogspot.com/2010/09/privacy-in-age-
of-augment...](http://rakkhi.blogspot.com/2010/09/privacy-in-age-of-augmented-
humanity.html)

~~~
roadnottaken
The desktop is NOT DEAD. All those other devices are primarily for consuming
media -- which is great. But I'm still using a desktop with a keyboard if I
want to do any, y'know, work. I spend ~8-12 hours a day on a desktop and
everyone else I know with any kind of office-job does too. And that's a lot of
people. Tablets/console-games aren't going to change this any time soon.

~~~
rakkhi
I'm currently working on a the 3'rd floor of a household brand and as I look
around there is not a single desktop, everyone is using a laptop - some with a
docking station some without. Everyone has a large 24inch monitor to plug
their laptop into. My last company issued an IT direction that we would not
buy anymore desktops - only Sunrays for virtual desktops. So as far as the
future of desktops in offices, I am not convinced.

~~~
sspencer
Same setup here (a very small shop) - everyone usually just plugs in a 24"
monitor to their MBP. Can't remember the last time I used a desktop tower.
Notebooks, monitors, and servers are the offices of the future.

~~~
NickPollard
I'm not so sure, who needs a powerful laptop when you can get a desktop
machine much more cheaply and a phone/tablet for mobile?

~~~
rakkhi
You don't need a powerfull laptop for most offices you need a thin or zero
client like a Sunray and virtual desktop. If your staff to need to move again
low power tablet and laptops and connect to virtual desktops for that
processing power when it is needed.

------
narag
A modest request: please, with each version don't make it more and more
difficult to make the Windows explorer behave as in Windows 95. I mean having
a folder tree and detailed view. Some people still work a lot with files and
folders "the old way".

Bonus points for not moving the configuration screens around.

Things that have changed with explorer: less space for content, caused by
adding not-so-useful toolbars, folders tree replaced by "selected" or
"favourites" pane, "easy mode" tree navigation that prevents opening more than
one branch at the same time, default to "libraries" in Windows 7, default to
views other than detail, sometimes very difficult to change, hiding file
extensions, folder redirection... Most of the changes can be reverted touching
some registry or configuration setting, but it's increasingly difficult and
time consuming, and sometimes impossible.

I guess the changes are intended for new users, but it would be very welcomed
to have a "classic mode" switch somewhere. Usability is important, but please
consider that old users have different usability requirements. For me Windows
is less and less usable with each version.

About the config dialogs, I've recently had to make a novice user to change
the DHCP settings for Windows 7 over the phone. It wasn't an easy task.

~~~
roadnottaken
GREAT point. On a fresh Win7 install it takes like 5 clicks to get to 'My
Documents', with all the favorites and libraries etc. Do I really need to
click past "My Music" folder every time I want to open a file? SIMPLIFY.

In case you missed it: SIMPLIFY.

~~~
sandipagr
you can add My Documents to favorites maybe making it 1 click?

~~~
roadnottaken
this is actually a good tip, thanks.

------
cmars232
I'd like to see Microsoft reach out and genuinely contribute to more open
source projects, Microsoft has great technologies, lots of smart people, a few
pockets of progressive change, but overall, I feel like everything Microsoft
gives away or open sources is still part of a grand strategy geared towards
locking us all into Microsoft Windows OS and expensive products.

As an open source developer, this was a major factor in shifting my focus from
.NET to Java and Python. Even though I still miss real generics :)

Lock-in is a major turn off, and we can smell it. In the long run, I know from
experience that open platforms will eventually win, and my expertise there can
be more valuable than some certification in a captive technology. Because
otherwise in order to sell my services as a developer, I'd have to sell your
stuff. I see what you did there... but this may not be best for my customer.
No thanks...

Instead why not sell products that we _want_ to use and pay for, that is so
customizable and modular that it is simply a better technical choice? Stop
trying to trap us!

And please start using the same OSS licenses everyone else is using. Even if
it's not the intention, your special MS OSS licenses make us suspicious of
your motives. First think that comes to mind when I see a special MS license
is "uh-oh, is this another 'shared source'?".

------
doron
Please abandon IE only interfaces for your enterprise products. Having a fully
functioning web interface for outlook web access or sharepoint shouldn't be a
big deal, but it is a constant problem, you cant force people to use IE,
embrace the alternatives.

Added features are not always good, we know Office is a cash cow, but it is
also heavy as hell, offer a slim down office suite, not in software, but in
features, or at the very least, allow people to easily turn them off. And
please please dont do this format change again (from doc to docx) it was a
real dick move. oh yeah, embrace and promote open formats.

While we are on the office issue, WHAT THE HELL is your problem with full
compatibility between office for mac and windows office, where is access? why
did you remove vbscript from the apple product? did you think people will
abandon macros? seriously, what the hell are you doing with this one

Add single instance storage capability to your entire server line, it may
sound as a minor feature only but it would make your server line better, also
simplify your licensing schemes across the board, it is antiquated and
annoying for IT staff who wish to be compliant. while we are at it, powershell
and cmd, should incorporate unix commands, why not?

Xbox development should open up more, the Xbox market should be more plugin
oriented, services like Pandora would give the best product Microsoft had in
years, extra boost.

It wont hurt Microsoft to acknowledge the brilliance of other companies,
parroting the line that Microsoft invented the Tablet form factor in the face
of the ipad and latching windows7 as an alternative to Ios is shortsighted and
makes you look outdated and somewhat ridiculous, paradigm shifts should be
acknowledged. Please reconsider the courier.

While we're at it, Crapware and glut should be abhorred and disdained and
discouraged. if i buy a new windows7 machine, i dont want to reformat it to
get rid of the trialware, crapware that is loaded on the average dell etc...
Do you know how much of a performance degradation this stuff does? its
comical. the speed (and often stability) gained by the computer you just
bought when you perform a clean install, makes it feel like a different
computer. you will also save time for small business IT.

Microsoft, you are rarely loved, and only admired with caveats. Work on your
image better, you outspend Apple on marketing but still manage to look bad,
you are not getting your money worth. Get Microsoft Surface technology to
museums and public serving institutions, it will help them serve the public,
it will help you look cool.

~~~
russell
Dont blame Microsoft for the crapware. The manufacturers get paid a boatload
to install it. One manufacturer I know was paid 9 figures for the front page
on the default browser.

~~~
doron
you are right, I still maintain that Microsoft needs to be more control freak
on this. It has direct connection to the degraded windows experience, and is
something Apple rightfully latched on to promote the alternative. At the very
least promote manufacturers that dont engage in this practice.

------
CoryMathews
The major thing for me is Simplicity!

Buy Opera. They have an awesome browser and such a small market share. The
perfect browser to replace IE. If not at least make IE use Webkit or Gecko.
Pref. Gecko so its split 2v2.

When I plug a new monitor in I want it to detect it and turn it on, default to
extend my screen or ask me what I want to do. Win+p is nice but a lot of
people don't know it.

When I plug in new speakers I want the sound to change to use that, or again
ask me. I don't want to pull up the damn control panel every time I change
speakers.

.Net needs to be able to run on mac and linux. Yes there is mono but its not
the same.. I want an official release, same for Visual studio make it run on
all 3 major OS.

I want to be able to install IE on linux. And make IE6, IE7.. Installable side
by side.

I want something like GnomeDo built in. The startmenu is ok, but not the same.

Drivers are getting better but I still end up having to go download drivers
from nvidia, hp or whoever. PITA

Microsoft needs a software marketplace built in similar to the one in Ubuntu.
Its so nice being able to open up a software center and click download. No
searching the internet nothing.

Same goes for a webapp center within IE.

Release an enterprise IE and a standard IE. Make the standard auto update like
Chrome and make the Enterprise version have longer support cycles (basically
the enterprise version is what IE is now)

Improve your web apps. Yes you have an alternative to almost everything google
has but they are all (arguably) worse.

I think thats enough for now :)

------
arethuza
Do something courageous with web browsers - deprecate the IE line of browsers
and create a completely new browser based on WebKit. Offer both to users for a
few years with a view to phasing IE out completely within X years (say 5).

Maybe offer a way of providing hints (maybe through AD GPOs) of which sites
should be opened using which browser - that would probably make short term
adoption within enterprises less painful.

~~~
unexpected
I wouldn't want WebKit to become the dominant engine. I like the current
competition - it keeps everyone honest. Remember, when IE was the only
browser, look at all the trouble that happened!

~~~
arethuza
Yeah - I guess I meant something, anything, that would be a clean break with
IE.

Maybe they should buy Opera Software?

~~~
CoryMathews
"Maybe they should buy Opera Software?"

Yup they should. Opera has an amazing browser and Microsoft could let it shine
the way it should. I'm really surprised they haven't already.

------
drivingmenuts
1\. Fire your browser team - the entire division. IE is the dead, stinking
remains of 90s technology. Save yourself a ton of grief and money and
standardize on Gecko or Webkit. Then make it a mandatory upgrade. Do what
Apple did - change or get left behind. It may hurt in the short run, but it's
paid off in the long run.

2\. You know that buzz that Apple and Google have? When was the last time you
heard _anyone_ who doesn't work there say the same thing about Microsoft? Your
mindshare is a dead stinking corpse in the middle the street that no one cares
about.

3\. Get smaller and get faster. Mozilla updates every couple of months and its
like a party. Safari updates whenever Apple feels like it (which is still
faster than you guys). Chrome updates whenever they take their ritalin. They
all update faster than you guys. You've got 40 million programmers up there
and this is the best you can do?

4\. Other platforms exist. At a minimum, your browser should be on them (see
point 1 first, though). Us Mac users thank you and curse you (well, I do,
anyway) for allowing to have Office. Now go do the same for Linux.

~~~
vijaydev
40 million programmers?

------
auxbuss
Say to Ballmer?

I'd tell him to move aside. Ballmer's a sales' guy. He is clearly a good
sales' guy. But he's the wrong person to be determining strategy at Microsoft.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Ballmer had gone to Sun, as the
sales' guy. Is there an xkcd for that?

------
dotBen
I have nothing to say to Microsoft or Ballmer because Microsoft is so
irrelevant to me now - both as an internet professional and in my personal
life.

I remember installing Windows 3.11 from floppy over my MS-DOS install on a 386
and I've used every version of Windows through to XP since.

But you lost me, all my machines run OS X or *nix, I've never run Windows on
the server, I don't own any Microsoft software and I don't use any online
Microsoft products (Bing, etc).

My love for computers bloomed when the Internet became available to the
measses, C1992. That's when you decided that you wanted to own the Internet so
you created your own, MSN Home. It didn't work, and you never really got the
Internet until it was too late.

You are irrelevant, Microsoft, and due to the way your company is set up to
profit mostly from selling Windows + Office to corporations you will never see
any reason to stamp out the irrelevancy until it is too late.

In many ways it's very sad.

------
sandipagr
Fire your marketing department. Like seriously, I mean it.

1\. What's up with the 2 page long name of each products? Windows Live
Security Essentials 2\. What's up with bazillion version of each OS? 3\.
What's up with all the ads? Windows 7 launch party with that crappy video,
seriously? Is that the best you came with?

Zune was a good product and it was killed because of the marketing strategy. I
guess these are problems when you get big and have 100k employee.

------
pierrefar
I would start with a version of Windows that is not backward compatible with
really old APIs (i.e. removing a lot the old cruft) and making the remaining
OS be super fast and have low memory usage.

I ask for this because although computers are getting faster all the time,
booting and using Windows these days is still an exercise in patience, even on
my high end laptop.

~~~
makecheck
I would add specifically that virtualization is overdue. Apple's strategy back
in the day was pretty good: sandbox the entire old OS so that users can still
get most things to "just work", but then support only a subset of APIs on the
new OS. Apple also kept the old OS as-is (i.e. ugly), while using all the nice
new technologies and look-and-feel as bait to encourage developers to move.

~~~
pierrefar
Yes very good point. Build a good foundation OS and then virtualise for
backwards compatibility.

I think .net is a good bait for such a new system. From the little interaction
I've had with C# devs, they seem to like it.

~~~
limmeau
There is already the XP mode in Windows 7, which boots a virtualized XP for
compatibility.

~~~
pierrefar
Thanks. Didn't know that.

Hopefuly this means that implementing the idea I'm talking about is not too
much of a stretch from the current code.

------
Aegean
An operating system roadmap that promises to get leaner, smaller, faster on
future versions.

Not to flame but I switched to Ubuntu after Vista and never looked back.

------
JunkDNA
Some points:

\- It's annoying in this day and age to be forced into using the entire MS
Stack when I need to work with one specific technology. For example: if I want
to test a web app on various versions of IE, I have to run Windows. OK fine,
even though IE is the only browser that is tied to one OS, I'll let that go.
However, if I want to use the Microsoft-provided free MS Virtual Machine
images, I have to run them on Virtual PC despite the fact that I have a
perfectly good VMWare installation. On my Mac, this means running windows on
VMWare, and then Virtual PC inside that virtual machine. This is insanity. I'm
trying to support your product, you should be making it as easy as possible
for me. Even Apple ported Safari to Windows. As a developer, this just makes
me feel hostile to MS. Another case: MS SQL Server. It's a real bear to
connect to it from unix since (last I checked) there are no official drivers.
You have to use some unix ODBC open source stuff and it's just not suitable
for production work. My organization has a huge SQLServer instance I can't use
because the Linux support is brittle. Contrast that with Oracle who has
official drivers for practically every OS under the sun. The Windows for
everything attitude has got to change. MS is a software company, not a Windows
company. I know MS doesn't have a strong history of "playing nice with
others", but it's sorely needed.

\- Figure out a way to get corporate IT departments into regular upgrade
cycles. The fact that lots of stubborn companies refuse to upgrade because the
costs (perceived or real) are high is madness. It's a drag on the whole
Microsoft ecosystem and heavily rate-limits the cycle time for new products.

\- The segmentation of different Windows versions is just silly. There should
be one version of Windows and that's it. It's simple for people to understand
and it makes licensing a breeze. Artificially creating different versions
doesn't really help anyone. Having a server and a desktop version is plenty
(since they are genuninely different).

\- MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is
based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix. I know this is tantamount to
heresy inside MS. But if you look objectively at how Apple has used open
source and unix, you see they are able to get incredible leverage for their
size. Not having do to everything in-house and relying on the broader
community is pretty good business for them. It lets them focus on the places
where they can add value. At some point, it's not efficient for MS to maintain
a parallel universe of "invented here" stuff. A proprietary Windows
GUI/userspace on top of a unix core (like Mac OS) could really revitalize the
whole Windows brand if done properly. It might even draw some geeks back from
Mac OS. I became a Mac user because I was tired of dual booting Linux and
Windows. I like having first-class email, word processing, photo sharing,
etc... but I also want the unix underpinnings for my software development and
scientific computing needs. Geeks aren't a big market by themselves, but they
really make an impact on the decisions of others.

~~~
gaius
_MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is
based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix_

You know the "Windows/DOS" stuff in NT is an emulation layer, right? It's
known as WoW, Windows on Windows. The NT kernel is the work of Dave Cutler, of
DEC VMS fame, and it is actually very, very good (form your own opinion about
what has been layered on top of it).

~~~
JunkDNA
If Microsoft could deploy a decent unix on top the NT kernel, that might not
be a bad strategy. But the fact remains that there are a wealth of unix tools
that you can compile and run on an number of unix variants, but are
practically impossible to build and run on Windows without heavy
customization. I'm arguing that is eventually going to be a problem for MS
because they are forced to invent everything internally and can't really
easily incorporate what's going on elsewhere.

~~~
gaius
There's a POSIX subsystem.

Way back in the day, Microsoft had their own Unix, Xenix. However they did a
deal with AT&T to get out of the Unix market - they probably still can't sell
a Unix even if they wanted to.

~~~
robbyt
Does anyone know what UNIX even is anymore? Does UNIX=BSD? So does that mean
Microsoft could sell Linux, since Linux!=BSD?

------
Tinned_Tuna
The Xbox (bar it's heating issues) is a damn good product. The advertising
still has a little way to go, but over all it's a nice package and it is a
good user experience start to finish.

Similarly, C# is a nice language, but I'm not (personally) overly keen on
Visual Studio, I like smaller IDEs (personal preference here!).

The main issue that I see is the obsession with integrating everything with
Windows. Notice how iTunes is cross platform(ish)? Python is cross platform?
Apache is cross platform? Chrome & FireFox are cross platform? I don't think
that it's an accident that those are fairly popular -- any one who uses them
is not in inherently tied down to Windows, Mac or any other operating system.

I've said this about IE9, cross platform is generally better. Broaden your
application's user base and correct the issues with advertising and you'll
stand a real chance at turning things around, in my opinion.

Contrary to popular belief, throwing money at an issue does not correct an
issue. With the creative markets, you'll need to get hold of genuinely
creative people -- scout university campuses, advertising agencies (and
anywhere else) and find those who are really passionate about creating
something special.

~~~
kennedywm
In terms of strategy, if you're the dominant player in the market, it simply
isn't wise to make the experience for customers switching to other OSs more
comfortable.

~~~
nailer
The web is on track to have more apps than Windows.

------
nhebb
I would like to see .NET framework penetration numbers. A lot of .NET
developers still target 2.0 for desktop apps because the perception is that
that 3.0+ have a much smaller installation base - even though numbers posted
on statowl.com and Scott Hanselman's blog suggest otherwise. This is
definitely one case where more transparency by Microsoft would benefit both
them and the developer community.

I would also like to see the Certificate Revocation List checked less
frequently. Microsoft Office add-in developers actually get penalized for
having digitally signed add-ins, since the (daily?) CRL check slows Office
application startup significantly.

~~~
ern
Talking about penetration numbers on 3.0+, data on WPF and Silverlight
adoption would be useful.

MS should also consider making Silverlight and WPF more compatible.

And if WPF adoption is lagging expectations (as I suspect it is), figure out
how to simplify it and flatten the learning curve.

~~~
bmj
I suspect one of the problems with WPF/Silverlight adoption is the requirement
to learn _another_ layout language. I'm working on a rather large Silverlight
4 app, and am generally happy I don't have to work on many UI layouts. I can't
muster up the desire to learn another markup language.

------
Keyframe
I know probably no one will care here, but I'd really like to see WP7
availability more than this shameful list here:
[http://developer.windowsphone.com/Help.aspx?id=fd9b5508-6436...](http://developer.windowsphone.com/Help.aspx?id=fd9b5508-6436-4503-9174-45bf532b9dfd)

I'm in Croatia, I have friends in Slovenia (EU Country) as well as Hungary (EU
Country)... this is just sad.

Also, I'd like to see XNA spread to web. You can make a prototype game or a
full indie game already for Windows, XBOX and WP7 from the same codebase, so
why not extend that further to either Silverlight or a plugin like Unity? That
would rock.

App store for PC would be a nice idea for windows, if done right.

And, finally, Windows Live for games tied into that app store would be neat,
but I think it would even be better for microsoft to buy Steam platform and
integrate it into windows. Yeah, I know - a far fetched dream.

------
Khao
The main point that could be a real changer for me (being a web developper) is
: Make sure everybody has the latest version of your free softwares (and I'm
really thinking about internet explorer here). It's a real pain to have to
support IE6 still because our clients use it and now that IE9 is coming out,
we know how it will take years for everyone to switch. Their release cycle is
completely broken and they will be left in the dust by competitors if they
keep doing this.

------
aaronbrethorst
That's ok, Steve gave out his contact info at TechEd 2005:
[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06Tech...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06TechEd.mspx)

Here's my question: I was a blue badge in Program Management for four years. I
left in 2007 because I didn't want to deal with an atrophying bureaucracy, nor
did I want to play corporate politics just to get a 5% raise each year.

I know a ton of other people who have left over the past three years, and more
who are considering leaving now. I talk with ex-MSFTs who ended up at Google
or Amazon, and their only regret is not leaving years earlier.

How do you stop this sort of brain-drain, and turn Microsoft back into a
company where the industry's best want to work again?

------
pornel
Please twist everyone's arms as hard as you can to get them upgraded to IE9
ASAP.

Please get modern browser in Windows Phone 7.

IE7 makes my job miserable.

------
patrickaljord
About IE9:

* add support for websocket

* add support for webgl

* make it cross-platform

* make trident open source

Yes, I do realize the last two are very unlikely and probably webgl too as MS
tends to boycot everything opengl but if they added SVG maybe there is hope
for this one.

Also, try to stop BS marketing such as:

* [http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/product...](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/compare?T1=tab2)

------
acqq
MS should be smart enough to make the best RDP client (the app to connect to
Windows machine) for iPhone with the best encryption. And to work with XP too.

Also forget the "effects" that are not good over the wire. The goal is the
best possible experience when the desktop is accessed remotely.

Rationale: There are enough people that need the power of the Windows based
computer (power means the software developed in all these years) but who want
to access their desktops from iPhone. Even if iPhone is the competitor, if you
allow users to use your system from it the users will be more committed to the
desktop Windows platform then if they have to look for the new solutions for
everything.

------
CWIZO
* you still have time to do the right thing with IE9 to introduce chrome like auto-update, and shorten your 2 year release cycle to at least half a year

* don't drop support for xbox 360 as soon as the next one comes out, that really hurt with the first one

* windows is a great development platform if you work with Microsoft tools. Make it more friendly for other technologies to. For instance: make a unix/linux compatible shell, so I can use all the tools, that I now have to ssh to some server, locally (cygwin is a pain in the ass).

* for the love of all that is holy do something about IE6&7

------
DeusExMachina
Stop with things like the funeral parade for the iPhone. Really guys, that was
really lame.

MS should refocus on its priorities. Every now and then comes out the iPhone
killer and fails. Even if you have a good product with Windows Mobile 7,
iPhone should not be your target. Android is eating your market share. The
iPhone is a closed box from Apple, Android is the OS that runs on phones from
different manufacturers, which is the same strategy of WM7 (by the way, why
does everything get called Windows at MS? You don't even have the window
concept on a phone).

------
dageshi
I really wish Microsoft would stop making half assed versions of stuff that
other people have done better just because they somehow think they should.

Each time I see something like Bing or Zune I just wonder why MS does it,
they're pissing away their credibility by desperately trying to be google or
apple when patently they're not.

I'm an app developer for iPhone and I would _love_ Microsoft to up it's game
in Mobile. Apple are a bunch of elitist control freaks that piss me off every
time they open their mouthes, google just want to sell more advertising and
are desperate for the chance to do that in your pocket as well as on your
laptop. Build me a platform I can port my app to with a minimum of fuss and I
will jump at the chance.

Now if I were them I think I'd try and build on the one area they've been a
success in the consumer arena. xBox. Build xbox mobile, do a deal with one of
the other major carriers (who isn't at&t) for the exclusive ability to do
multiplayer gaming over their 3g network for a flat rate. Get your existing
game developers to build for it, but make sure it's possible for independent
developers to build for it as well. Doing that would be something seriously
exciting and would offer a choice that doesn't currently exist.

------
dmfdmf
SQL Express Server 2005 does not come with SQL Server Agent so no schedule
backups and many apps have manual backup only. (did they fix this in 2008?)

Put some resources behind the Event Log "more information" links that takes
you to the Microsoft website and says "We're sorry" no additional information
is available even for MS products. At the very least, configure the link to do
an Event ID and Source google search instead of the worthless "I'm sorry" web
page.

------
rubypay
1) Change the name of Microsoft Security Essentials so people will have an
easier time finding it and knowing what it does. Market it better, while
keeping it free.

2) Have more free options available for small businesses and teams running the
.NET stack. BizSpark is a step in the right direction, but for cash-strapped
startups who want to test ideas out in a production setting, it still doesn't
compete with the free open-source alternatives.

3) Focus more on getting program installations done right. For example, SQL
Server 2008 has taken a step backwards in terms of installation. Errors happen
quite frequently during the install/upgrade process--it shouldn't take several
hours of fighting one installer to get it working properly.

4) For popular third-party programs that work correctly with Windows, it would
be nice if Microsoft had an online database of checksums that Windows can
transparently check the program against. If everything looks good, don't
present the user with "Confirm/Deny" choices, just install it. Otherwise users
become jaded and used to clicking on "Confirm" even for popups that require
more thorough inspection.

------
cryptoz
Personally, the main thing I dislike about Windows is the lack of proper
window management. There's no real Focus Follows Mouse, you have to use third-
party applications to get windows to Stay on Top, or to have a second taskbar
on your second monitor, etc. It's unfortunate that your OS is called Windows,
but compared to your competition you are severely lacking in your ability to
usefully manage windows!

~~~
fragmede
And then, Visual Studio raises itself on activation, making focus-follows-
mouse too frustrating to keep using, so you can't even use one of the focus-
follows-mouse apps if you use Visual Studio.

------
sriramk
If folks want to mail SteveB, just mail steveb@microsoft.com. He has given out
his email address on multiple occasions (like
[http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06Tech...](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06TechEd.mspx)).

I can attest that he reads all his emails and often responds (I am low in the
MSFT food chain but have always gotten responses from him).

------
blhack
In regards to IE9: please please please make this easier to install. Currently
this is what I need to do to upgrade to IE8:

Log in as Administrator -> Install an update to the machine (Why?)

 _Reboot_ the machine (Why?)

Log back in as Administrator again -> Install IE

 _Reboot_ the machine _again_ (Why?)

Log in as the user that users the machine. Launch IE: "Hello would you like to
participate in BLAH BLAH BLAH?. (Why are you asking me this? I just want to go
to youtube and watch a video!)

[Yes] __[No] __

Compare this to Chrome, or Firefox or Opera.

Log in as Administrator -> click on executable -> Next Next Next -> Launch
Chrome -> Go to youtube -> Done.

There are things that would make my life a lot easier too, but this is very
small picture stuff (but I think it reflects a bigger problem.). These tools
may already exist, but I don't know about them...which is a failure on the
part of microsoft:

I want a tool that will automatically audit my MS office license keys for me.
Scan my network, tell me who has what keys.

An asset management tool in general would be nice. Scan my network, give me
back a list of all of my machines, _What user is currently logged into that
machine_ , and what its IP address is. Yes, this is already possible using a
few other tools, but it would be nice to have it all in one place (again, if
this exists already, please tell me).

Other things that would be great:

Give me a centralized repository of windows ISOs and Office installs. You can
get these things, yes, but it involves jumping through a bunch of hoops. Just
give me microsoft.com/downloads and present me with copies of your OS, and
office. I'm not saying give away product keys (obviously), just media.

Btw, what you guys did in Russia this week was really really cool. I actually
had a lengthy conversation with a friend of mine about how awesome of you that
was. In all honesty, you guys are doing a lot of really really amazing things
right now. I am still in disbelief at how I could just email some very nice
woman at Microsoft Research, ask her for a peppermill, and have one show up at
my door a few days later. That kind of stuff warms my heart. So does making
the N-GRAM data from bing available to students for free. That type of stuff
is awesome, and that is the type of stuff that makes me want to support you
guys. Keep _that_ up.

Thanks, Ryan

~~~
pragmatic
Don't forget the ridiculous prompting for phishing/search engine/etc after
that.

Just let me use the damn browser.

------
alexgartrell
So, I think I'm a pretty good programmer (Resume's in the profile, if you're
curious) and I happen to be interviewing with Microsoft on the 11th, so here's
my perspective.

From a recruiting point of view, the way you guys outsource travel
arrangements is a total PITA. Source Sure (or whatever) really, really sucks,
and it's bogus that interviewing for a job should be more time consuming and
paperwork intensive than my taxes, and complete with an audit. You don't have
to go full-out Fog Creek on your interview process or anything, but I think
taking the arrangements back in-house would do wonders for you guys.

Other than that, it'd be cool if I could be convinced that I would work on
something interesting and meaningful without having to watch out for Office
Politics and mismanagement (what I was overwhelming warned about by former
full-time employees as well as former interns). It is my sincere hope that
such bubbles exist within Microsoft for at least a small portion of your
developers.

------
icey
Linkrot on MSDN is a serious problem, as is the MSDN search.

I've resorted to using Google to find documents on MSDN because its index
seems to be more up to date and tends to give me the non-broken links (why
doesn't Microsoft use Bing to power MSDN search!?!?).

Navigating MSDN for documentation is painful at best.

Also, it would be really nice to have all of the .net exceptions well
documented in one place.

------
Flemlord
1\. Please create a public/private App store so I can easily install a WPF
app. In general, make it as easy to install a desktop app as it is right now
to install an iPhone/iPad app. Not just the mechanics of the installation, but
also the friendly discovery process with descriptions, screen shots, reviews,
etc.

2\. Windows 8 needs to run well on tablets and touch needs to work _just_ like
it does on the iPad--don't show me the cursor. I don't care if they cost 3x
what the iPad costs, but I need a good tablet experience for our business
clientele. And I definitely mean full Windows 8, with MS Office. If the early
releases of Windows 8 don't run well on tablets, we'll be writing iPad
versions of our apps.

3\. Keep up the good work with WP7, C#, Visual Studio, WPF/XAML, Dynamics and
Sharepoint 2010. Please make SharePoint interoperability a priority across
your entire business product line. Good call on killing the Kin.

------
countottoblack
Suggestion to Microsoft - Do less, but better. My faith in their products has
slowly grown over the last 10 years, however they still suffer from trying to
have too many fingers in too many pies. And in my opinion their products
suffer for it. Maybe they should put more focus into fewer products?

------
RexRollman
I am not happy with Microsoft's splintering of Windows into so many versions.
It is a waste of time. I say just offer one client version of Windows and sell
it for a flat price.

I would also like to suggest giving me more options on what I install during
the install. I'm not suggesting this option be something that normal users
see, it can be hidden away somewhere, but to make me install a web browser I
won't use is silly. (And no, the current "hide access" way of doing this,
after the bits are infecting my hard drive, is not satisfactory.)

Bitlocker should accept pass phrases and be easier to enable if one doesn't
have a TPM.

Finally, I think it is high time that Windows allows people to have their home
directory anywhere they want to; especially during account creation. This is
something that should be an option in the Users control panel.

------
iampims
MS, please stop trying to sell 8 different SKUs for each new version of your
OS. Just sell one. Thank you.

------
Torn
A properly standards-compliant browser. I know IE9 has _partial_ support for
CSS2, but I want them to go the whole hog (css3, acid3, svg, etc).

------
barredo
Spend the same money on startups that Microsoft spent to destroy startups in
the 80s & 90s.

------
LordLandon
Please stop it with installers that download other installers. If I want to
download Live Messenger, I don't want to download a program that'll download
Live Messenger.

"Alright! Download finished! Wait, downloading messenger? What did I just
spend 5 minutes downloading?"

------
helium
Don't let dynamic languages in the CLR die!!! (IronPython, IronRuby)

~~~
thebigshane
Reach out to ClojureCLR too!

------
rhhfla
1\. Don't buy Nokia; waste of money and no help in sorting out a mobile
strategy 2\. Port CE to ARM as soon as possible before the entire tablet/phone
market is lost 3\. Focus on the enterprise market where you potentially
contribute value added and move out of consumer software apps which will all
be free, web-based in five years 4\. Focus all software development on smaller
code that assumes no hard drive and 4GB or less of flash memory in the device;
really understand products like Dropbox as a means to see a software strategy
going forward 5\. Abandon the strategy where all the software (Office, IE,
etc) only runs on Windows

------
ekidd
I want to say, "Thank you." Lately, I've been working to print Office
documents and Outlook emails to PDFs for a product in the legal industry, and
Microsoft's documentation, their CodePlex projects and their interoperability
teams have made this process surprisingly painless.

It's a pity that IronRuby was largely cancelled, however—I would love to have
more high-quality dynamic languages under .NET. Microsoft has a variety of
excellent static languages, but dynamic languages like Python, Ruby and
JavaScript are all very popular, and Microsoft hasn't had a popular tool in
this space since Visual Basic became a static language.

------
motters
At this point probably the smartest thing which Microsoft could do would be to
adopt some Linux distro (perhaps OpenSuSE, which they already have some
relationship with) and base all of their future development on top of it. At a
stroke this would eliminate many of their security and malware problems,
dramatically improving the user experience.

Windows remains prevalent, but at present as a software developer I'm not
seeing much of a future for it, other than as a legacy system that I may need
to support, and am recommending home and business users to move to other
platforms (either Linux or Mac) whenever that's possible.

~~~
tmountain
I love Linux as much as the next guy, but this is off base. A good deal of
Microsoft's strength lies in backward compatibility and entrenchment. Serving
up a brand new OS could potentially destroy that competitive advantage.

A better strategy might be to incorporate better support for open protocols
and document formats into their products and allow easier interoperability
with the outside world. My biggest beef with Windows has always been that it's
difficult to interact with its products using third party tools.

~~~
motters
I disagree. I think much of the weaknesses of Windows - especially its
security woes - are due to trying to be too backward compatible with previous
versions, which has meant that long standing problems have either not been
addressed, or only inadequately patched over.

Making a clean break with the past and moving to a new system where network
security is fundamentally designed into the product from the very beginning,
even if it's not based on a Unix clone, would be move in the right direction.

~~~
jpr
Backward compatibility may be a weakness in security, but a strength
otherwise. I like it very much that I can still run many of my games that I
purchased in the 90's on the Windows 7. AFAICT, Linux can't easily offer such
a long binary backwards compatibility (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I also think that - along the lines of what tmountain said above - more
important than open source code, is that protocols and formats are open.

------
ary
Two things really stand out for me.

1\. Please, please, PLEASE take the App Store model that Apple has used and
apply it to Xbox Live. There is already a process by which developers have to
get their wares certified to run on the Xbox so the review process is pretty
much already in place. The barrier to entry on the 360 needs to be
significantly lowered (there have been half-baked efforts, but nothing
terribly inspiring). One of the most exciting rumors (that didn't happen)
about the Apple TV was that it would be running iOS and allow for apps on a
television. The Xbox 360 is in a great position to make this a reality. Let me
write tiny games/apps for the 360, and let it be easier to get them on Live
than it is to get on Apple's App Store.

2\. The way the entire company thinks about User Interface / User Experience
design is, if I may be impolite, _fucked_. What little I've been able to read
regarding how MS goes about designing the parts of their software that people
see and use comes down to this; We follow whatever Office does and middle
management sanitizes everything. It's no wonder that something great like
Courier died inside of Microsoft. Designing applications for _humans_ is very,
very hard. Designing applications for humans inside of a huge bureaucracy is
next to impossible. There are probably people working at MS with titles like
"User Advocate" and other nonsense, but the end product reflects that those
people are incompetent, impotent, or both. A team of powerful, capable people
need the ability to "stop the line" and say no to the bullshit. The company
has coasted for far too long on UI/UX familiarity due to the pervasiveness of
its products. People _hate_ using MS software. My family _hate_ their Windows
PCs. The gloss and fresh paint of Vista/7 haven't addressed the common
person's frustration. In a business environment people have an incentive to
adapt to bad software and work around it. At home my mother just wants her
computer to print a photo at the click of a button, at the proper resolution,
with the right orientation, and exactly how she sees it on the screen.
Experienced business and technical users have mentally blocked out the
usability cruft of the last 20 years, but the consumer market is and will
continue to be unforgiving. This is why Apple is eating your lunch.

~~~
allwein
RE: #1 Have you checked out the XNA Creators Club and Xbox Live Indie Games?
This seems to be exactly what you're looking for and has been around for a
while.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Live_Indie_Games>

<http://creators.xna.com/en-US/>

~~~
ary
Yes, I was aware those programs when I made the post ("there have been half-
baked efforts, but nothing terribly inspiring").

They're limited in that they don't have the same abilities as professionally
produced games. What I'd like to see is a leveling of the playing field when
it comes to online digital game distribution for consoles. Restricting some of
the system's abilities (ala iOS, etc) is naturally going to happen, but
anything a professional title can do, my (hypothetical) game should be able to
do as well.

There are also a lot of interesting possibilites for streaming video, etc like
what you're starting to see on iOS devices. The situation for content might be
a little sticky considering that MS does its own distribution deals. At the
very least opening the field up to smaller shops and lowering the barriers and
costs to entry would be a _huge_ step in the right direction and MS would
still get a cut as the apps/games would be bought with Microsoft points.

~~~
nailer
Commenting from my personal experiences, great games like Limbo are ghettod
off in some indie area, but crap like Dead Rising 2 are in a completely
different place - with pictures of a box, like it's going to be mail order or
something.

Show me ALL games, sorted by downloads, ratings, newness, genre, and/or
suggestion.

------
runjake
I am not the usual Anti-Microsoftie you see around these parts. I love many of
their products. Many of my gripes over the years have slowly been fixed, but
there are still some:

\- Windows does not have a strong history of (non-half-assed)
interoperability. This is a hinderance to using Microsoft products in many
projects. Use the same technologies as everyone else and do it right! Screw
XPS, Screw WinRM (or tunnel it over SSH like normal people). We're too busy to
learn The New Way To Do $foo This Year.

\- Stop reimplementing the wheels everyone else uses. A good example is the
XPS vs PDF war. Everyone else uses PDF, it's a reasonably open standard, just
USE IT. Do go create your own "value-added" garbage.

\- Your enterprise products are not only not free, they're costly. I can use a
free open source web application stack that is at least as good as
ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC. I love Visual Studio though. BizSpark is a start, but
what about those of us doing large scale community/"hobby"/not-for-profit
projects?

\- Ballmer's leadership sucks. Every time I read one of his stupid quotes
about his stance on $foo, I cringe.

\- blogs.msdn.com is gold. Keep this program and the openness from the
engineers going!

\- Stop the inter/intra product group fighting that ends up hurting the end
users. Get some stronger leadership.

\- Stop trying to make Windows more simple for grandma. You're making it
harder to navigate for the rest of us (see the Windows 7 control panel as a
perfect example).

------
fmw
As someone that is completely out of touch with the Microsoft ecosystem that
is a very hard question. The main reason for that is I'm simply not the target
audience for their flag ship products, but I also want to avoid getting locked
into a platform that depends on the whim of a company with vastly different
interests from my own. For the same reason I'm increasingly moving away from
Apple products. So it would be a bad business decision for Microsoft to change
the way their software works for the small minority of users like me.

That being said, some of Microsofts products are very solid on a technical
level and much better documented than their open source counterparts. My
impression of .NET, for example, is very positive, although limited to Mono.
It seems like they are moving in the right direction with IE as well and I've
heard good things about MSSQL (or whatever it is called these days). They got
a lot of credibility for IronPython and IronRuby, too. What happened to
IronRuby ruins that good will, though.

The problem is that I'm afraid to touch "the good parts" that come out of
Microsoft for anything beyond playful experimentation. In my opinion, that is
a wasted opportunity. With Oracle ruining everything Sun built Microsoft has a
great opportunity to eat market share away from Java. Why aren't they donating
the IP related to .NET to the Apache Foundation, for example? That would make
.NET a viable platform for me (practically, not necessarily technically).
Developers used to be forced to work with Microsoft because that was were the
market was, but with modern browser technology we don't need them anymore. So
the next best thing they can do is make us willing to work with technologies
like .NET.

One more thing. Ten years ago, when I permanently left their platform, my
opinion of Microsoft was bordering on hate. These days I see them, and Google,
as one of the more reliable big tech companies, miles ahead of Apple and
Oracle. Maybe that has something to do with not being directly exposed to
Windows anymore, but I do get the impression that their reputation is
improving.

P.S. Theoretically, there are a lot of things I would love to see from
Microsoft, like donating technologies like DirectX to the Apache Foundation so
it would be easier to run games on GNU/Linux or making Windows a thin layer on
top of BSD, but I don't realistically expect them to do anything like that.

------
DanielBMarkham
Dear Steve and friends:

1) .NET and F# are the best things you've done lately. Make folks truly able
to develop and program it under any O/S and you will gain fans for life. Stop
holding .NET hostage to Windows. (I know about Mono. MS should dive into this
in a big way. It's truly mission-critical)

2) Big mistake buying Groove and then killing it/sucking it into the we-must-
conquer-the-world office server system. It was better stand-alone. This shows
that Microsoft has a tendency to buy and kill. Sure, you're running a giant
integration machine, but integration is not always the best strategy

3)IE must die. Simple as that. You lost the anti-compete, the code is old and
bloated, and you're sucking wind behind Google. Sure, it's been a great hold-
off-Google-as-long-as-you can deal, but at some point the stalling tactic
doesn't work. You reach the tipping point and customers will leave you in
droves. You are fast approaching this point. Act quickly before you get there.
Best bet? A re-branded browser released monthly, fully standards-compliant,
and hand-optimized in assembler. No Active-X. Painful, yes.

4) Take a lot of your architects out back and shoot them. I joke, of course,
but you guys have a tendency to make everything into a 747-cockpit. It's
crazy. Somebody needs to get a handle on design over there; you are failing
miserably.

5) Decentralize and spin-off. Lots of business books on where you are, and
most of them say to make small companies with freedom to innovate. You've
owned the market. Now it's time to define sub-segments of it and compete there
as separate companies. The leverage and strategy you used to get here are not
going to work to stay here.

6) The O/S is a browser. Get used to it. Make it a mantra. Everybody in that
place should be thinking of the O/S as just a fancy browser. You were headed
in the right direction with IE, but the Netscape fight killed that idea. Well
the court battle might be over but the general principle you were chasing is
still around. Go with that

7) Your server-based solutions are the cash cow. But the cow needs to get out
and exercise some. Love the Office Integration, now make them use "real" xml
and make the server products more standards-friendly. You can't beat the
entire internet -- they want the data. What you can provide is custom walled-
gardens with lots of features. Allow users to drift in and out of the office
server solution system seamlessly and without paying. Make money on the
upsell. Difficult change to make, I know, but time is running out on the
current model.

8) For a while you've been in the IBM-how-can-I-hang-on-to-each-little-penny
routine. Folks see that. They understand you are fighting a rear-guard action.
I'm sure that in the echo-chamber that is Microsoft things are all fine and
hunkey-dorey, but you'd better get your ass in gear and make new breakthrough
useful products and I mean right now. Too much research just sits on a shelf
doing nothing. Take Google for a model -- don't build shit unless you're
willing to play around with it publicly to see if there is a market. No
market, no product. Better to have a quick beta released that lasts 5 years
than waiting 5 years for something that middle-management manages to kill
before it ever sees the light of day.

ADD: And I never want to run another update program again. I don't mean I'm
annoyed at having to reboot a thousand times. I am annoyed with the entire
update process in its entirety. Kill any user interactivity and just make it
update. If you want us to have dozens of programs on our box, they're going to
have to shut the hell up. No pop-ups, no updates, no nothing unless I ask for
it. Just make it work.

~~~
fleitz
Second the F# sentiments, best language I've used in a long time.

Also can ms put more guys on iron ruby.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I'm starting to grok interactive mode for the first time with larger programs,
and wow! Takes your performance up to a whole new level.

I'm concerned that they're going to kill/assimilate it, though. While they
should be reaching out to the linux/FOSS/OCaml community, instead they're
building one of their "specials" again -- adopt then modify, tie it tightly
into everything else, then use it all as leverage on the little guy. People
really hate it when they do that. That trick has gotten very old.

------
GBond
Stop being bi-polar.

Make a decision on who you are making products for. Either create products
that fully cater to MegaCorp Executives or for Consumer/Developers. You will
almost always have competing needs and risk serving neither if you build a
product that tries to cater to both.

If the choice is the later, tell Balmer he should personally make an effort to
listen to the demographics. I bet the benefits of doing so outweigh those of
commissioning a research company to post on HN and create a report.

------
thebigshane
There are few technologies that I think could be invested in to get much more
support from the HN crowd (whether they are well known to the HN crowd yet or
not)

* Singularity -- should be the basis of a new OS, maybe not to replace windows... but be the next windows. You're going to have to break backwards compatibility sometime, might as well start with a parallel OS

* Intellipad -- [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd861709%28VS.85%29....](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd861709%28VS.85%29.aspx) I heard it would be something like emacs for .NET

* opening .NET -- mono is really close but isn't yet as polished as to attract the thousands of .NET developers. Buying into the whole MS stack is too expensive for founders and small businesses but if development could be done on or in conjunction with open source environments, I imagine lots of Ruby (IronRuby), Python (IronPython), Java/Clojure (ClojureCLR) folks would be more willing to consider the market.

* SharePoint is beloved by all enterprise companies but ALL developers laugh at it. Offer some kind of DLR API and I bet you could get lots of programmers more willing to support it.

* Command line -- go ahead and support unix commands and a more unix-like shell. How could it hurt?

* MSDN licenses are ridiculous and clearly only for big companies. Even startups that could start with BizSpark and ActionPack would rather use open source tools than be stuck in MSDN licensing hell.

* drop the price of Windows Server 08 Core to better compete with Linux servers

* start advertising better to non-enterprisey IT guys.

------
endtime
Get WPS7 to feature parity with iOS as soon as possible. I think there are
actually a number of reasonably disaffected iPhone users who want to switch,
but don't want to give up e.g. copy/paste or multitasking. Also, make it clear
to people that using WPS7 means using the Zune client, and that the Zune
client is better than iTunes - I think you already have the better software
here, but zero brand awareness.

Get your secret hacker teams to make stuff that feels futuristic. Surface is
cool, a mouse with a touch surface would have been okay if Apple didn't beat
you to it, but why don't you make some freaking HUD goggles with eye tracking
or something? You have the financial and intellectual resources to do it. I
guess you get points for Kinect here, but right now Kinect is the exception
rather than the rule, at least in the public's perception. Releasing something
as cool for non-gamers as Kinect is for gamers, and I think the mindshare
gains will be huge. You won't out-Apple Apple (and I don't think you should
want to) as the shapers of tech fashion, and I doubt it's possible to out-
Google Google as the shapers of the web, so be the shapers of the future
instead.

------
heresy
\- Be more open to learning from, working with and using OSS software that was
not written inside Redmond campus. I'm sure most of these projects would love
to treat Windows as a first-class target platform. It's just not possible that
Microsoft will be able to write best-in-class of every type of software. And I
don't buy the argument that it opens you to a legal minefield. Apple is
arguably a bigger company than you are now, by all the metrics that count, and
manages to do this just fine. I have written software under the MIT license
that is part of every shipping OS X installation now. It rocks.

\- Licensing. Goddamn, fix it. DreamSpark/BizSpark is not the answer, it's a
stalling tactic. I wouldn't use Microsoft technology for my own startup if it
came to that, as I know licensing will kill me if I'm successful, and will
also kill me if I'm not, once the timer runs out.

Background: Used to be a Linux/Unix dev, moved to .NET in 2004, but I still
get offered jobs doing iPhone or Rails based web development on a regular
basis due to my OSS profile. It's getting harder to turn them down, as I'm not
convinced Microsoft's roadmap is not a dead end any more.

------
nathanielksmith
Why continue to develop proprietary software for problems that have been
solved over and over in open source (code editing, code compilers, browsers,
email clients, word processing, the list is endless)? People--and businesses--
are not going to continue being okay with shelling out hundreds/thousands of
dollars for something they can get for free. It may be profitable now, but it
won't be in the future.

------
SecurityMatters
Howdy, 10 years ago, I was a happy user of Microsoft products and could not
see any reason to use anything else. I never minded paying for software. I
still don't mind, although now, all of the software I use is free(legally
free). I don't even allow Microsoft software on my network, because I don't
trust it. What drove me away from Microsoft was a steady history of the
company lying to me and treating it's customers with contempt. Sometimes I
hear that Microsoft has gotten better, but many things, including recently the
behavior concerning Microsoft Office XML shows me otherwise. I disliked Linux
when I started with it, but I did not appreciate paying money to be treated
like dirt and I forced myself to convert. I think I understand the economic
forces that drove Microsoft, but I think you were too short sighted. You
looked on consumers as people who had little choice but to knuckle under to
you. No consumer wants the DRM you crippled Windows Vista and 7 with. No
sensible company wants an unreliable OS, which is all you offer now. I have
discussed the unreliable nature of Windows with several senior MS engineers
and they almost all agree about my points. One senior designer did not,
although he could never find and deliver to me the evidence he though he had
to the contrary. I am more productive now with Linux than I ever was with
Microsoft products, and I feel much better about it, too. It seems to me that
Microsoft is on it's way to irrelevance and I think there is very little
chance you will reform. You think the actions you take are defensible. Most of
them are, but that is not the only standard that matters. I feel dirty when I
have to use Microsoft products now and that is 100 percent driven by your
choices. I convert people to Linux every month. I still have an open mind, but
I would need to see a real difference at Microsoft to change my mind. Thank
you for asking.

------
moon_of_moon
1\. I've used Ubuntu on my desktop for the last 1.5 years. We switched most of
our Windows servers to Linux over the last year as well. It would be great to
have a free base Windows OS release, with zero bells and whistles, but a fully
functional networking stack, and no connection limits. Provide the rest as a
paid monthly service. The corporations that are going to pay for it, will pay
for bells and whistles. Most of them are currently migrating to Linux, btw;
the only thing that stops them if anything is the lack of paid support for the
middleware.

2\. Price your software according to purchasing power parity. If a book in a
B&N store in SFO costs $US49, the same book costs about $USD10 in book stores
in Bangalore. Do the same for Windows and MS Office. (Require that its paid
for by a country specific credit card if you must).

3\. Open an office somewhere more exciting than Seattle. Remember that most of
the crew pulling all nighters and doing the death march are < 30 y/o, think
about what they want from life.

4\. Send me money, and I'll tell explain in detail how to turn around the
online business.

------
jdavid
#1st and foremost, Microsoft has been a leader in the tech industry, and has
created great patterns and code for the rest of us to compete with.

#2nd MS you need to take more risks. maybe the MS brand name is not the place
to do it, but you have amazing research going on and no place to see how it
plays out in the marketplace. find an avenue to test markets like startups do.
try things and be willing to fail. in racing if you don't spin out at least
once you aren't trying hard enough. Apple jokes about AppleTV as a hobby, but
it's a good example of an Apple product that has yet to succeed, even though
so many of them have worked. at least Apple is both focused, and taking risks.

#3rd MS your largest competitor is yourself, you have nothing to fear but your
own products. you will be a better company if you invite competition into your
marketplace. heck if a good competitor comes along, you can do what other
large companies do and buy them. and you'll create a reward system for
innovators to flock to your set of platforms. on this note, i challenge you to
open source or share source on legacy code. why keep the code closed on win
3.11, dos, win95, win98, win2000, winxp? let the market place take that code
and do something with it. then buy the interesting companies.

#4 get out there and have some fun. to much of what MS does is profit
motivated. do something inspirational, just for the fun of it, just for the
geekery of it. it will effect your brand in a positive way.

#5 sell software for linux. great software will win on any platform, you don't
need lockin. you just need great products. maybe sell directx for linux.
embrace choice.

#6 give away an operating system, that has an app store and make it easy for
developers to sell and update their code on those machines. think Steam +
iTunes + Windows.

------
kmfrk
Create _one_ edition of Windows at each release - at least keep it simple
(stupid). Peope rarely figure out exactly what the differences are, what with
abstruse spreadsheet explanations. When they finally get their hands on a
version that isn't Ultimate, they are left with the feeling that they don't
get the full experience, which detracts greatly from the joy of getting a new
version of Windows.

In other words, it's detrimental to the brand and marketing of Windows - and
Office, which seems to suffer from the same. There is no "Windows", "Windows
7" or "Office 2007" there is Basic, Somewhat Basic, Student, Enterprise,
Ultimate, Blue, Purple, Turqoise, Cyan edition. I don't want Microsoft to _be_
Apple, but just consider how easy iWorks and Mac OS X is to market by
comparison. And fit into just one page.

I like that you'll call the next version of Windows "Windows 8", which, to me,
is a step in the right direction. But the aforementioned is one of the many
things that ensures that "corporate" will always be a part of a sentence about
Microsoft.

I'm open to something along the lines of a "Private" and
"Enterprise"/"Business" version, but I find it hard to believe that private
super users won't want the features in the E/B edition. If you have to create
separate versions, maybe you could make a "Basic" and "Advanced", which
separates the users who don't need - or understand - the exclusive features
from the companies and super users who do, and allows them to get a cheaper
version without all the complex dingus.

(FWIW, I use Windows 7 and intend to do so for a while, but I'd love for
Microsoft to be more of a start-up than a corporation. It feels complacent in
some respects or just out of touch, which I assume is because it has to appeal
to many platforms and customer types at the same time - but does it really
have to show so much?)

------
cturner
Phwoa. What an opportunity. I'm a developer/admin. I use windows on desktop,
mac on laptop, and do most of my work ssh'd into unix hosts. While I was at
uni I worked as a NT administrator in a datacentre but always found the
platform like a straight-jacket compared to unix.

1) Windows would be a lot better if there was less of it. A good combination
would be a Windows UI, Microsoft developer tools, Microsoft productivity tools
on top of a true unix.

2) Why don't you create a 'Developer' version of Windows that costs some more,
and includes simple-install of developer tools and productivity suite in one
hit? That way when you reinstall your system you can get it all without
stuffing around. Any unix you name comes has an install that gives you a
super-powerful development stack out of the box: these days they have a
compiler, libraries, perl, python, powerful text editors, hex editors, network
tools. Windows is near-useless out of the box.

3) The world needs a new type of word processor, where editing is done by
structure. Users should then be able to render that data in different ways -
styled for printing, or for the web. At the moment data is very brittle.

4) The combination of styles and fonts in Word creates untold damage. Users
generally don't know what they're doing, and it's nasty to be the poor bugger
who gets stuck cleaning up after a naive user has been at a word document.

5) Some Windows apps cause lots of trouble by the way Windows widgets
automatically transform dash and apostrophe characters to special sigils that
break in other systems.

6) Windows would be more useful if it had rapid and effective workspace
switching ala X-Windows.

7) The alt+tab functionality in excel has always been broken, and this is very
annoying. Your OS division broke alt+tab functionality in Windows Vista+7 and
this is super annoying too. (I've discovered alt+esc is some compensation - it
fails to minimize but does reliably moves things to the back of the switching
stack, unlike alt+tab which is now completely unpredictable). I've been using
Windows 7 on desktop for six months. I can't think of a UI change I've
encontered which I consider to be an improvement. The Windows UI has become
less usable with each release since Windows 2000. I think you're driving it
with focus groups, and there's no coherent plan. If there is a coherent plan,
you could change what's driving it.

9) The desktop can still be cool. Desktop can have multiple monitors,
comfortable keyboards, nice sitting positions, good audio-visual arrangements.
You could play this up more. It would be great to have something like a phone
that you could dock and which became your desktop system.

10) Disk sharing over SMB is a poor experience. I can't believe that it needs
to be slower to interact with than a web browser when it's on my local
network.

11) Windows file locking is annoying.

12) Telnet is an extremely useful tool to have for helping diagnose problems
over the phone when dealing with naive customers. Your team removed it from
the standard Windows install. Put it back in, and improve its support for
complex TTYs. You should ship a ssh client while you're at it, putty is
perfect.

13) For the love of god, please get somebody to take fifteen minutes and
update notepad so that it respects unix line-endings.

14) I doubt you'll be able to create a successful new platform until you
change the way you relate to your audience. People have been burnt by the
experience of Windows lockin. But if you took a stand against copyright, and
started focussing on creating flexibility for your users, people could change
their minds. Imagine if MS started trying to make Windows support all the
formats, and started pushing back attempts by media companies to build lockin
situations.

~~~
BrandonM
_3) The world needs a new type of word processor, where editing is done by
structure. Users should then be able to render that data in different ways -
styled for printing, or for the web. At the moment data is very brittle._

TeX solved this decades ago. In my understanding, there are several word
processors that can output LaTeX.

 _13) For the love of god, please get somebody to take fifteen minutes and
update notepad so that it respects unix line-endings._

For the love of god, quit using Notepad! Wordpad is superior in every way.
Seriously though, I used to have the same gripe as you until a took a couple
minutes to set Wordpad as the default program for opening txt files. Microsoft
needs to just make Notepad be a symlink to Wordpad and get rid of Notepad
altogether.

~~~
CoryMathews
Wordpad has hidden characters.. and is therefore not a suitable notepad
replacement. Notepad++ would be closer.

~~~
BrandonM
Really? I've had no trouble sharing files between Wordpad, cygwin, and unix
while using Wordpad.

~~~
runjake
I have. I've gotten bit by the hidden char and char translation issues with
Cisco configs. Often, it would cause units to halt on bootup -- quite annoying
when said unit is 42 km away.

------
nathanwdavis
Make Windows fully POSIX compatible out-of-box.

------
10ren
Xbox gui should be instantly responsive (at least as an option). It's so
tediously slow, it even misses button presses - you have to wait for it. It's
frustrating and unnecessary in a graphics machine. No offense, but even the
grossly underpowered iPhone manages to be instant. Xbox Zune is even slower:
the switch to movies takes many seconds. Perhaps this is setting up encryption
modules - but it's absurd. Because of this, I avoid anything movie related (Of
course, games are the key, but an unnecessarily shoddy experience actually
makes me use the Xbox much less often.)

"Indie Games" aren't available on Australian Xbox - this would add a lot of
value.

Gold Xbox: the inline link to "switch off auto-renewals" doesn't work. You
have to ring up, and cancel instantly, losing the rest of the month. This
comes across as underhanded and dishonest. Unless Xbox LIVE is a major profit
center, this needlessly loses goodwill.

------
sharjeel
Microsoft is dumping its rock solid Windows Mobile platform. This is a huge
concern for me.

It was developed with years of efforts and in 6.5 Microsoft got it much right.

However just because Apple's marketing strategy worked really well, it didn't
mean you needed to scrap your well built-in well tested platform in favour of
a copy of iPhone called Windows Phone. It has so far not been able to create
any excitement in the market yet but on the other hand Windows Mobile has a
lot of fans.

Windows Mobile has thousands of useful applications which help so many people
around the world. On the other hand, Windows Phone is just a new platform: do
you really think scrapping away will convince those hundreds of thousands of
Windows Mobile users to upgrade to something on which their favourite apps are
no more available?

You need to encash the already built hype and following rather than pretending
that you don't have anything at all and starting all over.

~~~
nailer
The market wants touch phones. None of those apps handle touch well.

Oh, and the iPhone is popular for more reasons than marketing.

------
cloudkj
Despite not being an employee, I have close personal Microsoft ties, so I
regularly hear about what goes on in Redmond. Anytime I'm involved in a
discussion about Microsoft's future, the first and foremost point I bring up
is how Microsoft needs to divest its investments in order to succeed in the
future, or have any impact on shareholder value with respect to its stock
price. Microsoft is more of a giant company with several distinct product
silos. The Windows and Office product silos are cash cows, while the other
ones often struggle to catch up. It's like a giant, lumbering robot trying to
move through molasses. Microsoft needs to divest and spin off some of its
various smaller divisions and allow for more autonomy. Let them operate as
they please and allow for the market forces to take effect.

------
Tichy
Don't copy the bad aspects of OS X, only the good ones. In turn, don't throw
out the good aspects of Windows (XP), only the bad ones. Not everything Apple
does is good - make up your own mind.

(I hate how Windows 7 removed the likeable things about Windows XP and
introduced the annoying things about OS X).

~~~
petewailes
Could you provide examples of things you like/don't like in OSX and XP?

~~~
Tichy
OS X: can't deal with the Finder. I frequently don't know how to navigate to
an upper directory, for example. I have troubles with the task bar, too
(sometimes somehow I can't drag stuff into applications). I miss the show
desktop button. I don't like that Apps stay open when I press "X" and I have
to close them all with CMD+Q instead. Cut+Paste does not exist. It's all
little things, but they add up.

Windows 7: now the same problems with the finder. Impossible to find anything
without utilising desktop search. No show desktop button anymore. Failed to
copy the task bar appropriately: now to start a second command shell, from the
task bar, I have to right click the icon. Noobs simply can't remember to use
the right mouse button.

Windows XP: flawed security model (everybody ends up running it as
Administrator).

Must admit that it has been a while since I worked with XP, but I remember
that they had some touches that were actually useful. Apple does not go for
useful touches, just pretty ones.

~~~
epochwolf
> OS X: can't deal with the Finder. I frequently don't know how to navigate to
> an upper directory, for example.

Four ways I know of.

1\. Use the column view so you can see every folder you've navigated through.
(My preference)

2\. Right click on the title bar's label.

3\. Use the path button on the toolbar.

4\. Use the back button (Yeah, it's not always up)

If the toolbar is missing, click the white button at the top right of the
window to return to a regular Finder window.

:) That said, none of those are exactly obvious which is a recurring problem
with OSX. About the only thing OSX gets right in that category is that almost
everything behaves the same so you don't have to figure it out twice. For
example, open a document in textedit, you can right click on the title and get
the folder tree the file exists in.

~~~
DeusExMachina
One more: press alt+cmd+up arrow on the keyboard.

~~~
callahad
Just cmd+up is fine

------
znt
For all these years I kept on installing windows on my laptops and desktops
not because I'm a MS fan, but all the cool games run on windows and I'm a
frequent gamer. MS probably will have a good advantage if they released a
handheld gaming platform.

[http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/210279/rumor-
microsoft-d...](http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/210279/rumor-microsoft-
developing-zune-xbox-handheld-gaming-device/)

MS will probably have a good comeback with that, I hope it wouldn't be a
closed environment like XBOX or Sony PSP. I would love to play flash/html
canvas games using a handheld gaming platform. If they could add touchscreen
functionality along with web browsing and installable games from MS
Games/Steam etc. then it will be game over for other handheld platforms.

------
rodh257
I'd say try to compile the document with things that are actually realistic.
Many of the suggestions here are akin to having a meeting with Obama and
telling him 'Shut down the military and divert the money to solve world
hunger!' and similar statements that may sound good but in reality aren't
going to be taken seriously.

If you send through a document to Ballmer saying he should drop .NET, throw
away Windows Phone 7 and base Windows on Unix, he isn't going to be likely to
take any of your suggestions seriously (even if you did throw in ones that
were realistic and made sense).

I'm sure you already realise this, given you're smart enough to have been
asked to produce such a document, but focus on slightly smaller things that
could actually make a difference.

~~~
nailer
Agreed, but I think the few 'replace Windows with Unix' posts have been
countered by other posters. We're a pretty mature lot here.

MS does need to realize a few things which may seem radical however - ie, the
platform being the web not Windows these days.

------
philwelch
On a corporation-wide strategic note, I have two thoughts: Embrace maturity.
Expand only in limited, strategic ways.

With apologies to Mitch Hedberg, if you follow the tech industry long enough,
you start to get mad at Microsoft. There's Microsoft's iPhone (Windows Phone),
Microsoft's Google (Bing), Microsoft's iPod (Zune). Someone needs to tell
Microsoft, "man, just be yourself."

Microsoft seems obsessed with coming up for a "killer" for every hot new
trend. If some other company's product gets buzz and "relevance", you can
expect Microsoft to come along 1-2 years later and try and compete with that
product. By the time Microsoft's product is any good, the buzz moves on to
something else. I'm waiting for Windows Live to try and remake itself in
Facebook's image.

Microsoft is a mature company. They pay dividends. They're not going to
compete in terms of buzz, "relevance", or potential for future growth. They're
not in the same league as Apple or Google--but in the league they _are_ in,
with companies like maybe Oracle and IBM, they're at the top of the league. So
stay in the league that you're winning. Remember, the point of growth and
relevance and hotness is to get into the league you've been winning for over a
decade.

Yes, Apple is even older than Microsoft and is growing fantastically. That's
because Apple had nothing to lose. If you want growth, you have to roll the
dice and reinvent the company from the ground up. That's easy if you're Apple
and you're at the bottom of the league, struggling to break even. Microsoft is
a different story.

Microsoft knows which of its products are worthwhile, which isn't necessarily
synonymous with profit. (Visual Studio isn't a big revenue source, but you
have to have developer tools for your platform to get developers.) Focus
exclusively on those.

Handle extensions in two ways. First, instead of chasing every trend, chase
maybe one or two opportunities at a time (company-wide) and focus your best
efforts on them. Opportunities aren't trends. Once something is a trend, the
opportunity is lost. That's not your league anyway.

Second, don't always chase an opportunity by building something. Like any
population, you need fresh infusions of DNA every so often or you will suffer
from the effects of inbreeding and die out. If a startup demonstrates a
profitable business model that can benefit from Microsoft's scale and
stability, buy it. Become the best "pooled-risk company management company"
(<http://paulgraham.com/prcmc.html>). Once you buy the startup, don't destroy
or assimilate it. Don't require them to build on your technology stack. Don't
move them to Redmond. Carefully control the mixture and interaction to protect
the startup's culture and DNA. Over time you can integrate more if it will
provide a benefit, but some businesses will have to essentially remain
separate companies. Embrace that.

~~~
sandipagr
Maybe I am mistaken but wasn't windows phone there before iPhone, MSN search
before Google? The same argument can be also applied to other companies.
There's Googles iPhone, Google's Facebook, Google's Windows, Google's Office
and what not. I personally don't think its bad to compete on those fronts. The
technology is changing and so companies have to adapt to these changes. I
don't really see them going after every hot trend. They are just making their
offerings more complete.

~~~
bonzoesc
Kinda? The problem is that once a competitor shows up and does well (Google
search, iPhone), Microsoft flails with their legacy stuff (Windows CE Mobile
Phone Series 6.5, Microsoft Windows Media Audio PlaysForSure) for a couple
years, and then apes the competitor as much as possible while throwing anybody
who was invested in their products under a bus of incompatibility.

~~~
philwelch
All out of desperation to beat their competitors. But you don't win by beating
your competitors. In 1997 Steve Jobs said, "we have to let go of the notion
that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose." Well, Microsoft has to let go
of the notion that for Microsoft to win, Apple and Google have to lose.

~~~
bonzoesc
It's like they're falling victim to the "Fire and Motion" idea that Spolsky
talked about: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html>

------
phatboyslim
Probably too late to comment, but I can't get past why Microsoft still charges
an exorbitant fee for Visual Studio. Eclipse and other development
environments are free of charge. It encourages development by reducing barrier
to entry.

More developers = better apps = more customers.

------
elbrodeur
I would like to tell Microsoft to stop being so risk averse. Stop relying so
heavily on market research. Stop acquiring talent with proven track records
and stifling them with your rubric.

If you want to survive the next 20 years, you're going to have to innovate.
But innovation comes with significant risks, and at the earliest sign of
failure or possible failure, you pull out instead of pivot, adapt or wait.

Stop worrying about marketshare. Start worrying that your products are not
considered thought leaders; your flagship products are (until several
innovations recently, like IE9 and 7) considered buggy, not secure and it's
your fault. You've let the competition paint you into that corner.

Stop playing catch up. Start innovating.

------
qeorge
Requiring approval of apps for Windows Phone 7 is awful. I was excited about
the platform until that announcement, and have since jumped ship to Android.

Microsoft, in my mind, has always been a champion of developers. Above all, I
would protect that legacy.

------
rafaelferreira
Microsoft should prepare itself for a world in which the consumer computing
experience will no longer be dominated by a single player. Apple, Google,
Palm/HP, Blackberry, Nintendo, Sony and probably many others will grab a share
of the time and money that in the past would've gone to newer Wintel PCs.

Ms should target Windows as a strong business-only brand, and this focus would
probably make for a better product. It's probably wise to still play in the
consumer market, with XBox and Windows Mobile and whatnot, but expecting lower
margins and increased competition.

Also, please hire someone to come up with better names for your products. It's
getting ridiculous.

------
nradov
Fully support server-side automation of Office.

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757/en-us>

There are a lot of use cases for automatically generating Office documents.
There are so many developers who want to use your products that way. Why not
embrace them and use them to drive additional sales? We are actually doing
server-side automation of Word right now in an internal work flow application
— even though it's unsupported — because there's no good alternative for what
we need to accomplish. But it involves some ugly kluges and when things break
we can't call up Microsoft support.

------
c1sc0
Get rid of Ballmer and put a techie in charge

------
zdw
If you're going to force OOXML on us, at least make your products support it
correctly.

Last I checked, running a somewhat normal business document saved out of Word
2007/2010 wouldn't even pass the validation schemas written for it.

------
gasull
Microsoft enabled competition in the PC market when introducing DOS. It's
something like Google is doing today with Android in the smartphone market. I
would like Microsoft to do that again. Today's Microsoft products are designed
to vendor-lock-in the users, instead of liberating them.

Microsoft limits user freedom not only regarding its own products, but also
adding DRM to its OS, for example DVD zones.

Vendor lock-in and DRM are the main reasons why I won't use Windows unless
it's in a virtual machine. I don't want the OS I use to limit my freedom.

------
kmfrk
As much as you've got going for Xbox and Live, you're getting known as the
people who always, gosh darn it, have to monetize _everything_ in the
Marketplace. No such thing as free downloads and updates, be it new maps,
avatars or other content packs. Valve and other altruistic developers have
often mentioned this problem.

This makes me, either as a consumer or a developer, to like PlayStation 3 all
the more, even though your online store and service seems to beat theirs
handily by other measures.

------
elmindreda
Now that it's clear that OpenGL isn't going away, fix WGL. It takes twice the
amount of effort to use compared to other such APIs, and fixing it shows you
care about standards.

------
kennedywm
Microsoft needs to spin off sub-brands like Toyota has done with Scion.
There's a lot of cool stuff that Microsoft would have better luck selling
under a more hip brand name.

------
d2x
Clean up your products' APIs - make them more consistent. I had to work with
Dynamics GP's .NET API a few years ago, and it was quite cryptic.

I recently had to work with SQL SMO, and in this case, numerous references to
small DLLs that, by themselves did very little.

These may be minor nitpicks in the grand scheme of things, but they contribute
to a perception that Microsoft is fragmented and lacks consistency across
products, and make developers' lives needlessly difficult.

------
gherlein
I would buy Office for Linux. Hands down. Full price. Don't lock me into a
crappy OS to get your products I _do_ like.

Also, take serious advantage of Apple v Google and do some real innovation in
the OS area. Make me love Windows 8 more than Linux. You have an opportunity.

Finally, make a next generation platform for mobile that's more than a lame
copy of your crappy OS for the desktop. Inject some real competition into the
handset market.

------
VladimirGolovin
1\. Make sure that new versions of IE are standards-compliant.

2\. Implement a more aggressive IE update policy to quickly remove older
versions of IE from the browser market.

------
utefan001
In outlook, if my boss clicks send and the email has the word "attachment or
attached" in it, ask him if he wants to add the file he forgot to attach.

------
swah
I want to say "Thanks for making it affordable and easy to people from all
parts of the world and all levels of income to have a personal computer."

------
chegra
1) More competitions for develops like 10kapartevent.

2) Robotics - Try to create a cheap programmable android. I know not core
competence but partner with someone.

------
alanthonyc
The fundamental problem I see is that Microsoft's internal company bureaucracy
(which is probably fairly typical of many large corporations) gets in the way
of innovation.

My suggestion is to break up the company into its various constituent parts
(Windows, Office, Xbox, Explorer/.NET, etc.) and spin them off as independent
corporations.

I'd buy stock in MSFT if that were announced. Pretty sure it wouldn't happen
though.

------
njharman
Thanks for DOS and WinNT. But, since then you haven't been relevant to
anything I do or want to do. Oh, and you made the best mouse ever.

------
jorangreef
1\. Put your best people on IE9.

2\. Put these into IE9:

2.1. File API: Directories and System: <http://dev.w3.org/2009/dap/file-
system/file-dir-sys.html>

2.2. IndexedDB

2.3. WebSockets

3\. Adopt WebKit for the next IE.

4\. Accelerate the IE release cycle to every 6 weeks.

5\. Code the next major Microsoft product range in Javascript, HTML, CSS.

6\. Put a copy of Proverbs on every Microsoft desk.

7\. Put a copy of Ecclesiastes on every Microsoft desk.

------
auston
Please use webkit for IE9+?

~~~
barmstrong
Yes - this is my one wish also.

With every new version of IE that comes out millions of hours of programmer
productivity are lost around the world. Microsoft, it's time for an
intervention. Stop, please just stop. Your hurting us, and yourself. Put DOWN
the web browsers.

------
mike-cardwell
Don't let Windows Live Mail lose out to GMail. Google is constantly adding and
playing with new features for GMail and Microsoft should be doing the same.
Eventually Google is going to come up with a real killer idea for mail and
you'll be scrambling to keep your users and paying customers unless you stay
nimble in this category.

~~~
mike-cardwell
What's with the downvoting? This is one of the few places where MS is
currently competing with Google on an equal footing. Windows Live Mail has
just as many users as GMail, but wont unless they keep up the innovation... MS
needs to keep an online presence, and email is the perfect way to do this
considering more people have an email address than use social networking...

------
usedtolurk
Two things:

1) In Outlook, please stop turning email addresses into annoying underlined
names that can't be edited.

2) If history is any guide the trend will swing back towards client-side apps
at some point. If you want to make the OS relevant again you need to show us
some awesomeness that simply can't be reproduced in a browser.

------
lmkg
Bill Gates had vision. He wanted to change the fucking world, and he did. He
put a PC in every house. He also had vision for how to run a business, and he
(rightly) gets a lot of flak for that vision (i.e. forced integration), but it
was effective in making and securing Microsoft's dominance.

Ballmer has not demonstrated vision in anywhere the same level. He seems more
like a manager than the leader that Bill was. He has continued to execute the
same vision that Bill had, or sometimes just goes through the motions. Bring
products into new emerging markets (cloud, mobile, etc) and a huge reliance on
enforced integration (lock-in). Throughout this, the original strategy that
drove these methods has remained unquestioned, and often forgotten altogether.

Microsoft needs to question its original strategies and decide if they're
still working, and either what is needed to make them work or what can replace
them. For example: Forced integration. The idea is that if someone wants part
of the MS Stack, you upsell them the rest of the MS Stack to get the full
potential of the part they want. The problem is that if someone wants part of
the stack but not the whole thing, will they go all-MS, or will they forgo
that one part that they might have gotten in isolation? Back in the day, MS
was dominate enough in some spaces that they could force their way into other
spaces with integration. Is this still the case? I suspect it is far less so.
Other companies and FOSS has made an entirely-non-MS stack viable for a
variety of uses. Playing nicely with, say, Unix may be a more worthwhile
strategy than it used to.

Similarly, Microsoft used to get into a whole bunch of emerging markets in
order to dominate them, not for that market as such, but in order to prevent
competitors from emerging. Does this still work? Not as much as they would
like. Google and Apple are pretty well established in mobile, and Google is
pretty well established in search (on the other hand, the XBox won). Take a
look at whether chasing your competitor's products is still worthwhile, from a
strategic view (the answer is likely to be neither yes or no, but a question
of picking your fights better).

Now, I don't know enough about the various markets to be able to say for sure
that MS should embrace Unix or ditch WinMo 7 or whatever (I like Bing,
personally, and hope it succeeds). But I do have the strong suspicion that
that question has not been seriously asked in the first place. As an outside,
Microsoft's strategy & vision looks like it has become cargo-cult-ish in the
last decade or two, following in the footsteps of Bill because he knew what he
was doing. That could even have been a good idea a decade ago. But the world
has changed. Old practices need not be discarded, but they must at least be
examined. If you create a new vision for Microsoft in the 21st, and stick to
it, many of the other decisions are much easier.

EDIT: The other thing I would add is that products need to better focus on the
question of "Why would I use this?" Xbox succeeded because it answered that:
Xbox Live. Zune, despite being (according to some critics) better than the
ipod, did not succeed because it either didn't have or didn't communicate any
compelling reason why I should get a Zune. Bing is facing the same problem.
Office 2007 was really cool because rather than focusing on what it could do
from a features perspective, it focused on what the user needed to get done
and resulted in a more productivity-focused tool. I am pessimistic for WinMo 7
because I haven't heard why I should prefer it over other smartphones.

~~~
rbanffy
> He wanted to change the fucking world, and he did.

No. That was Jobs.

> He put a PC in every house.

I believe that would be Jack Tramiel

> it was effective in making and securing Microsoft's dominance.

Sadly, it wasn't nearly as effective in helping people use computers.

------
skar
I'd say do your best to beat your competition, but within the spirit of law.

And no NIH syndrome to control everything in your stack.

Means you could have used android, linux or webkit etc instead of writing
everything yourself.

But choice is good too, so give it a rip and happy days to you and us
consumers :)

------
Dmunro
Two words: browser compatibility. I really don't care what else they do as
that won't affect my life in any way, but this is something I have to deal
with daily, and is ultimately extremely frustrating, time consuming, and costs
my employer a lot of money.

------
fsipie
Add stuff into vs2010 to make small, portable executables for Windows with
minimal dependancies. Get rid of b.s. like silverlight and wpf and adopt html
5 big time. Rip off cocoa & iphone sdk and make a windows-alike version.

~~~
PhrosTT
Silverlight is a windows-alike version of iphone sdk... only probably easier
to use.

In general I think SL and WPF are good... but certain XAML things need to be
fixed. When you need 5000 lines of XML to change 1 color, there's a problem.

~~~
fsipie
Hmm silverlight isn't really like iphone sdk. IOS has a visual consistency
that means that apps look generally nice across the board. Silverlight is a
stylistic smörgåsbord.

I guess I worry if MS are going in the right direction with their web stuff,
as silverlight has been out for years and I don't use anything written in it
daily at all. All the popular & useful websites use html & jquery & flash.

------
moby_duck
Dear Microsoft,

Can you please, please, please, create an emulation mode where file name paths
use forward slashes instead of back slashes? Bonus points awarded if you also
consider getting rid of the c:\ "disk name" file system conventions.

------
rbanffy
You hardware is excellent (Xbox 360 death-rate excepted). Love the natural
keyboard, love the mice. They are all essential to me.

OTOH, you software is terrible. Completely FUBAR.

My suggestion: keep the hardware division, abandon the software.

(burn, karma, burn)

------
stevederico
Why charge for your SDK? If I am going to develop for your platform you should
be paying me, not the other way around.

Does anyone at MS even use Hotmail? Its absolutely a joke, I know gmail is the
leader, but at least try.

------
jcapote
Stop making operating systems. Make IE cross platform, and make Visual Studio
dump exe's out for every platform, become the de facto way to develop apps on
every platform. Become awesome.

------
dman
a) Zero cost deployment. Create some minimal shell version of windows which
will allow me to basically compile a few applications into an OS image that I
can deploy on actual hardware machines / virtual servers. b) Have open source
software available via a package manager which takes care of dependency
resolution. One click install of apache , python etc. c) Embrace popular
languages like python/ruby. d) Learn to obsolete old stuff strategically.

------
Tangurena
While I'm sure that the changes to the partner program make sense from the MS
side, they were a case of too much too fast for our company.

------
misterbwong
Bring back the courier. I'm not usually an early adopter of hardware but if
you made it work like the demo vids, I'd buy it on day 1.

------
fsipie
Also, get rid of Ballmer and put someone technical in charge. A hard hitter
like Gates or Jobs. MS is embarassing at the minute.

------
j2d2j2d2
An html5 based extension system similar to chrome or safari so that extensions
are easily portable between the browsers.

------
mattmaroon
Asking that here is sort of like going to a KKK rally and asking if anyone has
any questions for Jesse Jackson.

------
grandalf
Dear Microsoft,

I'd like to see a commitment to web standards, manifested by support for IE9
all the way back to Windows 2000.

------
estacado
Build everything around Xbox Live. Identify what makes it work exceptionally,
apply it to everything else.

------
ashleyreddy
If you included an ad blocker in Internet Explorer you could shut down google
overnight!

------
siculars
I'm pretty frank about not being a fan of microsoft. I actually tell people
that if you absolutely must use windows, the only acceptable way to do it is
on a virtual machine on a mac. I was just at the bitly hackathon night earlier
this week and virtually to a person everyone was sporting some flavor of
macbook, not to mention that the office is kitted out in imacs. I routinely
stop by my local coffee shop hangout just to do a laptop head count, which you
should already know consistently hovers in the 70-80% range in favor of apple.

It is not just that apple is better on virtually every measurable metric that
consumers care about but it is that microsoft's offering is so piss poor.
Virtually the only reason people still buy windows machines is price nowadays.
I have personally 'converted' dozens of long time windows users to apple after
converting myself back in 2003. Those that have not followed my advice only do
so based on price and price alone. Even still, those are just a small
percentage of most who seek my opinion.

In the interest of being useful and not simply telling microsoft to pack it in
because they have already lost (because they have) I will try to contribute
something...

Dear Microsoft,

Speaking from a developers point of view you should really take a look at
where the action is nowadays. Now I don't know what you consider to be the
current 'hotness' in general computer development today but I think it is fair
to say that this very forum, HN, is where it is at. The slashdot of it's day,
as it were. If you were to crunch the articles that have made the front page
on any given day through your bing search tool over the lifespan of this site
I would certainly wager a morning coffee and even a donut that you would be
hard pressed to come up with a measly handfull of relevant microsoft related
technology articles. If you were to run a sentiment analysis on all the
articles and all the posts contained herein you would not have to have a phd
level implementation to ascertain that the general sentiment towards microsoft
is low in the extreme. Beyond sentiment there is simply asymptotically zero
mindshare amongst todays developers in microsoft technology.

But bashing aside, lets just look at what people are playing with. Nodejs,
NoSql, various jvm languages, cloud infrastructure and the like. Virtually
none of those things are even remotely connected to microsoft and its
technology stack in any way. Some of them (if not most) are not even available
on windows. Bottom line is that the new breed of developers do not use and do
not care about microsoft technologies, except for one small piece: IE. Every
developer developing for the web concerns him or herself with the performance
of their bit of code on IE. Thankfully this is becoming less and less of a
concern through the use of cross-browser libraries like jQuery and it's
brethren.

Having just watched the Pope give sermon upon lecture in the UK live on the
BBC I feel compeled to say to you: Repent. For the current crop of developers
worldwide do not heed your vision of the computing future. I would echo a lot
of JunkDNA's comment[1] in the sense that if you are even concerned with
getting a second look from developers you need to make your tools available to
them where they live, namely unix based os's. You need to have all in one
prepackaged virtual machines that will run under parallels and vmware on the
mac. Pure and simple. Developers who are not already windows adherents use the
mac to develop their wares or some flavor of unix, in which case my
recommendation of a virtual stack still holds true in regards to vmware.

As a consumer I would not even consider buying any offering from microsoft as
it stands. Neither the zune or a winmobile device. The former being an utter
failure and the later being an utter failure in its previous incarnations and
if not changed drastically will continue to be in its most recent incarnation.
Again, look to apple. What are they doing? Do some of that and then add in
your "added-value" flavoring. To second JunkDNA[1] yet again, two versions of
windows please. One server, one desktop. I'm a computer professional for over
a dozen years and I have no idea why there are so many versions of windows.
Honestly, I don't know what to tell people when they ask other than you are
out of your mind and there is no one running the ship over there in Redmond.

In closing, I would like to wish you the best and honestly hope that you get
it together. I strongly believe that the apple phoenix rose from the ashes due
to their epic defeat at your hands. If you can mount a comeback the
competition will fuel the space to the benefit of consumers everywhere. Good
luck.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1701083>

------
potatolicious
Re-work your entire UI strategy in Windows. Seriously, do so now. And do so in
all of your desktop app groups (except Office, they seem to be doing okay).

Why? Because they're too risk-averse, and willing to let _really horrific_ UI
slide - and as your customer demographic has demonstrated in recent years,
they will buy into good UI and positive experiences in _droves_. They will
line up for a week before release to get their hands on a UI that works... and
MS doesn't have UI that works.

Look at things like the system tray - a terrible idea that everyone realized
was a terrible idea back in 1998. 12 years later, it's still there and as bad
as ever - this is a textbook case of MS being too afraid to pull the plug on a
feature that frustrates its users every moment of every day. I'm not sure what
kind of horrific fury had to be leveraged to get the Office team to do their
(IMHO, very awesome) redesign, but the same thing needs to happen to Windows,
and it needs to happen _right the hell now_.

If you need a good example of someone at MS who knows good UI, consult the
Xbox team. These are the same guys who took a perfectly good UI (the original
blade interface), threw it out, and implemented something _much_ better, and
were not afraid of stepping on some toes to do it. MS needs this spirit back
in its UI development, across the board. Substandard UI should not be accepted
at all, and there needs to be some centralized oversight into the user
experience. The quality of UI, or hell, even the basic layout of UI, across
the entirety of Windows is so marvelously inconsistent it's a wonder people
can navigate your OS at all. Compare with MacOS X, where Apple has gone to
great pains in the last 2 years to bring all the disjointed bits all back
under the same banner, and unify the experience to something much more
consistent and usable. MS needs the same.

Further, your entire approach to the touch market is _broken_. The multitouch
functionality in Win7 is _laughable_. Your company has correctly surmised
recently that the touch market is going to be a crucial one in your battle for
the consumer OS market - but you're not going to win it (you're not even going
to be an also-ran) if you keep concentrating on inconsequential, completely
useless bits like multitouch scrolling. You need a version of Windows that is
_completely_ overhauled, UI-wise, for the touch device. It is completely
insufficient to touch-enable your existing tiny buttons, make no significant
changes to the main Windows UI, and call it a day. The way people interact
with a touch device is completely different from how they use a desktop
computer - Apple has realized this, and MS needs to realize this as well.
There should not be "Win7, now with multitouch", there ought to be "Windows
Touch" - a completely different user experience, leveraging the same
technologies.

I'm not terribly qualified to speak on the enterprise market MS is dominating,
but you guys are losing _badly_ in the consumer space in every segment except
video gaming. The Xbox team moves _quickly_ , and they execute _really well_
to critical and user acclaim - MS would be well served to study what has made
that part of the company so successful, and the rest of their consumer
products such utter failures.

~~~
nailer
+++ The third gen xbox interface is even cleaner. These would be the guys to
do a real Windows touch interface.

------
OmarIsmail
First let me say that I'm a big user of MS technology, I actually one of the
few that calls myself an MS fanboy. Xbox owner since 2001, Xbox Live
subscriber since 2002, coding in .NET with VS since 2005, Windows machines,
etc etc. However I own an iPhone and an iPad. They are the best in class for
what they offer.

Here's a very very practical idea that MS can implement very soon: Xbox Live
App Store. MS already has 40+ million 360's connected to people's televisions.
You have the Indie Game section, and there are some non-games there, but the
quality is pretty poor. First off, broaden the scope officially to "Apps" and
make them a first class citizen in the dashboard. Market the area, support the
area. Just look at what Apple is doing with the iTunes app store and
iteratively improve upon that. Also, give indy developers access to Kinect
libraries ASAP. Essentially with Kinect, you can do to the TV what Apple did
to the Phone - made the advanced "smart" capabilities accessible to everyone.
And open it up to developers in a big way because you don't have the resources
to make everything yourself. I really can't stress how cool this would be, and
how game changing it would be for the "set top box" experience.

Here are a few "big" ideas that I'd like from MS that are more out there: 1)
an all you can eat digital media subscription. I would pay up to $100/month to
be able to watch any movie (in HD), play any game (PC or 360), read any book I
want to, or listen to any music anytime that I want on any device I want. I
don't care to own anything or build up any collections. I just want to be able
to consume the media that I want to in a ridiculously convenient way that is
actually reasonably affordable.

2) Where my physical person is my representation in meatspace, my facebook
profile is my representation in cyberspace, my phone should be my
representation in digital space. When I walk into a room with my phone every
device around me should be aware of my phone and extend my phone's
functionality. Let me put it this way: my phone contains a display, speakers,
camera, etc. If there is a better display in the room then let me use that
display instead of my phone's. If there are better speakers in the space then
let me use those speakers instead of the phone's. etc. Essentially "explode"
the phone's physical device into the surrounding better devices so you
effectively have a "super phone" wherever you are. And subsequently you
"collapse" the phone when no such compatible devices are around.

3) somehow get rid of bandwidth caps. Fast ubiquitous wireless with no
bandwidth caps would be amazing 3b) somehow make the above reasonably priced
no matter if you're "roaming" in another country or whatever

Now for minor complaints: 1) Windows sucks for battery life. OSX is awesome
for battery life. This is one of the major reasons why Apple can make decently
powerful laptops in a nice form factor. 2) WHY do I have to reboot my computer
for every damn little update? It severely impacts my enjoyment of my Windows
computers.

------
mping
Support the .NET ecosystem on Linux. Do a proper shell on windows.

~~~
nailer
Last is done.

------
talonx
Don't keep on building what you think is a better OS every few years, and EOL-
ing the previous ones. Why do you think people prefer WinXP over any of the
others?

------
eogas
Can I have a WP7 dev phone? Pleeeeaase!

~~~
jf
Email me.

------
dmoney
Be most sensible to others.

------
danbmil99
webGL or equivalent, I guess it's gotta be webD3D

------
cory_and_trevor
Fuck off.

That is about all.

------
shareme
Mobile: MS screwed up by getting too late to buy core Danger staff and thus
missed the OS team..

Buy RIM..all-of-it especially the OS staff. That OS-Services-hardware combo
plus staff is enough to pivot if MS lets the incoming new ideas float to top
pas the Political Fiefdoms that are so much an obstacle at MS..

Or the cheaper solution Wall-off-a-building at MS Campus..raise a pirate flag
and put 100 software developers there..some MS Mobile hardware some OS dev
tools and leave them be for 10 months with no Management interference..

And SB you have had things in the Research Labs that should have seen a
product release..it was that good of ideas..

The whole MS Management structure is not working..

Might be a time to give out $150,000 startup scholarships to developers to
start new companies..

Do not get me wrong I think you are smart enough to know, SB, that its not
working..you have smart people bu the management infrastructure and political
fiefdom culture at MS is in the way..

------
gizmomagico
I suggest you do the following:

\- Make sure that you at least quadruple the amount of incompetent middle
managers at Microsoft.

\- Ensure that all important decisions are made by douchey sales guys.

\- Maintain bass-ackwards-compatibility as long as you possibly can.

\- Make IE 9 not conform to any standards, especially now that you've said it
would. This will allow you to force everyone to make web-apps on your terms,
and help you maintain your death grip on the entire industry, and there will
be much rejoicing.

\- Start more projects that don't go anywhere. I really liked the Kin. Kin
One. Kin Two. "vahn-tah-iihm, tooh tah-iihm". It was possibly the most
magnificent product you've ever had.

\- This reminds me, I think the world is just _itching_ to get their hands on
another Zune. Name it something like "Zune For Portable Music PlayersForSure".
If you build it, they will come!

\- Spend even more exorbitant amounts of money on inane ads. The butt-wiggle
was a nice touch, but not enough. Something even _more_ eccentric will help
you connect with today's youth. Imagine Lady Gaga in her flesh-attire, licking
a Kin 3 prototype while staring intently at the camera. No words, no
background music. It will be perfect, and vast quantities of units will be
shifted once Kin 3 comes out five years later.

\- Whatever you do, please don't write a new OS from scratch. Just keep on
keepin' on.

There. That should work. Do it for, you know, the greater good.

Actually I wanted to write something somewhat different, but that would have
been downvoted into oblivion.

------
jeberle
\- Drop the shiny, translucent Aqua-wanna-be thing. Windows should look
serious, a la NT 3.51/Win2K. It's been downhill since then. If you want to
copy someone, take some style hints from NeXTStep, or these guys:
<http://www.ableton.com/live-session-view>.

\- Hard deprecate the backslash. Forward slashes have been OK in code since
forever. The GUI should display & accept slashes.

\- Incorporate bundles into Explorer & the Windows loader (again, like NeXT).
This would eliminate thousands of brittle file references in the reg db.

------
ergo98
Keep on doing what you're doing: Microsoft has been a good corporate partner
in the technology space over the past few years, perhaps humbled a little, and
it has served the company well.

On the product front there isn't much to say - Windows 2008 R2 is excellent.
SQL Server 2008 R2 is excellent. Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 is excellent.
These are top of the game products, so....maybe lower the price? The only
thing keeping these products from absolutely dominating is the price of entry,
especially given that the competitors largely cost $0.

------
9ec4c12949a4f3
Next desktop shell needs to have an open interface to programmers such that
modification of widgets and replacement is now open to the community.
Programmers will find this especially useful. No more stupid dialog boxes with
scroll items showing 4 at a time but containing 5000 items. And get that
stupid advertisement out of MSN messenger.

------
jpr
Don't let hackers to cajole you into turning Windows to an open-source unix-
clone, world already has way too many of those.

------
lotusleaf1987
Make your software more intuitive, I hate digging through sub-menu after sub-
menu to find something, then it's not there and having to back track, repeat.
Make software for the end user.

------
TylerBrock
I'd just like to point out that Apple is bigger than Microsoft now. Suck it
Bill!

Also: Windows 7 is a good product, thank you.

------
known
I'll tell you. How much will you pay?

------
towndrunk
Please do away with the registry! It was a failed attempt and is now just a
mess.

------
benologist
Thank you for BizSpark and the Express editions of everything.

Also please buy Adobe, un-fuck Flash, and make Express editions of their
expensive-assed tools too.

~~~
loewenskind
No, let flash die. And the sooner the better.

------
sqba
So long and thanks for all the fish.

------
osopoderoso
Hello, I was going to post independently, but HN don't allow me to do it (you
are submitting very fast, slow down).

Here is what I would like:

    
    
       Find a precise title for a post, that is a program that receives a url, a document or any text input and outputs a precise title for that information.

------
skbohra123
Kill piracy, stop giving free software to universities and most importantly
let the enterprises breath. Trust me, follow this. This is the only way you
can have a nice ending.

------
ankeshk
If I could make strategy decisions for Microsoft, here is what I would do:

1\. Invest in integration. The dream Bill Gates achieved was a computer on
every desk. The next dream should be: everything computerized. And connected
and manageable with one device. Create a wearable app which would allow me to
turn on / off any electrical device in my home. Which shows me statistics of
how much electricity I used. Connect all the electrical devices - don't just
focus on the home theater / multimedia part. Let me set the temperature of the
room with that one device. Let me set music with that device. Let me run the
kitchen equipment with that device.

2\. Buy <http://www.emotiv.com/> \- that or something similar to that is going
to be the future. Where folks don't have to type on a keyboard. Or even use
hand motions to work the computer. Just thought will do. So buy the company,
put massive resources behind it - and bring the technology to the market a
couple of years earlier than it otherwise would take.

3\. Invest in a network of satellites. So you can connect all the devices all
over the world together.

------
BillGoates
I would tell Microsoft to go back to their 90s mindset. Less focussed on big
corporations, and more on getting (Windows) Microsoft software everywhere.
Back then Microsoft was maybe an evil empire, but at least they did some
exciting things from a developers viewpoint.

@Balmer: Get rid of .NET. There are people who use it, and some of them
actually like it, but it will never become the huge success you thought it
would become. This also means Silverlight has to go. The JIT compiler, with an
open sourced assembly language, could get a 2nd life in the browser.

For a next OS, have a good long look at Windows 2000. Start from there, and
instead of adding millions lines of code, start rewriting to make it smaller
and faster. That way you end up with a valid OS to use on mobile devices.

Put more effort into your webbrowser. Make it so that it can be used for any
type of application. Don't wait for W3C, if it's up to them we will have to
wait till 2019 for a complete HTML5 specification. The other browser
developers will either follow, and if not, developers will decide if they make
a windows only application. Make the browser the default UI layer of Windows.
This time to prevent nasty lawsuits, make it easy for others to add their own
navigational toolbar.

So in short, instead of trying to protect business with windows locked in
technology, be more open, and out develop the other companies. Become the
company again, where it pays off to develop on your platform.

~~~
bad_user
> _@Balmer: Get rid of .NET._

In Q4 2009 the Server and Tools division had a revenue of 3.5 billion, bigger
than their Client division, their online services or their entertainment
devices.

.NET is one of their best products. It's one of the few reasons developers
might develop for Windows Mobile 7. It's the single reason I actually thought
about deployment on Windows servers.

With a single platform you can target the web, desktop clients (even clients
running on Mac OS X / Linux), rich intranet web apps (Flex-like) or mobile
apps (Silverlight has been released for Symbian, WinMo7, MeeGo and probably
Android following).

Getting rid of .NET could be the stupidest thing they ever did, and probably
the last nail in their coffin.

~~~
BillGoates
The server and tools revenue doesn't say anything about .NET. I didn't say get
rid of SQL server or their server OS.

Compare the popularity of C# + VB.net to other languages to see .NET has less
than 1/20th of the market. And that for a company that not so long ago
dominated the software market.

.NET is useless for

* desktop applications, since the forward and backward compatibility is not guaranteed.

* Downloadable applications, because a 250mb library pack download is just too much.

* Web Startups and/or social applications, because of the (sql) server costs.

So the only use .NET has is for small corporate applications.

The only thing Silverlight is good for is playing DRM protected media.

~~~
bad_user
On Window XP the download for .NET 3.5 Client is just ~28Mb for machines with
no framework, ~ 40 MB for .NET 4 (again, with no other version) and the web
installer is only ~800 KB.

Over 80% (or even 90%) of Windows clients have some version of .NET installed,
and since it's being pushed through Windows Update, some stats are reporting
.NET 3.5 at more than 60%.

The Windows 7 marketshare is bigger than 10%, which means there are more
Windows 7 clients out there then OS X, and I haven't seen OS X developers
complaining about a lack of users willing to try out their apps.

> _Web Startups and/or social applications, because of the (sql) server costs_

Yes, but it really depends on your needs. PlentyOfFish / StackOverflow are
doing just fine.

~~~
BillGoates
Details missing the point. Yes it's possible to use .NET, but Microsoft
development tools aren't automatically the best choice anymore, and often even
the worst choice.

