
Things Microsoft Still Does Well - cl8ton
http://techland.time.com/2014/02/06/4-things-microsoft-still-does-well/
======
fiatmoney
Microsoft's enterprise software is really, really good. Active Directory, SQL
Server, Azure, C# and Visual Studio are all amazing. They also make tons of
money, and MS is really good at managing them as cash cows over time.

Not coincidentally, they just put the Cloud and Enterprise guy in charge of
the company.

~~~
rtfeldman
I keep hearing this, but it's just such a foreign concept to me. The idea of -
for lack of a better term - _surrendering_ my entire development stack to a
single company rings just about every alarm bell in my head.

What happens when (say) .NET isn't the best tool for a particular job? Just
close your eyes and use the inferior tool anyway? Or use the right tool and
just throw the hard-won Microsoft ecosystem synergies out the window? I'm
constantly using different technologies for different projects; doesn't this
come up a lot in the enterprise world, too?

Granted, I'm not an enterprise developer. I've never worked on a code base
that more than 20 people were working on at once. But I don't understand what
makes large organizations see a walled-in ecosystem like that as a plus rather
than a trap.

~~~
Einstalbert
"Oops we developed our product on Silverlight because we're an MS-kit company
and now Silverlight is crap. Now what?"

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The fact that Microsoft stopped developing a technology that hardly anybody
used isn't a surprise, I don't know of any business that would keep supporting
something that was so obviously not going to succeed.

~~~
Spearchucker
Silverlight is not a technology - at least not in the sense that it is a
product and relies on two technologies - XAML and .NET.

As such it always amazes me to see otherwise intelligent people complain about
Microsoft dumping or abandoning them and their Silverlight-based products.

The _technologies_ in Silverlight are in most cases directly portable to WPF,
Windows Phone and WinRT. Any Dev that throws out effort based on Silverlight
probably deserves being abandoned.

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daniel-levin
The article misses a very important thing Microsoft still does very well:
makes money [0]. Irrespective of one's opinion on the quality of their
products, they still produce software the provides value for real people. They
employ a ton of people, all across the world [1]. Microsoft may have lost a
decade in the visible consumer segment (mobile phones, tablets), but they
still make _boring, profitable, enterprise_ software that helps them on their
way to $22B in annual profit. They're not shrinking either, according to their
fast facts page [1]. Microsoft still does business _very, very well_. Even
though I personally don't like most of their products, I'm genuinely excited
by the change of CEO, because Microsoft has the resources (perhaps not the
culture) to build awesome new technology in the next few years.

[0] [http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft)

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/news/inside_ms.aspx](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx)

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asadotzler
It's time to stop joking about IE like that. IE 11 is a fine Web browser these
days. Yes, it took them a while to catch back up, but they have and they're a
genuinely modern browser today. Firefox is still a better browser, for a good
number of reasons, not the least of which is Mozilla's mission to put users
and the health of the Internet first, but Microsoft engineers working on IE
for the last few years deserve more credit than they're getting. Shouldn't we
be cheering for them to build the best they can instead of insulting them?

~~~
beagle3
> Shouldn't we be cheering for them to build the best they can instead of
> insulting them?

No, we shouldn't. Do you have any reason to believe that if IE became dominant
again, Microsoft would not abuse its position once more? I don't. Fool me
once, shame on you. Fool me twice ....

(And I wasn't fooled even once, but the Internet at large was).

The onus of proving that they mean well is on Microsoft this time, and they're
not living up to it. Ok then, I guess IE11 is an ok HTML5 browser (don't have
windows, can't even test). But they fought against introducing WebGL (and
lost), and they're still reluctant to introduce WebRTC.

~~~
veidr
I think Asa is focusing more narrowly than you are. Both arguments are valid.

As a browser, MSIE 11 is vastly better than previous versions. They took what
was just about the shittiest browser on earth, and made it more or less OK.
(Although Firefox and Chrome are both better.) From that limited perspective,
kudos to them.

As a corporation, though, Microsoft is still a toxic entity with poisonous
effects on the ecosystems it participates in. It actively, brazenly works
against the interests of the Internet user community as a whole, and those of
its own customers. Microsoft the company is a bad actor on the scale of
Oracle, Monsanto, Halliburton. So you're right, too.

~~~
BSousa
And Google isn't?

Seriously. They drop products faster than Paris Hilton changes her hair color.
They are involved in multi million settlements due to throwing their users
privacy rights under a bus. Do you really want a browser from a company that
is only interested in violating your privacy for a few extra dollars? Why put
MS in the same league as Halliburton but give a free pass to Google?

But kudos to Firefox thou, I don't use it normally, but form what I read and
little I used, they actually care about the user.

~~~
veidr
I didn't say anything about Google.

And, from what I can tell, Paris Hilton's hair color is pretty consistently
blond:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=paris+hilton+hair+color&clie...](https://www.google.com/search?q=paris+hilton+hair+color&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Dwb4Uq2eFZGakgX3-oD4CA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1383&bih=1116)

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Svip
Yes, the Xbox 360 has been a success in the US (beating the PS3), but in
_every_ other market than the US, the PS3 has beaten the Xbox 360.[1] And the
article in question is very US-centric on that regard. I am not saying the
Xbox is necessarily bad, but is it better than the PlayStation? I think that's
rather subjective.

Although I hear that neither Sony nor Microsoft has made a lot of money from
their console adventures.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_%28seventh_generation%29#Sales_standings)

~~~
pimeys
My problem with Xbox 360 is it's selection of games. My wife bought the
console for us two years ago and the only games we've played with it have been
Skyrim and GTA V, which are also available for PS3. Almost all of the games
available are in this so called 'dudebro' category: fps, sports etc.

What are missing are the japanese weird and arty, or colorful and playable
games that are available for Playstation or Wii. The games I remember from my
childhood (Mario, Zelda) or some absolutely mindblowing ideas like Journey.

~~~
AdrianRossouw
agreed.

i went through the library again recently, and I could not find a single
exclusive worth owning either of the xboxes (although galleon was nice, and
jet grind radio eventually got re-released on PSN).

There is an exception to that of course, namely xbox live arcade. There are
still a handful of XBLA exclusives that were worth it, but most of those have
been re-released on PSN or steam too.

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nemothekid
I guess this is consumer focused as it missed some of the real MS Gold -
Azure, MSSQL, Visual Studio, C#.

However, on the consumer path this interested me:

>As the console gaming industry evolves (dies?), Nadella needs to convince
America that the Xbox is truly a living room feature, not simply a gaming
device. If he can sell that concept, Microsoft will leapfrog Sony and
recapture the lead.

Despite the claims of the "living room console" being made for years, I really
can't find any evidence for it. I can't see why a $499 console will beat out
an $99 Apple TV for OTT entertainment in the larger consumer market. I still
think this idea that the gaming console will become "the box" is an idea that
has roots in the early 2000s, where people only have 1, maybe 2 televisions at
home. If "John Jr." is playing video games for 4 hrs/day, I commonly see he
does it in his room, not in the living room where he can impede on "John
Sr."'s decision to watch the Netflix. Sure they could buy 2 Xbox Ones, but
John Sr. doesn't really need all that gaming power.

~~~
tdicola
Agreed--I think the living room 'hub' is DOA in a world of smartphones and
tablets. Why would I want to mess around with some clunky 10 foot interface
when I can just pull my phone out of my pocket or pick up the tablet on my
coffee table?

~~~
uvTwitch
You may be content with a 10 inch screen, but I live in a flat of 24-28year
olds, and my xbox sees more use as a youtube player than it does as a gaming
device. My flatmates are content to search for things using the awful
controller text input to play them on the tv rather than use the laptops
sitting right in front of them. I'd tell them about SmartGlass, but I doubt
they'd use it.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Why would they use an xbox for YouTube rather than using a tablet in
conjunction with an Apple TV or Chromecast? Is it just because the xbox is
already there and always turned on?

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kabdib
Microsoft might be /okay/ at doing a Mobile OS; they are, however, at the
mercy of the platform drivers, and this recently drove me away from my
perfectly-fine-except-for-one-killer-bug Nokia 920.

Something deep in the Nokia 920 was turning on and spinning the CPU like mad;
the unit would heat up and drain the battery by mid day. Nothing I could do
fixed it; I waited through two system updates and it was never fully
addressed. (AT&T was never very quick about releasing updates, either;
separate problem). I finally downgraded to an iPhone a few weeks ago. I can
use the iPhone all day without worrying about the battery, but the mail client
(which I use constantly) is a _lot_ more clumsy to use than the one on the
Windows phone.

Microsoft is at the mercy of bad little code monkeys who write drivers at the
BSP (Board Support Package) level, which are usually done at contract houses
like BSquare. The code I've seen some out of these places has been . . .
marginal. In the cases I've had to use it, I've usually wound up rewriting a
lot of it. You get code that passes tests, but that's about the only bar for
acceptance; internally the code is usually badly organized spaghetti whose
mission is to pass the tests, and that's it.

You want the driver-level code in your system to be ROCK SOLID. If you
contract this work out, you're going to need a great acceptance system [code
and design reviews, because automated systems like WHQL are inadequate and get
gamed anyway], a way to update drivers in the field so that mistakes can be
corrected quickly [phone releases seem to happen every 9 months or so, so
_nope_ ], and you want to be able to get good feedback from customers [looks
at AT&T . . . sighs].

A phone is a top-to-bottom thing; blow one level and you've got a bad product.
Microsoft hasn't really figured this out yet; maybe with the Nokia purchase
they'll have a full stack and finally do everything right.

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chestnut-tree
This article mixes two things - things that Microsoft does well from a UX
perspective (like Windows phone 8) and things it does well in terms of sales
and profitability, like Microsoft Office (which arguably is not very well
designed in terms of UX).

This is true of other large software comapnies too: Adobe with their Creative
Suite and Google with Android - both successful in terms of sales, but
arguably very uneven in their usability (in my opinion).

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us0r
5) Make money.

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smoyer
It's a good article, but I'm not sure about one line used in describing
Microsoft Office users:

"extremely loyal user base"

Is it really loyalty? Or is it inertia (people learned it once upon a time)
combined with lock-in (everyone else is sharing documents in this proprietary
format)?

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piggybox
The very first things came into my mind when I saw the title were MS ergonomic
mouse and keyboard, then xbox the second.

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randomafrican
Do we all agree that their only hope in consumer mobile is making Office
cross-platform ?

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mbq
0) Keyboards.

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gschiller
*Thing

-> Enterprise

