

Companies rarely die from moving too fast... - michaelpinto
http://parislemon.com/post/10396714293/the-birth-of-qwikster

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CurtHagenlocher
I think Siegler is missing the forest for the trees. The real question is not
whether Microsoft should have dumped "legacy Windows"; in many respects, for
ARM-based mobile devices, it actually has. The more interesting issues are
around two industry-wide trends -- the increasing commodification of software,
and the re-verticalization of software and hardware -- and whether the Windows
business model itself might be in danger of obsolescence.

Also worth noting: for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft did actually ditch backwards
compatibility in favor of "the new thing". And despite generally favorable
reviews, it's not exactly burning up the sales charts.

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technoslut
It was easy for MS to ditch compatibility for Windows Mobile. It never was as
dominant as the PC share so they could afford to start with a clean slate.

In terms of ARM tablets, I assume that the only reason to have desktop mode is
so it can run Office, however limited the features may be since it would take
much too long to make it Metro/touch-friendly. MS isn't completely cutting the
cord like Hastings is doing.

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iaskwhy
I love reading MG Siegler, Gruber and company but all this talk about how
Microsoft should emulate Apple's strategy leaves me sad. We should be pushing
for innovation, not copycats. Microsoft is trying to pull something hard but
they might actually make it work, why do they need to just copy Apple's
strategy just because it has been working for Apple? I have said this many
times before but there's not only one way to achieve success.

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iamclovin
I happened to tweet this quote this morning and a friend of mine made a valid
point:

"though there's a difference between spinning your wheels fast, and actually
moving _forward_."

<https://twitter.com/choonkeat/status/115660699530825728>

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ctdonath
While perhaps "rarely", some do.

Netflix is moving too fast in response to their subscription splitting.
"Quikster" (sp?) looks like an overreaction to a brief, albeit significant,
customer irritation. Rebranding the core product (it's long-term fame is for
DVD rental, not streaming, even if the latter is the main goal) confuses
people. "Hey, where did Netflix disc rentals go? Guess I gotta go to
Blockbuster again..." I don't see this ending well.

~~~
saturdaysaint
The kind of moderately tech-savvy person that's Netflix's main customer is
going to completely abandon physical media in the next year or two. Since
getting Apple TV (i.e. iTunes movies plus Netflix) I'm no more willing to wait
two days for a disc to arrive than I am willing to wait for a search result.
Movie watching is often social, and more and more people are accustomed to
having an immediate say in the movie they watch in social situations (probably
thanks to Netflix successfully integrating into every TV/game console/set-top
box).

So the downside to abandoning physical media is limited (they'll still own
what's left of the rental delivery business) and the upside of staying in the
lead of an increasingly competitive industry by focusing on on-demand video is
huge.

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viscanti
Premature scaling and optimization are the top killers of startups. A better
title might be "well established companies rarely die from moving too fast".
Those companies have a larger safety net and can afford to take more risks,
because those risks are small to them. The same risks can (and likely will)
kill a startup.

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signalsignal
Companies rarely recover from moving in too many directions at once. People
forget that a company isn't something magical. It is just a name on a piece of
paper.

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contextfree
They may not have died, but I think Microsoft suffered from moving too fast in
the mid-late 90s: the antitrust trial, security and reliability problems.

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Hisoka
I'm a 1-man company and moving too fast has destroyed my social life and will
to live.

