

Is it Ballmer's fault? - edw519
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10419508-16.html?part=rss&amp;subj=news&amp;tag=2547-1_3-0-20

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cpr
Pretty hard to say.

I'd say it's just MS's size that has done them in. When you get that big, it's
just too hard to change your dominant technology and business cultures.

Plus, I'd say there's a general lack of elegance about the whole MS empire.
It's more "hack it until it works," at all levels of their software stacks.
Not that there aren't a whole bunch of brilliant folks laboring there, nor
that there isn't good software in their stable, but I think they're laboring
without people at the top who have some clear sense of "taste" as well as some
clear sense of long-term technical vision.

Or maybe they do have those people, and their vision is just out of date or
wrong-headed.

Windows Mobile is probably the best example of this. Who in their right minds
would think that just subsetting Windows itself would be a good idea on a
mobile device? Including assuming a little mouse-like pointing device, so the
whole WIMP stack could be used unchanged? People who are blindly convinced
that the Windows API is the best and doesn't need to adapt or change or grow
to move with changing environments, I guess.

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rbanffy
three (or two-point-something) words:

"management by managers"

