
Microsoft’s Very Good Day - jeo1234
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/microsofts-very-good-day
======
delish
I struggle with changing my perception of Microsoft. I still characterize them
by their Halloween documents and efforts to destroy Netscape.

I would recommend the Surface to friends or family, which is a recent change.
But _I_ would never use Microsoft products. And not just because I'd be giving
up years of Linux folk-knowledge. Childishly, when I watch a youtube video of
someone far more skilled than me programming in Windows, I recoil a little.

I strive to avoid bias; I don't want the change in perception to happen merely
after people like me die. My bias is fallacious, but it holds like any other
deeply-felt bias.

Hell, I only recently stopped calling them _M$_.

~~~
togusa
I'm an MSDN subscriber, write C# all day and am sitting in front of Win8.1,
writing this in IE11 with a Lumia 640 next to me.

They are still utter bastards and I sleep with one eye open.

Currently the tally of bad stuff is pretty high: Patent wars against
competitors, forced bundling agreements, lock in despite the open
specification stuff which is mostly just wrong, being fucked over on audits
and licensing agreement shuffling repeatedly, collaboration with NSA/PRISM,
disregard for privacy, plain arrogance since Windows 8 the repeated
termination of developer stacks (silverlight, WF3, AppFabric etc) that people
built their entire products on.

The marketing tactic of talking constantly about everything shiny drowns out
these things going on behind the scenes. The press doesn't help this.

If there's any advice I can part on people is not to get all mushy and happy
about it and always keep that eye open.

~~~
harkyns_castle
Personally, I'll never forgive them for their practices. They deliberately
stifled competition, shafted developers, abused their position, and rubbed it
in our faces.

There's no coming back from that, and I'll gladly educate newcomers to IT on
their ways.

Let them die. The new CEO could be the second coming, you can't fix that
cancerous attitude that is entrenched.

They deserve to become obsolete, at the very least.

~~~
detaro
Sadly, if you use such rules there are not many big tech companies left that
haven't done such things...

~~~
sounds
False equivalence fallacy.

You can wish Microsoft would die, and still use an iPhone.

In fact, much of Apple's success can be attributed to Microsoft fumbling the
mobile revolution. In other words, people who use Apple may be doing so
directly because of how much worse Microsoft was -- due to Microsoft spending
their limited resources on zero-sum tactics like shafting their developer
ecosystem.

Compete or die. (Microsoft seems to act like they have a third alternative,
monopolize. They're still immensely profitable so it's understandable that
their shareholders are comfortable with their current course.)

~~~
y4mi
sure, it just makes you an hypocrit.

~~~
sounds
I personally don't use any iThings. y4mi, do you have concrete examples of
what Microsoft has done that has significantly improved end users' ability to
run Free Software?

------
octref
Microsoft feels like the new Apple to me.

I haven't used Apple's product in Jobs' era, but I've heard a lot of good
stories about how solid and easy-to-use their software was. Now I'm on
Yosemite, experiencing annoying bugs and unexpected quits/freezes on a daily
basis. I don't even dare to update to El Capitan. Yesterday I upgraded to
XCode 7.0.1, and all my swift projects failed to compile. If it's not for the
touchpad and screen I'd rather go back to my Arch Linux laptop.

Apple isn't bringing any more surprise or delight to me hardware-wise. And
their software quality is declining day-by-day. Development wise, just take a
look at XCode's newest reviews to learn how bad the dev experience is.
Developers are what makes a platform succeed, and Apple doesn't seem to
realize that.

However, MS has been amazing since Nadella. My favorite news is open sourcing
.NET and making it available for Linux. VSCode is also solid and even feels
more polished than Atom to me. Hololens looks cool. Surface definitely lives
up to its hype.

Last week I interviewed with MS. At the end I asked about the interviewer's
opinion on MS's change and attitude to Open Source, and in his response he had
this line: "Because Open Source is the future". I can hardly imagine a MS
staff in pre-Nadella era would have such opinions. MS has changed. I think
people should put down their prejudice about MS's past and admit that. Going
to Redmond next Wed for an onsite. Wish myself good luck.

~~~
hga
_I think people should put down their prejudice about MS 's past_

There are some things that people find to be unforgivable. Not sure if
anything MS has done qualifies for that for me, but in the area of gun
control/the RKBA, which I've been fighting since the early '70s, there are
companies like Ruger and Smith and Wesson which I absolutely refuse to do any
business with after they betrayed US gun owners.

Sounds like your problem is that OS X has become Apple's red headed stepchild,
iOS isn't reported to be having problems of this magnitude last time I
checked. Too bad OS X is Apple's development platform of choice (only possible
one???) for iOS....

~~~
pweissbrod
In my eyes the only thing microsoft is uniquely guilty of is being the first
dominant software company in a digital age.

Both apple and google have had their turn at the same position and done most
if not all of the same dubious actions to end-users and developers as
microsoft.

I respect a distrust for microsoft but I dont consider it rational to hate one
of these big players more than another.

------
ZeroGravitas
There's been lots of positive announcements from Microsoft recently, but I
think I'll save the applause for when they can do those cool things and
actually make money from it, not from extorting cash for patents, office
document lock-in, and all their other "bad microsoft" stuff.

~~~
codeulike
_extorting cash for patents_

Standard practice among all the big players

 _office document lock-in_

Standard practice among the players lucky enough to be able to do it (we now
call it 'walled garden')

... My thesis is that all big tech firms now act as MS once did (or would if
they could). But we're just used to it now.

~~~
iheartmemcache
On first read, I was going to ask to get a link to that thesis, thinking it
was some Masters or PhD work. Every 10 years you're going to have the 'big-
evil'. I'm with you 100% about it being standard practices in big companies,
and 110% about users being complacent about accepting the walled garden.

Also re: patents- IBM has a huge patent portfolio. Very little of it is used
to patent troll. Those boxed-office Texas shell LLP law-firms setup are
nothing like what IBM is doing today (second only behind Red Hat in terms of
core Linux kernel commits, IIRC[caveat: source was from a talk I attended in
2013 by one of the 3 upstream-controllers, including Linus]). "Evil 80s IBM"
is now actually too stagnant to really exploit the consumer and barely
breathing off of old banks and gov't systems that run System/36,360,38,390 on
z/OS.

"Evil 90s MS" is now opening up basically everything for the consumer, minus
the cash-cows (enterprises). MS Research funds tons of Haskell research,
language development that gradually goes from PhD/post-doc work -> "obscure"
languages like Haskell/F# -> C# (LINQ is effectively a monad). Python 3.5's
new async/await is largely influenced by work Microsoft did (both in semantics
and syntax). The CoreCLR is on Github. Inspect, modify, alter, run your F#
code on a RS/6000 or 8 dollar ARM if you want to. Visual Studio Community
Edition is free, a la the IntelliJ model. I argue they're now a net positive
on the community. Just like IBM, they've realized the enterprise is where
their money is, so charge for SQL Server licenses (which are really reasonably
priced compared to Oracle), Sharepoint, Server, and Dynamics/Biztalk type
stuff.

In the 80s it was IBM. In the 90s it was MS. Today, Apple performing so much
walled-gardened anti-competitive practices (I can't install my legally
purchased copy of OS X on my Intel machine? Really?) that it makes the MS DOJ
trial look completely insignificant.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
> (I can't install my legally purchased copy of OS X on my Intel machine?
> Really?)

I thought the only way to legally purchase OS X was to buy it preinstalled on
a mac.

~~~
jacalata
It's for sale directly from Apple -
[http://www.apple.com/au/shop/product/MC573Z/A/mac-
os-x-106-s...](http://www.apple.com/au/shop/product/MC573Z/A/mac-
os-x-106-snow-leopard)

~~~
wmoxam
That's a quite old version of OSX (2009), and is meant for people needing to
upgrade from OSX 10.5, as v10.5 wasn't upgradable over a network connection.

------
mrmondo
Clickbate marketing article name with little valuable substance. I tried
Windows 10 in tablet mode and I found the whole experience to be disjointed.
It felt out of touch with recent UX trends / advancements, the same old thing
with a new skin and even more tiles. Everything I wanted to do took more
'clicks' that I was happy with and there's little-to-no consideration to power
users. Am I the only one that doesn't see any signs of real innovation here?

~~~
ino
They are marketing really hard where the tech nerds and devs are, astroturfing
comment sections and sponsored articles everywhere.

Things like Microsoft is changing and giving fuzzy feelings (really?), but the
general audience is harder to get. I've seen huge billboards with surface 3
ads, special sections in stores, but I've never seen one in the wild.

~~~
bane
I work for a medium sized tech company and the surfaces are absolutely
ubiquitous, 1:1 with Mac books easily. People who have them absolutely adore
them. I'm considering getting a surface book when the lease on my rmbpro is
up.

------
Aldo_MX
_Godwin 's Law warning_

I find more ridiculous the statement "we will never forgive Microsoft" than
saying "we will never forgive Germany".

They're a company, not a charity, they're in the business of making money, and
if making money implies using "dirty tactics" such as saying phone
manufacturers "bundle Office in your phones or we will use our patents against
you" it will certainly happen regardless of which company we're talking about.

Also, you should not be angered at Microsoft for collaborating with the NSA,
but be angered at America for forcing companies to collaborate with the NSA.
If you were in the position of Microsoft would you reject and risk loosing
your company? Don't be ridiculous! If Apple is playing to be the victim right
now, is because it's more profitable for them after the public outrage that
followed Snowden's revelations.

There is a real world outside the Free Software bubble, a real world where
companies struggle to survive and any means to survive, even at the expense of
the competition, will certainly happen.

~~~
exelius
People like to anthropomorphize companies as having a conscience, but you're
right: they're just autonomous control structures with the goal of making as
much money as possible. Sometimes their leaders will make bad decisions
prioritizing money now over money later, but ultimately such decisions are
often just as bad for the long-term health of the company as they are for the
market (even though they may provide a short-term benefit).

And for everyone who says Microsoft should have told the NSA to shove it, just
consider how quickly a major CEO can be taken down by the government: Jeff
Smisek, widely considered one of the two most powerful men in the airline
industry, was forced out of his position as CEO of United Airlines as part of
a government corruption scandal with no more fanfare than a tersely worded
press release. He has yet to be charged with anything, but criminal charges
are inevitably coming. Any company that does business with the US government
(as Microsoft does) is likely participating in some form of corruption or
another. All they have to do is investigate that corruption and long jail
sentences for senior executives will follow. It's essentially the NSA's
version of "plata o plombo".

~~~
hga
You're forgetting the _direct_ example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio)

 _He was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading in Qwest stock on April 19,
2007 – charges he and many others claim are U.S. government retaliation for
his refusal to give customer data to the National Security Agency in February,
2001._

Given the iffiness of such charges when it's your own company's stock, we have
to at least entertain the proposition that refusing to work with the NSA is a
ticket to Federal prison. Qwest is said to have been the only big company that
refused.

~~~
exelius
Yeah; I remember that one too. The Smisek one was just more recent, and Smisek
was also a much more visible CEO than Nacchio given United's place in the
airline industry. From what I can tell, the Smisek issue may have genuinely
involved some wrongdoing, but Smisek may only be involved because the ultimate
target is Chris Christie. But he was a titan of his industry, and when he left
there was no retirement party or farewell video: just a new guy sitting in his
chair and a short press release explaining that a change had been made. Nobody
is immune.

But yeah, that's the jist of it. Refusing to comply with an NSA order will
likely just end you up in jail on something else because the government has
the power to lock you up. So we can't hold the companies who complied with
them entirely responsible, as those companies are made up of individuals who
have families to think of.

~~~
hga
_Refusing to comply with an NSA order will likely just end you up in jail on
something else because the government has the power to lock you up._

That's the thesis of _Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent_
([http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
Innocent/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
Innocent/dp/1594035229)), that:

 _The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to
work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she
has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in
the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number
but also become impossibly broad and vague...._

He'll have a lot more examples, I'm sure.

 _So we can 't hold the companies who complied with them entirely responsible,
as those companies are made up of individuals who have families to think of._

Especially since the Feds have no compunctions against going after your family
if they can't pin something on you. E.g. junk bond figure Michael Millikan,
who's real crime was creating a market for poorly managed companies.

------
roymurdock
It's funny how people will believe that one person, Satya Nadella, can have
such a profound impact on a company of hundreds of thousands of people. It's
all about crafting a story and offering people an explanation for why the
company is changing.

I wish there was some type of bayesian submarine-ometer[1] that took the
baseline percentage chance of any "article" being dressed-up PR on a
particular website and performed some type of analysis on the company's
marketing spend, brand perception, buzzwords, the interests of the article's
author, and the article's similarity to other positive articles on the
company/product.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
ChuckMcM
I could not help myself, I had to get a surface book, it may end up in the
pile of things with great potential but I had to give it a shot. Two devices
were in the running for my 2015 tablet HW refresh, the Lenovo Yoga 3 and the
iPad Pro. This sort of came out of left field.

It has a lot to live up to, I use my iPad every day and for a variety of
things, but something I always wanted to do on my iPad, sketch, wasn't very
satisfactory. And while I liked the Surface Pro 3's pen experience, its
battery life was a challenge and some key Apps weren't there.

So long battery life, a better drawing experience, and a useful typing
experience, and, for bonus, I can stop carrying around a laptop as well? Well
if this thing can pull that off its a win for me, and I'll just put vmware
workstation on it and run Linux when I'm doing my embedded work.

But the other thing it has done is really highlight the impact of market
windows. Had the iPad Pro come out last year, or even in Q1 of this year, I
would be using it already and probably not be buying the Surface Book.

For historical reasons the first thing I bought to try to do what I wanted was
the "Touchbook" from Always Innovating. Detachable keyboard, touch screen. But
not enough battery life, and the screen's resistive touch screen was not very
useful. I also have the Illiad 2 from iREX which an an epaper display with a
watcom stylus, loved the pen, and the readability of epaper, but very little
app support and challenging storage options. For a while I've lived with both
a laptop and the iPad. I'm really curious if this new box can meet my
expectations.

~~~
tluyben2
I for one am curious how much battery life you can really pull out of it. When
I see 12 hours on the spec I usually don't get more than 7-8 and that's right
there in the 'not enough for a day' zone for me.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Agreed, if it is less than 9 in the "real world" I'll be pretty disappointed.
The thing that makes iPads work for me is that they save a _lot_ of power when
they are asleep, and they come back instantly when they are woken up (very
phone like in that regard). If Microsoft has given W10 that ability on their
Surface hardware it could do the trick for me. (the only time I go 8 - 9 hours
straight on battery is when I'm travelling)

------
awjr
Their partnership with Google over Typescript and the general openness that
they are pushing is fantastic. I really feel they are giving a lot to the
developer community.

The Surface Book is an exceptional piece of kit. It is telling that the top
end book (16GB/512SSD) was the only one at one point to be sold-out on pre-
order. None of the other options include 16GB of ram and I think this is a
shame, but you cannot fault what they have done here.

Kudos. Microsoft now gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

~~~
shmerl
I'm waiting for them to join Vulkan working group.

------
hliyan
It's amazing to think that such a massive behemoth could change direction in
so little time.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Not really. Microsoft has always had two sides, two forces constantly warring
with each other internally. Microsoft is and always has been chock full of
serious, 100% authentic "hackers". And those have driven the company as much
as high level business decisions over the years. Microsoft has long been a
proponent for things like open platforms (such as the original PC design) and
has long tried to be a good citizen within the computing industry. There was a
period of time when those voices were muted compared to the voices of hard-
nosed business types but you can see those forces re-asserting themselves in
the current iteration of microsoft.

~~~
7952
For years the hackers/pundits were telling MS to adopt a more inviting
buisness plan with free versions etc. It is possible that this approach could
be detrimental even if they hace good products. It is ironic that as consumer
Windows has become a more polished product they have removed the premium
pricing in favour of app stores and subscriptions.

~~~
tdkl
Which control panel do I need to open to get that "polished" feature you're
mentioning, the Metro or the old one ?

~~~
7952
Oh yes I agree that it doesn't come close to achieveing polish, but that is
surely the aspiration.

------
ableal
_" The company was so in love with P.C.s (the hub for all things and for all
time to come) that it came late to the Internet and much, much too late to
mobile phones."_

In the early 2000s, Microsoft did try pushing tablet computers, "pocket PCs"
based on Windows CE (rivals to Palm PDAs) and even had Windows Phone OS in
some smartphones.

That did not gain traction, because the user experience was not captivating,
and they had missed the insight that fingers would be the way to go. (I'm not
sure if earlier the capacitive touchscreen technology was already available in
alternative to the resistive screens that required a stylus.)

I'd say that Apple's post-2007 success would not be possible without learning
from Microsoft's expensive failures. But Microsoft did try.

~~~
arnoooooo
IMHO, it was not about fingers. Palm PDAs were vastly superiors to me in terms
of UI because, unlike Windows CE, they did not try to mimic a desktop
experience.

------
andosa
It definitely feels like Microsoft is on the right track with Nadella in
charge.

~~~
aswerty
Yeah, with the likes of .Net Core it seems very much like Microsoft are on the
right track. But you'll still see plenty of, what I call, "Microsoft
decisions" that just make things into more hassle or expense than it should be
purely for the pursuit of profit. One example is if you want to migrate from
Linux to Windows 10 on a few computers you're legally required to buy a
Windows 10 license for each machine you run. So for people with a few machines
that might be 3 licenses you have to pay for - it's just crazy.

~~~
pjc50
"You have to pay for our software to run it on a machine" is possibly the
least crazy example you could have chosen. There's far more strangeness in
Microsoft licensing: Terminal Server, the whole business of CALs, the vast
number of SKUs with ambiguous names, VM licensing, and so on.

~~~
MarkyC4
> the vast number of SKUs

In their defence, we did that to them. They had to make all the N versions of
Windows to appease EU courts. What's troubling is that no such restriction is
placed on Apple or Google

------
Keyframe
I don't have much feelings towards companies and technology. I use ones as I
see fit. Windows has, since 7, been very useful to me. Even 8 (8.1 which I'm
on right now). Windows has been my primary OS since 7. I augment it with Total
Commander and Babun (cygwin) and that's it. Everything is great, except Babun
which could use some more work (or I don't know how to use it). I also use
Redhat on other workstation (due to graphics software dictating it) and it's
not as usable on desktop as Windows and OSX are. That's not a surprise though.
I also use OSX on my macbook air, because that's the best laptop I could've
got for what I needed (lightweight, moderately powerful, battery life). I
carry around Android Nexus 7 tablet as well, so new Surface Book looks like a
good deal to me in order to get rid of macbook air/nexus 7 combo. Microsoft
research also does some cool stuff in graphics which I've used (through their
papers). I use Word and Excel all the time as well, along with Google Docs.
those are just some random thoughts as I perceive them from my POV now.

------
ksk
Microsoft to me has always been good at 'businessy' stuff. Embrace partners,
embrace developers, and keep users somewhat satisfied. If you help others make
money, they're going to love you. Apple has been good at 'designy' stuff. Wow
and embrace users, keep developers and partners somewhat satisfied. This
explains why Apple doesn't really care about backwards compat, or
communicating/co-coordinating releases with partners, etc. It looks like MS is
taking a leaf out of Apples book. I wonder if they can continue to do the
other stuff as well.

------
rottyguy
I'm really surprised it didn't touch on the oncoming xplat-ness of .net in
this round up. I feel like this is huge considering how much it connects the
technology. To boot, c# is a top 10 language on github even though it's
primarily a single platform language ([https://github.com/blog/2047-language-
trends-on-github](https://github.com/blog/2047-language-trends-on-github))

------
listic
Microsoft's offerings still seem under-designed to me, on a second look. I
still can't order Surface Pro (or Surface Book) with cellular modem; only
Surface 3, an older and supposedly lower end device. I can't order Surface
Book with 1TB drive, only a Surface Pro 4; despite the former being a more
expensive and supposedly higher end device.

Why so? As far as I understand, Microsoft still goes with the templates their
hardware OEMs already have: Surface is based on a tablet template, while
Surface Pro and Surface Book are supposedly based on different laptop
templates and the available options are thus defined by the OEMs. This also
explains why the 'Pro' versions 1 and 2 had cameras inferior to the 'non-Pro'
versions.

I wish Microsoft got their act together and gave more attention to design,
while they are at it. If they are saying this is a tablet that _can_ replace
my computer, let it have what those tablets that _can 't_ have: cellular
module. If it has a non-removable hard drive, let me have it in the greatest
available capacity, sepecially while you already offer that on a lower-priced
model.

~~~
pmelendez
" I still can't order Surface Pro (or Surface Book) with cellular modem; only
Surface 3",

Can you order a Macbook Air with cellular modem? because that has always been
the range they designed the SP for.

~~~
listic
1\. No you can't, but I have always wondered why.

2\. They might, but they say it's a tablet, and it looks like a tablet, and it
has touch screen. Tablets (often) have cellular.

------
kriro
I kind of thought the headline referred to the fact that they did finally
release a patch that makes connecting to Exchange servers via Outlook possible
again in the latest OS X. [too snarky, maybe but it was a pretty hilarious
situation where both Apple and Microsoft failed fairly hard for a (short)
while]

------
alexschleber
The piece and ars technica video show both the good and the bad of this new
MSFT attempt:

Some good ideas, but let's be real - ultimately a total niche product at
$1500. Compare that the surface pro 3 has been selling about 3-4 million units
in the last year ( q3/2014 - q2/2015 revenue was estimated around $3b, on
devices costing about $800 + $130 keyboard), while Apple sells about 20m Mac
units in the same timeframe, which is in itself STILL a niche! ﻿
www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-mac-computers-since-first-
quarter-2006/﻿

I just don't see how this is going to make any sort of real dent.

------
draw_down
I remember using a Windows machine in 2006 that could also double as a tablet.
(You could pivot the screen around and then fold it back on top of the
keyboard.) It wasn't very good of course, and my point is that this idea is
not new by a long shot. So is the enthusiasm for Surface Book coming from the
fact that it's made by MS themselves?

Beyond that, it strikes me that the way they talk focuses so much more on
narrative than the actual products they're selling. Like "I want you to love
MS because you love building things for other people" or whatever.

------
walkingolof
Wonder how much Nadella really changed vs the changed perception of the
company, much of this stuff must have been brewing while Ballmer was at the
helm..

~~~
JustSomeNobody
But not likely because of Ballmer.

------
alinspired
MS/Windows/Office has always been a workhorse for me, but i might be in the
process of becoming a MS fanboy :)

