
Has Microsoft Gone Nuts? - AdamJBall
http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/has-microsoft-gone-nuts.html
======
tptacek
Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the
Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down
action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in
mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive
reaction, but it was already set in motion.

Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that literally
and clearly bets the company on it, is going to seem comical: Microsoft is a
gigantic company that has no power in the mobile market. All their moves are
big (because of their size) and pointless (because of their market position).
Big pointless moves look crazy.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _Microsoft isn 't nuts._

Yep. Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed, that's all.

Look, they've been great simply by virtue of being in the right place at the
right time. There was an incredibly TREMENDOUS hidden demand for a PC and an
operating system for it, and MS happened to be there at the time. A half-blind
monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money
too. It was impossible to _avoid_ being dragged up to (at least financial)
greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in
the right neighborhood at the time.

And that was a market that worked well if unified on a single standard. As
luck would have had it, that was Windows. Okay, not entirely luck, Bill Gates
is also a shrewd businessman. But from a technical perspective, MS has always
been mind-numbingly mediocre and uninspired and anti-visionary. Remember how
they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real
Microsoft.

Well, now the tremendous hurricane lifting MS up is dying down, and it's
becoming apparent that it really takes gale-force winds to keep flying an
object with all the graceful aerodynamics of a brick.

With the tides of history turning against them, it's now obvious to everyone
that they are really inept at innovation. What's funny is that this is
considered "news".

Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long. You've
probably cost us all perhaps a decade of progress. Nobody of consequence is
going to miss you.

~~~
bluedino
>> Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long.

Don't be so harsh. The industry wouldn't exist as we know it _without_
Microsoft.

There'd still be 10+ different platforms.

~~~
dgregd
Really? How many mobile platform do we have now?

~~~
bluedino
That matter? 3. Just like how many desktop platforms we have. Windows, iOS,
and Android Windows, Mac, and Linux

------
steven2012
Microsoft should split up the company into smaller ones. This is something
that should have happened with the anti-trust case a decade ago, but
unfortunately it didn't happen. I said to myself at the time, it would have
been the best thing for the software industry if we saw Microsoft split up
into an OS company and an applications company.

Now, I think they should split off Windows, Applications, X-box, and Mobile.
There are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft still, but they are all
stymied with the culture of everything having to center around Windows. X-box
was best when it didn't have Windows shoved down it's throat and the same goes
for Mobile. Now, Windows is having Mobile shoved down its throat by an
increasingly desperate and frenetic management that is drowning in
incompetence, and they're taking everyone down around them.

What they need to do is just admit that the industry is changing on too many
fronts too quickly, and this idea of having horizontal integration across
multiple products is unfeasible. Having integration of Internet Explorer into
Windows, or the same with Office worked. But they keep going back to the same
well too many times. They need to let each market grow organically, and let
their good PMs and engineers make the best products they can, not the best
products that will keep selling Windows.

~~~
tstrimple
I disagree completely. That's essentially the way things were a few years ago.
A big part of Microsoft's problems, both internal and external, come from the
fiefdoms that sprung up around the different divisions. They were effectively
different companies with the same CEO. They rarely communicated well and this
lead to a lot of unnecessary duplication of work. Microsoft is now on a path
to unifying the ecosystem and this is fantastic from a developer perspective.
I can write an app for Windows 8, and the vast majority of code for it can be
reused directly on a Windows Phone or Xbox app. That is significant. As much
as people complain about Windows 8, unifying the UX across the platforms is a
Good Thing. Using a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet and Xbox all feel very
similar. None of that happens with different companies.

~~~
steven2012
It's great for people who want to be in the Windows ecosystem. The problem is,
almost no one wants a completely Windows experience anymore. Microsoft is
great at strategically leveraging their monopoly and creating a forced
marriage between two separate experiences, and making both of them worse, much
like forcing IE into Windows, Windows Mobile into Windows 8, etc. The problem
for Microsoft is that this is no longer 1997. People have legitimate choices
and are spurning Microsoft like never before. Their monopoly no longer buys
them any strategic advantage anymore except in enterprise software.

They can keep trying to create a unifying UX experience, but no one cares.
Their Metro UX in Windows 8 has been a disaster. The inertia that Microsoft
counted on to make IE the #1 browser no longer works anymore.

The best thing to do for the engineers and for shareholders is to break the
company apart and let each division fend for themselves. Let them make the
best product they can, not stymied with one hand tied behind their back
because they have to maintain this terrible lineage back to Windows.

~~~
tstrimple
Whether a person wants a completely Windows experience or not has no bearing
on unification being beneficial overall.

I personally don't believe that they are worse experiences. The Windows Phone
UI is loved by pretty much everyone who uses it. It's a similar story with
Windows 8. Read reviews from people who are actually using the operating
system and not just reacting out of fear of change.

One of Microsoft's strengths is how diverse their portfolio is. Adding to that
the fact that Microsoft products are working together now better than they
ever have before. Breaking the company apart is simply ridiculous.

~~~
steven2012
You are free to believe what you want. However, Windows 8 is an unmitigated
disaster. Surface is an unmitigated disaster. Windows Phone is absolutely
ignored. Bing is largely ignored. Internet Explorer has lost large swaths of
marketshare.

Microsoft is trying to unify an experience that no one cares about. They're
building products that no one wants to use. And the reason no one wants to use
them is because they are being stymied by this ridiculous notion that they
would have a common experience, but an experience that no one wants to use
because they are stymied.

When Surface came out, I very much wanted to buy one for my parents, because
it looked like exactly what they needed. I spent 45 mins at the Microsoft
Store, and I didn't end up getting it. It was terrible. Sometimes, I didn't
understand which way to swipe, I didn't understand why there was Flash but
some websites wouldn't work, and then sometimes I would get the Windows task
bar, and didn't know why. Compare this to the iPad which is almost a perfect
experience, because it's so much easier to use.

Microsoft has stymied themselves by trying to take the core Windows
experience, and then hammering it into the tablet experience. And then they
take this really shitty experience, and then hammer that back into the desktop
experience. It's like taking a photocopy of a photocopy.

If they allowed their teams to make the best product they could, they might
succeed in the same way Google has succeeded. But forcing everyone to pray at
the temple of Windows is what is ruining Microsoft in 2013 and beyond. They
need to split up and forget this unification delusion.

~~~
tstrimple
Windows 8 has more users than all versions of OS X combined. If that's an
"unmitigated disaster", what does that make OS X?

Windows Phone has overtaken iOS in Latin America and holds the number two spot
for mobile devices. Windows Phone has also overtaken iOS in Italy, and is less
than a percentage point away from taking over in Germany as well. Across
Europe Windows Phone market share has doubled from this time last year, while
iOS continues to decline. Windows Phone is the fastest growing mobile OS
worldwide. Nokia's customer satisfaction has surpassed all Android
manufacturers and is right on the heels of Apple. None of this evidence
supports your claim that Windows Phone is "absolutely ignored".

Bing handles roughly 30% (Bing + Yahoo) of internet search traffic in the US.
A far cry from being "largely ignored".

None of this paints a picture of "an experience that no one cares about". Your
statements show clear bias with no evidence to support it. You're certainly
entitled to your opinions, but the sweeping statements you are making are
simply wrong.

~~~
steven2012
First off, you are getting the wrong impression about me. I'm a Windows user.
I have some Apple products, like an iPhone, but I tried using Mac OSX for a
year and hated it. I have a MacBook Pro at work, but I bootcamped it and run
Windows 7 solely. I've been a Microsoft user since MS-DOS 3.3, so I don't care
what OSX's install numbers are. I started my career programming for Windows
3.1 SDK, using MFC, etc, so I've been with Microsoft every step of the way.

Windows 7 was a great OS after a disastrous Windows Vista. Windows 8 is again
an unmitigated disaster. 88M users out of 1 billion install base?

[http://www.neowin.net/news/there-could-be-885-million-
window...](http://www.neowin.net/news/there-could-be-885-million-
windows-8-users-but-is-that-big-enough)

Even Steve Ballmer himself said that Windows 8 was not selling enough.

[http://www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-states-that-windows-is-
no...](http://www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-states-that-windows-is-not-selling-
well-next-gen-surface-in-testing)

No one wants to upgrade to Windows 8. That's why they are backing away from
their Metro strategy. Yet another integration attempt that has completely
blown up in their face.

You are also wrong about Bing's search traffic. It's 18%. As I said, largely
ignored. 4 out of 5 people ignore Bing. Bundling Yahoo as disingenuous since
most people don't know it's Bing. I worked at Yahoo. I know how inertia works,
and given that their search share hasn't changed much since they had their own
search engine, it's being used by people that just don't care. You could
switch Yahoo's backend to Google and no one would know the difference, because
they don't care.

Sure, Windows Phone may be a small success in Latin America, if you consider
selling dirt cheap phones with no margin a success. It's still the #2 phone to
Android and Windows Phone is still 3-6% marketshare worldwide. 94 people in
the world out of 100 ignore Windows Phone. It's absolutely ignored. That may
change in the future, if Microsoft gives away their phones for free. But as of
right now, they are absolutely ignored.

Microsoft is unable to create a single experience on any of their platforms
that bring happiness to their users, except for X-box. I don't have an X-box
one, but many of my coworkers are complaining like hell about Microsoft's need
to change the X-box one's experience to more like Metro's. I can't speak to
how accurate this statement is. If they were smart, they would be battling PS4
and trying to make the best gaming console they can, instead of having another
agenda of some failed integration that is unnecessary.

~~~
tstrimple
And I'm an avid Mac user. My primary machine is a Retina Macbook Pro. I just
converted my wife from yet another Thinkpad, which fell apart after two years,
to a Macbook Air. I've got my whole house connected via an Airport Extreme and
a couple Airports used as access points. I have my Apple TV as the HDMI IN
source on my Xbox One. The only time I open Parallels is for Visual Studio or
the occasional PC only game.

I was an early adopter of Android tablets. I bought the Xoom when it first
came out, and then the Asus Transformer as soon as it was available. I have
bought and returned three iPads (iPad 2, 4 and mini retina) because of just
how limited the OS actually is. The hardware was beautiful, but I still can't
do simple things like create a separate account for my kids to use? Now I own
two Surface tablets (Pro and RT) because I find the experience to be simply
better than iOS and Android. The other platforms have a lot more apps
available, but the Windows store has what I want.

I now also own Windows Phones across the family because I was tired of the
fragmentation issues on Android. I was also tired of having to flash the ROM
every few months because performance and battery life got worse and worse over
time.

You will probably find similar stories if you just look at the people using
Windows Phones and Windows 8 (on touch devices). Pretty much all user reviews
I have read on the systems are incredibly positive and it is only getting
better.

Edit: Yes, there are hundreds of millions of Windows 7 users not upgrading to
Windows 8. I think that's to be expected as Windows 8 is best experienced on a
touch device, not with a keyboard and mouse. If you look at all of the new
devices running Windows 8, they pretty much all have a touchscreen (tablet,
laptop or convertible). I have used a laptop exclusively for the last five
years now. The only time I ever touch a mouse is to play first person
shooters. I believe Microsoft sees that there are fewer and fewer new
dedicated desktop setups, and it makes more sense to build your operating
system towards where the market is going than to where it was. For once they
are trying to be ahead of the curve, and we will have to see if it pays off in
the long run.

~~~
solnyshok
she will be lucky if Air lasts two years.

------
gfish3000
Not at all.

Because Android achieved dominance, it's now starting to lock down how much
its OS can be modified by other vendors and locking manufacturers into using
either Google's services or having to make their own from scratch on top of an
outdated OS shell. Microsoft is probably wondering how much appetite there is
for vendors to make a break with Android and try to replicate their past
successes with a new, more modern mobile OS.

At the same time, it's trying to take care of its legacy users and giving them
what they want and what they ask rather than simply dictating to them "here's
how you will be using your computers." Also, not what you'd call nuts, just
listening to consumers and learning from their experiments.

------
rayiner
I think this is way off the mark, in general.

"But that’s not the roadmap we’re hearing from the Microsoft OS team. Instead,
they’re talking about creating a single Windows code base that runs across all
types of devices, something that’s technically appealing if you’re a Microsoft
engineer but thoroughly uninteresting to customers."

If I wanted an Android phone, I'd go buy one of the bazillions of Android
phones. If you're someone who isn't just going to buy go a Samsung phone,
you're probably, like me, not invested in Google's ecosystem. You don't want a
phone that plugs into Google's "cloud" but rather a phone that runs Outlook
and Office, and can interface with your company's Exchange Server, Windows-
based CMS, etc. That has value; being yet another crappy Android vendor does
not.

Microsoft's strategy is just fine, it's their execution that sucks. Windows on
Phones and Tablets should have featured tight integration with the Microsoft
ecosystem from Day 1. Instead, they botched Surface RT by releasing it with a
half-baked buggy version of Office on a tablet that didn't integrate with
Active Directory. Windows Phone 8 has no synergy with Windows on a tablet or a
Windows PC, and oh, the roadmap to a proper touch-optimized version of Office
includes the phrase "when pigs fly." Microsoft comes consistently late to the
party with products that are little better than MVPs, and that's sinking them.

------
drzaiusapelord
How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is
changing and moving toward mobile devices.

Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are
very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio
via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and
everyone knows it.

~~~
pantalaimon
Why do people repeat saying that "the personal pc landscape is […] moving
toward mobile devices"? I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just
because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sure there is a decline in sales for
PCs because the market is saturated and for the most people, unless they are
gamers, their 5 year old computer will do just fine. Yet people keep shouting
that the days of the desktop computer are over and everyone soon will write
their eMails on their smartphone only.

~~~
thatthatis
Hypothetical semi personal example:

I got an iPhone and suddenly about 40% of my Internet consumption went to the
iPhone. Now, in that case most of the 40% was incremental, but it did supplant
about 10% of my desktop browsing.

I got a tablet and suddenly about 30% of my Internet consumption is on the
tablet, stealing about 10% from the iPhone, 10% incremental, and 10% from
desktop.

I've reduced my desktop Internet use by only about 20%, but now desktop only
makes up about 40% of my internet activity.

What sane mega-corp would sit there and say "well, we still dominate the
desktop 40% so lets not worry about the other 60% that is now consumed by
related products."

Computing is moving to mobile doesn't mean the mobile use has to come from
cannibalization.

------
Jemaclus
Microsoft isn't nuts, but black text on dark gray background is... yikes.

~~~
mcormier
Try reloading the page. The server is taking a beating because this article
has gone viral. There is a white background if the site loads properly.

~~~
Jemaclus
I tried a couple of times, so I wouldn't make a dumb comment, but it never did
show up... I may stand corrected, assuming a white background ever actually
loads. :)

------
gdrulia
I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able
to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop
apps.

~~~
LordIllidan
If they can be resized and used as normal windows - I'm all for it - that's
how I use apps on a normal desktop operating system!

~~~
MLR
I'd assume they could scale fine but have a minimum resolution of 1024*768, I
think that's what MS used as their base when designing Metro apps.

------
coderguy123
I don't know guys, I just picked up dell venue 8 pro. this thing is nice. the
whole Metro things works really well and it is fast and smooth. The quality of
games/apps I am seeing is already better than my kid's Nexus 7 (long way from
ipad tho). If they market this thing right, I can see it(windows tablets in
general) gain some hold in pure tablet world.

------
guardian5x
Nokia has already stated that the Nokia Android phone (Normandy) was
cancelled, even before the Microsoft take over.

------
duwease
Isn't this just a continuation of Microsoft's recent-years strategy of waiting
until other peoples' innovations created a market, and then trying to drop
their entry into it? Zune, Xbox, Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, etc.. hell,
didn't Ballmer explicitly state that was his strategy?

~~~
tstrimple
I don't think that's true at all. Zune, Windows Phone, Windows Tablets and
Xbox are all _more_ innovative than the competition. The phone and tablet are
suffering from being so late to the game, and Xbox is "suffering" from grossly
incompetent marketing and PR. All of those products get fantastic reviews from
people who actually own them.

------
badman_ting
They have so much money and are well-entrenched enough in various ways that I
expect they will flail around until they hit on something that can sustain
their business long-term. Though I admit I have absolutely no idea what that
will be.

What has been frustrating for me is how this way forward was missing for years
now, but criticism of MS management was always shrugged off with references to
Windows and Office. Criticism of Ballmer was met with "profits are up", and a
sprinkling of "MS is a huge company, you think you could do better?" Mmmm, so
helpful. Then the industry they depend on as the source of those profits is
registering double-digit declines YOY and all of a sudden it's a crisis. So
aggravating.

------
0_o
With Start8 installed, the Windows 8.1 is actually the best Windows OS I have
ever used. Looking forward to a native start menu!

------
ar7hur
Very well written.

Excerpt: _Microsoft could ship a hamster wrapped in duct tape, label it
Windows, and a lot of OEMs would bundle it._

------
winslow
Would Microsoft benefit from Nokia building an Android phone to help their
argument in the EU over the android patent? They could argue that they are
indeed using the patent in their own android devices and thus have a
compelling argument to keep receiving royalties from other manufactures.

------
batmansbelt
Hopefully when MS and Nokia make an Android fork they put up an Android port
of Internet Explorer on Google Play. Firefox on android is a great browser
(better than chrome), but it would be nice to have more choice.

Since the recent death of Opera there are only two browsers on Android.

~~~
csmuk
I've suffered IE10 mobile for a bit now. It's a great browser but to be honest
the entire mobile web is written for WebKit.

This makes it painful.

~~~
r00fus
It's not unlike the recent desktop browser days - where the web was written
for IE6.

However, this time, WebKit is open-source, so at least there's no excuse for
other browsers to not simply support it.

------
ebbv
If Nokia's going to continue to exist they need to sell phones. Windows phones
aren't selling. An Android one might. They have to take the shot.

Giving away Windows Phone/RT might encourage other hardware vendors to try it.
Maybe they won't. But they definitely won't if Microsoft tries to charge them
for it. Again, worth the shot when they have nothing to lose. It might be
crazy if Windows Phone/RT were runaway successes, but they aren't.

Windows 8 is also a huge failure. Trying to go back and make it more like 7,
which most people continue to prefer, is probably for the best.

This article is as poor as the design of the blog it's featured on.

~~~
dangrossman
> Microsoft nonetheless has to be happy that Nokia has blown past Motorola to
> become America’s No. 4 smartphone vendor. According to new data from
> Counterpoint Research, Nokia’s share of the American smartphone market has
> surged from a mere 1.4% in the second quarter of 2013 to 4.1% in the third
> quarter.

[http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/nokia-us-smartphone-market-
share/](http://bgr.com/2013/11/01/nokia-us-smartphone-market-share/)

~~~
ebbv
Going from being nearly dead to not quite dead is not the same as being
healthy.

------
drcode
Luckily Windows 8.1 is just barely capable enough for me to run virtualbox
with an ubuntu image.

How people can get by using Windows 8.1 as their main OS (beyond using it
merely as a shell to launch virtual machines) is beyond me. Microsoft deserves
to lose big time in the marketplace for their half-assed attempt to glue a
phone interface onto desktop PCs.

~~~
pmelendez
Haters gonna hate.

I installed Windows 8.1 on my laptop (2008 model so no touchscreen) and the
experience has been great so far. I do spend more time on the desktop side
than in Metro side but even then in overall is faster, more reliable and with
nicer features (i.e win+x, universal search, etc.) than windows 7.

------
pmelendez
> "I think a more interesting licensing strategy for Microsoft would be
> forking Android"

Sure, what we really need is having another flavour of Android. That wouldn't
be confusing to users at all and will make developers happy (specially because
it will be ditching the easier development environment for mobiles )[/sarcasm]

------
mortyseinfeld
_But today, Android has huge market momentum, so a phone vendor switching off
it would be abandoning most of the available customers, something they are
extremely reluctant to do_

Wrong, consumers aren't attached to phone OS's like they are to windows on the
desktop.

You'll be betting wrong, if you bet that windows mobile is just "going to go
away".

------
skywhopper
The author says Metro is the new OS/2\. I think the correct metaphor would be
Microsoft Bob:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob)

