So Steve Ballmer is leaving Microsoft a year from now: what kind of schedule is that? It’s one thing, I suppose, for a company to point out that they have a retirement policy or a succession plan, or even to just give the universe of potential Microsoft CEOs a heads-up that the job is coming open, but I don’t think that’s what this is about at all. It’s about the stock. Like in baseball, when all else fails to get the team out of a slump, fire the manager. And sure enough, Microsoft shares are up eight percent as I write. Ballmer himself is $1 billion richer than he was yesterday. I wonder if he had cleaned out his desk this afternoon whether it would have been $2 billion?
You’ll read a lot of stories today and tomorrow about how Ballmer as CEO missed big product trends like smart phones and tablets — the very trends that Steve Jobs and Apple did so well. But that’s not so. Windows CE phones existed long before the iPhone. Windows tablets predated the iPad by more than a decade and date from the pen-based computing fiasco of the early 1990s. So it’s not that Microsoft missed these opportunities — they just blew them. Windows CE sucked and Windows for Pen Computing was close to useless.
Apple was successful in these niches mainly because they did a more thoughtful job of them at a time when hardware was finally coming available with enough power at the right price to get the job done. Earlier simply wasn’t an option.
Microsoft has always been good at embracing enormous opportunities — opportunities big enough to drive a truckload of money through — but hasn’t been very good at the small stuff. Microsoft saw that IBM-compatible PCs were going to be a huge business and so they bought an operating system to be a part of that. Microsoft saw that network computing was going to be big so they “borrowed” some tech from 3Com. Microsoft saw that graphical computing would be the next trend so they licensed Windows 1 from Apple. Microsoft recognized almost too late that the Internet was going to be huge so they started giving away Internet Explorer. All of these were simply doors that needed to be walked through into new rooms filled with money. The most truly innovative move that Microsoft may have made as a business was simply bundling most of its apps together into Office and using that to destroy the rest of the PC software industry — now that was smart.
But smart phones and tablets, those were tactical moves, not strategies, and the revenue potential was never there to get those efforts the top talent they would have required to succeed if the hardware had been ready to support them.
It’s good that Ballmer is moving on and I’ll be intrigued to see what he does with his money. As for Microsoft, the future there is even more uncertain. There’s lots of money still to be made, of course, but the PC era is coming to a close and Redmond appears not to even be a player in whatever this new era comes to be called. That has to be tough for a fighter like Ballmer. I’d be eager to move on, too, if I were him he.
Gee – What a legacy of nothing worth buying! Good riddance
And yet, Ars Technica reports that “Under his leadership, Microsoft’s net income has increased to $23 billion, with annual revenue climbing from $25 billion to $70 billion, with an average annual profit growth of over 16 percent.”
http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-to-retire-within-12-months/
Yes but isn’t all that just a recovery from where he started 10 years ago? So if my house filled with water and I spent 10 years cleaning up the water damage to bring it back to where it was does that make me a great home-builder?
I’m not sure there is anything magical about 10 years. The article was describing the improvement averaged over his leadership period.
Please elaborate on how you think it all relates to the reorganization? Linking it to the stock price makes it sound very short-term in interest, but this has clearly been in the works for years, and with Ballmer’s close involvement. Surely this wasn’t a response to the perennial calls for Ballmer’s head on a platter, or perceived underperformance of Windows 8 (certain people really need to grieve over the Start menu and get on with their lives).
Can you please comment on how it is “clear” that this has been in the works for years? Press reports indicate this is sooner than he expected (by Microsoft’s own statement as well), and there is no announced successor.
Although I don’t think Cringe is suggesting any inside info, that he’s speculating based on experience, I don’t see much to support that Microsoft didn’t decide along these lines. As to the “head on a platter” call, by no means is that related to Win 8’s failures alone, rather it’s to the perception that Ballmer has been too slow, if not also too little, in addressing the market spaces in which MS is not making progress or is falling behind.
The real irony of the situation is that Microsoft became an enormously successful company copying and marketing GUIs (Windows vs. Mac), productivity software (Office/Outlook vs. Lotus/WordPerfect), network software (Windows Server vs. Novell), browsers (IE vs. Netscape —well temporarily) and database software (SQL Server vs. bunch of vendors.) Yet in the markets that they innovated (Windows CE and Pen Computing), they were the big losers. I guess it is true that in the tech space it is a disadvantage to be the first mover.
Except that the first version of Windows CE copied the Psion 3 organizers (whose OS later became Symbian), then the next major version was a direct rip off of Palm OS (Palm sued Microsoft to keep them from using “Palm PC” as the generic term for WinCE pocket devices), and the Palm OS-based Treos were the first devices in the form factor that Microsoft adopted for their WinCE-based Windows Mobile smartphone platform. Besides that, smartphones like the Nokia Communicator existed for years before smartphones based on any Microsoft platform.
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Not to mention that GO Corporation released their PenPoint tablet/stylus OS before Microsoft released their first attempt at pen computing, Windows for Pen.
So the follow-up post is going to be about who the new Microsoft CEO will be, right? Can the world’s oldest and largest microcomputer software company ever recruit a new CEO from outside the company? Would billg ever allow that?
Grammar! Should be “if I were he.”
Fixed!
That’s why I love you Cring. You’re a man of decisive and immediate action!
This is the Post-Microsoft era. Linux rules now. Android and iOS are strong and hard to beat.
“Microsoft saw that IBM-compatible PCs were going to be a huge business and so they bought an operating system to be a part of that.”
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Except that when IBM first came around, Microsoft told them “Go talk to Gary Kildall over at DRI.” They were lucky that IBM came back to them, they were lucky that someone else had already written the CP/M workalike QDOS, they were lucky that he was willing to sell it to them, and they were lucky that he wasn’t at all a good negotiator.
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These things were not foresight.
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“Microsoft saw that graphical computing would be the next trend so they licensed Windows 1 from Apple.”
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Windows 1.0 was Microsoft dabbling in graphical computer environments, just like Xenix was their dabbling in Unix after Microsoft purchased a license for Version 7 Unix from AT&T in 1979.
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Windows was pre-announced in 1983, and not actually released until 1985. It took them 10 years, until 1995, before it was actually usable by most PC users as their main OS. That’s 10 years for them to to see that “graphical computing would be the next trend” and really get serious about it.
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Before then, the official party line taken up by MS-DOS users was to routinely disparage the Mac’s “WIMP” interface, and argue that to get “real work” done you had to a use a PC with its MS-DOS command-line interface (and 8.3 file names!).
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“The most truly innovative move that Microsoft may have made as a business was simply bundling most of its apps together into Office and using that to destroy the rest of the PC software industry”
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Even then, Lotus showed the way with Lotus 1-2-3 as an integrated software package. Again they were lucky that their competitors in office software, Lotus and WordPerfect, were so inept.
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Really, you’re leaving out Microsoft’s major “innovative” competitive move: The bundling deals for MS-DOS and later Windows with PC OEMs, and the terms of those deals that held back the competition like CP/M-86, DR-DOS, DESQview, GEM, OS/2, etc.
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You know… That “innovative” competitive move that eventually got them in trouble with the DoJ, got them slapped with a big injunction, and almost got the company broken apart.
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In the end it was never about Microsoft foreseeing anything and being a leader in any major technology. Their main advantage was having those PC OEM deals in their back pocket that allowed them the headroom to plow through and continually iterate over their copies of other people’s innovations until they were finally good enough for the market to accept.
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For someone who lived through all this stuff I’m surprised at your modern, rosy perspective of Microsoft of the 1980’s. Maybe you just don’t want to kick a man when he’s down?
Yes, I lived through that period. Heck, I was writing about it the entire time. And most of your criticisms I made at the time when others weren’t. If I were to write the column you want in this space this afternoon it would be 5000 words long and I have better things to do. So chill out, man. It’s a long trip we’re on here (more than a million words so far).
My comment was under 500 words and didn’t take all that long to write. (I lived through all this stuff, too, and all it took were a few quick Wikipedia lookups to nail down and match up the actual dates with my personal memories of the events.)
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See, what I like about reading your work is that you do have historical perspective to draw upon for these things. So it’s disappointing when you do a piece that’s more like something written by a relative newcomer who *didn’t* live through those times. Even you admit that you’d made the same, more accurate observations in what you’d written previously. So why the fluff now? It’s not like you’re writing for BusinessInsider or something. 😉
Lun, you seriously need to get things in perspective. I’ve followed Mr. Cringely’s work for 25+ years. He has written far more on Microsoft than any 5 other journalists you can name. Time has shown him to be very accurate and very visionary on the subject.
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Why a short column today? Why not. Microsoft is no longer the overwhelming force it once was. Do they really deserve a lengthy column. Does anyone really care?
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Mr. Balmer’s announcement was news worthy and Mr. Cringely gave it the attention it deserved, and some different perspectives that others did not.
His depth of knowledge and insight used in previous work is specifically why I was calling him out on the weaknesses in this particular blog post. He even said that in the past he’d made most of the same criticisms I made. So one could say that my perspectives are actually aligned with his, and it’s just that in this particular post he decided to forget or ignore his previous historic experience; perhaps in the interests of narrative. But then that’s the same criticism he’d just leveled in his previous post, at Ashton Kutcher’s Jobs film.
@Lun: “Mr. Balmer’s announcement was news worthy and Mr. Cringely gave it the attention it deserved, and some different perspectives that others did not.”
@LunEsex: Where were you earlier in the year when Bob was rolling out his retooled “Accidental Empires” ? Would have appreciated you perspective then…
@Bob: Whatever happened to the updated edition of Accidental Empires, anyway?
Well despite all the dissenters, I lament the slow, agonising demise of the PC and any company which championed the platform. My first encounter with Microsoft was version 2.11 of MS-DOS, a tweaked version of their OS that would run on my secondhand CCPM machine with its enormous 10MB BASF hard drive. It gave me access to a whole new library of easy-to-use software. Something not to be underestimated. Bob has written more eloquently than I ever could, in a myriad previous articles and posts and books about the history. Now that the product-line has evolved and diverged I think it would be a foolish person who wrote off Microsoft so easily. Bob doesn’t. Their resources and talent-base must be huge. It may well be that a new hand on the tiller is required to navigate through the tricky waters ahead but I’m sure they can find a way. It is hard to deny the majority of businesses still rely on desktop PCs despite all the shiny new gadgets out there. As the old song has it and maybe, humourously, appropriate: “Rock is dead but it won’t lie down”.
Agree !
Microsoft seemed to embrace Intel forever – The missing phone/tablet hardware was provided by ARM/RISK.
The Windows goose has slowed its egg production. The German Government Warns Key Entities Not To Use Windows 8 , because of a TPM chip – a grandchild NSA’s Clipper chip
RISC?
I’m certainly not the only one making the switch to Linux. None of the three major options are particularly good, but Linux, at least, offers numerous choices, is open source, and is free from the, “We’re just no longer doing it that way” mentality of management in the IT industry. For those of us who are simply tired of of the turmoil of this continuous paradigm shift thinking, Linux offers a string of islands far separated from the continents of asinine mismanagement and the control of the swill merchants.
Thanks to Scott McNeally who won the desktop from BG for all of us NOT to depend on him (BG) anymore !
“and is free from the, “We’re just no longer doing it that way” mentality”
Ha, wait until you get a load of Gnome 3.
Is that photo next to your name a preview from Gnome 3?
I can’t help but think that the problem for Microsoft right now is that they are primarily still a horizontal outfit geared for a commodity market. As a vertically oriented company, Apple has been able to innovate in ways Microsoft simply cannot or cannot do easily. You want to be horizontal when your business has become commoditized, but vertical during times of innovation.
They are taking baby steps with the Surface, but they are very late to the game. Their only ace in the hole is Office and it hasn’t been converted to multi-touch yet. And this is putting them in competition with their former OEM partners.
I’m having trouble seeing why Microsoft isn’t just an early stage Blackberry.
Once a company outgrows it’s founders the bean counters take over. That KILLS INNOVATION. Being cheap may improve the bottom line until your cash cow grows old, but you don’t see many cheap swashbucklers.
I’ve been working with Microsoft the last 15 years. IMO, the biggest problem is THEY CAN’T EXECUTE. Bean counters don’t listen to engineers, and can’t understand them even if they try.
Look at the last few versions of windows. There’s really very little change except tweaks in the gui. Rearrange a few menus, switch from icons to square panels, or move the start menu back and forth… that’s about it. Wow, look what we’ve got for you — a new paint job!!! Years of work, and that’s all they can do.
Same with office. They’ve got customers suckered into buying a whole new package every few years for very little change. When was the last time there was a feature that actually made it worthwhile to upgrade? Never in anyone’s memory, probably.
Steve Jobs was able to push aside the bean counters and give Apple new life. Steve Ballmer is throwing in the towel. His leaving will make very little difference. He and buddies Bill and Paul still have enough shares to control the board. Every major decision has always required their blessing, and still will.
Gentlemen, beyond all the criticism for the misbehavior of the MS products, let’s not forget that the PC world had been far more difficult in hands other than BG’s … Steve would had kept a tighter hand on the desktop, and the PC as we know it would had been therefore … more clunky ? or limited ? Could Mitch (K) had done his Lotus 123 easier on Steve’s desktop ? Could had we done all the tons of software that once run on BG’s desktop, run on Steve’s desktop ?
Bob ?
MSFT has moved from the Applications business into “Devices and Services”. For the most part, I think that’s true and they’re finally accepting that. However, I think they’re also divided internally (something they’re trying to solve). There isn’t one clear vision for the future of MSFT since it’s subdivided into disparately different markets and products!
They just “recently” got into the devices market. I don’t consider the XBOX a device, since it’s a whole other animal! It’s gotten them into the Entertainment and Platform business, things that only open up when you enter the Console market. The Entertainment business is a multi-billion dollar business on it’s own.
Saving MSFT includes embracing the XBOX department and realizing that this isn’t something they’re doing on the side… it’s now one of their 2 primary markets, as they’re really in the Entertainment and Services business where they also are toying with Devices.
They’ve taken on too many battles without an end-game in sight (other than simply entering into the market to compete). They’re fighting Google with Bing, Apple with WindowsPhone / Surface, various companies with MS Cloud Services and Sony with the XBOX. On top of that, there are many other areas MSFT is still fighting for markets that have (almost) died years ago! (thusly, the “end” of the PC market as everybody has come to know it).
As far as finding a successor for Ballmer… anybody who’s on the various “short lists” aren’t standing out. They’ve been in the industry, whatever industry they are singularly focused on, and have been stagnating. That’s why no names are coming to the front! They’re searching both “internally and externally” because they really are looking for someone who encompasses all aspects and has a vision and strategy for the future.
There IS someone out there who can take the reigns and make positive changes and steps in reforming MSFT… and that person is ME.
The best person for the task is someone picked from obscurity… someone without preconceived notions of how the industry/company “has” to work. The problem is, both MSFT and the media covering all this aren’t at all familiar with me. I don’t have a track record, simply because I haven’t been involved (life doesn’t always give some of us the opportunity to achieve and stand out.)
They need someone who is willing to take an intelligent look, choose a strategy and show the industry : This is how things CAN be done and we CAN make great products people get excited about!
They also need someone who can reorganize and create a new hierarchy, someone who knows how to redistribute and reallocate resources efficiently!
I can do all this for them, but I’m a nobody, living in the middle of nowhere, Texas. (Houston, to be exact).
We’ll see if they decide to pick me up for one of the “entry level” positions they’re currently hiring for. Once I’m in, I’ll have (at least) some access to help positively shape the future of MSFT. It’s too bad their hiring process takes forever-and-a-day without any notification on where you are in the process!
Of course, with the “Cringely Bump” maybe I’d start showing up on the industry radar!
You fancy writing a piece on me? You’re one of my favorite industry personalities after all!
Cool. You’ve got my vote, for what it’s worth, Jason. I like your thinking.
“Jason’s the man for the chair that Ballmer wrecked.”
Going to be hard to choose; shall we vote?
A) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcRwI-NLrhM&feature=youtu.be
B) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mRpgGWzDA
Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys! I’m serious about changing MSFT’s focus and public image, and I really think I’m the guy to do it! First things first, though. We’ve got a year (at least) until Ballmer steps down, so getting in there and learning as much as I can is priority #1. There is only so much I can discern about their strategies, organization and budgets from the outside. But thusfar, I’ve been on-the-money.
As far as Jason Chase VS Nick Selby goes, that’s a nice presentation he had. However, mine was done with just me and a crappy camera, done in 1 night (which included writing) and wasn’t meant to awe an audience, just get me into the 2nd stage of MSFT’s lengthy hiring process (of which, I’m still waiting to hear back… as well as all other applicants).
He’s something like 19. I’m 35. I’ve got the energy, the intelligence, and the age! Think Marissa Mayer (Yahoo CEO), but actually anchored in reality, more passionate, resourceful, efficient and with a greater vision (for XBOX & Microsoft!)
I’ve also had the struggles in life that the others haven’t (especially Ms. Mayer.) I haven’t had any resources (no money my entire life for school, tech, food), have been vying for survival for the past 10 years post divorce, and stuck 200 miles from the nearest “applicable” town for the industry! (and that town (Austin) didn’t really even become “applicable” until 2008-ish… unless I wanted to work for (shudder) Dell)
With no money, in ’08, I went back to college on solely government loans/pell grant (I couldn’t qualify for anything else being too old and too white)… where I wasn’t allowed to make any money else they’d take away my pell grant! I struggled to survive while blowing away all the classes to get my BA in Comm, with a minor in Global Business. I graduated with “honors” and all that. But, I could only afford to go to University of Houston, not Georgia Tech, Stanford, Harvard, or any other wonderfully popular (and expensive) schools… both due to money and due to location (UofH is the only college that I could afford, especially because my selection of colleges were limited to places that I qualified for “in-state tuition”… not to mention every other college costs twice what UofH costs… and UofH costs twice what it should!)
If I’m finally empowered via money and resources, I’ll be putting on even better presentations on a regular basis than Mr. Selby there. Plus, I know the industry and (especially) the XBOX… which I really believe is becoming HALF their market, whether or not MSFT want’s to admit that or not.
Long story short, I am trying to become “the man!” However, there’s still a long road (and a lot of exposure I have to get) before that becomes a remote possibility. After all, I’m just some dude from the middle of nowhere that talks like he knows everything. How else can I prove it if people don’t start listening and give me the chance?
Anyway, if you want to keep up with me, my website is linked to my name. (I suppose that’s how you found my video? I’ve got a few other video/audio examples of me on there … but none of them are extraordinary either… since they’re also produced by ONE guy with CRAPPY equipment at BREAKNECK speeds!
Everybody can keep up with me on Twitter : @KamenRiderZOR. I’ve got a facebook and linkedin linked off of my site, although I don’t regularly use those.
Also, if anybody wants to start pushing my name out there into industry circles (Cringe-ster, I’m looking at you), the more my name starts getting out there, the more of a chance someone might actually stop for a second and listen!
I’m not looking for a million-dollar salary. I would refuse to take that! What do I need with THAT much money? I’m a guy who lives well within my means (since my means are effectively zero). Doesn’t a person who has never had ANYTHING have a better grasp on how to reorganize and restructure a company to make more effective use of it’s resources to embrace opportunity?
Well, if they’re intelligent, they do… and I like to think I’m fairly intelligent. I’ve done nothing but prove that my entire life… and I’d like to think that me busting my ass for the past 6 years to get this degree (of which I could have tested out of on day-one) would also highlight that! Most of the college years were spent with me taking 5-6 classes (15-18 credit hours each semester including Japanese, which was a 5 credit hour class on its own), getting A’s… but then teaching myself what I really needed to know OUTSIDE of college. I went ahead and taught myself base-level Actionscript (flash) and C# (to publish an XboxLive Indie Game, which I have).
All of that while trying to survive on (many weeks) less than $3 per day for food.
What a sob-story, right? But it’s just further proof of my intensity, my commitment, and my tenacity!
Now, back to trying to figure out how to further promote myself without looking like a self-centered egomaniac!
And I really need to start using the . between paragraphs on this site. My prose reads a lot better when things are space appropriately!
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Cringely, your comment system needs improving! 😛
“BA in Comm, with a minor in Global Business.” Sounds like your interests and academic background are not in sci/tech. For example, in Ballmer’s case: “he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with an A.B. in applied mathematics and economics.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer . There are as many people interested in improving Microsoft as there are people who have Windows installed on their PC. Good luck.
“Sounds like your interests and academic background are not in sci/tech.” Simply determining that based on my degree does not establish that I am not a sci/tech guy. After all, Ballmer isn’t either. He’s in Mathematics and Economics. I graduated Summa Cum Laude (although the UH people wrote Magna on my degree, since they don’t even understand their own honors system… which is why they recently changed it).
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That crap doesn’t matter, nor does the degree. The degree doesn’t determine “what I’m good at”. After all, I did say that I could have gotten the degree day-one. The only reason I got it was so more people would start taking me (somewhat) seriously. It was a default choice, made after being in the system and figuring how long it would take (and how much money) to get out under various banners!
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Plus, you don’t NEED a sci/tech guy running the show. MSFT isn’t exclusively a SCI/TECH company. It started in applications! That’s software, not SCIENCE or TECHNOLOGY (hardware). MSFT didn’t start pioneering industries, but they do what they do well enough to get their marketshare!
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I’m the son of a Broadcast Engineer. I have friends who are software engineers at Boeing, do work for NASA, and one of my friends sold half-million dollar storage arrays for EMC and now writes for Ars Technica. I think I’ve got an extensive background in science and tech. Plus, I PROGRAM!
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I would have gotten my degree in physics, but in going back… it would have taken me longer (and money to support a DECENT living) in order to play catch-up on the math credits needed. I took Calculus (which I didn’t need for my degree). I had taken Cal back in high-school and was sleeping through it (3 maths higher than you needed to graduate) but thanks to the Texas Education System, I had to drop it to take P.E. since Texas didn’t recognize my Tae-Kwon-Do training as a P.E. credit simply because it wasn’t an Olympic Sport. I graduated in ’96, and it had already been announced that Tae-Kwon-Do would be an Olympic Sport in the 2000 Olympics. But, I still had to drop it to take P.E.
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Also, I don’t know if you know what Comm entails, but it’s Media Production (MSFT IS a media company now… they’ve been running MSN.com for how long? (and that’s nowhere near science or technology) ). Comm also entails PR, Marketing, and a slew of other things. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_studies
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I’m not defined by my degree. I have a wide range of skills and interests that merge seamlessly into MSFT’s already existing product lines, and their future direction.
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On top of all that, I bleed GAMES + distribution (half their industry from this point forward) and GAME THEORY. You’re telling me a life-long history of strategy ISN’T useful at all in the corporate world?
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Jobs said it himself in Cringely’s interview : “If you’re willing to… ask a lot of questions and work hard, you can learn business pretty fast. It’s not rocket science.”
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You don’t have to know every bit of every product to understand how to arrange the business and make it whole again. It’s not rocket science. But, what if you DID get someone in there who was capable of understanding rocket science? Now, that would be something!
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I AM a sci/tech guy. However, I’m also a hell-of-a-lot of other things!
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Yes, there are thousands of people who are looking to improve MSFT. I do think I’m uniquely qualified to bring MSFT out of darkness… and I think I encompass so much more than most other potential candidates will.
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I’m the guy who asks “why is this done this way?” and when I don’t get an answer that doesn’t satisfy my question, I continue to ask it.
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I’m the guy who will stand up and say “this seems wrong”, or “this could be better”, and am not afraid of losing my job. I’m not in life to just make it through the day, getting a paycheck and going home and forgetting.
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I’m in this to make a difference in the world. I’m in this to make a positive difference, not to just cut a profit.
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I’m here to see that things evolve and grow. Stagnation and trickle-down-technology are methods for venture capitalists, not visionaries.
… and I know there’s a double negative up there. I wish (like John at the bottom) we could edit posts. No matter how much you proof-read, something slips through! 😛
All I can say, so much for future contention that Ballmer was biding his time, leading Microsoft to be the next Berkshire-Hathaway – then again …. I think this is very fishy, Ballmer said he will step down once they find a replacement – what if Microsoft’s fortunes ( share price) improve in those interim months during the search – what if Steve takes credit for the upsurge – When Ballmer steps down, is turned out or dies, then I’ll believe it – who’s my fave choice for his replacement? Sheryl Sandberg might have vision to re-make and improve Microsoft’s fortunes … if the boys club of Silicon Valley would let her
For me there was first the Microsoft of MS-DOS which was a small successful company and then the Microsoft that launched Windows and undercut both WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 in price to destroy them.
In MS-DOS days Microsoft didn’t do applications and that meant Microsoft was part of the software technology business. After Windows, Microsoft priced Word and Excel at about one-third the competition and Microsoft became almost the entire software technology business.
At the time I admired the way Microsoft destroyed their competitors, but that mentality also destroyed Microsoft too. Windows became too self-absorbed, bloated and too much about developer convenience rather than new features for consumers. Netscape threw a breath of fresh air into Redmond, but hubris at Netscape doomed them too.
I’m typing this on my laptop (MacBook Air) so the mobile revolution in tablets and smartphones hasn’t completely eclipsed PCs, but clearly mobile technologies and perhaps wearables next, are the future. I could just as easily use an Ubuntu-based PC now as a Windows one.
Where Microsoft had some mobile presence, they are almost completely devoid in the cloud, which is where big companies of the future are and will be. The cloud is a requirement for all the tiny wearables. Microsoft has the brains and the money to get there, but they will be slogging at Google’s ass for some time to come and that won’t make their CEO’s job fun.
I predict Nokia CEO Stephan Elop won’t return to take the reins. The former COO could return for the slow death scenario of Microsoft sliding into oblivion, cost-reducing everything in sight and gaining profits for the first few years of his tenure, then a quick exit with nice reviews. The dark overlords on the board of directors will be wise to this, including the darkest overlord of all: Bill Gates.
I think a real asshole like Reed Hastings is what Microsoft needs. Someone to just relentlessly kick butt until something new is found. That is who will succeed Ballmer.
Scott Forstall
Don’t be so hard on poor Steve Ballmer. Think of everything he’s done for developers, developers, developers, developers (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Ballmer was dining out on previous success of Microsoft. The main being, as others have pointed out, OEM installed as the standard OS for PCs. And the standard office suite too.
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He lacked detail. He didn’t concentrate on the user experience and as such you had Vista followed by Windows 8. Searching of files in Windows 7 has gone back to command line based for a GUI; shocking. Then the office ribbon bar where you’ve got to try and figure out all those hieroglyphs.
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But worse he arrogantly ignored his customers and wouldn’t then stand up say “I’m sorry” and get it fixed. The last success was the Xbox 360, but only when the XBox One looked to be a sales disaster did they perform a hasty U-turn.
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Microsoft has to learn that Windows doesn’t fit everywhere either. A desktop OS doesn’t work in a phone, and a phone OS useless for PCs. PCs aren’t dead; they’re just transmogrifying. A new OS strategy is needed for the new way computers are being deployed. Different products need different OSs.
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Whoever takes over from Ballmer has to focus on the user experience and he has a lot of work to do. Importantly he’ll have to split the divisions of Microsoft around products again.
Agree. Steve Jobs said it to Bob Cringely in an interview: Gates has no style. And there is not the first time a MS products is a fiasco: dos 4.0 (loosing files!!!!), windows 1, … all the way up nowadays. Besides: why so much talking about this lucky-good-for-nothing of Ballmer ? What’s his merit ?
“Microsoft has to learn that Windows doesn’t fit everywhere either.”
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Indeed. If Apple and Google had been similarly fixated then the OS on iPhones would have looked like Mac OS and Android would have been just a browser window loading web pages. Instead iOS and Android are complete breaks with the past and together they’ve completely taken over mobile computing. (And then look at the relative lack of success of Chrome OS, which *is* just a browser window loading web pages.)
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What does Microsoft do instead? Sure, they create a new “tile world” interface for the Zune HD, then expand it for their new phone OS, but it’s years too late. Then they try to force that interface onto desktop Windows and Xbox, after the Zune HD was a flop and without even waiting to see if it’ll be successful on phones first. They’re still stuck with the same “Windows fits all” mindset; they just decided that this time the tail should wag the dog.
““Microsoft has to learn that Windows doesn’t fit everywhere either.”” Now you seem to be contradicting your own comment about the Windows and Office teams coming up with different GUIs.
“Now you seem to be contradicting your own comment about the Windows and Office teams coming up with different GUIs”
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I don’t think I am but please explain and I’ll try to clarify.
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If you think I’m against progress, I’m not. It’s whatever is done has to be an improvement on what was there. Not just mixing up where everything is like you’ve taken Scrabble and given the box a shake! As an example with IE they moved “History” to a tab within “Favourites”. Is that logical? I don’t think so and couldn’t find it via the menus. Icons have always been a way to speed up going through menus, but menus give the complete list. Once you’ve found the menu item you recognise the icon and take the short cut next time. There wasn’t that cheat-sheet for existing and experienced users; they had to use the Help system!
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If there is a contradiction then it’s searching of your own files within Windows 7 (might be with Vista but I skipped it, same with 8). In the search box you’re type your search term, that’s fine. What’s not fine is that you’ve then got to try and guess which command to type to limit to a file search (why would you want it to search your emails too?) and then for the specific type of file. Or even date. Those were easy GUI tic boxes and drop down menus in XP but it’s as if you’ve now dropped back to DOS.
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Then I found out that searching in Windows Live Mail and limiting the date range didn’t work. Both the Before and After options performing the same function and emails were returning from outside that range. Worked in XP, just now in 7. That’s a sign of poor programming and poor testing. The big things work brilliantly; but it’s the detail that’s missing.
All I meant was that Microsoft’s current attempt to put a similar GUI on phones, tablets, and phones with Windows 8, would be along the lines of making the Office GUI and the Windows GUI similar. So it seems strange to oppose one but not the other. Personally I like similar, if not identical GUIs, but that’s just me. But I fully agree with all your comments about the software bugs. These days Microsoft seems to be “reimagining” bugs instead of fixing them. But they can charge for new, reimagined, versions of software which they can’t do for just fixing bugs, so I understand.
Microsoft’s habit of bringing out devices that the hardware wasn’t yet ready to support seems a lot like its tendancy to rush things in its operating systems as well. Vista wasn’t ready and neither was Windows 8, but MS thought they were because a lot of time and money were spent on them.
Apple’s success was largely due to getting the timing right, as Bob says. They waited until batteries, touch screens, microprocessers and communications hardware had advanced enough so that their cost, performance, reliability and size were right for a mass market product. They didn’t have the luxury of throwing billions at their products and hoping for the best like Microsoft did.
Many, many people in the software industry made their living using Microsoft products. Still do. Love or hate him, Ballmer was a big part of that, so I am not going to criticize someone who put food on my table.
Honestly, I don’t understand why Windows doesn’t just fork some Linux distro and do what it does best, which is to a) provide nice front ends for users; b) provide driver support; and c) write top-notch developer tools.
Well, I doubt they could fork Linux (GPL would complicate for them), but why not fork BSD? I wonder if any other company has pulled that off?
-Brian
Sent from my iMac
I guess I’m missing something here, everyone keeps talking the demise of the PC, yet when I look out over a cube town in any office building I still see a PC on every desk. They have not stopped buying them, opting instead to give everyone a IPad or Tablet of some sort? I think all of those potential tools are great have a new Windows 8 phone myself that I really like but then I am part of the evil empire. I think all these extra tools are just more. I mean just because practically everyone carries a cell phone again in cube town there is still a IP phone with lots of functions and buttons that is used all the time too.
As for Microsoft’s miss steps I too lived through most of those, Milinium comes to mind. I think some of that is frankly the founders of the company. When I was a young IT guy, both programmer and admin. I started down so many blind alleys thinking this is the one to solve all my problems. Took up different technologies, used them for a while then realized it just wasn’t cutting it. Or frequently the industry moved away and took to off in an other direction. Now that I’m a grey beard I tend to think a while before I jump but jump I will given enough reason.
Everyone wants to tout how great Apple is, hey they make good products no doubt. Their store has a lot of excellent apps, but even there most of all of those apps go begging. We all tend to forget that the industry is still only really 30 years old. I see everywhere apps that need to be built and an awful lot of me-too apps that really are no improvement on what is already there. I think the future is very bright for this industry and for Microsoft. Despite everything we can’t exactly say Microsoft is an also ran?
The PC isn’t quite dead yet, but the PC’s market share certainly is in decline and will be for the foreseeable future. There are a lot of teenagers in my neighborhood, I talk to quite a few of them. Not a single one of these teens has a desktop in his/her bedroom. Almost all of them have a smart phones…either Apple or Android….most have a tablet/laptop, but, like I said, not a single desktop.
As things stand now, Google has the consumer market, MS has the biz market, and IBM had the gov market. MS certainly can survive as a profitable company, since business wouldn’t be giving up the PC any time soon, but the question is: Will MS be able to adjust to the new market reality?
For years, decades actually, General Motors refused to face reality. They continued buying market share long after it was obvious they were in a hole they couldn’t get out of. Will MS do the same?
“….most have a tablet/laptop, but, like I said, not a single desktop…” I’ve never owned a desktop either because a laptop is a PC just like a desktop. My first PC ran Windows 95. It was a Toshiba 720 CDT which I still use as a Win98 web server. Currently I use a umpc as my desktop when it’s docked.
Is a laptop a PC if it’s running Android? A significant number of the laptops I’m see these kids use are running Android.
It depends on who defines a PC.
“Recently, tablet PCs have been given operating systems normally used on phones, like Android or iOS. This gives them many of the same uses as a phone, but with more power and functionality.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer .
However, that is too all-encompassing for the marketing types who need to make comparisons between traditional PCs and the new stuff. I believe they define a PC as a device that includes an attached keyboard, but if the keyboard is removable, then it’s a tablet. Of course phones are another matter entirely. So I guess if you must make a distinction, it’s PC (attached keyboard), Tablet (removable keyboard including the on-screen types), and Phone.
But I’d also be will to bet that when and if they join Cube Town they will have a Windows PC on their desk of some sort that will be connected to a Windows Server?
I don’t care what happens to Steve Ballmer or Microsoft. As long as there is a free market, some person or group will come up with whatever the market demands. Or they will produce something that will create a new demand in the marketplace. This assumes, of course, that the government doesn’t destroy the ability of people to satisfy their needs and desires.
As a student in those years. What I recall was Microsoft was the first company to “sell software” and invent “shrinkwrap”.
Until they came along software was “free” and often printed in books, given away, or you got a big 5.25 inch floppy disk in the back of a book.
It was the concept of paying for a knowledge worker’s work, and experience programmers “art” that Bill Gates championed.
And that was directly at odds with Steve Jobs, Woz and Apple. They took up the opinion, perhaps driven by Woz that its the “engineering” you should be paying for.. and something more tangible like an Apple II you could physically touch and feel as a good. In fact they added the engineering as a component, most people were buying the hardware.. and that’s how they were selling it.
Apple fought tooth and nail to “not” start the App store and brought iTunes to life loathing it.. fearing it would weigh down their engineering and support staff. So if anything their brilliance in money making was imposed upon them by the models that Microsoft built.
Microsoft still makes money from “nothing” and it making more of it from “less” nothing as even shrinkwrap and delivery systems have become less and cheaper.
Amazon actually capitalizes on the Microsoft model.
Google carries the Microsoft model even further to charge Advertisers real estate on end users web pages seeking “free” web searches.
And let us not forget that Apple, Amazon and Google would have no business at all, even today, if billions of computers were not running Microsoft operating systems. Suppose they took a strategic decision and Microsoft were to decide not to use DNS any more? All name queries were funneled exclusively through Microsoft XNA – Secure DNA and Search? And it were the default.. users had the choice of using an old DNS option, but had to manually load it instead when installing the TCP stack.
Microsoft, Apple, and other companies all charge for their work. Some specialize in software, some in services, and some in hardware. It’s not necessarily a Microsoft model so much as an economic model.
.. with hindsight it can appear that way. But Netscape was first truly knowledge based “product” to challenge Microsoft. When Microsoft and Netscape were dueling it out the concept was brand new. Google in a way is “Netscape” reborn.. under the protection of the anti-trust distractions. Google would have probably suffered the same fate as Netscape if Microsoft had started earlier, and might have really been challenged if the Yahoo acquisition had gone through.
I really wish I could re-edit my previous post for spelling. But the ideas are there. Alternative DNS systems have been suggested for security and search for nationalist reasons and others over the years. Even the tsr packet driver and Trumpet winsock proceeded the official Windows 3.11 Wolverine TCP/IP stack. The reason things like Tor and VPN systems haven’t caught on is simply because what we have is good enough, the defaults work.. but they can shift.. if a company with enough customers decides to release an enhancement in an update. You could even have an NSA “opt-in” DNS option, deliberately send all your traffic through a reverse Tor through the NSA for storage and indexing.. then there would be no presumption of privacy.. it would be very public and understood. I kind of wonder at what level anti-trust could win.. if end users chose that option.. to divert their traffic through Microsoft sponsored NSA routers. DNS involves many levels and algorithms for load sharing and redudnacy.. Round Robbin, Weighted Averages, Preferential Order, Search Weighted Order. In a way Google is a tertiary DNS service based on pictures and user session preference.
These comments sure do miss a lot.
Ballmer was in an impossible position. Chairman Bill jumped ship at precisely the right time. (“Always leave them wanting more.”) Exponential growth ends with a crash, and the exponential growth of the business desktop microcomputer is now “mature”. You can sell replacements and occasional upgrades, but you can’t sell lots and lots more, ever again. Bill got out just in time.
“The ‘smart phone’ is the first second-generation personal computer.” The iPhone is the first personal computer to have no VisiCalc DNA. It was the last Herculean accomplishment of the old IBM to take an existing generic term, “personal computer” and capitalize it into a brand name, “IBM Personal Computer”. It is impossible to have contact with other people without seeing that “smart phones” serve the computing needs and desires of a heck of a lot of people. (And it was the last Herculean accomplishment of Chairman Steve to crack the mental monopoly of the WIMP interface. 40 year old computer technology?!?!? Gag me with a clay tablet.)
So Microsoft’s dominance of the universe ended when it turned out there could be another galaxy besides the one they still own . . .
Hi All,
Comments are now editable.
It is not like Apple only had successes in pen-computing. Anyone remember the Newton? This was at a time that Apple didn’t have Steve Jobs…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_%28platform%29
To me it all comes down to business practices and ignored business trends: MSFT threw the baby out with the bathwater in its desire to protect their OS business. The PC business isn’t growing like it used to due to saturation and much longer replacement cycles.
The longer replacement cycles and the reality that the vast majority of people who can afford to by a windows PC have one (no or less growth from developing markets). People aren’t buying new copies of Office and Windows. Who needs the features of the new version of Office and Windows? I don’t. People are buying and upgrading less. It is that simple. MSFTs response is to try to increase prices through a renting software gimmick targeted at stupid CIOs (and they have found some).
Regarding business practices, MSFT has long ago stopped being a software company in its efforts to constantly protect windows. Had the Justice department broken them up (Had Bush not been elected), they would have had to spin off thier software business from their OS business and that would be a great business today. They would have ported Office to the other platforms (Unix, Linux, IOS, etc.) and would have remained dominant. Their OS business would have had to be more aggressive in providing OSs to set top boxes, smart phones, tablets, etc. Their DBMS would have had a great deal of more footprint in the enterprise.
Now their “strategy” to go into services and devices is another joke. After All, there is such a huge unmet demand in the marketplace for services and devices that I am sure that they can launch from a standing start and be a player there.
MSFTs problem is a cultural problem. They have a culture of too many cooks spoil the broth and a culture of being a cut-throat player so that few other companies want to partner with them.
In the old days I would annually submit my prediction to Bob’s Beginning Of The Year prediction columns that Microsoft would adopt LINUX and stick the WinGui on it and call it Windows, saving all of that operating system support and development expense. They still may do it with Android on the devices of the future.
The biggest sign that the PC era is closing is that Point Of Sale (POS) systems (i.e. “smart cash registers”) are increasingly iPad based. Even my local golf course has an iPad POS in the bar!
This trend is continuing everywhere, even places the PC never made inroads. Hyundai is bundling iPads loaded with the owner manuals in their flagship lines. Hotels are placing iPads in rooms to control TV, temp, room service etc. American Airlines hands out Android tablets loaded with a couple of dozen movies and Bose headphones in business class on intercontinential flights. Airlines are getting ride of 35 pound pilot bags filled with manuals and charts in favor of a pre-loaded iPad that contains all of it. The examples go on with new ones almost daily.
The Pen PC was a flop, but so was the Apple Newton (except in hospitals where docs loved them). But when hardware caught up to software ideas Apple brought out the iPhone/iPod Touch and then the iPad and changed the technology market. Balmer et al missed that just as they missed the internet. (Remember Bill Gates’ keynote speeches calling it a fad at ComDEX and then having to toss billions at IE to catch up?)
Microsoft has tons of smart people in their Redmond campus, but they lack creative people, people who see things that others do not see. That was Steve Jobs’ gift and it created and then re-created Apple. He was a true leader. Folks wonder if Apple can continue without him and still have that creative edge. Nobody wonders about Microsoft continuing without Gates or Ballmer. They were great managers, but not the kind of creative leaders who create a market. (The Office bundle being the one exception, and that was a marketing move, not a technology move.)
If there is such a creative force within Microsoft who just has not been allowed to voice his/her own ideas because of top management, that person could lead Microsoft to new heights. Maybe that person is outside of the company. The question is: “will the Microsoft Board even look for such a person, let alone higher them as CEO?”
The examples you gave of special purpose devices replacing computers is valid but some of those devices never would have been done at all with the PCs of today, so they are a new market. I find it interesting that while many uses of a computer have been replaced by special purpose devices, there is at least one special purpose device that has been replaced by a more general purpose smartphone, the watch. Some day, as tech progresses further, we may be back to PCs doing everything, simply by docking your Mac or Windows PC/phone so you can use a large keyboard and display, like the Ubuntu Edge.
Ballmer is no fool. He cannot dump his shares while at the helm. Although he was pushed, he’s presumably realised that the horizon is not so rosy no matter who is in control. He has carefully steered and overly protected Microsofts cash cow in OS/Office software and done Microsoft shareholders proud, but he knows that the bottom is about to fall out of that market, and with it Microsoft’s share price. Conventional software pricing will be in free fall soon as consumers and companies see alternatives such as ad-supported (Android/Chrome), hardware subsidized (Apple) or micro payment (AppStore) software. Microsoft will adapt and evolve but the lucrative licensing model will slowly evaporate as the sun rises over the old model so carefully constructed by Gates and Ballmer. It was a good run!
Watch him sell Windows 1.0
As Seen On TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGvHNNOLnCk
[…] it was two guys (Jobs and Wozniak) soldering circuit boards together in a garage. In a post called Microsoft, Ballmer and the end of the PC era Robert X Cringely observes […]
I think PC Era never end, but it will evoluting to become more sophisticated
PC is already not widely used but still useful for servers and play the game the high quality HD. while many people choose a tablet that is lightweight and can be taken anywhere.