“Microsoft’s stock price says it’s in poor shape and while the new direction makes sense, it would already be doing much better if it had listened to what Apple’s taught it over the decades,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “Here are a few lessons it should have learned.”
6 Apple lessons Microsoft never learned:
• Inspiration through good taste
• Quality not quantity
• Complexity costs
• Good products sell themselves
• Sexy simplicity
• Empowerment
Each of the 6 points above discussed further in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The six lessons are fine, but Microsoft’s stock price is actually at a 14-year high currently, reflecting the departure of a clueless buffoon along with some investors’ collective delusion that a Microsoft insider fluent only in corporatese is going to magically repair the hull that Ballmer gashed from stem to stern and miraculously salvage the sinking S.S. Microtanic.
Add another one to the list – HYBRIDS DON’T WORK!!!
Not yet. When Apple makes one it will work. I give it 18 months or so. Surely they have been experimenting with one.
More likely they’ve been experimenting with dozens, learning what works and what doesn’t, to come up with aspects that work/don’t work. Then, they can actually make the one that does. 🙂
The customer is not always right.
– particularly when he/she has no view of the bigger picture.
The customer is never right…Like Henry Ford said “If I asked the customer what they wanted, they would have just asked for faster horses” 🙂
Henry Ford said, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”
Sexy simplicity.
And a great product for the time.
And it wasn’t Zune brown.
How about “Copying innovation is NOT innovation?”
Hilarious list – like Microscum could ever learn such lessons.
I abhor Microsoft, and their adherents. Despite having nothing to do with the—past, present or future, I resent the impact they’ve had on my life and I truly await the day they’re gone. Sorta like Islamic terrorists.
That’s about the size of it. Some companies like Microsoft should never have existed bringing more misery than delight. Plus why should such tech CEO dolts dictate to the rest of humanity their poor choices, lack of insight and clueless vision? That should be a privileged position for the truly worthy and not just some jackass by a twist of fate benefit of a college dorm assignment.
Agreed. Dustbin of history and whatnot.
Don’t put the sales-guy in charge.
Or the bean counters.
That thing about putting the sales guy in charge. I always find that funny, because Steve Jobs was one amazing salesman.
I think Steve has more of a innovator status than salesman, but yes he knows how to sell his products. i think one of the best ever…
Jobs was as brilliant at marketing as he was about all things he was passionate about. I never saw him as a “sales” guy.
Gates on the other hand, was the alpha “sales guy”. The massive con-job he’d did to IBM with DOS and subsequent cons of Apple and other competitors (raping & pillaging others creations) created extraordinary wealth for him and his buddies.
Steve Jobs had vision and passion
Bill Gates has greed and narcissism
Any culture will follow the path of its leaders. This is even more pronounced in corporate culture.
Apple is what is because built it this way. He said that Apple itself was his greatest achievement. He threw everything he had into creating a company that would last and continue to make our world better.
Microsoft is where it is today because Gates and Balmer’s vision was to generate money first above all else. Quality and simplicity drowned under corporate bloat and complexity.
It’s no wonder they are a company in total confusion and panic.
Advice Nº 8 (from me): Make vacuum cleaners. It’s simply in your DNA to produce things that suck.
Oldie but a classic 😎
Amen to that …