“For anyone that has ever worked for a failing company wandering over to http://minimsft.blogspot.com will be a bad trip down memory lane. It showcases the deep disappointment Microsoft employees are feeling as a result of the Vista slip and the apparent lack of consequences for those in power that, they feel, should have prevented it. A lot of new and potential employees are apparently posting as well showing their increasing concerns with working for a company so apparently dysfunctional,” Rob Enderle writes for Technology Pundits. “I think a lot of us have been there, but how do you correct a problem like this?”
Enderle writes, “The symptom of the problem is Windows Vista is late but what is the cause? The first step should be to accurately analyze the problem. If this isn’t done by people who are both qualified in the analysis and trustworthy the result will be garbage. Based on this forum my guess the cause of the problem is one or more of the following.”
• Unqualified employees and managers
• Excessive Bureaucracy
• Intelligence
• Trust
“If one of these is a Silver Bullet it is Trust,” Enderle writes. “For Microsoft, Open Source is a statement on how much the company, and Industry, is distrusted. Looking at the problems with the US, the EU, and Korea (among others) you can easily see they are largely founded in distrust as well. Even this blog that formed the foundation for this piece shows a dramatic lack of trust inside Microsoft. Honestly if you can’t trust your employees, managers, partners, vendors, and customers I can’t help but ask why you think what you are doing, regardless of whether that is building cars, TVs, or software, is what you should be doing.”
Full article here.
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MS should buy Be, inc’s IP and build Windows ZP from that. That’d show Apple!
Spot on Big Al. This article would have more credibility if it came from anyone other than the Fudmeister (with the possible exception of Thurrott or Dvorak).
I do think the question of trust is an interesting angle though. Would you trust Ballmer with anything? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw a chair.
Would anyone trust Bill Gates? Look at the history of MS. He has screwed partners and enemies alike. If you were working for him, would you trust him?
MDN word : one
Trust no one.
The advantage Apple had in recovering from the Copeland fiasco is that Apple was willing to bite the bullet, shift gears, and drop support for older software/systems (if not immediately, then eventually). Heck, they weren’t even going to have a Classic environment initially, until they realized that they wouldn’t sell as many new Macs if people couldn’t run Classic apps while waiting for software updates/replacements.
Microsoft’s biggest problem is that they refuse to cut off the legacy PCs. The irony is that such a change would force a lot of companies to upgrade systems, software, etc., and probably make Microsoft even more money on new versions of Outlook, Office, etc.
“Excessive Bureaucracy” should have been listed three times!
We have all already commented inteeligently on this stuff; why do we care what coçksm00ch Enderle has to say? I read his commentary above and it adds NOTHING to this story. MDN, please continue to preface your links to discussions of his pointless scribblings with Enderle: Yada, yada… so that I may know not to go there. Thank you for you support.
Intelligently
There’s a little part of my brain that keeps softly saying:
Steve has a plan. He’s demonstrated it twice already and few people seem to recognize the potential for it happening a third time.
1. Steve builds NeXT into a viable software platform with a state of the art OS product. Then he sells this to Apple at a time when it is sorely needed and saves Apple. Steve and NeXT take over Apple.
2. Steve build Pixar into a viable animated movie house with a state of the art movie product. Then he sells this to Disney at a time when it is sorely needed and saves Disney. Steve and Pixar take over Disney.
3. Steve rebuilds Apple into a viable hardware and software platform (again) with a state of the art OS and cutting edge hardware products. He even migrates the OS and hardware to another chipset used by the other computing companies. He then sells the computer side of Apple to Microsoft at a time when it is sorely needed and saves Microsoft. Steve and Apple Computers take over Microsoft.
Steve and the new Apple Entertainment continue to produce the iPod and other media related business products.
Seems to fit, doesn’t it? Or perhaps my medication is overdue….
Back on the meds.
Stronger Meds
SirROM,
That’s an interesting idea, but the biggest reason why that couldn’t happen is the same reason (one of many reasons actually) that MS is having so much trouble coming out with a quality product in their next OS – Legacy.
The size of their customer base forces them to keep all that old Windows garbage intact so that the world doesn’t come to a screeching halt. As much as I despise the company and their corporate culture (or lack thereof), I recognize that they must surely have some talented people there who are capable of innovation. It sounds like they have some serious management issues but even if they didn’t, I don’t think they’d be capable of coming up with something really great because they’re tied so tightly to 20+ year old technology. To truly innovate, they need to step away from that, but their enormous customer and developer base won’t let them. It would also stop them from buying Apple and building off the Mac OS.
ndelc,
That’s where I think the beauty of this idea comes from. If they “bought” Mac OS X and brought Steve on board (much like Disney), they could turn this OS problem over to the “Apple department” and tell the world that within 2 years the OS would be changing. This would give developers a chance to modify their programs (made easier by the switch of Mac OS X to Intel) and they would likely be relieved to know they would be getting a stable, virus-free OS. In addition, Steve would unveil the famous “red box” virtualization layer using the new Intel chips that would be available to run current Windows XP programs unhindered while the remainder of the developers made the transtion. I think Microsoft is either too lazy (bloated from within) and doesn’t feel the need to innovate with such a dominant market position, or they are just too afraid or overwhelmed by the necessary task they must eventually face. Either way, buying the Mac OS would bring everything into harmony and Microsoft wouldn’t have to worry about losing market share to Apple during the transition. I honestly think that Microsoft’s customers would be excited for the first time in years about such a transition if they had an idea of what they would be getting in return.
I enjoyed reading your thoughful comments and getting a chance to discuss this idea!
Trust? Naah, more likely the same old culture of trying to break or change things to “own” them, plus an incredible feature-greediness that includes backward-compatibility and more secure back doors to the company’s black ops room [aka the MW: “hell”].
Dunno why that makes me laugh.
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