“Microsoft’s original audacious vision was a computer on every desk. (Importantly, that vision later became corrupted and transformed into ‘Windows’ on every desk.) By the turn of the century, Microsoft had, for all intents and purposes, accomplished their mission. Now what?” John Kirk writes for Tech.pinions. “‘A company that feels it has reached its goal will quickly stagnate and lose its vitality.’ ~ Ingvar Kamprad.”
“Steve Ballmer has often said his goal was to make money. And he did. But making money is the means, not the end,” Kirk writes. “‘Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.’ ~ Ayn Rand… If a company values profits more than its vision, it will first lose its vision and then, ironically, it will lose its profits too. Money is an excellent servant but it is a terrible master.”
“Microsoft desperately tried to get into phones, tablets, watches and TVs but they missed and they missed badly. This is where their subtle shift from ‘a computer running a Microsoft operating system on every desk’ to ‘a computer running Windows on every desk’ came back to haunt them,” Kirk writes. “Rather than try to create an operating system right for the various emerging form factors, Microsoft insisted — over and over and over again — on trying to shoehorn Windows onto every form factor. The results were disastrous… The recipe that made Microsoft dominant is not the recipe that will make them relevant again. Say goodbye to Microsoft.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Buh-bye, tasteless wannabes!
As we have always said, even as many short-sightedly waved (and continue to wave) the white flag, the war is not over. And, yes, we shall prevail… No company is invincible. Not even Microsoft. – MacDailyNews Take, January 10, 2005
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Bye bye.
…and buy bonds.
Good-Bye… But AOL can say it better than I…
Microsoft should, and eventually will, produce a Microsoft-branded desktop to keep the dream alive.
If “everyone” is migrating to mobile, then it’s incumbent on Redmond to take the lead and what better way than to reinvent the desktop?
If all you do is develop an operating system that does not power today’s Macintosh, then you had better get busy and make a computer!
Apple’s Mac is at or near 10-percent now and I don’t see that number shrinking at all. It will never eclipse the PC market, there’s not enough time, but there is still plenty of time for Microsoft to reinvent themselves.
But what if MS does go under, and Windows gets discontinued because of this? Will the PC vendors go onto something else, like, maybe Ubuntu? Or will they, too, go belly up?
I don’t think Windows should become exclusive to a Microsoft-branded computer. HP and Dell, et. al., would be competitors for sure but it’s not like they would abandon Windows immediately.
As was suggested by another, maybe they become exclusive to enterprise first before introducing a consumer version.
Steve Jobs told us the reason Macintosh was successful was because Apple made the OS and the hardware.
Why can’t Bill Gates see that? Who was he fooling with his strategy to create a Catch-22 between themselves and the people who make the hardware?
The PC world’s transition to 64-bit was strongly indicative of the problems Microsoft created for themselves.
But it’s more than that. Windows, even the latest version, has a terrible (!) user experience.
Yesterday, I assisted a competent website developer to set up an FTP app, SSH keys, connect to a server, and download some files. What would’ve taken 5 minutes on a Mac took over an hour due to the need for multiple app installations, cumbersome steps and a confusing interaction which the computer. That last part was my fault because I kept trying to point to things on his screen and touching it, and it was responding to my touch! So annoying. I was aghast at the experience, but we got it working. Then he got home and it wasn’t working anymore. Windows…. for those that love pain.
Tell me about it. I tried to help a client that had a laptop running Windows 8. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I ever had with a computer. Without a doubt, it is the worst, second to none operating system ever foisted upon the user community. How Microsoft could believe they had a winner, is beyond belief.
A trained monkey could have done a better job.
But it’s more than that. Windows, even the latest version, has a terrible (!) user experience.
No one is denying that, but apparently I’ve left the door open for yet one more anecdotal story that only proves my point.
You’re conveniently overlooking my notion of Microsoft building a desktop PC that works better on one of their machines.
Apple Computer, Inc. was in a similar situation in 1997, only they had no OS and sold beige pizza boxes. Microsoft has a marginal OS and no boxes.
Or will they, too, go belly up?
You mean like Compaq, Packard Bell, IBM desktops, eMachines, Tandy?
The list is long and I’ve no doubt Microsoft hastened their demise by rolling out one disaster OS after another, causing them all to falter in business.
You don’t have to be smart to realize Microsoft isn’t going anywhere soon. They’re so entrenched in society and the civil and federal governments have nowhere to turn.
The VA isn’t going to jump off of Windows XP Pro to Macintosh. They’ll upgrade the hardware and network to accommodate Win7 or 8.
It will never eclipse the PC market
I disagree. I believe that as the iPad guts the desktop computer market, the Mac will be the last PC standing, since it’s what we need to develop iPad applications.
-jcr
So you’re saying no one will ever develop iPad apps using a PC? Or that the iPad will forever be dependent on a desktop?
Your belief creates an interesting dichotomy; the iPad is dependent on the desktop, but the reverse can’t be said for the desktop.
I won’t live to see a future where the PC will lose its appeal. In fact, I forsee the PC benefiting immensely from the advances made in mobile technology, which will foster innovation on the PC front.
I see the power of the desktop encapsulated in something the size of a deck of cards.
The question is, who will be there first, the PC or the Mac?
The Mac mini is already approaching that size. Show me a well-known and equally-capable PC that has the same form factor as the mini.
Or the iMac, which really is just a screen – unless you want to project something, it isn’t going to be much less than that.
The iMac is a laptop with a pedestal and detachable keyboard.
The mini needs to evolve and take on a greater role in the home. Add a tuner, Airport, and Time Capsule into one package similar to the Mac Pro.
Again, the Macintosh is second to none. It’s in Apple’s DNA to shrink their products. Woz imbued Apple with principle of reworking products to make them smaller and faster.
Microsoft has no one in Redmond who talks of designing the PC for the desktop manufacturers. They live in a Catch-22 world.
Don’t ask me for a comparable experience in the PC to the Mac. I’ve never owned a PC, nor do I patiently await the arrival of the “Mac killer”, but I believe in the Market. I believe that without a Microsoft, there is no Apple. Well, at least until the mobile revolution.
When is Microsoft going to get serious about hardware? They keep dragging out rebranded product made by their partners, that subsequently fails in the market.
Alan Kay was right and Apple’s vertical market is proof.
I see MS rebranding themselves as strictly an enterprise focused company.
They are done in the consumer market with the exception of the Xbox.
Even enterprise has its limits. Companies are not migrating to Windows 8. The cost in lost productivity will make them consider alternatives. Apple is the most likely beneficiary. While Windows has gotten to the point of being unusable, Mac OS is still the leader in intuitiveness, ease of use and productivity.
There’s nothing weird about OS X, Windows 8 on the other hand is totally weird to the point of making it useless.
Apple is the most likely beneficiary.
I don’t see it and neither does Wall Street. Microsoft is entrenched. They still own 90-percent of the desktop using world.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, MS can cut their entire headquarters down to a receptionist and someone with signature authority and Windows will live on for some time to come. Its momentum is the millions of “Windows-Only” IT pros, globally, that will be able to keep it running in business almost indefinitely into the future. (This fact is already in progress.) The slowing adoption of new iterations of MS OS does not do much to slow the continued purchase of hardware that depends on earlier Windows infrastructures.
Personally I’m beyond fedup with the Windows dogma, but Apple will always need real competition otherwise we just get another MS in the long run. I still envision a world with a multiplicity of competing OS environments, more Apple-level hardware development and gobs of application development to go along with all of it, and, a network environment that enables free-flowing document and project sharing across all platforms. Did Phillip K. Dick, by any chance, leave a story concept that hasn’t been discovered yet, that shows us, (the human race) how this might be accomplished?
Microsoft has been inside every computer on earth, except their own. Xbox aside, I wonder why the never had the balls to produce a desktop to work hand in glove with Windows?
Partner backlash? Perhaps, but desperate times calls for desperate measures, right Sony?
I just don’t get all the Sony love here. They made Windows PCs and they make Android phones. I will admit, the Xperia series are good phones for being Android, but do people here really treat them like the Apple of the East?
I still hate them because of the root kit I got installed by just playing a CD on my Windows machine. I’ll never buy any Sony again.
but do people here really treat them like the Apple of the East?
We did. Steve Jobs did. He admired the CEO of Sony for years. Celebrated their innovation and design acumen.
But those days are over. Sony needs to die so it can be reborn.
Dies and is reborn? Let’s hope it’s as a phoenix and not as a flesh eating zombie.
Or Godzilla.
You maybe to young to remember but Sony was once the cutting edge in consumer electronics. They still are in TV/video production. They gave us the first popular transistor radios (I still have a radio from about 1965 – it still works and sounds better than most portable radios today), the Walkman the first personal sound device and arguably the inspiration for the iPod, the handy cam the first consumer video recording device, the trinitron TV that gave decent colour and remained aligned over time, the first CD players, the diskman etc. They dominated the broadcast production camera area, gave us the first CCD cameras and still lead here, they brought cassette tape based recording and editing to TV with Beta, BetaSp, and then DigiBeta and HDCam, they came to dominate TV audio in mics and radio links, battery technology and many other areas too numerous to list here. It is true that they made some major blunders, and it is interesting to note that they faltered when they mixed the conflicting needs of a content owner / provider with those of a tech innovator. The root kit thing is a perfect example of IP lawyers interfering with tech development. Same with mini disk, Betamax, Blueray and oddly iPod. Sony never got over the fact that they didn’t invent the iPod. It was their’s for the taking but they were deeply involved with IP protection after the acquisition of Columbia and BMG and lost the focus. Greed killed the innovation. There is a tremendous lesson here for Apple and the content providers. Disruptive innovation will always lead and along the way will break many business models, including your own. Adapt or you will surely fail – eventually. SJ understood this completely, TC and Sir Jony carry this forward, but I bet the day Apple lets a lawyer into the inner creative sanctum will be the day the apple starts to rot. Not soon I hope.. The Dr.
Mr. Kirk has some good points, but quoting Ayn Rand takes away any credibility.
There are certainly a lot of people quoting her who are not doing her reputation any favors.
There seem to be a lot of Ayn Rand “fans” who think she was pro greed, Gordon Gecko style, when in fact she was pro liberty, fairness and virtue. Her characters famously turn away from riches in Atlas Shrugged in order to maintain their integrity. Her characters were also inventors of valuable things, not pirates of finance.
Some people also seem to interpret her as pro jungle-captalism, but one of the main points of her philosophy was that a bias towards corporations or the rich was wasteful and evil. She was staunchly pro level-playing-field for even the poorest and believed in competition by the merits of what people produced, not on back room deals or non-value creating competitive strategies.
Kudos, Nevermark. Finally someone cuts thru the Ayn Rand alarmism, and sees the part of her credo where there is nobility in creation, personal responsibility and invention. Give me an inventor or builder over an arbitrageur any day. Creators vs rapists..
Yes, being ‘anti’ is little more than taking a complex person and reducing her to a political paper doll
So, Apple’s iOS and OSX are safe from the Heartbleed SSL attack on their products. Only where we surf to and store our data. I am assuming that this attack is another open door in Microsoft’s Windows.
With all those holes and open doors in Microsoft’s products, the NSA will hate to see them die off.
Supposedly MS does not have Heartbleed
It’s not as simple as that. The Windows version of PHP was vulnerable, so any Windows-based severs running PHP would’ve potentially had issues, and there’s plenty of those. The core Windows software may not have been affected (different version of OpenSSL in use? different SSL library?), but there’s plenty of software installations that could’ve been affected.
That is what happens when you put the sales guy in charge – Many companies have failed once they got to the point of the sales guy being in change – they have no vision only care about numbers and sales and typically know very little about the crap they are selling.
They won’t disappear completely, but they’ll become more like IBM, a server and services company distanced from consumers.
There were some great quotes in that article. Certainly it’s nice to put brilliant people’s quotes in the mix with Microsoft. When it comes to Steve “developers, developers, developers monkey boy” Balmer it’s probably appropriate to put in a quote with someone of the same level of integrity and intellect so that he can relate.
”Money trumps peace.” — George W Bush, Feb. 14, 2007
k ..A ….r ……….M a
First of all, this is not “karma”.
If you think it is then you don’t understand the concept.
Second, Apple will NEVER be a serious threat to M$ as long as they go for the mid/high end.
Wishing M$ out of existence is silly.
There is room for both.
firstly, I didn’t understand a thing you said, except, for and secondly, that thing about them both being in a room or something. 😆
“windows! Windows! Windows!!”
– Steve Ballmer exclamation from a speech
Such vision. No wonder he was given a home game and thanked for playing.
They made one right choice by making office for the iPad. Let us see if this continues. If not, bye bye Microsoft.
This user won’t rent software.
But enough will and it will be the difference between their productivity and yours.
It’s nice to have choices, even if the alternative is not your cup of tea.
Apple said it too. You can’t shoehorn a desktop operating system into a mobile platform. Idiot anal-ists keep saying Apple will replace IOS with OSX on the iPhone. Well guess what, it’s NOT going to happen. Apple will not make the mistake Microsoft did because in developing IOS they knew it wasn’t a viable option to begin with. They also knew that forcing Flash to work on the mobile platform was also not going to work. Microsofts other big failure was forcing desktop users of Windows 8 to use the touch interface before getting to the desktop interface. Why?
If I don’t have a touch interface why would I want that on my desktop? This should have been a common sense thing but I think Balmer lost his 10 years ago and forced it with Windows 8.
Now it’s the opposite. Apple must shove iOS into desktop computers because it’s so popular.
It’s like everybody see’s the trainwreck of Windows 8, but Apple must do the same thing, just ‘because’
Gross, why did they have to quote that Russian pos?
Parting is such sweet sorrow. Not.
Microcruft
Our code. Your consternation.
And neither is Apple
>Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver
Is this the same Ayn Rand that died penniless after living a decade or so on social security? I guess if you choose to follow her financial advice perhaps you can too.
Where are they going? MSFT is just fine and will be a player for a long time to come. Apple is starting to feel the effects of continued growth to. Very hard to rule the roost forever.
Sorry everyone, but no-one more than me wants to see the back of Windows, but it’s here for the foreseeable future
No IT department will buy proprietary, single supplier hardware for their company – proprietary software however they are quite happy with.
Commodity hardware allows the bean counters to assure investors that they are not ‘wasting money’ and proprietary software keeps things nice and stagnant for IT support to manage.
It’s not Windows that’s the problem, it’s the ‘locked-in’ services that support it. .net, sharepoint, exchange, xdirect extensions etc, these services are Windows dependant, and companies are cemented up to the knees in them.
This isn’t going to change, even if Ronald Macdonald was in charge of Microsoft, IT pros will always but Mucrosoft.
Funny though. Microsoft had $89 Billion in cash reserves and while many will find all the bad in Microsoft, it still is a dominate marketshare owner in the mid size to enterprise business world. They have a long future ahead of them.
Sorry guys but MS locked in business will continue so. I myself have had to buy a windows box because of business clients. They won’t allows virtualization use in my Mac. The aholes wants PC/Windows DELL or HP among others allowed in the company.
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