I read a really good (and slighly scathing) article over at New York Times yesterday about microsoft and Steve Ballemer's conspicuously optimistic claims about the future of Macrosoft. The dominating force of computing can no longer be called Micro anything, they are a Macro company, they have software products in every realm of computing; desktop, online, music/music players, mobile, search, business software, servers everything.
The article started out,
With the arrival this week of Windows 7 and a host of complementary, slick computers, Microsoft intends to undermine those Apple ads that mock PCs and their users as stumbling bores. Mr. Ozzie, who plays the role of visionary and strategist at Microsoft, says Windows 7 will let PCs keep pace with other computing devices and, in short, finally make them sexy.
yeah i believe it to a degree, windows 7 has resuscitated my belief that windows can actually produce a decent product that does not completely disregard my affinity for privacy in what i download and where i get it from. Since my life conversion to Apple i have realized all the impositions that microsoft had placed on me and how i desperately tried to escape their grasp by using as much 3rd party software i could, but i still lived in the windows world even though my house was a winamp/firefox/photoshop construction.
Using windows is like wearing a turtleneck sweater, it feels like a really weak midget is trying to strangle you. hyperbole aside...
These days, however, Microsoft has legions of doubters. While it still commands a prominent and profitable position in computing, brand experts say consumers stumble when trying to define what the company stands for and whether it can create a grander technological future.
“Microsoft sort of disappeared from the scene,” says Regis McKenna, a Silicon Valley marketing and strategy expert. “Every once in a while, they have a delayed Windows release or something like that. By and large, I think the marketplace is focused on what Google and Apple are up to.”
Critics of Microsoft say it has hugely underestimated market changes and plotted a long and winding course toward irrelevance. It remains too fixated on its old-line, desktop-based franchises, they say — too slow, too predictable and too, well, Microsoft
Honestly, what is Ballmer (the CEO a.k.a. the boss) doing? I don't feel like microsoft has really had a solid focus since they had to clean up the vista mess. If ram and hard drive prices hadn't been falling like a dying duck in recent years vista would have been improbable. The typical midrange $600 laptop now comes with 4 gigs of ram, the logical maximum that most systems can handle. So microsoft has been pushing 64 bit solutions which provide NO kind of advantages for typical computer users and actually kind of confuses them (why dosen't my 64 bit windows explorer show flash content? because there is no 64 bit flash). The average web surfer does not NEED 4 gigs of ram but their computer does just to be moderately responsive, run multiple programs and play video smoothly. Sad.
MY dual core imac ran faster than any PC i ever had, with one gig of ram and i didn't have to defrag the hard drive every 5 minutes. If you don't save anything but documents on your computer defragmenting your hard drive will not afford you much performance.
and more
Mr. Ballmer contends that Microsoft is the only company prepared and positioned to merge computing from both ends — the desktop and the cloud. “We’re just investing more broadly than everybody else,” he says, adding that, when it comes to software, “I want us to invent everything that’s important on the planet.”
noble sentiment mr. ballmer but i think apple is already doing that...
and it shows in their revenue...
Google too...
we know, intricately the game plan of microsoft. They over power emerging markets with pure development money and then lock the market down the low prices and high licencing fees. Thats how this whole Operating-System-Bundled-With-Your-Computer schema started. Also netscape vs internet explorer, windows mobile vs. everyone. Not only is their search engine 5 years late, it's call Bing, But-It's-Not-Google and looks like google. Yes their homepage is jucier and a secret ploy to install Silverlight on your computer (which i did, so i could peruse the different daily pictures) search for a torrent on bing, absent. As well as a host of other content which macrosoft is excluding from their search results. Typical microsoft hedgemony in action.
My life is too short to recount all of the balls in the microsoft court that were dropped, windows mobile 6.5, vista, zune just a bunch of products that are released, microsoft says oops, we missed a lot of stuff and then attempts to gain market share from a compromised position and make it up to the early adopters who were the first to purchase the products and redeems themselves to the rest of the consumer base. They have been playing the catch up game with themselves. Which is why i am so impressed with the quality and polish of windows 7.
A lot of the article talks about cloud computing, tying together products and services in your house; beaming netflix to your tv, computer and dvr; playing videos on your tv, computer, phone and mp3 player; syncing contacts between your computer and phone easily; mobile internet devices, location sensitive devices and programs etc. but microsoft's lack of integration thus far leaves me doubtful the behemoth will be able to integrate their sugar AND milk into their coffee, honestly.
To be fair the Xbox platform, Xbox live has been successful example or integration and cloud services but i'm not a gamer, im a pc user.
My mom has a zune and she has to use a zune specific software to manage her music rather than windows media player. The zune software is way cooler but it also does not rip music or movies and has limited integration and NO features that recognize our home network.
Rivals now simply dismiss Microsoft as a laggard rather than hitting it with the Evil Empire criticisms so familiar in the 1990s. In its place stands Google, which now has Microsoft’s mantle as a game-changing technology behemoth and is also increasingly perceived as a dominant competitor whose power warrants concern
To be fair, microsoft will prove they can create polished solutions, which probably means working MUCH closer with hard ware developers. They are going to have to prove they know how to design interfaces that are compelling, which has not been their strong suit, ever. They have to show us that all of our devices with microsoft can be networked and live up in the clouds. Last of all microsoft has to answer to the consumer, 2009 is the first year that consumers bought more computers than the enterprise market segment. More than ever people are bringing their personal computer into work (mostly apples) and our digital life is at the same time tied to the hard ware we like and disconnected from a specific computing terminal more than ever.
And microsoft will have to act like they know this.