[HN Gopher] Microsoft Full Circle
___________________________________________________________________
Microsoft Full Circle
Author : simonpure
Score : 119 points
Date : 2022-10-18 12:36 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Meta owning Giphy is anticompetitive, but Microsoft bundling
| Teams for (basically) free is fine?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Microsoft is "early" to VR because it was already a player in VR
| and has very long been "early". Microsoft has been investing in
| AR/MR/VR research since before the original Surface, not the
| tablet one but the giant table that got rebranded and then sold
| off, and since before the original Kinect. Microsoft is still
| making plenty of HoloLens devices (some on huge contracts)
| despite them not being "sexy". Windows 10 has had AR/MR/VR apps
| bundled for a long time despite most users never using them.
|
| It's hard for it to be a "full circle" when for the most part it
| looks like a straight line. The surprise shift here isn't in
| Microsoft but in Meta finally asking for help and partners after
| seeming to believe they could do it all on their own.
| sho_hn wrote:
| That's not the point of the title. The point of the article
| (and their coverage of MS for years) is that Microsoft used to
| be all about Windows: An operating system that abstracts
| hardware and enables first- and third-party apps. And now they
| making themselves about a system that abstracts hardware and
| runs apps again, but across a spectrum of devices and front-to-
| back. The common element is now the user and their account, not
| the single PC it runs on.
|
| I also think it's obvious, but then salient things are.
| Consumers today don't decide between PC vendors and operating
| systems, but between entire company-branded computing
| ecosystems. Are you on the Google or Apple or Amazon train?
|
| Things Stratechery doesn't discuss enough and this article is
| poor about:
|
| - Unlike in the Windows days, in the new competing-ecosystems
| world, geopolitics plays a much grander role. Everyone used to
| be on Windows, not everyone is on Google. China, Korea, Russia
| all have their own ecosystem juggernauts. In our globally
| interconnected world, computing has become somehow _less_
| globalized recently.
|
| - Microsoft doing VR stuff on Facebook's platform is totally in
| line with their observations on Microsoft's strategy going
| forward, but Microsoft and Facebook also compete on the
| ecosystem front, and the implications of this are just brushed
| over here as that's not the article, but it would be a more
| interesting one.
|
| - The really interesting thing that sets these different
| companies apart is their revenue sources. Apple sells hardware
| (and content and lifestyle), Microsoft sells enterprise
| software subscriptions and cloud, Google sells ad space and
| cloud.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > Everyone used to be on Windows
|
| Not true. IBM was one of the top 10 most profitable companies
| in the world as recently as 2015.
|
| After adjusting for real inflations rates, inclusive of asset
| inflation, they actually made greater profits some years then
| either Google or Meta or Amazon do today.
| sho_hn wrote:
| You're of course right, I was exaggerating for effect. What
| I mean is that the PC stole a lot of other people's
| lunches, and PCs across the world had an almost equal
| likelihood across the world to be running Windows, and that
| mattered when the PC and what you could run on it (i.e. the
| app format) mattered.
|
| Now it doesn't matter all that much anymore if you're on a
| Mac or a Windows or a Linux computer. You can largely use
| the same apps and services across them (with the exception
| of gaming, which, as an interesting aside, is now much
| better on Linux than on Mac). Anyone expending the effort
| to make a new app will usually build them that way, while
| in the past, you had a lot of platform exclusives.
|
| But what is new and interesting is that a Google account
| doesn't deliver you as much value in South Korea because a
| lot of its services are unavailable or bad there, while
| it's nigh on impossible to live without a Kakao account,
| which in turn is entirely optional in, well, most
| everywhere else.
|
| I find it fascinating that the global reach of user-
| centric/service-oriented computing is less than the reach
| of the previous device-oriented computing. It's certainly
| also not true that geopolitics have never mattered before
| in computing and reaching users, but I'd say they matter
| more than ever before.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| To me this difference is to be expected.
|
| When things were device-oriented whoever had the better
| devices naturally got easy footholds in every country.
| Since any country that tries to outcompete the world
| leading products would have needed to invest vast sums of
| money. And even then 90% of the supply chain would still
| be in the typical locations.
|
| It simply made sense for everyone to leave the multi-
| billion dollar investments to a few multinationals, at
| least for consumer products.
|
| The only real exception being Japan pre-iPhone, when they
| had the manufacturing diversity to make nearly everything
| domestically and enough wealthy consumers who also didn't
| care much for international interoperability. And even
| then the major Japanese firms were making very slim
| profits.
|
| Whereas since the entry bar for creating competitive
| software is so much lower, many countries can afford to
| nurture genuinely homegrown products, and have a
| reasonable expectation that they will be competitive.
| soundnote wrote:
| > Whereas since the entry bar for creating competitive
| software is so much lower, many countries can afford to
| nurture genuinely homegrown products, and have a
| reasonable expectation that they will be competitive.
|
| I don't think it's that. It's that eg. Kakao has
| KakaoTalk, a chat app. And chat apps tend towards
| monopolies and oligopolies because of network effects.
| The value of the app is less in how good it is, and more
| in who else uses it.
|
| If you're just buying a music player or an office suite
| for a common file format, what you use doesn't really
| matter to anyone else, and their choices to you.
|
| Chat apps, collaboration platforms? Suddenly, who else
| uses them matters a lot, since it's about the people, not
| the physical function. And once you get big enough, the
| network effects turns from a hurdle into a gigantic moat.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| > Microsoft used to be all about Windows
|
| This feels like a Citation Needed assumption both in this
| comment and in the article. Again, there's too much of a
| straight line here: Microsoft has always been one of (if not
| the) largest software development companies for the
| Macintosh. That has never changed.
|
| We all know Ballmer was a huge Windows cheerleader and "home
| team supporter" and wanted to make sure that the best
| experiences were always on Windows. But he never killed
| Macintosh support. He championed the iPad versions of Office
| that Nadella is credited for (which the article even points
| out!). The closest Microsoft _ever_ came to being "Windows
| only" was maybe the brief glimmer of optimism under Nadella
| where the Windows 10 team briefly imagined that every device
| _could_ run Windows (and then felt the crushing
| disappointment to realize that most wouldn 't).
|
| Again, it doesn't look like a full circle to me but a mostly
| straight line with a few zigs and zags if you zoom in micro-
| enough. I understand where some of this is coming from that
| Microsoft did have years, especially under Ballmer, where
| they seemed to care too much about Windows, but Microsoft was
| never "just" The Windows Company in any era.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Yes, this is fair.
| chaostheory wrote:
| > The surprise shift here isn't in Microsoft but in Meta
| finally asking for help and partners after seeming to believe
| they could do it all on their own
|
| This isn't a surprise given the sales numbers of hardware and
| DAU of meta online properties. While they are the clear leader
| in VR, given how great the Quest 2 and its original pricing
| were it should have had much higher sales numbers and usage.
| That result also wasn't a surprise given that the Facebook
| brand was so toxic to the masses, that even changing names to
| meta hasn't mitigated it yet in the short term. The name change
| will pay off eventually for younger generations who aren't very
| familiar with Facebook, but that day is about a decade away
| karmakaze wrote:
| Initially I thought MS might have learned from missing out on
| mobile to get ahead in AR/MR/VR and be a device and platform
| leader. It seems what they learned is to give up before
| entering and focus on partnering instead. That is something
| they've always succeeded at PC+DOS, IBM+WindowsNT,
| Apple+Office, JavaVM.
|
| To me it does seem a low target to aim for. VSCode shows they
| can execute, but for some reason when the stakes are higher
| they don't do as well Windows Phone, Edge browser, etc. I
| suppose I could call that corporate self-awareness.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Here specifically too: Microsoft has such a weird lead in
| AR/MR/VR and have mostly just been sitting on it. For
| example, because of early Kinect work, they own the patents
| that would have made Meta's weird journey between "no legs"
| to "everyone gets legs if they want them! excitement!"
| irrelevant or much faster had the partnership happened
| sooner. They built the first "metaverse cloud" on Azure and
| they've used it and they've made something as exciting in
| theory as the HoloLens boring Enterprise products.
|
| The other possible takeaway is that after Windows Phone,
| Microsoft really has been truly risk adverse when it comes to
| consumer products, even in areas where they had a lead and
| could have delivered something no one else could.
|
| > VSCode shows they can execute, but for some reason when the
| stakes are higher they don't do as well Windows Phone
|
| Windows Phone was arguably very well executed at the software
| level. Microsoft's troubles with Windows Phone were at the
| hardware levels and (worse) the economic levels where the
| phone carriers had already decided they prefer a duopoly and
| selling three things is one too many things to sell.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Windows Phone was bad executed at development experience
| level, with the WinRT, UAP, UWP enforced rewrites.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| We've had this argument more than once and I still
| disagree with that take. I took a .NET application
| through those transitions and there was never a "from
| scratch rewrite" step at any point. A lot of cheese moved
| and there was sometimes quite a bit of XAML shifts to
| meet new UI expectations, but most of the business logic
| code stayed the same or barely changed. On the other
| side, I've seen Apple enforce equal or worse "enforced"
| rewrites between major iOS versions with not even a
| fraction of the complaints Microsoft got across those
| product versions.
|
| (I had more inconvenience moving apps back and forth
| between WPF and Silverlight in some of the years prior,
| and even those moves were never from-scratch rewrites.
| Admittedly that may have left me with more skills to
| handle XAML changes and write to lowest common
| denominator XAML, so I am aware of my biases.)
|
| I realize you aren't ever going to agree with me on this,
| and I don't expect you to. I do think it is still useful
| for other people to see that there are counter-opinions
| here.
| int_19h wrote:
| Apple can get away with a lot more given its dominant
| market position (esp. when it comes to delivering paying
| customers to app authors). But when you're the new
| scrappy contender with minimal market share, so _you_
| need the devs to make apps for your store rather than the
| other way around, it better be smooth sailing all around.
| pjmlp wrote:
| A rewrite is a rewrite, even if only one line changes.
|
| Not going to bother to list everything that changed, it
| is public available for anyone to judge.
| gw99 wrote:
| Microsoft is only early to VR because it universally screwed
| everything else up. Wrapping all this text around it and
| marketing bullshit is disingenuous.
|
| What is the truth is that they had all the opportunities and
| staff and squandered both on mismanagement and quality issues and
| continue to do so to this day. What we have left is pissed off
| customers, pissed off developers and a declining market position
| other than where they could lock businesses in. The only market
| keeping them alive is entrenchment and naive MSPs and retail
| pushing their crap.
|
| I look forward to their VR strategy going down the toilet with
| Meta, where it belongs.
|
| Fire the board. Kill off the marketing situation which is
| basically lies at this point, remove telemetry from your
| products, invest in QA again rather than getting "insiders" to do
| it, remove decades of bloat and build quality not quantity and
| perhaps people will have confidence again.
| seshagiric wrote:
| Once bitten twice shy. It actually looks the other way: after
| the mobile and browser debacles, I think they got multiple
| things right: Cloud, XBox, Github, LinkedIn...one thing though
| is you don't see much cohesion between these services which
| Google and others seem to be much better.
| gw99 wrote:
| I can't say they got cloud or github right. Both are major
| friction points for a lot of companies I know. Particularly
| O365, OneDrive and Intune are complete administrative
| nightmares riddled with bugs. Even Office on the desktop is a
| shit show now thanks to all the cloud integration.
|
| And GitHub is popular but seriously so so so not right in
| many ways.
|
| What they have succeeded in doing is merely _centralising
| leverage_ and forcing entrenchment.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| They didn't quite screw everything up. Cloud is making a
| killing. Office monthly subs is a goldmine, and Windows online
| subs will be too. That's why they constantly talk cloud, it's
| their new bread and butter. And, in a highly related way, Xbox
| is also killing it. They have half the hardware sales, but
| their Xbox live ultimate sub is awesome. Lots of games, pretty
| cheap, and pretty, pretty recurring revenue. Oh, recurring
| revenue that feeds their cloud a gigantic customer, too. They
| went so far as to force most games to be compatible with both
| the new and old generation of Xbox's, so they could keep
| getting Xbox sub money. This has been successful enough that
| Sony has both been forced to do likewise, and Sony has resorted
| to the courts to stop it.
| desiarnezjr wrote:
| It isn't dissimilar to other missteps they made in the past as
| well. Early tablets powered by Windows XP. Windows CE and
| embedded. Phones.
|
| Their wins are massive. Really enterprise and XBOX lately (no
| doubt more, but just off the top of my head), but I've
| considered Windows only marginally usable for years, and that's
| more based on legacy, but it still has a place bloated as it
| is. It's an essential OS and platform, but with no focus --
| they're just shuffling the same deck chairs UX wise, though no
| doubt improving the scaffolding bits.
| localhost wrote:
| There is a really key quote towards the end of this piece that
| really captures the spirit of this post, and that's from Satya
| Nadella. I'm including it in its entirety because I think it does
| a really good job at summarizing what Ben is writing about here:
|
| "Sometimes I think the new OS is not going to start from the
| hardware, because the classic OS definition, that Tanenbaum, one
| of the guys who wrote the book on Operating Systems that I read
| when I went to school was: "It does two things, it abstracts
| hardware, and it creates an app model". Right now the abstraction
| of hardware has to start by abstracting all of the hardware in
| your life, so the notion that this is one device is interesting
| and important, it doesn't mean the kernel that boots your device
| just goes away, it still exists, but the point of real relevance
| I think in our lives is "hey, what's that abstraction of all the
| hardware in my life that I use?" - some of it is shared, some of
| it is personal. And then, what's the app model for it? How do I
| write an experience that transcends all of that hardware? And
| that's really what our pursuit of Microsoft 365 is all about."
|
| The key part is "abstracting all of the hardware in your life". I
| use a Windows laptop, a Mac laptop, and an iPhone interchangeably
| in my life. When I switch between them pretty much nothing
| changes - I have access to the same core apps: Office, Obsidian,
| 1Password, web browser. If there were a new device, say some kind
| of headset, I suspect that would plug right into my existing
| ecosystem of hardware and software. There needs to be an "OS"
| that manages all of that, and right now the frontrunner here is
| Microsoft. That could change of course, but there are _so_ many
| interesting problems to solve along the way.
|
| Disclosure: I work at Microsoft.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| > There needs to be an "OS" that manages all of that, and right
| now the frontrunner here is Microsoft.
|
| I just don't see that. How exactly is Microsoft better placed
| than Apple or Google?
| crazygringo wrote:
| Microsoft is simply making more money from more customers on
| it.
|
| Google Workspace is the main competitor, but they're not the
| front runner, they're second place.
|
| Things like Apple Pages and Keynote are only used by a small
| fraction of consumers. They're not taken seriously as an
| enterprise productivity solution by anyone.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > They're not taken seriously as an enterprise productivity
| solution by anyone.
|
| Because anyone who can create a great presentation would
| never think of things as "enterprise productivity
| solutions". They'd just make an awesome presentation.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Right, that's exactly it. You can create a great
| presentation... but you can't collaborate on it online
| integrated with your office's directory of contacts,
| create todo items from within it that show up on people's
| calendars, embed live figures from your colleague's
| modeling spreadsheet, get signoff on it from colleagues
| as part of a standardized process, and so on.
|
| If you're using Keynote to make an awesome presentation
| as a solo project, it's fantastic. If you're using it for
| enterprise productivity, it's a non-starter.
| sreekotay wrote:
| For sake of argument, not Apple because they are too close to
| the HW (specifically their own), and not Google because they
| are too far away from the HW (completely fractured).
|
| Amazon is an interesting underdog here...
| bee_rider wrote:
| MS is somewhat unusual in that they are, in some sense,
| "about" providing a platform but not really capable of
| consistently knocking it out of the park hardware-wise.
| number6 wrote:
| I think the "OS" that abstracts everything away is the web.
| Foremost these Javascript Applications.
|
| With Microsoft 365 they took the Idea of Google Suit and
| integrated it in their OS.
|
| Google tried it the other way and failed. But ultimately they
| are talking about the Chrome Book.
|
| Well even beyond that. It shouldn't matter which hardware you
| use and this is brilliant; it's just not Microsofts Idea.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Apple services are very much tied to Apple Hardware and
| iOS/OSX
| [deleted]
| neosat wrote:
| This ^ is spot on. While the general 'abstraction' argument
| is spot on, MS is in fact poorly placed to be the 'OS' that
| becomes that abstraction. In fact, arguably it doesn't even
| need to be an 'OS' level concept. An example is google docs
| or WhatsApp. I can work on documents seamlessly across
| different actual 'OS' because the application abstracts that
| away - and it is sufficient. If an OS were to abstract all of
| this, it would also involve numerous compromises, notably on
| the tightly integrated end-end experience (hardware to UX),
| which is Apple's entire strategy against the likes of
| Microsoft.
|
| So no MS is not the best situated to be that 'OS'. 1. It is
| unclear if such an OS (with the benefits and trade-offs) will
| be preferred to a world where cross-OS applications can
| abstract away the OS. 2. Someone like Google (minus their
| execution woes that seem to get worse in recent years) is
| better positioned to abstract away the complexities for a
| regular consumer.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| I've found that so much of what I used to have centered around
| Google has moved over to Micrsoft for me. I don't pay for
| anything (or very little) Google wise but pay for Office
| monthly. If Microsoft had a GOOD Google voice competitor, well
| ...
| bbu wrote:
| Something to rival google photos would be great!
| dm319 wrote:
| I use a Linux laptop with my favourite applications (vim, vim-
| wiki, Firefox, pass). I don't try to integrate across devices,
| I just take it around with me.
| verisimilitudes wrote:
| This describes a mainframe with dumb terminals.
| q-big wrote:
| > "Sometimes I think the new OS is not going to start from the
| hardware, because the classic OS definition, that Tanenbaum,
| one of the guys who wrote the book on Operating Systems that I
| read when I went to school was: "It does two things, it
| abstracts hardware, and it creates an app model". Right now the
| abstraction of hardware has to start by abstracting all of the
| hardware in your life
|
| What you are creating is then clearly _not_ an OS, but an
| abstraction layer over operating systems. In other words:
| claiming that are creating an operating system this way is in
| all likelihood a blatant lie.
| pjmlp wrote:
| "An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit
| into a language. There shouldn't be one." - Dan Ingalls, in
| an article in Byte Magazine, 1981
| fassssst wrote:
| Isn't that what a web browser is?
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| That's just arguing semantics.
| costcofries wrote:
| +1 What really matters are powerful experiences that allow
| people to get things done, easily. Eliminating workflows.
| Sorry that's overly simplistic but that's what it is.
| AuthorizedCust wrote:
| The parent comment has no replies, and its text is taking on
| gray tones, indicating poor votes.
|
| How is it the top comment? I thought comments were mainly
| sorted by vote-based ranking?
| generalizations wrote:
| Honestly, that sounds like the dream of plan 9. Full circle
| indeed.
| gigel82 wrote:
| beebmam wrote:
| > I use a Windows laptop, a Mac laptop, and an iPhone
| interchangeably in my life.
|
| I had to abandon Apple hardware because of their hostility to
| interoperability. Hard for me to not feel resentful over this.
| asdff wrote:
| What were your issues? I prefer it because its unix based. It
| makes it a lot easier to work with open source software that
| assumes you are using a unix based system, and its easy to
| write a bash script to save you a lot of gui work.
| abofh wrote:
| You're not alone - I more or less bailed around the
| iPhone/iTunes start, once amazon gave me a way to 'own' my
| music outside of an OS/hardware dependent ecosystem, I left.
| Apple makes everything wonderful if you never leave their
| walled garden, but I operate linux servers, I support mac
| engineers, and I provide service to windows clients. The only
| OS that makes supporting all three _harder_ is macOS.
| trelane wrote:
| > The only OS that makes supporting all three harder is
| macOS.
|
| How is Windows easier in this regard? Managing Windows
| clients requires a whole cluster of Microsoft services, no?
| Shared404 wrote:
| You can use AD on Linux as well though, either joining a
| windows domain or running one from linux with LDAP afaik.
| croutonwagon wrote:
| Interestingly. Thats the main reason im still on an iPhone.
|
| I dont use Apple Music or iTunes anymore, it has caused too
| many headaches.
|
| But i DO use PlexAmp. And it works great, works with FLAC,
| will transcode, and allows you to selectively cache things.
|
| Its not perfect. There are hiccups with transitioning to
| Carplay for example. But in general, if not for PlexAmp, i
| likely would have ditched iPhones after having them since
| roughly the 3gs (with a few google/Android phones smattered
| in between, namely the Nexus One and Galazy Nexus).
| lake_vincent wrote:
| Just wanna add that WSL(2) is one the best things Microsoft has
| ever done, and has opened up Windows as a true developer's OS.
| The universality is amazing, and now I feel like I can truly
| use almost any piece of software OR hardware I can dream of
| (short of MacOS exclusive software, which is mostly creative
| media stuff anyway).
| orangepurple wrote:
| How do automated birthing pods and human biomass recyclers
| affect user identity verification compliance and lifecycle
| testing requirements? I don't think your plan is well thought
| out.
| shuntress wrote:
| In your opinion, how does TypeScript fit in to the sentiment
| expressed by this quote?
| userbinator wrote:
| _The key part is "abstracting all of the hardware in your
| life"._
|
| ...so that it's no longer in your control, nor perhaps even
| your property anymore at some point.
|
| The 3rd E isn't "extinguish" anymore; it's "enslave".
| matt_s wrote:
| I'd counter that with the advent of apps and services (SaaS) is
| essentially the operating system now. The notion of "there's an
| app for that" and most mainstream apps are cross platform, so
| they are the thing that binds to our daily lives more than some
| HW abstraction OS.
|
| I can use various SaaS to do everything and it doesn't matter
| if I'm running a device from Microsoft, Apple, Google or third-
| party Android device builders.
|
| The OS doesn't matter at all for the majority of users.
| rising-sky wrote:
| Agree. I think the so called "cloud" is _the_ abstraction
| layer for apps and even across apps. Anecdotal example that
| just happened to me, I'm reading a PDF on my iPad with an app
| called PDF Expert. When I highlight text in PDF Expert, I'm
| able to see the highlight in the native PDF Reader on iPad
| OS, and also when I open the file in the Kindle app, I get
| prompted to pick up from my last read location (from PDF
| Expert). All of that is possible because I store and read the
| same file from an iCloud drive. The ability to share state
| between apps and in a format that they can consume and mutate
| is they key here, so the user does not think about what
| software OS is actually running underneath, or even which
| application. The latter still needs more work to allow
| interoperability based on standards, the missing ingredient
| there is motivation not technology.
| localhost wrote:
| For personal use, I'd mostly agree, but without a common
| identity over those SaaS services the user experience isn't
| as ideal as it could be. As a simple example, consider how
| you would share a file between two different identity systems
| - you can't - you effectively have to use the security by
| obscurity trick of "whoever has this link can {read|write}
| this file".
|
| In enterprise use cases where the company pays for the
| service, you really want to integrate these SaaS services
| into a common shell and this is the role that Teams plays.
| You get single sign-on with enterprise credentials, a way to
| share data with those 3rd party services, and a way for
| multiple users in your organization to collaborate together
| with those 3rd party services.
|
| This is the place where Microsoft is currently in a
| leadership position. Teams is increasingly viewed as being
| the "cloud OS shell" for enterprise users. Ben has written
| about this for quite some time - see this earlier piece from
| 2020: https://stratechery.com/2020/the-slack-social-network/
| robomartin wrote:
| > "abstracting all of the hardware in your life"
|
| This is precisely where I think MS failed miserably with
| Windows Phone. They had an incredible opportunity: Make a smart
| phone that is a full, natural, joined-at-the-hip extension of
| your desktop.
|
| They did not. Instead, they made a separate device. This was,
| from the perspective of desktop integration, 100%
| indistinguishable from any of the other offerings out there.
| They were playing "We too" when they should have been playing
| "Check this out!".
|
| Something as conceptually simple as a docking station that
| instantly brings your phone into your desktop as a first class
| integrated app, able to interact with other applications,
| including browsers, would have been a huge step forward and a
| massive selling point for Windows Phone. Add to that an open
| API for developers to be able to integrate desktop Windows
| Phone services into their applications and MS would have had
| the makings of an ecosystem that would have just exploded into
| the business community in a massive way.
|
| Instead they wasted time and money with an offering that did
| exactly the same things as any other offering while trying to
| invent a new UI. The strategy was doomed to fail before the
| first phone was introduced. They tried to build an iPhone with
| a different UI when the business world would have energetically
| adopted a deeply integrated extension to desktops in the form
| of a smart phone.
|
| To this day, I still think I would drop iPhone in a second if
| MS came out with a well thought out system along the lines I
| described above. The paradigm shift (or the twist in thinking)
| is that the phone is given life as an _extension_ to the
| desktop experience rather than as an afterthought that behaves
| as a peripheral. It would be like a sci-fi movie where the
| person grabs an application from the screen, it materializes as
| a physical device in their hand and they walk away. When they
| get to the office they push it into their display and it melds
| into that system instantly. Sci-fi aside, that feeling and
| utility would be incredibly useful.
| pjmlp wrote:
| They kept rebooting the development experience, naturally
| even the more passionate Windows developers gave up.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| > Something as conceptually simple as a docking station that
| instantly brings your phone into your desktop as a first
| class integrated app, able to interact with other
| applications
|
| What the hell are you talking about? What does this actually
| mean in real terms?
|
| Right now Windows already desperately tries to do exactly
| what you're saying.[1] Do you want a PalmPilot-style sync
| app? iPad/Mac-style "Universal Control"?
|
| 1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-
| dev...
| robomartin wrote:
| > What the hell are you talking about?
|
| Care to try again? This time, pretend you know how to have
| a conversation.
| avrionov wrote:
| > "Instead, they made a separate device. This was, from the
| perspective of desktop integration, 100% indistinguishable
| from any of the other offerings out there. "
|
| They made a device which was worse than all of the existing
| devices. The initial version didn't have TCP /IP support,
| only HTTP. The app store was full of scams, etc.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Something as conceptually simple as a docking station that
| instantly brings your phone into your desktop as a first
| class integrated app, able to interact with other
| applications, including browsers, would have been a huge step
| forward and a massive selling point for Windows Phone."
|
| I feel like the hardware limitations of ~2005-2012 would have
| made this nigh impossible. I know a few ultra-portable
| devices were trying to do something like this around that
| time, but even then they were still well above the size of
| smartphones. Cellular data and bandwidth was also extremely
| limited at that time as well, so cloud style/thin client file
| access would also be impractical.
|
| I can understand wanting to make a new OS/UI because the
| pocket PC experience was quite clunky and those devices did
| not have widespread adoption. There was also the novelty
| factor of using touch and gestures instead of a stylus.
| Anything resembling the windows/desktop paradigm would have
| been seen as antiquated. I'm sure Steve Jobs would have
| exploited that as strongly as he possibly could.
|
| All in all, I like the concept you have presented. I just
| don't think that it would have been viable at the time and I
| can forgive Microsoft for making the choices they made back
| then.
| [deleted]
| truncate wrote:
| I think, we used to called that cross-platform applications not
| Operating System. Honestly, it sounds trying to too hard to
| sound like sell a vision that already exits for a while. That's
| not a new idea IMO. Java wanted that, Adobe has been trying to
| do that with their CC stuff, Google has been on it for a while,
| Apple does that within its own ecosystem for all devices you
| would want to use (iCloud, handoff for applications, AirPods
| ...). I don't know why Microsoft is frontrunner with this.
| Microsoft probably can work with more platforms, but I'm not
| sure it goes deep enough with each other those compared to say
| Apple or maybe Google.
| kurtreed wrote:
| How do you pronounce Stratechery?
| Andrex wrote:
| Stra-teachery.
|
| My brain misinterpreted it at first and now it's too late to
| fix it.
| jrootabega wrote:
| I assumed it was derived from "strategery". (str@-TEE-j@r-ee)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategery
| jdminhbg wrote:
| It is, but Ben pronounces the "tech" in the middle as it's
| pronounced independently.
| jrootabega wrote:
| Right, a reasonable person would understand that in order
| to map the pronunciation of "strategery" to "stratechery",
| you would substitute "TEK" for "TEEJ".
| maxfurman wrote:
| I always hear it as Will Ferrell's GWB saying "strategery"
| instead of "strategy." I know it's incorrect but that's my
| brain for you.
| dspillett wrote:
| I read the "tech" like in technology: stra-tech-ery.
|
| Though at first I misread it as stratrechery which has other
| connotations!
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Ben Thompson cohosts a podcast [0] that comes out very
| irregularly, but is a true gem. He says "stra-tech-ery"
| there, so you are correct :)
|
| [0] https://exponent.fm/
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Yeah, but for some reason I _prefer_ "stra-tuh-cherry"
| jszymborski wrote:
| This is the correct answer, but I always read it as
| "straight-cherry' in my mind.
| authpor wrote:
| I thought it was a one word combination of "strategy" + "tech"
| [deleted]
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Windows was demoted to one section of the company's Surface
| announcements held as a precursor to the main event.
|
| We see this with Windows _and_ with MacOS. MacOS 's downfall is
| the more visible one.
|
| The OS is no longer prioritized except where it needs to be
| somewhat presentable in screenshots. The OS becomes a vehicle to
| sell company goods. The OS rots to the point that there's no one
| left at the company with even the most basic competence to create
| first-party apps for it.
|
| Because the money is elsewhere.
|
| I wonder at which point this neglect makes the OS so unusable
| that it actively hurts the development of the money-making
| machines.
|
| Though strangely enough MS would survive this better than Apple.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Anyone doing Windows desktop development can definitly feel
| this.
|
| After the mismanagement of WinRT, finally fixed with UWP on
| Windows 10, instead of improving the .NET Native and C++/CX
| experience, they created Project Reunion, deprecated .NET
| Native and C++/CX, replacing them with lesser tooling, pivoted
| Project Reunion into Windows SDK, and are years away of
| reaching feature parity with UWP, let alone Forms, WPF, MFC.
|
| The current team seems composed by interns without experience
| on previous Microsoft frameworks, while the more experienced
| folks seem to have moved into Azure, Google or Amazon, from
| their twitter feeds.
|
| Just have some fun going through the WinUI, CsWinRT, C++/WinRT,
| WinAppSDK, Win2D, and see the endless amount of bug tickets,
| measured in thousands.
|
| Blazour seems to be the new kid in town, to the point of even
| trying to push it inside MAUI as pseudo-Electron replacement.
|
| Meanwhile the other business units are focused on Web or
| Android.
|
| It looks like "Azure OS" is the new Windows.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Windows really is a clusterf*k right now. In addition to the
| mess of frameworks that you talk about, Windows 11 has been a
| mess. From the random Bing-related crap getting increasingly
| prevalent and pervasive around the OS to the TPM fiasco (they
| originally let you install it on non-supported hardware but
| are now withholding updates). From the feature regression
| (e.g., taskbar is now immovable) to the yet-another-redesign
| that they teased/leaked during Build this year.
|
| At this point, I'd prefer an Azure OS that I could install
| locally and have the Windows team slowly transition to
| supporting Wine, improving Linux DEs/Wayland (or even create
| their own DE), since I believe that they're using some
| Wayland compositor (mutter?) for gWSL anyways, and
| contributing to the Linux kernel, which they're already doing
| to some degree. I genuinely don't know how feasible that is
| and I'm aware it's wishful thinking, but a person can dream.
|
| Then again, it would probably be to the Linux community's
| detriment and they'd just do the same scummy
| Bing/telemetry/dark pattern crap to foster ad revenue.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "The current team seems composed by interns without
| experience on previous Microsoft frameworks, "
|
| That's my suspicion too. And I believe they did the same
| thing with Teams and hired some interns who are learning
| Agile to rapidly deliver "feature".
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I noticed the same, I can't believe the inexperience of the
| developers Microsoft has picked to work on these important
| frameworks. It appears like a form of self sabotage.
| timeimp wrote:
| The "death blow" for macOS would be when you can develop,
| compile, test and publish iOS apps without a Mac.
|
| It would become on life support at that case.
|
| Any Apple engineers reading this - an update like Snow Leopard
| would go a long way!
| gw99 wrote:
| I doubt it. Most of the Mac users I know came from iOS and
| aren't developers. The iOS developer community is a tiny
| portion of apple users.
| gw99 wrote:
| Do you actually use macOS? It actually works. Unlike most of
| windows these days. There is near parity across all platforms
| on all apple apps and functions. I can transition from any
| device to another one smoothly.
|
| People don't care about that. They want the computer to go away
| and actually stop bugging them.
| Hasu wrote:
| Eh, I use macOS, Windows, and Ubuntu pretty regularly, and
| they're all pretty much fine. macOS gets in my way the most,
| but it's not significant trouble.
|
| Other workflows than mine would probably have different
| results.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| In your own way, you are correct, but so are people who have
| the completely opposite experience. In our industry (biotech
| manufacturing) we rely Windows for everything. All the apps
| we use are Windows only. For us, there is no "parity across
| all platforms".
| gw99 wrote:
| Yeah it's the same in my industry for some parts of it as
| well.
|
| But that doesn't mean it _works_. It 's literally only
| there because it is entrenched. A lot of the time it
| doesn't work and has an extremely large support cost.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Sure, that is your view. But that isn't the only
| viewpoint. We don't seem to have any major issues with
| our systems, but I'm not an IT expert.
| gw99 wrote:
| It's not really just my view. You might be a lucky
| outlier. I get to sit on a lot of calls with tens of
| large and small organisations who have serious troubles
| on a daily basis. I've seen some real horrors out there.
| Independently everyone just thinks this is the status
| quo.
| trap_goes_hot wrote:
| Okay, we just have a disagreement. Its no big deal. I
| appreciate your perspective.
| dmitriid wrote:
| I've been on MacOS for 15 years now. The iOSification and
| changes for changes' sake in the past years is evident to
| everyone. As for incompetence, it's enough to look at the new
| settings app that they shipped basically unchanged since the
| clusterfuck during betas and fixing only the most superficial
| of bugs.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| One of the other complaints you here on HN is that software
| is changing for sake of change rather than remaining
| relatively stable once the core feature-set has been built
| out. Well, MacOS strikes a pretty good balance on that score.
| They introduce new features, but haven't radically changed
| anything in a long time ... and that enables people to get
| work done.
| danielrpa wrote:
| No it doesn't, not for me. I don't work at MSFT and I own
| both a Windows machine and a Mac M1 for work. Simple things
| like my gaming mouse and wanting larger fonts on my 1440p
| monitor don't work without cumbersome hacks through buggy
| hobby software. My windows computer works flawlessly among
| other advantages such as a large software library right out
| of the box.
|
| I respect people who prefer Macs to PCs, but stop speaking
| about it like it is some universal truth.
| marcodiego wrote:
| > Simple things like my gaming mouse
|
| If your gaming doesn't work correctly on an OS other than
| windows, it is probably the manufacturer fault.
| koluna wrote:
| Ah yes, the good ol' Linux "You're holding it wrong"
| mantra.
|
| Look, I don't know about you, but I don't have unlimited
| time to go fiddle with whatever emulation layer is there
| to make some game from 2017 work well on a modern Mac.
| Not only that, but Apple has proven, time and time again,
| that they completely do not care about backwards
| compatibility, which is crucial for games, so let's not
| pretend that the "manufacturer" (assuming you're talking
| about the game developers here) is at fault - nobody has
| unlimited time to adjust their product on the whims of
| the folks in Cupertino.
|
| Here's the reality - on Windows, I can still play DOS
| games. On macOS, with the latest OS release, 90% of my
| Steam library cannot be used (that were all perfectly
| fine before the update) because Apple decided to remove
| support for 32-bit apps. So sticking to Windows for
| gaming is the logical choice if you want access to the
| latest and greatest titles and not a selection of a few
| that are "hacked around".
| isaacremuant wrote:
| You're being unfair to Linux if you think Windows doesn't
| do the same "you're not supposed to do that" every time
| you step out of a nice path. Or even with the nice path
| it'll suddenly decide it's time to worsen your experience
| to improve their marketing or data mining.
|
| There's awesome Linux experiences out there and the Steam
| deck is starting to show what's possible giving varying
| levels of control.
|
| We live in exciting times. The more choice, the better.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| On Mac, your apps reliably break. On Windows, they never
| break. It's not whether there's a right way and a wrong
| way, it's whether the right way stands at complete odds
| to how anyone actually wants to use the computer. Sure,
| Linux has a reasonable experience most of the time - that
| has nothing to do with Mac, and in fact has very little
| to do with Linux or its community either; Steam has
| nearly single-handedly made it work. The same way Windows
| tries to make it work, and the way Mac notably tries
| _not_ to.
| technion wrote:
| As a real side issue, you actually can optionally remove
| support for 32 bit apps from Windows server.
|
| Guess how much malware suddenly can't execute.
| gw99 wrote:
| 100% agree with this as a Mac user.
|
| But the mouse, if it doesn't work and it says it does on
| the box then that is the vendor issue.
| patientplatypus wrote:
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-18 23:01 UTC)