2011: Is Microsoft Drifting Into Insignificance?

[omnimodis78]

Ah, the pendulum swings... Most of your comments are naive, subjective and (a few) are down-right misinformed and uneducated! If I recall correctly, nvidia was written off by most of you, a little more than 5 months ago. They're not doing all that bad today. Microsoft has always been a double edge sword, and they will continue to be regardless of the "competition". Google, Facebook, these are solid companies but they are teens compared to Microsoft's mature wisdom. Oh, Wolfgang, I loved the IBM comment by the way, you're right, they have become irrelevant...I mean looking at the lame research projects they're constantly funding and conducting really demonstrates their irrelevance. https://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view_projects.php?ex=y

 

[socalboomer]

[citation][nom]tekeffect[/nom]I'll maybe agree with the one guy representing the company part. But Windows 7 is good. I use it but it should have been out years ago. And there isn't anything I couldn't have thought to put in it. Its a good boring product.Sony and Nintendo are the reason there is a xbox360....not the other way around. Yes we would have ps3 without them just like we have playstation without them.So your going to credit them with making a good mouse long ago.. plenty of good ones now. And office, come on, Libre office is going to continue to keep people from over paying for that product.[/citation]

I only gave a few examples. . . could have gone on with Photosynth, and some others.

Anyway - LibreOffice? It's starting to approach true usability - I can't use it, especially the spreadsheet. Just doesn't approach what Excel does without thinking. . . Sorry - OO and LO may be learning, but they're nowhere close yet.

And XBox360? Look how long that Sony was content to stick with the PS2 - years; and it was content with the Playstation for years. No competition, really, that it couldn't bury. Then, a year after the PS2, comes the XBox and once it gained popularity and started to make inroads against the PS2, MS releases the 360 (remember, it came out prior to the PS3). Remember it came out prior to both the Wii and the 360. . .

Anyway - not representing MS, was just disgusted by Wolfgang's shallow analysis of one guy's opining on a website. . . so had to opine myself!

 

[ulysses35]

Is it just me or is THG becoming more and more a Apple / Linux fanboy site every day ?

Today its let kick MS... but wait let us praise the almight Linux... tried linux.. not a bad effort but got pissed off with some of my softare not working so went back to W7.

Every other day the news is full of apple crap.

 

[beayn]

Unfortunately it isn't a company that causes its own downfall, it's opinionated drivel such as this article that spreads to the masses with no actual reason behind it. Personally I see as much innovation from MS as I do from Apple. Pretty much nothing. Everything has already been done and they all try to market their stolen ideas as "revolutionary". The difference is that Apple fans believe it while MS fans don't.

It's only opinion that brings down a company.

 

[Guest]

In answer to your question at the outset I say; no, Microsoft is not drifting into insignifigance! It think it is funny how we are all like a bunch of lemmings. It is popular and chic to bash Microsoft these days and everybody loves to jump on the band wagon. Personally I try to have no allegence to one company or another. I mean, really, who cares. Macs are cool, Google is cool, Android is cool...but I hardly think any of these are revolutionary. Take Mac. What is it? They are computers that are very stable and have a slick interface. Right now they are the latest fashion accessory. People buy them, I am convinced, to look cool because Macintosh has marketed them as a 'cool persons' computer. Are they? No...they are just a good computer. At what cost do we get this stability? We have limited abiltiy to upgrade components and soft backward compatibility. Macs stability comes at a cost. Since it inception what have the Mac OS's done? They have built on their same product. Just like Windows. It is not like Mac is coming out with a totally new OS each version. It is just building on the last. Somehow this is seen as more innovative that Windows? I don't get it. They are all doing the same thing...many of htem built on MS ideas to start with.

The iPhone was an innovation but it was not something that had never been concieved before. We had PDA's long before iPhone. To me, it is just another way to package the same idea...albiet in a very cool and usable way.

I could go on and on. Bootm line is I hope all of these companies continue to innovate and push the limits of what is possible. I just wish we as a technology community stopped all the sensational grand standing to support the superiority of 'our favorite' companies and just gave credit where crdit is due.

Microsoft is big, it has been around for a while, but many of the ideas coming out of Redmond are still cool, just like Google, Android, and Mac.

 

[dragonfang18]

I wonder how microsoft an improve kinect... such that it can track finger movements and become a new mouse and keyboard type input device. Lets see if they can do that to help bolster their company.

 

[kronos_cornelius]

This is just media perception. Microsoft still sales the number one operating system, and they have other projects that turn heads from time to time.

I am waiting for the day when I buy an Android-based with an Nvidia Denver chip on it. But that is a few years down the road.

 

[dimar]

Windows 7 is kind of OK, fast and stable, but lucking any new ideas; just more shiny, nothing more. What I'd like to see in Windows 8 is more customizable and better organizable desktop and taskbar. I hope they work on multiple desktops too. I really hope they work on better gaming experience.

 

[applegetsmelaid]

I'd be willing to bet that this article was written on a Microsoft based workstation.

Definition of INSIGNIFICANT

: not significant: as
a : lacking meaning or import
b : not worth considering : unimportant
c : lacking weight, position, or influence : contemptible
d : small in size, quantity, or number

None of these are a description of Microsoft. I doubt that in our lifetime and our children's lifetime will MS fit this definition. Just because MS does not make products in a new category or fit niche markets does not mean that they are insignificant. Major food companies don't become insignificant because they don't create some new exotic food no one has heard of. Consistency is more important to significance than innovation.

 

[cablechewer]

MU-TechTrainer bashing Microsoft has been fashionable for a long time now - at least 15 years that I can recall. Certainly since the DOJ took an interest in them it has been a pretty public, full contact sport.

Beayn - companies can cause their own downfalls. It isn't that difficult with a few bad products, some botched marketing they can fall a long, long way.

I am not saying MS suffers from this, but it may be having problems with mind share. When Windows and Office are just tools you use how relevant will MS be? Do you check the brand of a door knob every time you use one? You can become irrelevant even if your product is everywhere. If Windows just becomes another ubiquitous device like the door knob MS might still make tons of money, but nobody will think about them.

 

[antixbaby]

Boy, some of you people are really out of it. Sure Microsoft could be innovating a bit more than they do with hardware, but they are the "mainstream" OS that HAS to be virtually all things to all people. Do you think Apple would act differently in MS's shoes? Of course they wouldn't. There is a certain responsibility that Microsoft has (and those like Apple and Linux builders don't)...and I bet a lot of it they don't want! What do you want them to do? Drop compatibilty and completely change their software. They'd be idiots to do so, and screw with 80+ percent of the computing populace. Like ANYONE would do a hell of a lot different in their shoes. You wouldn't last a week. A bunch of ignorant arm chair quarterbacks out there.

I'm no Microsoft lover by any means, but I'm not an idiot either. I understand how things work, and NEED to work.

Most larger companies don't "innovate" or invent much more anyway. They just buy patents!

There are discussions to be had about this, but bad article and many dumb comments.

Essentailly, a borderline pointless article with an inflamatory title.

 

[Lamiel]

One blog by some random MS employee (probably a peon who has nothing to do with moving, shaking and decision making) spawns this vague editorial? Microsoft has officially announced Kinect support on PC but you talk as if they've written it off. I'm sorry, but this is one of the most irrelevant articles I've ever seen on Tom's.

 

[pelov]

I've been using Ubuntu 10.10 (on a dual boot win7 machine) for a couple months now and absolutely love it. default OS is ubuntu and I only use win7 for gaming. It's very intuitive, simple, and has a great community backing it up. Frankly, it's the exact opposite of what many people used to think of linux -- that being the console/terminal based server only OS. If today I had to suggest an operating system for a novice I would probably point them to linux. It sounds completely backwards but honestly it's just way way simpler and they'd have far less problems.

Drivers/applications are quite literally 2 clicks away. The interface can pretty much do anything you ask of it. All windows applications you're looking for have free open source equivalents from the software center. The community is vibrant and eager to help and there's frequent upgrades. If you need to update your software you simply type your password in on a reboot, and you can even avoid that. And perhaps most importantly, there are *far* less security threats on linux. And all of this can be done with an older PC.

It still lacks competitive games that would cater to that large group of windows users who only use windows for gaming, but if the directx versions were fully compatible on linux and more game dev's were looking to push their products via linux then you'd see a lot more customers jumping ship.

I don't want this to sound like i'm holding linux (and ubuntu specifically) to a pedestal, but I've been using windows and it's various releases since the early 90's and where windows had that more intuitive/easier feel to then, linux has really surprised me in the last couple of years and has dethroned both mac and windows.

 

[JamesSneed]

You lost me at IBM... True they are business focused but find one business with over 100 employess that does not use IBM products. I would even venture a guess that IBM inovates more than any other company. For example IBM are showing silicon at 11nm this week, anyone else got that, nope. Wolfgang, get a grip IBM and MS rule the business and consumer markets they are in.

 

[DSpider]

The Linux market share is something like 1.5-2%. I hope the masses don't adopt it. Because then it would probably attract attention from virus and malware creators.

So please, don't migrate to Linux. Keep using Windows. Be a sheep and continue to baaah like the rest of the population.


PS: I just ran Steam using "PlayOnLinux". Friends list was working and Counter-Strike 1.6 was running beautifully, which is basically the only game I used to play, on kz maps and sometimes on fy_snow for fun. I'm more into logical games anyway, like puzzles, adventure games, hidden objects, etc - those I play using VirtualBox (TinyXP rev. 11 install), which is pretty much a 3 GB .vdi file.

 

[bystander]

I've always said, Microsoft's biggest faults are why they are so successful. They are so successful because everything is backwards compatible. They support systems that are 20 years old.

Of course all this baggage makes their system a bit more bloated, and not always as smooth as it could be, but there is no way they can abandon their business user base like Apple does. They are dominant because of their commitment to their past and current users.

My only concern is why do they need to continue to create new OS's. We've come to a point that we don't need a new OS every 2-3 years. Computers aren't progressing as rapidly as they used to, and we are mostly just seeing tweaks. To try and wow us will result in another Vista (too bloated for our current systems), and if they just tweak it, no one will care.

 

[TeKEffect]

[citation][nom]socalboomer[/nom]I only gave a few examples. . . could have gone on with Photosynth, and some others. Anyway - LibreOffice? It's starting to approach true usability - I can't use it, especially the spreadsheet. Just doesn't approach what Excel does without thinking. . . Sorry - OO and LO may be learning, but they're nowhere close yet. And XBox360? Look how long that Sony was content to stick with the PS2 - years; and it was content with the Playstation for years. No competition, really, that it couldn't bury. Then, a year after the PS2, comes the XBox and once it gained popularity and started to make inroads against the PS2, MS releases the 360 (remember, it came out prior to the PS3). Remember it came out prior to both the Wii and the 360. . .Anyway - not representing MS, was just disgusted by Wolfgang's shallow analysis of one guy's opining on a website. . . so had to opine myself![/citation]

Ok honestly I'm not an office pro so I'll let you have the fact that ms is light years ahead off LO and OO but they work fine for me. But as for the consoles. Playstation released 1994, playstation 2 released 2000, PS3 released 2006. Looks to me like sony has a plan. Release a console every 6 years and support it for 10. MS gone tomorrow I bet it stays the same. Doesn't hurt to have competition. I don't hate MS. For good or bad they live off past success.

 

[svillav]

MS will loose ground only they make absolutely impossible to run an illegal copy of Windows. Windows 85% OS market share is composed by at least a 40% of illegal copies. In China, Africa, India and Latin America most installations of Windows aren't legal. When you buy a U$S 300 PC, that represents a sizable portion of your income you are not going to expend hundreds of dollars in an OS and other software, you buy pirated copies of them for a few dollars. If that becomes impossible, all that people will change to Linux. And then, having Linux a sizable portion of the market games will be ported to it and bye bye MS.

 

[enforcer22]

All you people here saying ms lacks vision and direction, tell me who doesnt? dont say linux its the definition of lack of direction and honestly i haven't been seeing any vision there either. Its and OS that changes from distro to distro or person to person with no real direction other then not being windows (whoopty doo). Mac well its only vision and direction i can see is copy everyone else change the package charge lots of money. Ok well at least their approach makes them money to continue doing something with out 10000000 of kids in their garage writing a driver or port or hack ..... anyways.

Sure MS has gotten content and its bad. But i read these people saying o when i can run linux... i just want to slap them. Until someone DOES make an innovative product which is NOT linux and NOT mac os. Windows will be the standard and since i don't see someone making a real os that doesn't cost a foot anytime soon i guess ill be using windows.

I should go back a little and say if mac would open up a bit and linux would close up alot more and standardize windows would be under alot of pressure but mac wants its closed system and linux wants it open source (Junk imo) and since ms is always whiling to give just enough to everyone to make anything they want for thier OS even if its buggy or not just so you and I can do whatever we want for it, You know exactly what will be on every computer being sold out of stores.

 

[brpeden82]

it like this Linux does eveything i want it do and runs real well on 2GB RAM and a dual core processor and doesnt take 20GB of space like windows 7 does. the potential is there it just needs to be standarized.

 

[Guest]

Really, it's not just Microsoft... It's the crazy idea that any rich person can send their douchebag kid to business school, and when he graduates, he'll be able to make decisions about a large companies products, even though he's completely clueless about how they work.

What makes Linux good is that it's managed by programmers who understand it's inner workings perfectly. Now Linux just needs to overcome what makes it bad; The lack of slimy Linux businessmen making shady exclusionary deals with OEMs and goverment officials(a la M$) , and to a lesser extent; a few ubiquitous applications that come off as really amateurish.

 

[Guest]

"but we already know that Microsoft is modeling the OS after Apple ideas"
Well what i think is i am sick of reading articles that always somehow end up with the declaration.That everybody is trying to immitate apple. i mean seriously so much for the unbiased journalism. i am afraid in few days they will start saying GOD copied steve job's example of having 2 legs, 2 arms and 2 eyes.

 

[pelowell]

Dude, where'd you get your MS hate from??? Um, last I looked, they were driving the touch OS stuff pretty hard (actually kicked it off a few years back if I remember correctly) and are doing some bang up stuff with enterprise/cloud/server solutions, not to mention pushing the envelope once again with Win7. Linux is, and will remain, an also ran. It has never been, and will never be, for the masses...

 

[CoryInJapan]

Windows 95 was awesome when it came out.
MS is just same ol MS...and not in the good way.

 

[snoogins]

Why was this under the News section?

Who is knocking Microsoft off the OS throne?

What is so wrong with what IBM is doing?

How can you extrapolate one employee's blog, and apply it to an entire company?

Honestly, this entire 'article', if we can call it that, belongs on a blog, not a site dedicated to tech news and reviews.

Unfortunately this blog entry did exactly what is what supposed to do, ruffle feathers and excite people enough to make comments on it.

Nothing more.