Paul Graham made a simple statement that is stirring up a lot of commentary on the net…
His conclusion is: But it’s gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money–so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous. He makes a pretty interesting case for his statement in his blog and provides four reasons for its demise: Google, Ajax, Broadband Internet, and Apple Mac OS X.
I have a different take on this subject though. Here’s my premise: Microsoft is a big company and different components are in different stages of age and health (not necessarily correlated, btw). So, here’s a start to a health report on the various parts of the Microsoft Community/Ecosystem. Feel free to jump in with your own health estimate on parts I mention or parts I left out. I’m structuring my list more-or-less on Microsoft’s own list of Products & Related Technologies.
- Windows Vista - Currently Stable but showing signs of ill health: I’ll go on record on saying I like it. And, I say that as someone who often uses Mac OS X too (and looking forward to Leopard 10.5). But, it definitely has not caught the attention of either the consumer market or the enterprise. This is a bit puzzling since it actually has a lot to offer to both groups. But, I’ve been using it regularly for over a year as a beta-tester. So, I’m probably not a good judge of the general public’s take on it.
- Internet Explorer 7 - Stable but not vibrant: Here’s another oddity. I actually wrote off IE7 before seeing it. But, after using it for a few months I actually like it but I’m not sure why. Firefox seems faster and offers a great community of add-ons. But, I still use IE7 now and then.
- Windows Mobile - Starting to show signs of age: Let me preface this by saying I’ve been awarded the Microsoft MVP designation in this area for the past 7 or 8 years. So, I like the product and look at it closer than most other Microsoft product areas. However, the Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Phone Edition and Smartphones have not fundamentally changed for several product generations now (unless you are also an Exchange Server user). Windows Mobile 6 is just a warmed over Windows Mobile 5. It would have been better had it been called Windows Mobile 5 Second Edition. It isn’t even based on Windows CE 6. It still uses Windows CE 5 as its core OS. And, Microsoft itself does not support it as shown when they dropped products like Pocket Reader, Pocket Money and Pocket Streets & Trips.
- Office 2007 - Very Healthy: The Office team has done a remarkable job in reviving what seemed like a tired old product line. It isn’t so much the addition of features as the re-juggling of existing features to make Office much more usable and interesting. Look at it this way. If you, like me, are not in 100% tip-top Olympian caliber shape and somehow got a personal trainer, dietitian, and life coach team to reevaluate your total being, you might take what you already have and make it the best it can possibly be. I think Office 2007 is like that. The ribbon bar is a radical new approach to user interface for previous generation Office users that somehow works well. It exposes features you probably never knew existed in Office and makes them easy to use.
- Windows Server 2003 R2 - Healthy: Although most of the servers I run are Linux based, I still run Windows Servers too. But, it may be that what I’m really evaluating are the add-ons for Server that will be integrated fully in the next generation: PowerShell and Virtual Server. These two add-ons are really make Server interesting to me.
- MSN & Microsoft Live - Dazed and confused: What is going on over there anyway? Some of the products look interesting (I actually use live.com itself a lot since I like the way it manages RSS feeds). But, I just don’t understand their strategy. Live Search is too slow. Office Live isn’t Office. Hotmail was becoming Live Mail but is now Hotmail again. And, where’s the support for Microformats that Ray Ozzie talked about at the 2006 O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference?
- Xbox & Xbox Live - Healthy but needs watching: I bought the first generation Xbox because I got tired of hardware requirements and driver side effects when I played games on a PC. But, I think the Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3 have both priced themselves out of competition for all but serious gamers. The Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii seem to offer a lot with a much lower entrance fee for the millions of casual gamers like me.
- FrontPage - Dead (replaced by Expression)
- FoxPro - Status Unknown: It is being moved from a commercial product to a CodePlex project status.
- Zune - Cough cough cough :-)
- Hardware - Healthy: The Microsoft keyboards, mice (mouses?), and webcams all look reasonably solid to me.
That’s just my personal take with no particular in-depth knowledge regarding revenue stream/contribution and market share. What’s your take on this?
Components that still need health reports:
- Exchange Server
- SQL Server
- Microsoft Dynamics
- SharePoint
- Visual Studio: I mostly write software using Ruby on Linux boxes folks. Let me know how Visual Studio is doing these days
- Works
- Money: What happened to Pocket Money for Windows Mobile?
- Streets & Trips: What happened to Pocket Streets for Windows Mobile?
I tried Vista the other day at work. I can't say I was very impressed. I don't know why. It is hard to put a finger on it. I was annoyed that they renamed some things (add/remove programs for one). Some of the stuff just seemed like glitz to me.
Robert: I suspect a lot of people have the same opinion as you. After five years, I expected a lot more from Vista. And, although I like it, I do find a lot of the changes to be more annoying than anything else. I suspect that Mac OS X and good ol' Windows XP are going to give Vista a run for its money (people moving to OS X or just staying with XP). That said, I do appreciate a number of Vista-isms and just got a new notebook at work with Vista Business Edition pre-installed on it.
Every time a new Microsoft OS comes out, people cling to the past talking about yesteryear (except Win98 -truly uninspiring). With Vista here and the Longhorn server on deck, we can resist or flee all we want. These products will tighten the grip. However, Sharepoint is Microsoft's future OS.
Perhaps it is SQL Server that forces Oracle to gobble up ERP companies thanks to value added BI, reporting, and integration services built in. Game changers like this eat away at competitor margins and make execs nervous. Dr Peter Chen, father of the ER model, comments on the future over at MSDN's channel 9 and it looks bright if the MSSQL team can deliver further levels of abstraction.
As a consumer and home user, I'm no longer interested in the Windows platform in any way, shape, or form and here's why. I just set up a new HP Pavillion notebook computer loaded with Vista for my wife. It took one hour and forty minutes to set it up, including updating all the drivers. When it was finally ready to go, I could hardly see the desktop for all the clutter of icons for this online service and that. It was all a bunch of junk. When I then opened up IE7, it too was so cluttered that I could hardly make out where the address bar was. Between the desktop and browser, I felt like I was standing in the middle of Times Square in Manhattan. I still haven't been able to figure out how to get the webcam to work with her AIM account.
Now contrast this with a MacBook Pro which I recently purchased. It took less than fifteen minutes to set up. And when I was done, there was nothing but a nice, clean, pristine desktop with the OS X dock along the bottom and the hard drive icon in the top right. And the webcam worked perfectly with no fiddling. In terms of the customer experience, Mac has Windows beat hands down.
whats really annoying is the fact that they not only quit manufacturing Xbox systems, but they quit issuing new games for it as well. i dont really have that kind of money to spend on an xbox 360, nor do i play it enough to warrant that kind of expense. the playstation line continues to issue games on EVERY platform they have issued, now it may be limited, but they didnt write off the entire system. once again microsoft has shown that they dont really care about their customers, with a resounding F.U.....but thanx for buying our crap.
Wow....you seem just like Microsoft....you did not actually address anything that was posed in the article? Namely that fact that desk top is dead........are you asleep, or get paid by Microsoft to tout their dead products?