dslreports logo
 
    All Forums Hot Topics Gallery
spc
uniqs
57
OZO
Premium Member
join:2003-01-17

3 recommendations

OZO to Smokey Bear

Premium Member

to Smokey Bear

It's a "feature" trading time

I'm sorry but I do not expect anything new from any "new" product developed by this company.

Since Bill Gates has left the company it is in a new epoch. It doesn't offer any innovation anymore, but rather it sells feature sets. When B.G. leaded company - I was excited with real new software development. But not now... Steve Balmer clearly has a different strategy. While he was shouting "developers" he really meant "marketers"...

What do I mean? Here is example. While Windows XP was innovative product and m$ actually offered the best technology available at that time to its customers, Windows Vista starts to add some "features", while at the same time removing others. It's offered to be more secure, but at the same time it's become harder to get to its configuration. It looks prettier, but it wastes a lot of computer recourses and therefore requires considerably more powerful hardware. Windows Explorer is inferior to WE in XP, etc. You can see this tendency even more in W7. See examples here List of features removed in Windows Vista - and here - List of features removed in Windows 7.

Look at IE7 (as one of the examples) and compare it to IE6. It finally had introduced a tab support, but at the same time convenient GUI customization was completely removed and replaced with a new GUI design containing a lot of bugs and obvious deviations from a common UI design. Office 2007 is yet another good example. They completely removed common interface and replaced it with the new inferior ribbon design (permanently taking more screen space by simply showing menu all the time, instead of dropping it down just for a time user needs to call it). To make this statement even bolder they do not offer you the common UI option and users have to buy a third party software to return convenient menu back. What will be next? I suspect in next version (or next to next one) they will return you convenient menu freeing useful space, but will remove another functionality to compensate it...

Bottom line, I don't expect a revolution, and I can't call it evolution either. It's just a "feature" trading time...

Smokey Bear
veritas odium parit
Premium Member
join:2008-03-15
Annie's Pub

Smokey Bear

Premium Member

said by OZO:

It's just a "feature" trading time...
Isn't that exactly what the customer demand? Windows 7 e.g. show now already the tendency to become the best sold Windows forever...
OZO
Premium Member
join:2003-01-17

OZO

Premium Member

Yep. It's more about money now then innovations...

Its a Secret
Please speak into the microphone
Premium Member
join:2008-02-23
Da wet coast

Its a Secret

Premium Member

said by OZO:

Yep. It's more about money now then innovations...
The devil does tend to short himself though, eventually.

CylonRed
MVM
join:2000-07-06
Bloom County
·Metronet

CylonRed to OZO

MVM

to OZO
With B.G they bought more innovations - all of the way back to early Win 95. Heck - they had to buy the OS to get Windows working at all.

The company has ALWAYS been about marketing - very little true innovation came from them. I do not consider buying functionality and wrapping it in Windows to be any type of innovation - that is marketing.

Not to mention - it has always been about making money...

Link Logger
MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB

1 recommendation

Link Logger

MVM

said by CylonRed:

With B.G they bought more innovations - all of the way back to early Win 95. Heck - they had to buy the OS to get Windows working at all.

The company has ALWAYS been about marketing - very little true innovation came from them. I do not consider buying functionality and wrapping it in Windows to be any type of innovation - that is marketing.

Not to mention - it has always been about making money...
I'm always interested in what people consider innovation in the world of computers/software perhaps some folks here could post some examples of innovation (by Microsoft or otherwise).

Certainly the GUI from Xerox, networking from ARPA, IC from Texas Instruments/Fairchild Semiconductor would qualify but what else?

Blake

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium Member
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK

KrK

Premium Member

I remember them buying things like Defrag, Disk Compression, Backup, etc etc

Link Logger
MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB

Link Logger

MVM

I remember them buying lots of companies, its what large companies do, especially large companies who have cash on hand. Years ago I had a company that had lots of cash on hand and our shareholders certainly didn't want that money sitting around in the bank making interest (interest isn't need enough to keep shareholders happy, as they can do that on their own), so we went out and bought some companies (companies that we could increase their market share through our marketing, companies that we could use to expand our client base, companies that expanded our product feature set, companies that prevent our competitors from expanding their product feature set, etc). Now Microsoft often buys companies just because they want the staff and not the product(s) as I mentioned before its the fastest way to acquire great employees.

I've been acquired a couple of times as well and each time it was a good deal as the company that acquired us had better marketing as we were tech startups so we had a great product and all the technical skills to create it, but we needed their marketing to get the product out there and be successful.

Sometimes when you start a company you have an exit strategy in place and often that involves being bought out by a bigger company like Microsoft. I like starting companies and creating products, but I don't and can't run them forever as that takes a different mindset then what I have (I'm good for designing and building the ship, loading it up and getting it out of port and running the narrows etc, but once she is underway on the open seas, better get a different captain as I'm likely to keep playing with it till the point that I end up trying to sail the ship capsized as I'm an agent of change).

Blake
dave
Premium Member
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio

dave to Link Logger

Premium Member

to Link Logger
I did make a list of what I thought was innovative in OS design, but it depressed me since it all happened in the 1960s and 1970s.

Link Logger
MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB

Link Logger

MVM

said by dave:

I did make a list of what I thought was innovative in OS design, but it depressed me since it all happened in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ya its depressing, but its how things work. Innovation is a beautiful thing and races along building on the work already done (Albert Einstein and Issac Newton both said 'If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants'), making great strides until someone invites Joe Public to get involved and then innovation slows down as the strides become shorter. Success can be a curse and for as far as computers are concerned success has been a curse for innovation as the user base has so much inherent inertia that change can't happen as fast as it used to. Now innovation is still happening but it really appears at 'build a better mouse trap' speed which is how most innovation occurs in any 'post consumer' technology, but most people can't see it and hence claim it no longer exists, but it does, you just have to look at the small steps as they still as innovation, just not the bombshells that were possible when things were just starting.

Blake
OZO
Premium Member
join:2003-01-17

OZO

Premium Member

What I've found depressing is - since S.B. took the leading role I start missing useful functions that were simply removed from the new versions of products. Just one example - toolbar customization in IE6 that was removed from IE7 - was already mentioned in my first post.

I don't remember examples of removed obviously useful functionality from products when B.G. was leading the company though. That's why I think now it's a different time - with new versions they simply start shuffle functions around and offering just a different subset of them (removing at the same time others) as a new version of product. As Z80 See Profile has said - it's a change in a sake of a change and almost nothing more than that...

BillRoland
Premium Member
join:2001-01-21
Ocala, FL

1 recommendation

BillRoland to OZO

Premium Member

to OZO
said by OZO:

I'm sorry but I do not expect anything new from any "new" product developed by this company.

Since Bill Gates has left the company it is in a new epoch. It doesn't offer any innovation anymore, but rather it sells feature sets. When B.G. leaded company - I was excited with real new software development. But not now... Steve Balmer clearly has a different strategy. While he was shouting "developers" he really meant "marketers"...
I would have to absolutely agree with this. Gates was a driving force inside Microsoft, whether or not you agreed with what they were doing. I'm not at all convinced Ballmer will be able to set a successful course for Microsoft.
xpclient
join:2009-08-26

1 recommendation

xpclient to OZO

Member

to OZO
Btw I agree 101% with what OZO said. Btw I created and maintained those "Features removed from Windows Vista" and Features removed from Windows 7 articles over three years (Nov 2006 when Vista RTMed) hoping users would be annoyed at this feature trading and demand MS to fix things up like these but users seem to be very satisfied with 7 and don't see what they're losing. It's similar to the Windows 7/Aero taskforce attempt but I'm more concerned about losing features which we have been enjoying in XP and previous versions that are removed either without thought or foolish conscious decisions by MS management. They don't give choice any more and keep things optional and customizable, that's why XP is the last best OS to come from them and that's why it's dominant at 70%.