Yep. Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed, that's all.
Look, they've been great simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. There was an incredibly TREMENDOUS hidden demand for a PC and an operating system for it, and MS happened to be there at the time. A half-blind monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money too. It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time.
And that was a market that worked well if unified on a single standard. As luck would have had it, that was Windows. Okay, not entirely luck, Bill Gates is also a shrewd businessman. But from a technical perspective, MS has always been mind-numbingly mediocre and uninspired and anti-visionary. Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.
Well, now the tremendous hurricane lifting MS up is dying down, and it's becoming apparent that it really takes gale-force winds to keep flying an object with all the graceful aerodynamics of a brick.
With the tides of history turning against them, it's now obvious to everyone that they are really inept at innovation. What's funny is that this is considered "news".
Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long. You've probably cost us all perhaps a decade of progress. Nobody of consequence is going to miss you.
> It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time
> "Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed"
me·di·o·cre
adjective
1. of only moderate quality; not very good.
I beg your pardon, but there are people out there who think that Visual Studio, Office and even WP8 are vastly superior in comparison with the alternatives. Quality not always guarantee success (You can ask Apple with the original Macintosh but there are several examples of that in history)
Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.
Kicking and screaming? This myth has developed that Microsoft completely missed the Internet bus, and only billg's belated realization and just-in-time gamble saved them from market disaster.
Except billg's famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo was written in May of 1995! Netscape Navigator 1.0 had been released a whole five months earlier. Essentially nobody from the old PC guard saw and acted on the web's potential before Microsoft did.
They aren't really inept. Its just that they want to do everything themselves, disregarding others. "It runs on our Microsoft platform, works well with our Microsoft tools and you can even store your stuff on our Microsoft cloud, provided that you run the Microsoft sync tool on your Microsoft operating system"
They really need to learn to stop doing that, because they're not able to afford it anymore.
Yep. Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed, that's all.
Look, they've been great simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. There was an incredibly TREMENDOUS hidden demand for a PC and an operating system for it, and MS happened to be there at the time. A half-blind monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money too. It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time.
And that was a market that worked well if unified on a single standard. As luck would have had it, that was Windows. Okay, not entirely luck, Bill Gates is also a shrewd businessman. But from a technical perspective, MS has always been mind-numbingly mediocre and uninspired and anti-visionary. Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.
Well, now the tremendous hurricane lifting MS up is dying down, and it's becoming apparent that it really takes gale-force winds to keep flying an object with all the graceful aerodynamics of a brick.
With the tides of history turning against them, it's now obvious to everyone that they are really inept at innovation. What's funny is that this is considered "news".
Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long. You've probably cost us all perhaps a decade of progress. Nobody of consequence is going to miss you.