Lucky Day
Daywatch
This is an article on the problems of facing Microsoft. I deliberately tailored it to not be the usual rant we've been hearing for the last 20 years; I won't be spelling their name with a dollar sign. Instead, this is article on recent problems with the company.
Since its a long article I've highlighted my central points in bold to make it easier for reading. Its not meant to make it a louder point as some anti-MS post are apt to do. Its simply because I know most forum readers don't have time for too long an article.
Since Bill Gates took a back seat to administrative role after losing the Antitrust suit the company has made some serious missteps. Of course, like Rockefeller no one for one instant believes he doesn't still control the company.
With the equivalent of a slap on the wrist from the Appeals courts MS felt comfortable enough to proceed with the status quo and continue to leverage the next version of Windows (XP). They did this to several companies of course but what got them into trouble this time was the Media Player being imbedded.
1) Windows Media Player - Since the release of Be and the growth of MP3 players there's been a growing popularity of using home computers for media. MS attempted to shut out competitors by leveraging their own, much improved Media Player already integrated into Windows to become the premier program. This caught the attention of European regulators who also felt emboldened by the American antitrust suit. They were slapped with a (reduced) $613 million fine in which their appeal was slapped down just last week.
2) The release of Windows XP has been one of the few bright spots for them. The company has finally gotten PC customers to move off its unstable Windows 95 series and force them to upgrade their software. Somewhat controversally they launched their WGA program to force users to register their copy in order to reduce piracy.
The OS market consolidated MS felt it needed to branch out. They managed to buy out and destroy the home internet appliance, the WebTV quite successfully but they had an about face.
3) After the success of the Nintendo 64 and the especially the Playstation MS decided to focus on the video game console market with the XBox.
From the start MS had been losing money on the device so they squeezed their suppliers (nVidia) to absorb some of the loss.
Worse, with the focus on their video game products MS has lost touch with their PC base.
4) Firefox, et al. While MS was taken on Sony the grandchildren of Netscape were getting their revenge on MS by developing superior browsers. The creation of "tabbed browsing" made their Internet Explorer browser look badly outdated. When MS finally released IE7 it was full of bugs that made it incompatible with many websites and some applications since it was integrated in the OS.
As well, an effort was made by the company to redesign look and feel of the thing and made it counter-intuitive.
5) Lindows - With Unix enthusiasts finally agreeing on a standard with Linux, Walmart's support of the small company Lindows proved to be an embarrassment for the company.
Walmart being one of the few companies with the leverage to cross swords with MS, this was clearly an attempt to squeeze MS to reduce OS costs the way they did against Visa.
MS fired back by suing Lindows and were surprised by a very effective defence that ruled against MS. The name Windows was declared too generic a name to trademark and MS ended up settling with Lindows by paying their court costs for the agreement that they change their name to Linspire.
The Lindows owner also was allowed the bragging rights to the press.
6) Windows XP 64 - This OS runs much more efficiently than its 32 bit counterpart but has the earmarks of being an also ran.
To be fair 64 bit processing was in its infancy at release, however from the start the Linux equivalent has 32 bit processing native to it. Compatibility wouldn't have such an issue if this were the same with XP 64.
Windows 95 and XP each had methods of dealing with previous levels of software, if only to lean on devs to make them compatible (with the exceptions of cheaper manufacturers such as Reveal who were thankfully put out to pasture).
It is only thanks to cross compatibility with Windows Server 2003 that drivers are finally being made available to this little OS.
7) XBox 360 - the original XBox did start selling games after 3 years but its never made numbers like the Playstation 2. MS released this with huge hype around the same time as the Playstation 3.
Other companies offered higher priced models aimed at the "core gamer". Both companies were avoiding making the same mistake of previous years of sticking with a console's technology for too long while game profits were rolling in.
However, neither company counted on Nintendo's resurgence with the Wii and their new innovations in user controls. Nintendo's focus on the casual gamer has embarassed the bottom lines of both their rivals.
As well, Playstation 2 game sales are still brisk and Sony has clearly showed an unwillingness to suffer further losses with their console sales. The PS3 may be expensive but either it is profitable or is sold at cost.
MS on the other hand is probably still taking losses at each 360 sold.
8) Office 2007 - after successive upgrades to Office 2000, XP, and 2003 there wasn't much new in these to write home about. However, companies kept buying them to be up to date.
With Office 2007 MS decided to rewrite the book without checking to see what kind things people like to read. The result was another counter-intuitive set of panels that emphasises quick keys over mouse control which is a throwback to company policy.
Businesses are extremely reluctant to switch to this to say the least.
9) Zune - MS entered the MP3 market taking on Apple's iPod the way its taken on the XBox.
Although MS's muscle has positioned itself very well in kiosks against its rivals, Steve Job's vision at Apple has continued to keep the market safe for iPod the same way he did by taking it over in the first place: brand awareness and by making a very good product. The iPod has certainly entrenched itself and Jobs has gained a leverage over the music industry like no one has before.
Zune is still in its infancy however and MS has left a trail of companies in their wake such as Borland, Wordperfect, Lotus, and Realaudio.
The Zune is poised on the doorstep of Apple the way the XBox was with Sony. At this point Apple's competitors' only advantage is their lower price which Apple customers seem to ignore.
10) Windows Vista - MS's first OS in 5 years (they released 3 in 2 years before that) has been received with a loud thud.
Vista includes a handful of features that XP does not but most of the more powerful or interesting ones were gutted from development years ago due to problems. The CEO of MS was fired by Gates for his inability to release Vista by Christmas.
Customers rebelled and vendors such as Dell pressured MS to allow XP to be sold again. Customers by and large see no compelling reason to upgrade from an OS that works and feel that any decent feature such as DX10 could probably be made compatible for XP.
Further problems include lack of backwards compatibility on many software titles and worse many hardware products that may break when a DX10 patch is released.
8) IBM releases Lotus Symphony to the OpenOffice project - OpenOffice and Google Apps have so far made little dent against MS's Office but this week's announcement by IBM may finally help release MS stranglehold with Office.
Time will have to tell however. IBM been fighting MS for year to regain its number one spot after its self destruction with the overprice and incompatible IBM PS/2 PC and the failure to garner interest away from MS with its OS/2 Warp.
-----------
Gate's ruthless takeover of the home PC market has been successful for 20 years bringing down the strongholds of such stalwarts as IBM.
The companies decision to branch out to the hardware end in the form of its XBox have created some talk but not the overwhelming sales it needs (at greatly reduced costs).
This focus is the cause of the company's stalling in the release of one failed software product after another, in markets where it was king.
The XBox' purpose to develop more standardized hardware for the mishmash of IBM PC clones may have been somewhat needed at first but cross platform development between the two have been virtually ignored.
MS quickly adopted a policy to encourage work on XBox games first and so devs treat the PC as an afterthought, and save costs by not gearing the ported games to PC designs.
The company initially bulked at the age old dream of convergence with the XBox and has since backtracked on this idea. Features that most consoles previously lacked such as internet compatibility, and DVD players have been added.
Meanwhile Windows, Internet Explorer, Office have suffered and the company lacks proper focus in the lucrative media player market.
Were MS to spin this division off and stop subsidizing it they could then get back to what they do best and that's software
XBox could stop being so overly ambitious and be a product that works like the Wii.
Since its a long article I've highlighted my central points in bold to make it easier for reading. Its not meant to make it a louder point as some anti-MS post are apt to do. Its simply because I know most forum readers don't have time for too long an article.
Since Bill Gates took a back seat to administrative role after losing the Antitrust suit the company has made some serious missteps. Of course, like Rockefeller no one for one instant believes he doesn't still control the company.
With the equivalent of a slap on the wrist from the Appeals courts MS felt comfortable enough to proceed with the status quo and continue to leverage the next version of Windows (XP). They did this to several companies of course but what got them into trouble this time was the Media Player being imbedded.
1) Windows Media Player - Since the release of Be and the growth of MP3 players there's been a growing popularity of using home computers for media. MS attempted to shut out competitors by leveraging their own, much improved Media Player already integrated into Windows to become the premier program. This caught the attention of European regulators who also felt emboldened by the American antitrust suit. They were slapped with a (reduced) $613 million fine in which their appeal was slapped down just last week.
2) The release of Windows XP has been one of the few bright spots for them. The company has finally gotten PC customers to move off its unstable Windows 95 series and force them to upgrade their software. Somewhat controversally they launched their WGA program to force users to register their copy in order to reduce piracy.
The OS market consolidated MS felt it needed to branch out. They managed to buy out and destroy the home internet appliance, the WebTV quite successfully but they had an about face.
3) After the success of the Nintendo 64 and the especially the Playstation MS decided to focus on the video game console market with the XBox.
From the start MS had been losing money on the device so they squeezed their suppliers (nVidia) to absorb some of the loss.
Worse, with the focus on their video game products MS has lost touch with their PC base.
4) Firefox, et al. While MS was taken on Sony the grandchildren of Netscape were getting their revenge on MS by developing superior browsers. The creation of "tabbed browsing" made their Internet Explorer browser look badly outdated. When MS finally released IE7 it was full of bugs that made it incompatible with many websites and some applications since it was integrated in the OS.
As well, an effort was made by the company to redesign look and feel of the thing and made it counter-intuitive.
5) Lindows - With Unix enthusiasts finally agreeing on a standard with Linux, Walmart's support of the small company Lindows proved to be an embarrassment for the company.
Walmart being one of the few companies with the leverage to cross swords with MS, this was clearly an attempt to squeeze MS to reduce OS costs the way they did against Visa.
MS fired back by suing Lindows and were surprised by a very effective defence that ruled against MS. The name Windows was declared too generic a name to trademark and MS ended up settling with Lindows by paying their court costs for the agreement that they change their name to Linspire.
The Lindows owner also was allowed the bragging rights to the press.
6) Windows XP 64 - This OS runs much more efficiently than its 32 bit counterpart but has the earmarks of being an also ran.
To be fair 64 bit processing was in its infancy at release, however from the start the Linux equivalent has 32 bit processing native to it. Compatibility wouldn't have such an issue if this were the same with XP 64.
Windows 95 and XP each had methods of dealing with previous levels of software, if only to lean on devs to make them compatible (with the exceptions of cheaper manufacturers such as Reveal who were thankfully put out to pasture).
It is only thanks to cross compatibility with Windows Server 2003 that drivers are finally being made available to this little OS.
7) XBox 360 - the original XBox did start selling games after 3 years but its never made numbers like the Playstation 2. MS released this with huge hype around the same time as the Playstation 3.
Other companies offered higher priced models aimed at the "core gamer". Both companies were avoiding making the same mistake of previous years of sticking with a console's technology for too long while game profits were rolling in.
However, neither company counted on Nintendo's resurgence with the Wii and their new innovations in user controls. Nintendo's focus on the casual gamer has embarassed the bottom lines of both their rivals.
As well, Playstation 2 game sales are still brisk and Sony has clearly showed an unwillingness to suffer further losses with their console sales. The PS3 may be expensive but either it is profitable or is sold at cost.
MS on the other hand is probably still taking losses at each 360 sold.
8) Office 2007 - after successive upgrades to Office 2000, XP, and 2003 there wasn't much new in these to write home about. However, companies kept buying them to be up to date.
With Office 2007 MS decided to rewrite the book without checking to see what kind things people like to read. The result was another counter-intuitive set of panels that emphasises quick keys over mouse control which is a throwback to company policy.
Businesses are extremely reluctant to switch to this to say the least.
9) Zune - MS entered the MP3 market taking on Apple's iPod the way its taken on the XBox.
Although MS's muscle has positioned itself very well in kiosks against its rivals, Steve Job's vision at Apple has continued to keep the market safe for iPod the same way he did by taking it over in the first place: brand awareness and by making a very good product. The iPod has certainly entrenched itself and Jobs has gained a leverage over the music industry like no one has before.
Zune is still in its infancy however and MS has left a trail of companies in their wake such as Borland, Wordperfect, Lotus, and Realaudio.
The Zune is poised on the doorstep of Apple the way the XBox was with Sony. At this point Apple's competitors' only advantage is their lower price which Apple customers seem to ignore.
10) Windows Vista - MS's first OS in 5 years (they released 3 in 2 years before that) has been received with a loud thud.
Vista includes a handful of features that XP does not but most of the more powerful or interesting ones were gutted from development years ago due to problems. The CEO of MS was fired by Gates for his inability to release Vista by Christmas.
Customers rebelled and vendors such as Dell pressured MS to allow XP to be sold again. Customers by and large see no compelling reason to upgrade from an OS that works and feel that any decent feature such as DX10 could probably be made compatible for XP.
Further problems include lack of backwards compatibility on many software titles and worse many hardware products that may break when a DX10 patch is released.
8) IBM releases Lotus Symphony to the OpenOffice project - OpenOffice and Google Apps have so far made little dent against MS's Office but this week's announcement by IBM may finally help release MS stranglehold with Office.
Time will have to tell however. IBM been fighting MS for year to regain its number one spot after its self destruction with the overprice and incompatible IBM PS/2 PC and the failure to garner interest away from MS with its OS/2 Warp.
-----------
Gate's ruthless takeover of the home PC market has been successful for 20 years bringing down the strongholds of such stalwarts as IBM.
The companies decision to branch out to the hardware end in the form of its XBox have created some talk but not the overwhelming sales it needs (at greatly reduced costs).
This focus is the cause of the company's stalling in the release of one failed software product after another, in markets where it was king.
The XBox' purpose to develop more standardized hardware for the mishmash of IBM PC clones may have been somewhat needed at first but cross platform development between the two have been virtually ignored.
MS quickly adopted a policy to encourage work on XBox games first and so devs treat the PC as an afterthought, and save costs by not gearing the ported games to PC designs.
The company initially bulked at the age old dream of convergence with the XBox and has since backtracked on this idea. Features that most consoles previously lacked such as internet compatibility, and DVD players have been added.
Meanwhile Windows, Internet Explorer, Office have suffered and the company lacks proper focus in the lucrative media player market.
Were MS to spin this division off and stop subsidizing it they could then get back to what they do best and that's software
XBox could stop being so overly ambitious and be a product that works like the Wii.