James Allchin, co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division:
I’m not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems our customers face are.
(source)
We already knew that Mr. Allchin, please continue.
I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that does not translate into great products.
Well at least you have great marketing.
I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft.
Why not? Just use the best tool for the job (hint: not Microsoft). After all you are still using Linux servers in portions of your site (via Akamai). And you used Linux for your main site a couple of years ago after worm and virus attacks (Microsoft hides behind Linux for protection). Microsoft just doesn’t get security but hey, you already said that :)
And I’m sure you still remember how your own techies admitted that FreeBSD was superior to Win2k for massive server installs when they migrated the frontend of Hotmail? Oh, and I think the Hotmail backend is still running Solaris?
And of course, since you are responsible of Microsoft’s operating systems, you know that your programmers use Perforce instead of Visual Source Safe?
And of course you know that between your own employees, for every MSN search user there are FOUR Google search users?
I think I get the point Mr. Allchin: If Microsoft doesn’t eat its own dog food anymore because it has lost its way, all your costumers should start doing the exact same thing:
USE THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB (Hint: NOT Microsoft).
Comments (10)
That is a common problem with the Tech Industry. Getting ahead of themselves and moving from one project to the next maybe a little earlier than they should. New features tend to awe and bedazzle.
Soon they will be acquired by inventarte :)
After now, my eyes will be on microsoft’s server ;) I have WinXP on my desktop pc :( (At first chance, i will replace it by a mac)
dethron: You can replace Windows right now, for free, with any distribution of GNU/Linux, or *BSD!
http://www.distrowatch.com for a list of the free alternatives to choose from.
Great article Tabo, and hello!
Yashy:
Thanks for passing by. See ya in #unixhelp :-)
I still believe in Microsoft as a software products company and their X-Box console endeavor. I wonder if the spreading themselves too thin is becoming an issue. Fighting a war on all fronts is a difficult battle.
MSN adCenter is not doing well. I have used it for a couple of months and Google Adwords clearly out performs. adCenter is too inconsistent and not cost effective.
Microsoft has become too concerned with taking on every new market and being the most popular at it. If they truly focused all their resources on making such things as Windows, Internet Explorer and Office better than the competitors, they could completely squash them.
Firefox is better than Internet Explorer, Macintosh Operation System is supposedly better than Windows, don’t know about Office.
I’m a long time MSFT fanboy. Mostly because their products used to work much better than their competitors. IE > Netscape. Windows > mac. Office > anything else. VS6 > java.
But recently I notice that they’ve lost it.
IE7 sucks rocks. The tab browsing is slow and the process crashed on me. IE6 never crashed on me before.
VS from DotNet onwards also sucks. The IDE is too slow. I find that I don’t use the IDE at all. I just write my programs in VS6 and compile it using VS7 compilers in a command prompt.
Been a die hard MSFT fan since msdos/windows 3.1 era… now I’m starting to look at IE7 and VS IDE replacements. It’s dissapointing.
I roll with Firefox, but wish most web developers starting designing more sites for FF.