Forecast for Microsoft: Partly cloudy

From health care systems to cell phones, the CEO Steve Ballmer wants Microsoft "to invent everything that's important on the planet."
(From The New York Times)

The story "Forecast for Microsoft: Partly cloudy" published October 18, 2009 at 5:56 PM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[ppgreat]

One question: Windows 7 is an update. "Vista done right" or whatever. And from I've seen in using it, it really is just SP4. Along the same lines as Snow Leopard to Leopard.

What such a huge disparity in the upgrade pricing? And the process of upgrading?

[Gold_Storm_Mac]

neither 7 nor sl are service packs. they both have new features and cosmetic changes. just not as many of them as say a normal os upgrade like xp to vista or tiger to leopard has.

[Super2online]

I think lots of people would completely disagree with you. You are using a phrase that has been popularized by Apple fans who are disappointed by Apple's "update". They are desperately wanting 7 to be looked at the same way so their egos can be massaged into thinking that the Mac actually has a shot at converting them. It's not going to happen. Even though Windows users have suffered through the humiliation that was Vista, they are hearing great things about 7 and see it as their savior. It's time to stand proud again and watch as the numbers rack up month after month demonstrating that their choice was a wise and popular one. Switch, are you kidding me? And miss the coming celebration? Absolutely no way!

[slickuser]

SP3 not SP4

and charging $300 for the Ultimate Crap Edition is a crime!

[shuyin84]

so there you have it all you microsoft fanboys that like to proclaim Mac's as being over priced, lets look at software costs, snowleopard costs at most $29, now lets take a look at windows 7 which is to microsoft as snow leopard is to Mac, $120!!!! Thats absolutely outrageous for something thats gonna fail just like vista did

[freemarket--2008]

@Super2online: Could it just be possible that Leopard was really a decent OS to begin with (still using it until the SL dust settles) ? Snow Leopard even though a major upgrade does not have as much impact as going from the dog Vista to Win 7.

[Random_Walk]

The big diffs?

Apple itself said Snow Leopard is not much more than an update, and charges accordingly: ~$30

Windows 7 is touted as a massive change (it isn't - just some superficial eye-candy and some code cleanup of Vista - otherwise it pretty much looks and smells the same), but it'll cost you a lot more. The majority of Windows users get to deal with a complete re-install if they go that route.

[Seaspray0]

"One question: Windows 7 is an update." One answer. You made a false assumption.

[symbolset]

Windows 7 lacks the fancy new scheduler that Mac OS-X has, which when joined with new programming models enables better scheduling of multiple cores. This is critical technology in the many-core era and their flagship operating systems lack it.

It's too early to predict whether W7 will be the sweeping success that many need it to be to drive purchasing of new desktop and laptop PCs and software. Most reviewers are being fairly conservative because the got burned for irrational exuberance over Vista.

Microsoft has missed a lot of turns in the last decade. While they have been stalled other companies have continued to grow. Now a company like Apple that was a $8B company in 2003 is a $168B company and very much in their face. Others have likewise managed to grow. Microsoft is not accustomed to dealing with peers, and they're going to have to figure that out because all the big names are drawing even with them. "Partnership" is going to have to take on a whole new meaning in Redmond.

They're going to have to build a Premium Mobile eXperience, and starting today that's got to look like a very steep hill to climb. They need to build credibility on the cloud, and that looks steep too. They're still hugely profitable - they could simply stop their unprofitable spending and their amazing margins on Office and Windows would propel them to huge returns, but they're out of room to grow in those domains so in the end that's a dead end too.

Whatever they do, we'll all be watching them and it promises to be interesting.

[Random_Walk]

"Most reviewers are being fairly conservative because the got burned for irrational exuberance over Vista."

Actually, many of the more sane reviewers of Vista were cautious as well (not counting cheerleaders such as Ed Bott, who even then were somewhat guarded ab't Vista).

[slickuser]

SP3 not SP4 and charging $$$ for Ultimate Crap Edition is a crime!

[zeroplane]

Wait, when has Microsoft innovated and created anything on it's own?

Windows --- Dos
Windows NT --- OS/Warp/Unix
.NET and C# ---- Java Platform and Java
Sliverlight -- Adobe Flash (or Macromedia Flash to be old skool)

Really when has Microsoft actually creating something that wasn't imitating someone else's idea?

[t8]

Microsoft Bob was original.
They gave up being original after that. They scared themselves and thought we need to copy AOL, Apple, Google, etc.

[Super2online]

Try Microsoft Courier and Natal for starters. If you don't know what they are, look it up and see innovation at it's finest. And while we are getting reved up lets talk about how innovative the second version of the Zune software was. Not a single review I read gave iTunes a leg up on it. Then there is the new Zune HD interface, a fabulous work of art that nobody has stated takes a second fiddle to the iPod. Sharepoin,t while not exactly an innovation has marched from 1st to 3rd version and become a billion dollar business for Microsoft even in the face of constant improvements to salesforce.com.

The Microsoft Office Ribbon was a user interface innovation that puts the tools you need at your fingertips based upon what you are actually doing. The intertace is now being adopted by many many companies in their software as well. Microsoft surface used standard hardware in innovative ways to bring multi-gestural computing to commercial and industrial uses.

And lets not forget that innovation is not the only attribute that a company needs to aspire to. Taking existing ideas and making them better is the hallmark of hundreds of companies the world over. While Apple has innovated in many areas, it was not the first to create an Mp3 player, far from it. Tthe iPod was just the MP3 player done right. And Microsoft has successfuly improved upon the iPod in many respects. So improving upon the existing features can be looked at as being very innovative when those features take a very large leap forward.

Recently Microsoft has begun to take many of their incubated and sandboxed creations and licensed them to others who where very thankful they did. In some cases these apps put a new spin on existing ideas and others where completely new, but none of them worked well in the product plans so are being licensed to others to earn some money from them.

Look at Google Wave. None of the features in this app are innovative un to itself. Email, chat, twitter, facebook have all been around for a long time, and in a few of those, just a few years. The innovation though is putting it all together in an innovative way that markedly advances it's usefulness.

So I think I have shown that innovation can come in many forms, and works its magic in many ways that you may not of thought about before.

[Random_Walk]

"Microsoft Bob was original."

You know? They actually had a pretty cool idea there... the problem was that they had such a crap execution of it, and seriously mis-read how folks actually use computers.

[Random_Walk]

"Try Microsoft Courier and Natal for starters. "

Vaporware until it comes out.

[t8]

"Forecast for Microsoft: Partly cloudy"

Followed by rain.
Microsoft's outlook sounds like Seattle's weather to me.

[Seaspray0]

What? No "Micr$logh will die, give the money back to the shareholders" remark? Feeling under the weather, t8?

[luke_marsh]

Rule number one for good inventions don't tread to heavy on the inventors lives or they'll take their ideas else where.
You can't just bully in total success or people will make things like Linux better and start attacking and consumers want the best technologies not just the Military.
That's it you deflate now there Microsoft.

[S Nijs]

Well whatever...

I just finished losing the last instance of XP from my home network, and totally migrated to openSUSE.
This is an OS (or better, Linux) that gets better and better with every iteration. Every new installation works better and faster on the same hardware.
Just show me an OS that is max. 6 months old, and runs comfortable on hardware such as a PIII-700 laptop with 512 MB Ram...

[Seaspray0]

I haven't seen a PIII-700 for over 7 years. Where do you find computers like that? Not even my greensheets has stuff that old.