Reply to post: Re: Only yourselves to blame

Next year's Windows 10 auto-upgrade is MSFT's worst idea since Vista

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Only yourselves to blame

Their core competency allegedly is software not hardware or advertising. They currently have a strong position with businesses and enterprises but they are risking it with various W10 idiocies.

I must admit I have trouble finding evidence that their core competency is software, to me it appears their only remaining competence is milking a monopoly position by hook or by crook, and even that isn't going so well. The problem with dishonest operating techniques such as lock in and, well, let's not beat around the bush and call it blackmail or OEMs is that such approaches create resentment that will come back to haunt you when your position weakens, and that is happening right now.

They damaged the Windows upgrade train by delivering such a disastrous code to the market with Windows Vista that that could not be labelled anything but alpha quality, so that train derailed there and then, and they have never quite managed to get that back on the rails again.

They damaged the Office franchise by making the UI so bad that especially long time users (you know, the people that by now have moved into decision making positions) had to fight to get work done, and they allowed that ribbon thing to even infest previously good software like Visio. This is in my opinion the point where the market for Apple opened up because Apple has always focused on ease of use, and the simplicity and usability of OSX is stunning if you come from Windows (you realise this less if you have just been using OSX all the time) - where Apple still struggles is Enterprise scale deployment and management support.

What put the final nail into the Office franchise was OpenDocument. MS saw nothing wrong with simply bribing MSOOXML into becoming an ISO standard, but it appears governments have miraculously managed to look beyond the tickbox - I suspect having to save money has finally kicked some sense into people, and OpenDocument finally became the standard it should have been for about a decade now.

The result is that monopolists suddenly have to play with others and go back to innovating and listening to customers. As the Win10 debacle and the massive astro turfing shows, they're not doing so well with that. To me it shows just how desperate MS management actually is behind all the brave words and spin. Yes, they still book lots of license fees but any strategist worth his money (that's only a few, actually) can see that the ship has been sinking for quite some time and they have not even started to plug the holes, let alone starting to pump water back out.

Time is running out - at some point, shareholders will actually start to notice this too.

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