Microsoft Disagrees With 'Clumsy' Criticisms

I read that article. It was good.. spot on. I would think he knows what hes talking about.

I too read the article, and one point Brass brought up, that I've heard a lot tricking through about Microsoft having incredibly hostile internal dynamics. What I mean is one sector often works against another in order to ensure their product reigns supreme, even if the other product is in fact superior.

ClearType reaching a billion PCs is not even related to innovation. That's called a monopoly on a product. Is IE6 innovative because for the longest time it's been installed on more PCs than any other browser?

MS is a pathetic innovator, just as all big software companies (and indeed most companies in every market) are. They rely on patenting the whole world so that they can sit on their existing products' success and keep out the competition through lawsuits. True innovation comes from sharing ideas freely, not locking them up in a complex web of restrictive licences and closed-source programming.

"The first to bring Facebook and Twitter to the living room."

my laptop has done this for a very long time. as well as many televisions.

The Xbox360 hasn't done anything revolutionary. Yes it was the first console to bring high def
movies to the living room, and it was the first to be obsolete. The PS3 is the Bluray player of choice
and it plays all the same games the Xbox360 does and then some. Windows itself is also a sleeper, yes
they lead in technology but what do they have for competition???? Basically in a nutshell, Nobody! Yes they
do drag their feet and we all accept it, until someone comes along and really challenges them it's going to
be the same old same old year after year after year..............

All other points aside, the man's name is Dick Brass. 'Nuff said.

the only thing I can say microsoft is doing well will be the "natal" motion gaming addon

Basically, the only reason Intel's monopoly has lasted is because of Microsoft handing the PC market to them on a silver platter, and in turn, unless another architecture can gain strong ecosystem support from a broad range of hard-and-soft-ware vendors, then Intel also props up Microsoft's monopoly.

Neither innovates unless they absolutely have to, and Microsoft "features" tend to include tying everything into Active Directory, which in turn ensures that if you use somebody else's web-browser/database/whatever, that you'll lose tons of features and integration(anybody who works with AD knows what an epic-fail of a standard it really is). Intel, on the other hand, does the same thing with hardware, with the recent Ion, Pinetrail and Westmere shenanigans, they're scared shitless that Nvidia might make $20 off of one of their motherboard sales, they'd much rather force you to have their shit graphics....

simplify, make a standard, and stop dressing it up like a whore with dangling jewels of useless...

Good grief people, why all the hate for MS? I would place money on the fact that every person reading this uses MS on a daily basis. (You mac users can piss off w/ your 6% of the market)Sure they have their problems, but they are perhaps one of the most innovative companies in the world. I would love to see anyone else create a more stable operating system with the infinite hardware and software combinations that MS deals with on an hourly basis.

Uninovative? 93% of the PC market uses their software. That alone creates a standard and thus driving innovation world-wide.

MS brought gamming into the 21st century, a feat that Sony, Mac, Nintendo, Sega, and the thousands of other competitors can't lay claim to. X-Box alone has created a gaming network far superior to any other console available. Quibble if you will about bugs and flaws, but ask yourself, "Would be here were it not for MS?"

Sorry!

Ask yourself, "Would my favorite game or software be here were it not for MS."

What nonsense,

That logic would make water and air the most innovative things in the world. There is also the fact that that same 93% use GNULinux software every day, but don't know it.

It's called Linux not GNU/Linux. The gnu herd lost that fight, get over it.

Both Brass' and Shaw's comments are valid. They're talking past each other,
Ok, people, MS is NOT a particularly innovative company. But I don't see that as their role. MS position is more to drag their customers, screaming and kicking ("I want DOS!" "Who needs 64-bit!") along in a rapidly changing world of technology.
They've mostly been good at that, though there are some bad holes in their performance.
Like their once war on standards. It has held back business developments for all, thus making MS miss huge opportunities. And it has only marginalized MS in a lot of areas, where they are the proprietary owner of #C and whatnot that no one wants to use for exactly that reason.
The guy who IMO was mainly responsible for a lot of that mess (as well as the Vista mess), has recently left MS. Hopefully that means a brighter future in the long run.
A threat right now, I think, is that XBox focus damage PC-gaming. I think MS need to do much more on PC-gaming. It and DirectX is one of their fundamentally best entrenched positions, it's weird to see how little they care about that these days. I think maybe we again can see some of the negative dynamics Brass mentioned.

I think I would agree with the Clumsy part. Don't clumsy people break things that aren't broken?

For once I actually agree with the left wing media outlet, the New York Times.

@hacksterman, i can't play Mass Effect 1 or 2 on PS3...so how is that all the same and then some? PS3 is a huge failure.

manwell999: Those darn GNU folks, they are the P.E.T.A. of open-source... How dare they try claim credit for Linux when they only did half the work?

Linux = Core OS layer, primarily involving hardware management and drivers

GNU = All of the command line utilities that userland applications depend on, and for gnome users, the desktop environment

"Microsoft Disagrees With 'Clumsy' Criticisms"

Of course they do. Wouldn't you if you owned a company that someone said that about?

No news here.

Just lip service. Everyone love to cheer for the underdog, and chip away at the leader. Its all good. It won't change the fact that Windows is, by far, the most popular and used OS ever created for desktop computers.

Jobs called it "clunky old PC software' at the iPad announcement.

"The first to bring Facebook and Twitter to the living room."

So the first console to bring Facebook and Twitter to the living room? That's what I call INNOVATION! ~sarcasm~ Except my computer has done that since their existance...and that is located in the livingroom...

Why don't you read the Harvard Article on "Microsoft of 2005" to get a better understanding as to why that is...hahaha. Plus many computer people don't choose M$ as their OS...only the unintelligent do...

First of all, you sound like one of those lamers over at Newegg who rate their technological competency as HIGH but yet present the most unintelligent review of how overclocking makes your computer crash and don't know why.

I personally don't hate M$, but reading comments like yours presenting useless information with no viable arguments to back up your claim is...well, entertaining but discouraging to say the least as you shoot off at the mouth as if your completely...competent. However...

"I would love to see anyone else create a more stable operating system with the infinite hardware and software combinations that MS deals with on an hourly basis". WTF kind of argument is THAT?! All major OSes deal with this problem, just that M$ has better support because they HAVE TO with their monopolistic market-share. The more stable has already been created, it's called Mac and Linux. LOL. Linux has a superior filesystem structure that helps it remain secure and stable...M$ proposed a file-system restructuring for the Windows Vista release called the WinFS...but that was scrapped and Vista overall was a POS. Your comment about "hardware and software combinations" is rather...amusing!

By the way, M$ is not really an awe-inspiring innovator...they like to come in in the middle of the game and take market shares away. And sorry if I don't believe that M$ brought gaming into the 21st century entirely on a measly xbox-live status. Your so called reference to "thousands of competitors" is so confusing...who are these thousands of competitors that couldn't bring gaming to the 21st century? How truly was it that M$ was ABLE to do this?!

"Would we be here if it wasn't for M$?" Yeah, I would still be here. ;-)

P.s. Oh by the way, M$ likes to take open source... copy parts of the source code and slap a proprietary technology on it. But hey, that's innovation for M$ right?

And most of us are still running windows

Well considering that having air and water allowed life to exist and flourish to the point we are now I would say they are the most innovative things ever. Without those 2 things nothing else would be here period, that is supreme innovation.

Psssh, no one uses OneNote, its an afterthought.

And on innovation: The Zune was DOA, Zune HD IS DOA, Microsoft completely ceded the search market to Google before even knowing there was a market, and ClearType? Most people have never heard of it. And it hardly helps ship more Windows units: the only reason Windows ships at all is because its pre-installed on all shelf PCs. The reason its pre-installed is because most people use Windows, and most people use Windows because their software runs on it, and most software runs on Windows because everyone has Windows. Its a cycle that began in the late 90s, and monopolizing distribution channels that most effectively wrap up consumers doesn't make you an innovator. Had it been any other judge, it'd of made you a monopoly.

Lots of cool stuff don't exist thanks to MS monopoly policy to eliminate any small company who "threatens" them.

What else is Microsoft supposed to say publicly? "I'm a PC and Macs have been doing this for 7 years?" People who have to deal with Microsoft daily and provide services to users. As an Admin we deal with tons of MS issues, we even have a custom version of Vista that works some what the way it is supposed to work. More than half our public/student computers are Macs at the university. Our statistics clearly show us that our PCs give way more problems than Macs (350 PC problems to every 1 Mac problem). 90 percent of these problems are related to MS, 10 percent to Dell. While these factors are verifiable, 90 percent of the University business structure is Windows based computing.

When we upgraded our Labs to Vista a couple of years ago, all of our network engineers were and still are using Windows XP at home and their desks. When I asked the director, why even bother with Vista, he calmly replied, "Job Security".

After looking at the code of Windows 7 beta, we decided to hold off until Fall 2010? Why because we have to make significant changes to our infrastructure that will affect users. While Windows 7 appears to be what Vista has been. The enterprise version will be a pain for users, unless Microsoft customizes it again so we can manage user accounts instead of Windows Server trying to do it for us.

Conclusion:

From Office 2007 to Vista has been a negative experience for users. Because of that we have to support multiple versions of Windows and Office which causes constant problems in large Enterprise sites. The Microsoft code is aged, the patch work software work arounds and the millions of dollars we've had to spend or 3rd party software and hardware for security and other needs.

Microsoft is the cause for 90% of my "job security", if Microsoft did the right thing, I'd be out of work.

May Microsoft live forever!

I found the answer article rather pathetic, while the original article is rather limited in scope. Still, a bit of perspective.

ClearType first shipped with Windows XP. However, the only setting you had was 'on' or 'off' - you couldn't define it per software nor could you refine it: you had default settings, that worked or not, or you didn't. For comparison, at the same time ClearType came out, Adobe shipped Adobe Reader with subpixel filtering on, and a complete setup for it - on which you could decide which looked smoother or sharper.

This was an add-on for WinXP, and only appeared as 'standard' on Vista. Meanwhile, in the FOSS world, you could (in countries where software patents aren't recognized) set up your font filtering depending on font size (filter on higher than 6pt, or another value, in any screen orientation possible, etc.).

So yes, ClearType was the bastard child of XP: it was there in 2001, but if you didn't have a common LCD screen (and these weren't common at the time), then it didn't work.

The stylus in Office: this one I can't really say. Still, if you look at Office's interface, it is true that a stylus on it would have sucked big time before MSO 2007, and still sucks with the ribbon (very small icons). That would be expected from a small office suite, not a market leader. Indeed, MS tablets are often awkward to pilot, if at all - most of the times, what makes them usable are third party tools and driver tweaks.

At least until 2006.

When Vista became such a huge success (/sarcasm), many people at MS started reconsidering: can we really afford to screw up so perfectly, eventhough we are market leaders? Why is it that our latest softwares have been so decried?

The answer was, 'security' isn't good in a sales pitch (does it mean all former products sucked at that? Well, yes - good one for prestige); 'performance' couldn't be taken seriously (I had a brush in with Vista on a reasonably powerful machine last week: ouch); and 'innovation', well, all those nice things found in Vista had:
- already been present in former Windows versions (ClearType, with an add-on)
- already been available from third parties (browser tabs, transluscent windows)
- already been found in other OSes (composited 3D desktop: Compiz)
- been completely screwed up (fast file copies, UAC)

On IIS, for example, what did it bring to the table that Apache didn't already have? Answer: nothing. At all.

No, the only "nice" things to come from Microsoft recently have been pushes for interoperability and better performance: Seven is NICE (but it should have come as a service pack for Vista, like SP2 for XP), .Net is open (see Mono), the OOXML format was finally reasonably cleaned up, native (if controversial) ODF support in Office, IE finally supporting the Internet like other browsers do (OK, we're still waiting for DOM2 support, but at least HTML, CSS and Javascript work)...

But, where do we see innovation here? In Xbox360? First console to bring 1080p to the living room? That's plain wrong:
- original model could only handle 1080i
- none can read HD media: you need to buy an HD-DVD drive for it, HD-DVD is pretty much extinct, and Blu-ray is still not available. On the other hand, PS3 did bring HD media to the living room, and Wii brought innovative controllers

As for the Zune, sorry: good joke. A portable media player that can't playback DRM content from the maker, that is more expensive and more difficult to use than any of its competitors... I remember reading an article once about a break-in in a hifi store: all MP3 players were stolen. iPods, Creative MP3s, etc. All but the Zune. That does give an idea of the marketability of the thing: it's worth less than dead weight.

Just like an exec trying to defend against criticism that is spot on, avoid the issues.

If Microsoft was so innovative, they wouldn't need to infringe upon other manufacturer's patents so often.