Comment by Spooky23
8 years ago
They threw about $500k at my employer at the time to hire some Eastern European company to build an app. They ended up stringing something together that got deployed on like 10 phones.
The problem was that a big enterprise customer is clueless about mobile apps, and Microsft’s endemic NIH syndrome made it difficult to work with business systems that aren’t Microsoft platforms.
O365 is a great example... the office platform should be an amazing mobile platform that drives all sorts of interesting things. But as an O365 customer, Microsoft just uses it as a lever to push their MDM product (you cannot configure Office apps without Microsoft stuff).
MDM is a pure commodity play. Microsoft would rather made $4.99 month on Intune than capture business process on their platform, which is worth 10x more.
Meanwhile Apple treats everyone pretty equally, and you can actually get stuff done.
I said this 20 years ago and it is still true today... Microsoft should spin off Office, server and client into different companies. Office could be an exponentially more valuable cash cow without being dragged down by the shitshow of Windows. Windows on client is a legacy product providing solutions to problems that people don’t have. Office is fundamentaly a more valuable platform.
Where I work, PC users spend more time in Outlook any other application. Browser and Word account for about 50% and 25% less time on average. So why are we presenting this UI optimized for computing circa 1997 where people run lots of little apps? Apple got this right by making iOS very low touch.
I'm not sure what your beef with Windows as a client OS is but if you're saying that the UI should be dumbed down, remember how the attempt to do so with Win8 backfired and that Microsoft quickly reverted most of those changes in Win8.1.
As the older generation is dying off / retiring, the percentage of people who have been using a computer for a long time has increased immensely, the "secretary who can't figure out copy/paste" issue is becoming less relevant every day. These days the only people I need to help do basic tasks in Windows are my retired parents.
I don't see how an iOS-like UI would be an improvement for virtually anything I can imagine doing on a Windows PC.
Increasingly, I'm having trouble with interns who don't know basic computer interface paradigms because they've never used real desktop operating systems, just a ton of phones and tablets.
They know how to send me screenshots taken with their smartphones.
> the "secretary who can't figure out copy/paste" issue is becoming less relevant every day.
Well, yeah, since the non-executive secretaries have been replaced by Office and network drives, essentially.
I didn’t say “make iOS”.
What I’m saying is that an operating environment built around Office and its functions would be more useful than the cruft built around Windows that is mostly redundant.
Windows is a boat anchor on Office.
Why would an OS built around Office be more useful than Windows 10 is currently?
If Microsoft released an update tomorrow that made it into an OS based around Office the user base would riot. "How to prevent windows from updating" would become the most popular google search in history overnight.
Outlook+Exchange is really the thing keeping Microsoft alive.
And Active Directory. I mean, I haven't found another platform yet that allows a sysadmin to control 10,000+ computers at the OS level simultaneously via one checkbox.
Clear area for disruption here. But it's IT stuff, so no one wants to touch it because it's not a cool selfie app.
Novell's directory made Windows domains look like a toy. But Microsoft abused their monopoly status, and pushed Novell out of the space. I still miss it.
And then they made AD, and extended the LDAP spec so that 3rd-party clients had a hard time working with it. But I digress.
Microsoft continues to exist because they can setup a system -- for many millions of dollars -- that allow a Fortune 500 to lock down PC's to the point of, say, not allowing users to change the desktop background. And CIO's nod their heads, stroke their chins, and say, "Yes, we need this. Our data is INFINITELY valuable. The files we create in the course of manufacturing something that can easily be bought, disassembled, measured, and knocked off in China, needs AS MUCH PROTECTION AS I CAN POSSIBLY SPEND MONEY ON. Oh, and 'SOX'! Feel free to make the users' workflow as miserable as possible."
In my opinion, this is why Windows Phone didn't make it. Microsoft's continuing vision is in letting someone ELSE control your computing devices. A phone is too personal for that.
Azure has provided enough of this IT-end-user-abuse-control such that big companies are following right into their cloud product. For this, all I can do is tip my hat to Nadella. Well played, sir. Well played.
Sysadmins aren't big fans of disruption either. You could build the greatest active-directory replacement in the world and no IT department would touch it with a ten foot pole because it isn't what they're used to.
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I wonder if that is what RH is gunning for by backing the likes of systemd and polkit.
Especially as they get more and more attention from the military-industrial complex.
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MS has a bunch of patents related to active directory. Nobody wants to risk touching that.
Nah. Azure revenue is growing dramatically every year.
For now. Some of the younger people aren't having any of that shit these days.
If they work at any big enterprise it is either Outlook or Lotus Notes.
The latter will make them love Outlook.
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