How Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did what Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates couldn't

Yahoo ^ | 1/30/2016 | Matt Weinberger

[Scutter]

On Thursday, February 4, Satya Nadella will celebrate his second anniversary as the CEO of Microsoft.

It's been an eventful couple of years.

Microsoft has grown its crucial cloud business, released Windows 10 to a much better reception than its loathed predecessor, launched a bunch of great apps for iPhone and Android, and generally made people like it a lot more.

But the real victory of Satya Nadella — the truly monumental shift — has been within the company. Under Nadella, Microsoft is pointed in one direction for first time in modern memory.

[Scutter]

My wife loves her Nokia Lumia 635. Worth much more than the $40 it cost. It’s real quality. But it has little or no apps. Because hardly anyone uses one, businesses like banks are not releasing Windows phone apps. The Windows phone is a distant 3rd behind IOS ans Android. The Windows phone is DOA.

It's a huge mischaracterization to say there are "little or no apps". Last I checked, there were over 100,000 apps for it. It's true that there is a significant "app gap" over iOS and Android. But I personally have only found a small number of apps that I wish I could have, but couldn't find on my Windows Phone.

The move to Windows 10 Phone is supposed to address that gap by attracting devs to write one app that will run on both Windows PCs and the phone. It remains to be seen if that strategy will work.

And by the way, the reason the phone business is in the state it is in now is because of so many years of Ballmer's bad decisions in this space.

[DrJeff]

I was a yahoo user since the 90's and quit when Mayer took over. Relentless spam, hacked email accounts, and finally the UI redesign killed them off. It's really sad b/c as an organization, they had some talented people over the years. Leadership just did not know how to use them to bring their ideas to the market.

Yahoo is down 23% over the last six months

[Hoosier-Daddy]

NT was bulletproof.

[Scutter]

Yes, so much mismanagement there....

[BobL]

“Linux is snappy and very responsive. I use Linux 99% of the time.”

While I like both Trump and Cruz, I do think that Trump will be better able to win in November and has the type of personality required to GET A LOT DONE as President.

[minnesota_bound]

#26 Does Trump or Cruz use Apple or Windows? : )
Apple Vs. Microsoft and Trump Vs. Cruz

[The Duke]

I have to admit that I am not familiar with Netrunner. Care to elaborate?

I installed Netrunner 3-4 years ago on an obscure little Gateway laptop I had purchased (LT3101u with 3rd party SSD drive), and the installation, surprisingly, was smooth as silk. The default Netrunner UI is KDE (it's based on KUbuntu), which is also nice (for those who prefer KDE). The install also comes with a rich set of apps.

In those 3-4 years I've continued to be impressed with the reliability and performance of this little sub-netbook (which can be had on eBay for as little as $125).

Netrunner is a good, stable, feature-rich distro.

[Scutter]

I looked it up on distrowatch and it says it’s based ob Kubuntu with a customized KDE desktop, extra codec packs, etc. So it sounds a bit like the KDE equivalent of what Mint is to Ubuntu. Is that an accurate statement? Is it using the same Debian package management system as Ubuntu? If so, I might like to try it out.

I usually just install plain Ubuntu as I mostly use Linux for services, and am remoting in via SSH. I don’t spend much time in the GUI. However, it’s fun to tinker around and keep up with the tech.

[dayglored]

> Ping to the Windows ping list.

You Got It!!

Great article on Microsoft's self-reinvention ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

Thanks to rarestia for the ping!!

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I went ahead and went to Windows 10 today. So far I’m still a little fumbly but It seems OK for the most part.

[The Duke]

The package manager is apt, with a GUI interface of Muon.

[TChad]

Thanks for your well-informed comments in this thread.

[Swordmaker]

#26 Does Trump or Cruz use Apple or Windows? : )

Apple Vs. Microsoft and Trump Vs. Cruz

"Those are his personal choices," Cruz said on CNBC. "I'll tell you, I love my iPhone."

US presidential candidate Donald Trump uses a Samsung Galaxy smartphone to tweet

[wally_bert]

I’ve been playing with Ubuntu and Mint and both are way more responsive.

Lately I’ve looked at Linux academy to learn more and get beyond just playing with Linux.

[Scutter]

Ok, thanks for the info

[upchuck]

Luv the fast bootup starting with Windows 8.1.

Yeah, too bad they had to give up F8 for that.

[CyberAnt]

Amen to that. I still miss being able to quickly and efficiently find my documents.

With Win7 I had to put a link on my desktop .. just to get to the directory where specific files are kept.

I wish somebody could take XP and put it back together. I really miss having such a friendly system to use.

[rarestia]

It was a ping to a ping list.

[MortMan]

Bull. It was an antisocial command for another poster to stay the hell off your lawn because they irritate you that included a request for a ping.