Posted on 05/16/2014 11:39:43 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
With two major cave-ins in the past few weeks, Microsoft is screaming at the top of its lungs about how irrelevant it is. If you didn’t understand the fall of Microsoft from powerful monopolist to computing afterthought, let SemiAccurate explain it to you.
For the past few decades, Microsoft has been a monopoly with one game plan, leverage what they have to exclude competition. If someone had a good idea, Microsoft would come out with a barely functional copy, give it away, and shut out the income stream of the innovator. Novell, Netscape, Pen, and countless others were crushed by this one dirty trick, and the hardware world bowed to Redmond’s whims.
The company sucked the life and innovation out of the industry for so long that eventually no one innovated because it was pointless, if the idea was good, Microsoft would end it. Ask Gateway about doing something as basic as making the initial desktop and installation process more user-friendly. Microsoft killed them for the sin of trying to make the user experience better. Everything stagnated as a result of this misuse of monopoly power.
As their marketshare grew to almost 100% of the PC market, Microsoft had to move into new areas for growth. There really wasn’t a new area large enough after Windows and Office to generate the revenues necessary to keep Wall Street’s desire for more sated so Microsoft did what they always do, leveraged their monopoly to extract more and more revenue from each customer.
(Excerpt) Read more at semiaccurate.com ...
Gotta read this to the very END!
If the end was good it would have been posted as part of the excerpt.
That was some rant.
I have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. They are not irrelevant and wont be for some time.
Honest disclosure, I am writing this from my Windows phone with the developer pre release 8.1 for phone. It is wonderful!
The version naming is going to confuse people.
I doubt Microsoft will run out of steam, that would be dangerous to computing because it would cause many people to,stop buying computers. I would never buy an Apple computer and I have very little interest in tinkering with Linux or Chrome.
Well, doing that from a phone seems pretty good to me.
Ubuntu Linux didn’t need tinkering, I just wish there was more software and games for it.
‘The company sucked the life and innovation out of the industry for so long that eventually no one innovated because it was pointless,...’
Not exactly correct. All those ‘barely functional’ features (including Windows itself) lead to a vibrant industry whose sole purpose was security, detecting and neutralizing viruses and malware and detecting/documenting effects of Windows backdoors (intentional or not). As an engineering effort Windows is more or less a failure (mostly more). Its certainly a textbook on what lack of engineering discipline and acumen breed.
Running Fedora distro and Firefox here.
My laptop fan died and I can’t afford to repair/replace so I am on a borrowed Windows laptop right now.
I remember when it first came out. It was free. That was a million upgrades ago.
How do I get my click back?
I wonder if he wrote that on a windows machine - and how many are reading it on windows machines. “ semiaccurate.com” seems to be an appropriate url for that article.
Not too many games on Steam for Linux yet though
Look at it this way.
If you had to buy a stock based solely on mobile’s future where would you rank Apple, Google and Microsoft.
One battle they’re really missing out on and it’s a big one is streaming boxes. Roku, Apple TV and Fire TV are going to be potent gateways in the future. You can’t compete against a $40 box with a $400 box. I might be able to convince a senior citizen father to spend $40 to get programs he wants when he wants them, never $400.
There hasn’t been one thing Microsoft has invented, I mean truly invented, that was a hot tech, must have thing.
DOS they bought, Windows they stole, Xbox they developed through fear, ZUNE!!!!! LOL....
Seriously I am hard pressed to really think of anything they’ve originated... ever. They are exceptional at making money though and being an also ran in a variety of categories.
Eventually they will come out with Linux games for windows. They have done it with Apple Mac OS X, so that the Valve Games, as well as a number of other games that previously were Windows Only on Steam (Deus Ex, Bioshock Infinite) are now for multiple platforms. When Steam realizes it can sell by broadening its game market to other Operating Systems. If there’s people who buy Linux games as they are on Steam, they wouldn’t have much of an issue making more Linux ports.
If they ever decide to cut off support for Xbox 360, Sony should send them cake because apparently PS4 beats the crap out of XBox One.
odd... Is Google down?
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