Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?
Short version: I've been asked to compile a document that will go to various people at MS, including Steve Ballmer (before anyone asks, no I'm not giving you his or anyone elses contact details).
As such, what would you guys like to see from Microsoft in the future? Suggestions can cover anything from IE9 to Windows 8, your thoughts on 7 (desktop or mobile), Xbox, Zune... Also, thoughts on competitors and their movements would be welcomed too.
Please note that this isn't just a feature request list, so anything to do with the strategic direction of MS and/or any of its divisions would be great.
Fire away!
380 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadI ask for this because although computers are getting faster all the time, booting and using Windows these days is still an exercise in patience, even on my high end laptop.
[1] Powered-off-and-ram-image-stored-to-disk type of sleep.
I love how the difference between sleep and hibernate is abstracted away in Apple's implementation.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1757?viewlocale=en_US http://www.macworld.com/article/53460/2006/10/safesleep.html http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...
I think .net is a good bait for such a new system. From the little interaction I've had with C# devs, they seem to like it.
Hopefuly this means that implementing the idea I'm talking about is not too much of a stretch from the current code.
Mobile technology - The Windows phone 7 will not succeed. Sure you will sell a few phones but for the marketing and sheer executive brainspend on this you will not get a profitable return within 5 years. I had a good debate on Quora about what sucess looks like for Microsoft and I don't think this is realistically achievable: https://www.quora.com/Will-the-Windows-Phone-7-succeed-Why-o...
So the best decision would be to give up on the OS and focus on applications such as MS Office and XBOX game centre for iOS and Android devices. Alternatively buy RIM - it is such a good synergy with the current MS business and getting cheaper by the minute.
Consumer operating systems - The days of big desktop being a true star are dead, it is a cashcow at best. Why do you really need more than a XBOX / PS3 and a tablet & phone now? Focus on building from scratch an OS like Chromium that will run on a tablet, boot in under 3 seconds, have IE 9 as the browser and run office.live.com with proper offline mode. Use the Wintel partnership to get firmware optimization with this and use Dell, Acer and HP to get this new OS out on a powerfull (maybe dual screen) tablet by Q2 2011.
Browser - IE9 looks promising but it is a straight up rip off of Chrome no questions. Where is the real innovation - hire some people that will really think outside the box on a browser e.g. how about something like Cardspace from WebOS - organize browser and OS activities by task rather than by tabs and applications
XBOX - This is the one shining light in the last 5 years for MS for me. Focus on leading the industry not following it - how about a true cloud gaming service using optimized RDP or equivilent to allow full 3D rich client emulation gameplay on tablets, TV's and phones
Zune - must support full cloud based music streaming service - do it before Google music.
Augmented humanity - do something to lead and the define to way to private and secure augmented humanity: http://rakkhi.blogspot.com/2010/09/privacy-in-age-of-augment...
Also, checking out the Quora thing now. Cheers
A laptop (particularly one of the "desktop replacement" variety) is certainly not in that class. Why would a minor change in form factor force a wholesale change in OS strategy?
will complement laptops much better than they do now.
This is not a viable "growth strategy." MS has worked on these boring enterprise products for 15 years already, and buying RIM and developing Office is more of the same. I can't foresee any new tech coming from these boring strategies.
MS's ceiling for mobile market share is 2nd place. This isn't a bad outcome, but to accomplish this MS needs to keep WP7 locked down (so it can compete with the carrier-garbage versions of Android we see now). Who knows? I don't think they're out to "win" consumer mobile; they want to participate in it, pick up good market share, and try to develop brand synergy.
Anyway, MS is an enterprise company at their core, so their performance in consumer mobile isn't a big deal. They know enterprise, so they should stick to what they know. Why not develop custom tablet software for enterprises? Or even new computing (or augmented humanity) devices for businesses/gov't?
The tech space is changing rapidly, and MS could be there to support that change with light and nimble tech. But, given what we know about MS and Danger, they're very far away from developing light and nimble tech. Culture must change at MS.
Agree with you on enterprise tablet, imagine the "Blackpad" running WP7
Not to flame but I switched to Ubuntu after Vista and never looked back.
The exception is Xbox ads. As 'rakkhi' noted, the Xbox product line is actually great, and I think its advertising is one reason for its success. Xbox ads, everything down to the cool logo/sound thing in each one, make me think about the product, instead of making me feel sorry for the company that made the commercial.
Start by throwing out all the copycat stuff. ("I'm a PC"...I get it. Stupid. Is that the best you can do?) If you're going to copy anyone, copy yourself: take Xbox ads, and extend their style to the rest of the product line. Then go even further.
I think they need to really find a better way to differentiate themselves from the competition, it doesn't have to be feature based as OS's have been able to do most of everything the average used would want for a long time, but rather the feeling people get from using it and how it makes things simpler for them.
They've done a great job of this with Xbox and Windows 7. I was incredibly sad when the Courier got cancelled. This was a big head pound moment for me. At it's core, MS sells software, but increasingly, it seems apparent that consumers are going to spend their dollars on hardware/software combos (this is primarily a nod to Apple, but look at the care that Google invested with Android - the G1, the close relationship to Droid, and Nexus One, and RIM making all their devices). It's no longer enough to say "here's an operating system, do what you want with it." This was the previous mobile strategy, and now it's gotten them into the position their in.
Mobile seems to be figured out already - MS will be fighting for 3rd place (at least for the next 5-7 years). Tablets is still a potential area for innovation - the iPad leaves a lot to be desired, ChromeOS seems to be dead, Android Tablets have yet to really take off.
Overall - there seems to be an inherent political culture at MS. It's intriguing that Apple has a higher market value with 10% of the employees. I know so many brilliant, smart people that work at Microsoft, but I haven't heard from them in the past 5 years - they seem to all be cogs in a big machine.
Encourage employees to start their own companies. Maybe have a blanket policy of providing seed money to any employee that wants to - YC style. Take a lot of smaller risks instead of few big ones. Zuckerberg would have taken $10,000 for 10% when he first started - now 1.6% cost you $240,000,000! You could have invested in 200,000 ideas for that price. Let your people run with their own ideas, without having to sit through 80 million meetings and having their ideas suffer death by 1000 PM's.
Just thinking that you need a billion dollar product or it's not worth it, will mean that no potentially game-changing ideas that start as a seed and will grow can come through the system. You're left with only the options to buy (but now the other companies will not sell as they have wisened up to their value) or partner (and you'll not get the real benefit or possibilities from it, and your competitors might).
They buy small companies and assimilate their products. Microsoft has done this many times, making many small but "successful" products. So has Google. And they both have just a handful of home-grown products that support their reputation. Personally, I find no fault with the strategy. But I do find fault with the way people use Google to bash Microsoft when they're so similar in this respect.
Everybody knows about Microsoft's acquire / "embrace extend extinguish" so how about a brief one for Google, to reinforce my point.
1. Search - Home Grown, Obv.
2. AdWords - Embrace/Extend/Extinguish - Copied from IdeaLab, Sued, Settled out of Court
3. AdSense - Acquisition
4. Maps - Acquisition
5. GMail - Home Grown.
6. Android - Acquisition
7. Chrome - Not sure entirely, but def based on WebKit, Seems fair to say it's not an E/E/E strategy tho.
8. Display Advertising - Acquisition
9. Docs - Several Acquisitions
10. Voice - Acquisition
several former GreenBorder employees were named in a description of [Chrome's] sandboxing ability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GreenBorder
via: http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/infographic-googles-acquisiti...
Step outside the bubble for a second. Most people don't have tablets, and don't want tablets.
That has best buy saying tablets are cannibalizing their netbook revenue. This does not mean that netbooks or laptops are dead - personally for the current price I find something like an ACER1215N a lot better value for my usecases than an ipad. This is primarily due to the the HDMI out, USB input for storage, rich client gaming and the fact that I can run any VM for any OS I want. For running MS office / Openoffice also the tactile keyboard is handy without paying for additional accessories.
If there are others like my netbooks/laptops may decline but not die completely, I would suggest a 60/40 split in 3 years tablets/laptops respectively.
Again, I would say that in 99% of cases, people who buy a tablet are not buying it instead of a laptop, but as well as.
There would seem to be some evidence that some of the people who have to choose now are migrating to tablets but the real test will be when they come to replace them having experienced both. Do they stay tablet or return to a laptop?
The history of computing is riddled with corpses with 'ridiculous'-looking exit wounds.
And the number of kids showing their parents how easy it was to be online with iPads in the various shops that were selling them.
Step outside the bubble yourself - "most people" don't understand the complicated "Start" menu - they just want to get on with using the web so they can do their internet banking, buy cheap airfares or look at gossip sites. Preferably not at desk. Or with a keyboard.
Also why not try Chrome OS first before you say it is dead: http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/
Combined with office.live.com I have everything I need for 95% of my needs.
I consider myself web-savvy and fairly technical. If I have trouble answering this question, what is the average user going to think?
People are turning towards experiences - which is a combination of hardware and software. What edge does ChromeOS have that is going to give it a better experience than Android?
Printing. Browsing the web and writing long emails like a normal user, rather than like a tablet user: no weird issues with mouseover, fully-functional built-in Flash, etc, etc. There are lots of differences between the web experience offered by Android and the web experience offered by Chrome OS.
Also, normal people won't have to make a decision in a store about picking "Android" vs "Chrome OS". It's more and more likely that people will pick from the limited few options in the store, and maybe try it out before buying it. If a store sells laptops and some run Windows, some Mac OS X and some Chrome OS, then Chrome OS will be a serious competitor at least in the netbook form-factor.
Tablets are often sold in different parts of a store, or at least together in a different display. You'll see people picking between iPads and Andriod tablets. I doubt that normal stores would display Chrome OS tablets in the same area (but I could be wrong).
But, but, but Adobe said that full Flash was coming to mobile platforms everywhere. Are you saying they lied?!
Seriously, that's meant to be something Android does.
Android is designed for native application based devices, Chrome is designed from the ground up for Web applications. Web applications especially with HTML5 caching technologies, LTE and Wimax, use of whitespace to increase Wifi range is the future and make a lot more sense on tablets than mobile phones.
Even Eric Schmitt says Android is not designed for Tablets:http://www.mobileshop.com/blog/mobile-phone-news/android-2-2...
Android has all the buzz, Android has the market share, Android has all the apps - if I were a tablet maker, would you put Android (a proven platform right now) or ChromeOS on your new tablet? ChromeOS will need some serious help from Google if it's going to be viable (i.e a Google specific device that shows it off). This is a prognostication on my part (a big one), but if Google relies on it's manufacturing partners (without strong direction), ChromeOS will fail.
Also, Chrome OS hasn't been released to the public yet and so it's absurd to call it "dead". The planned release date is in October.
Imagine walking in to Best Buy or Futureshop and seeing a line of laptops, some labelled "Microsoft" and some labelled "Google". People are less afraid to move away from MS if they're moving to a company they know and trust, like Google.
Calling Chrome OS dead, at least right now, is a very very silly mistake to make.
Focusing on the web experience and printing (to combine your reply to my other comment) seems like a very narrow niche to me. It seems like ChromeOS is trying to position itself between Android and something like Windows 7.
Surfing the web and wanting to print is a common use case - but in that example, why would I want a device that does that, but not get a full fledged computer? I can't even install my own apps! Why would I need the capability to print - yet buy a device that pretty much requires me to be online all the time?
It just seems very risky to me. Why not add a printing function to Android? Wouldn't it be cool if you could hook up your phone and connect it to a printer and print? Wouldn't Android devices have "proper" flash if they had more powerful processors? (which is a function of mobile processors getting more powerful)?
Then put a +1 next to everything you did on the web (or could have been if you Google it and found a web service for that) and a -1 to everything that you could not.
Work out what +1 and -1 as a % of normal. For me it was 95%, for my wife was 100%.
That is why Chromium will work. I put Ubuntu on for my wife put some links titled Facebook, TV, Music. She didn't even notice she was not on Windows anymore.
You hit the nail on the head: "labeled Google - you'll see them marketed as "Acer", "Asus", or "Dell" . People do not care it is Microsoft Windows or not they care that it does what they want, quickly, reliably and cheaply.
My blog on living without Windows, preparing for Chrome: http://rakkhi.blogspot.com/2010/07/preparing-for-chrome-livi...
There are very few cases in where having ChromeOS would be superior to a device with Android. Flash? Flash seems to be a processor issue. Android has Flash, and it should get better as mobile chips get more powerful. The whole flash thing may be moot if HTML 5 really takes off.
Printing? This seems marginal to me. "Buy this device so you can print from it" - that does not seem to be a very appealing sell.
Those were both of the features mentioned above. In contrast, if I have Android, I have access to all those Apps. Will Android apps be compatible with ChromeOS. I don't think so - this seemed to be a "feature" of Chrome.
It just seems that Chrome's functionality is a subset of Android functionality. With Android, I don't have the browser open all the time, but I can click a button and get there. Web pages should display the same on both devices - what's the advantage? The keyboard? Android works with a keyboard as well.
I guess what I'm saying is that the market for an Android netbook (vs. tablet - this whole issue is moot to me, they're both "mobile" devices) seems to be larger - it would do so much more than a device that's just limited to the browser.
Except that this doesn't actually seem to be the case at all. Netbooks had this and the market utterly rejected it. Now they pay much more for Windows netbooks. Before anyone tries to jump into the market with Chrome OS (a less capable OS), they will need to explain why this was the case and what has changed.
HUGE disappointment.
If you consider how much money Microsoft has wasted on seemingly failed or useless acquisitions, like $6B for aQuantive or $500MM for Danger, spinning off novel ideas from internal teams would likely have a greater impact at a far lower cost.
(I hate how Windows 7 removed the likeable things about Windows XP and introduced the annoying things about OS X).
Windows 7: now the same problems with the finder. Impossible to find anything without utilising desktop search. No show desktop button anymore. Failed to copy the task bar appropriately: now to start a second command shell, from the task bar, I have to right click the icon. Noobs simply can't remember to use the right mouse button.
Windows XP: flawed security model (everybody ends up running it as Administrator).
Must admit that it has been a while since I worked with XP, but I remember that they had some touches that were actually useful. Apple does not go for useful touches, just pretty ones.
It's there-- it just isn't labelled unless you mouse over it. All the way to the right, on the taskbar-- to the right of the clock. Lower-right-hand corner of the screen.
OK seriously, what Microsoft (and also Apple) should do is start a "coach your mum or granny" initiative. Everybody should help their granny or grandpa with their PC every once in a while. It is amazing how complicated it is to explain some things.
How do I explain that "show desktop" is just an empty rectangle? How do I explain that apps are not really closed when you close them? And so on. Just imagine a noob sitting there asking "why?" and having to explain. Then improve the feature.
Four ways I know of.
1. Use the column view so you can see every folder you've navigated through. (My preference)
2. Right click on the title bar's label.
3. Use the path button on the toolbar.
4. Use the back button (Yeah, it's not always up)
If the toolbar is missing, click the white button at the top right of the window to return to a regular Finder window.
:) That said, none of those are exactly obvious which is a recurring problem with OSX. About the only thing OSX gets right in that category is that almost everything behaves the same so you don't have to figure it out twice. For example, open a document in textedit, you can right click on the title and get the folder tree the file exists in.
I would also like to see the Certificate Revocation List checked less frequently. Microsoft Office add-in developers actually get penalized for having digitally signed add-ins, since the (daily?) CRL check slows Office application startup significantly.
MS should also consider making Silverlight and WPF more compatible.
And if WPF adoption is lagging expectations (as I suspect it is), figure out how to simplify it and flatten the learning curve.
I'd tell him to move aside. Ballmer's a sales' guy. He is clearly a good sales' guy. But he's the wrong person to be determining strategy at Microsoft.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Ballmer had gone to Sun, as the sales' guy. Is there an xkcd for that?
More constructively, I'd like to see Microsoft taking more risks and leading more. Kinnect and XBox Live are good examples of Microsoft being first in or coming up with the best thing out there. You could make a case for elements of Bing too.
So be more ambitious. Too many MS entries into markets now seem me too relying on the MS brand to prop up an otherwise ordinary product (Zune?). You need to either be better on day one or moving with such momentum that you're confident that you will be very quickly. How are you going to move with that momentum? I'd suggest less management and less marketing. Yep some of projects which don't have the current level of guidance are going to bomb out heading in totally the wrong direction, but the ones that succeed will be better than what you're producing now and get there a lot faster.
Your historic approach of watching markets develop and muscling into them using Windows and Office as leverage won't work any more. Windows isn't an effective lever in the new markets and the competitors (Apple and Google) don't shift as easily as they used to. You need to be in earlier and better.
Your developer tools are pretty good but your licensing is a quick route to insanity. I've honestly recommended Oracle in the past because for a proposal I had to put together very quickly, working out the licensing cost for a complex SQL Server implementation was simply too time consuming.
Mobile - you seem to have become obsessed with the iPhone where frankly you're ill equipped to fight. Aim at corporate, go for RIM. You're strong in corporate and if you can't do a better integration with a corporate infrastructure (which is likely based around Exchange) then you shouldn't be playing at all. Once you've got that sorted, then look at the consumer market building on that.
But also good luck. Though I don't think you'll ever be what you were historically, I honestly believe MS could be a company turning out great products and the more competition in the market the better.
If I were Microsoft, I would port .Net to other OSs, and aim to own the VM space. With the JVM in Oracle's hands now, there's an opportunity for a new player to take the lead. It's corporate infrastructure, it's a platform play, and it's developer focused, something they're historically good at. As a bonus, it helps them get products like SQL Server on more platforms, and into more customer's hands.
* don't drop support for xbox 360 as soon as the next one comes out, that really hurt with the first one
* windows is a great development platform if you work with Microsoft tools. Make it more friendly for other technologies to. For instance: make a unix/linux compatible shell, so I can use all the tools, that I now have to ssh to some server, locally (cygwin is a pain in the ass).
* for the love of all that is holy do something about IE6&7
Please get modern browser in Windows Phone 7.
IE7 makes my job miserable.
Do something bold for a change, really bold. Open source windows or office, do whatever scares you most and then make a go of it. With the talent pool you've got there you should easily be able to out-compete the market when you've done something like that, it will go a long way towards getting forgiveness for deeds done in the past and it will align your goals with the world much better than where you are today.
If this scares you realize that in the longer term this is where software is going to be. Developers have wised up to lock-in and other tricks and corporations are more and more moving to solutions that they control. The writing has been on the wall for years.
Oh, and stop funding stooges to attack third parties.
Yeah, you can see that with the iPhone, the Apple Store, and all the various clones that pop into existence like mushrooms (hello Kindle).
Sometimes I believe developers live in la-la land, totally disconnected from reality.
The examples you give are all tied to very specific hardware, microsoft thrived on open hardware making tools and supporting those tools.
Look at where IBM is going for what microsoft could be like.
The App Store isn't the only example, how about all those developers integrating their apps with Facebook, Twitter or the Google apis.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/github.com
Really, open source is growing faster than it ever did before, the products are getting much better, they're slowly wising up to the fact that open source does not mean 'shitty support' or 'no need for marketing'. More and more people are finding ways to make money in open source projects.
Drupal got a very large amount of funding based on software they're giving away (ok, not my personal choice, but still).
And so on. Open source is maturing, and microsoft could do a lot worse than set a trend for a change instead of trying to hold on to the brakes as hard as they can.
Maybe offer a way of providing hints (maybe through AD GPOs) of which sites should be opened using which browser - that would probably make short term adoption within enterprises less painful.
Maybe they should buy Opera Software?
Yup they should. Opera has an amazing browser and Microsoft could let it shine the way it should. I'm really surprised they haven't already.
I worked on Dynamics CRM for more than a year and I can tell you this: you do not get any relevant benefit from IE as a platform (as a user as well as a developer), it's annoying for developers that cannot use their tool of choice, it's annoying for client that have to switch to a different browser just to use the app. Moreover it's slow and buggy, and this makes the experience with the app, that is not very good, even less pleasant.
Similarly, C# is a nice language, but I'm not (personally) overly keen on Visual Studio, I like smaller IDEs (personal preference here!).
The main issue that I see is the obsession with integrating everything with Windows. Notice how iTunes is cross platform(ish)? Python is cross platform? Apache is cross platform? Chrome & FireFox are cross platform? I don't think that it's an accident that those are fairly popular -- any one who uses them is not in inherently tied down to Windows, Mac or any other operating system.
I've said this about IE9, cross platform is generally better. Broaden your application's user base and correct the issues with advertising and you'll stand a real chance at turning things around, in my opinion.
Contrary to popular belief, throwing money at an issue does not correct an issue. With the creative markets, you'll need to get hold of genuinely creative people -- scout university campuses, advertising agencies (and anywhere else) and find those who are really passionate about creating something special.
But there's a problem. Web programming, while allowing generally crummier applications, has some benefits that far outweigh this. This is why startups tend to focus on web applications - they're just so much better for startups, for a few reasons. Find a way to give these benefits with desktop applications, and you'll have people rushing back to Windows programming, because you can give a much richer use experience.
The benefits of web apps are:
* Not having to worry about deployment.
* Not having to worry about versioning (because the deployment forces everyone to have the latest version).
* Being able to collect feedback almost automatically, ala Google Analytics. Preferably all kinds of different feedback about exactly how people are using your application.
* Making life easier for the end user - no install, no configuration of things like which folders files are saved in (all the data is saved online automatically), etc.
At the end of the day, all of this is achievable outside of the browser - it just requires a completely new framework for creating applications, which gives all these benefits for free. Not all desktop applications will be able to use it, but this will allow rich applications to be made without sacrificing the amazing benefits written above, which is why so many people turn to the web.
P.S. I don't know much about Silverlight, which might be Microsoft's attempt to do just what I've outlined above. If so, then good going, but it still isn't being pushed hard enough since developers like me don't really know enough about it.
With HTML5 and AJAX technologies a web application these days can do everything a rich client application can with the added benefit of accessibility everywhere from any endpoint.
"The biggest thing Microsoft should do is make the desktop king again" .... keep flogging that dead horse with your buggy whip
Doesn't have much traction though.