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From the NY Times: "The Windows era at Microsoft, long in eclipse, is officially history. Microsoft said on Tuesday that it was splitting up its Windows engineering team and that the leader of its Windows business was leaving."
Microsoft is ready for a world beyond Windows
"We want to move from people needing Windows to choosing Windows, to loving Windows. That is our bold goal," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella three years ago. At the time, Microsoft was unveiling more details about Windows 10, and surprising people with technologies like the HoloLens headset. It was an exciting time of opportunity and optimism that had Microsoft betting on people loving Windows so much that Windows 10 would be running on 1 billion devices within three years. Neither wager worked out — which is fine, because Windows as we know it is no longer critical to Microsoft's future success.
Microsoft announced a new reorganization yesterday. It's the fourth major shuffle inside the company over the past five years, and the most significant of Nadella's tenure. Microsoft is splitting Windows across the company, into different parts. Terry Myerson, a 21-year Microsoft veteran, is leaving the company and his role as Windows chief. The core development of Windows is being moved to a cloud and AI team, and a new team will take over the "experiences" Windows 10 users see like apps, the Start menu, and new features. There's a lot of shuffling going on, but Nadella's 1,300 word memo leaves little doubt over the company's true future: cloud and AI.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by terrab0t on Saturday March 31 2018, @11:31AM (7 children)
They didn’t miss the boat. They launched several boats of their own which sank.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday March 31 2018, @02:03PM (6 children)
I'd say their boats sank specifically because they launched several. They screwed both Microsoft fanatics and application developers. Users: "Ha! I bought a Pocket PC device!" Developers: "And I wrote apps for it!" Oh wait, they just killed it. Users: "Ha! Now I have a Windows Mobile device!" Developers: "And I wrote apps for it!" Oh wait, they just killed that too. Users: "Ha! Now I have a Windows Phone 7 device!" Developers: "And I wrote apps for it!" Oh wait, Windows Phone 8 won't run on Windows Phone 7 hardware and the compatibility shim to let Windows Phone 7 apps to run on Windows Phone 8 will eventually be removed. Microsoft: "Announcing Windows Phone 10!" Users and app developers: "GTFO"
Compare that to iOS and Android, in which getting your application to work on newer versions was either automatic or a relatively tiny amount of work. Granted, Android sucked (and sucks) for getting a newer version of the OS on older hardware. But Google didn't have a ten year history of screwing previous mobile operating system adopters when they launched Android.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 31 2018, @04:28PM (4 children)
Someone with a clue must have left the leading ranks of Microsoft. Once they knew how critical backwards compatibility is, to the point that they maintained a list of quirks from previous versions needed to be enabled for different programs to run on the newer version. You could even run most ancient DOS programs on the newest Windows versions.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @06:01PM (1 child)
Meanwhile on the previous Windows, the OS could be updated and in most cases still work with 10+ year old hardware made by companies that no longer exist or have the source code. And there was some consistency in the interface.
Many Large Corporations understood the benefits of that. They don't want to spend money and time retraining their staff just because some MBA decided to "reimagine" the steering wheel, brake and throttle pedals. They have more important things for their staff to do - like their actual jobs. Your table at work should be the background not the foreground and play a supporting role. Not fucking choose to install updates just when you have to make an important presentation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday March 31 2018, @07:50PM
From an end user perspective that's the benefit and the drawback of free software, right? If there's abandonware (like old kernel API formats) you have the freedom to maintain it yourself or pay someone else to do it. But if you lack the skills, time, or money, you're screwed. I think history has demonstrated that this particular major headache with free software is a lesser evil than all of the locked down, DRM, privacy-violating garbage the proprietary vendors hit us with.
But it's a terrible situation either way. A few years ago at one of the FSF conferences a presenter made the point that freedom by itself means nothing. You can tell a starving man with no money that he's free to buy all the food he can eat, and that freedom has no value and won't save his life because he has no money. The free software world has that problem in spades - access to source code that you lack the skills or resources to use.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday March 31 2018, @06:04PM (1 child)
It really is amazing just how badly they screwed up mobile. They were there years before Android and Apple. I'm not sure what it was - maybe they never took it seriously, or maybe they thought of it too much of a threat to their desktop monopoly, or maybe it was just since the first attempts weren't a runaway success they got axed. But really, all they needed to do was just stick with it, keep investing in it, not screw over the people who did buy in and invested into the platforms, and I'm sure they would have picked up momentum and would be one of the big players in mobile right now. It's not like they didn't have the money, and the XBox shows that they are willing to sink a bunch of money and resources into something with the long-term goal of becoming a major player in a market.
Oh well, maybe it's for the best, though we could use another player in the Google/Apple duopoly right now, even it is Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Saturday March 31 2018, @07:45PM
Agreed on all counts. I hate Microsoft, but I think the current duopoly is worse than having Microsoft as the third major player. I don't see any upstarts making serious headway, either. The market looks like it's locked tight. I've love to be wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:16PM
Did their boats sink because they didn't plug all of the holes?