Is Microsoft An Innovator? - The Winer-Scoble Debate 365
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Bloggers Robert Scoble (a former Microsoft 'technical evangelist') and Dave Winer (longtime Microsoft critic) debate whether Microsoft is driving innovation or playing catch-up, in an email conversation published on WSJ.com. Winer writes, 'Microsoft isn't an innovator, and never was. They are always playing catch-up, by design. That's their M.O. They describe their development approach as "chasing tail lights." They aren't interested in markets until they're worth billions, so they let others develop the markets, and have been content to catch-up.' Scoble responds that Microsoft's innovation can be found in the little things: 'I remember when they improved the error messages you get in Internet Explorer, or when they improved fonts in Windows with ClearType technology. That improved our lives in a very tiny way. Not one that you usually read about, or probably even notice. Is Microsoft done innovating in those small ways? Absolutely not. Office 2007 lets me do some things (like cool looking charts) in seconds that used to take many minutes, maybe even hours for some people to do.'"
Innovator, maybe not (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, they have a habit of taking crap and actually making it pretty decent. At least to my experience.
Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
Out of proportion (Score:2, Insightful)
Different kinds of innovation (Score:1, Insightful)
Impressive Rebuttal (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. Improved error messages in Internet Explorer. Which side of the argument is this guy on again?
ClearType (Score:5, Insightful)
um (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that innovation? You may argue not, was it nice, nope, but they managed it, and business was so desperate for someone to get of their fat corporate arse and solve their newborn IT problem, that they loved everything microsoft did.
If only it hadn't been them that did it
Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Insightful)
News?.. not really (Score:4, Insightful)
MS innovates in their marketing and licensing schemes, but is that really what you want from a TECHNOLOGY firm?.. Sure, their lawyers are smart.. ("Lets see how we can gouge you today, AND not have you realize until your bleeding").
Everything else they have done as been, as many have pointed out, been based on someone else's work, that they have taken to market with their leverage. Again, nothing I can respect from a TECHNOLOGY firm. Microsoft should just cut the crap and call themselves what they are. a Terriffic marketing firm. They are NOT and have never been a technology firm.
Re:Innovator, maybe not (Score:2, Insightful)
technologies, and then enforcing their non-standards onto the
computing world.
If it weren't for their portfolio of IP (intellectual property)
patents, they wouldn't be relavent anymore in todays computing
world.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Re:Innovator, maybe not (Score:2, Insightful)
And then sometimes, they take a pretty decent product, make a less usable version of it and then crowd out the better product, by bundling their version with the OS.
Re:Out of proportion (Score:5, Insightful)
Bucketing all errors to prompt one page is not improvement - its obfuscation, its stupidity, its annoyance. It makes troubleshooting a problem exponentially harder.
If thats what microsoft thinks is innovation, they should have their product development team strung up by their short and curleys.
admission by omission (Score:4, Insightful)
Scoble tacitly supports Winer's argument by pointing to what would be normal "improvement" of products and technology citing that as innovation.
Come on! Every product is iterated! Scoble's claim this is innovation is specious. If any vendors out there didn't iterate on their own products with "small" improvements, they wouldn't stay in the business.
So, basically Scoble cedes the argument -- Microsoft really does lie in wait until the market is huge enough for predatory action, and jumps in with "small improvements". Innovation? Hardly.
Re:Innovator, maybe not (Score:1, Insightful)
Definition, please? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll make my case as such. Microsoft did come up with the XMLHttpRequest object, but it took people outside MS to turn that into AJAX.
Re:Too big (Score:2, Insightful)
Well... it usually helps when you purchase a prexisting product (toshiba gigabeat) and start from there..
Wow..you have an interesting idea of what interesting is.. I think most people would see thier implementation as ummm Worthless and/or insulting. But I guess Fanbois will be fanbois..
I feel bad for MS apologists... (Score:5, Insightful)
No... most of MS's innovation is sadly in their relatively nasty and harmful business practices like "Embrace and Extend". Honestly, this is the kind of innovation we wish they would just shelve somewhere....
Re:Too big (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Your wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
n.
The act of introducing something new.
Something newly introduced.
Anti-aliasing has been around since at least the seventies, Do YOU call that particularly new and thus an innovation?
Chasing Tail Lights... (Score:4, Insightful)
What is sad however, is that it is still possible to allow other to invent and then innovate to improve the original product. MS did indeed used to do that. They don't appear to now.
For example, Word, though possibly technically inferior to Word Perfect, was considerably easier to use. Word allowed everyone to use a word processor, rather than just those who had the arcane knowledge of what that cardboard shortcut list stuck on top of the function keys meant. Word provided most people with exactly they needed and empowered many more. Seriously, if you're old enough to remember those times you know that Word Perfect deserved to die the slow and painful death it did.
Similarly true with IE versus Netscape. IE was a good free thing compared with the performance of the paid-for Netscape.
Now MS seems to be in the middle. There are more innovative companies ahead of them and behind them (Firefox, as one example). It would be great if they can regain some of that innovation that they once had. There are still many targets for improvement. Photoshop being one that comes to mind immediately - powerful and the best available but preposterously expensive, arcane and unintuitive. I use it every day, and though it's take me years to get proficient with it, I'd gladly dump it right now for a better more intuitive and user focused interface.
Monad (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Innovator, maybe not (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe Office was originally an external, it's a lot better than it used to be.
I know IE was originally an external, it too is a lot better than it used to be in many respects.
Haven't really followed SQL Server or IIS much, though I know IIS has improved in the last couple iterations. Dunno if either started internally or externally.
Re:Different kinds of innovation (Score:3, Insightful)
"The Java innovation" ? What was that?
Those who think Java was an innovation should do a bit of reading about the UCSD P-System. The idea of a virtual machine wasn't new then, but few (if any) had previously built it into a full-blown platform like the P-System.
Re:um (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Different kinds of innovation (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the major innovations of the
As for Xbox Live, I can't really think of any PC services that came before Live that offered the original features. Part of the innovation of Live is that your name is the same on all games (this just can't be done on PCs right now and wasn't done on consoles until the Xbox). The 360 expands this even more.
It is obvious from your post that your conclusion (that MS is not an innovator) was arrived at prior to any of your reasoning. It would be better to concede these rather small areas as that is all they are, small areas of innovation from a rather gigantic company. It doesn't look good when compared to companies like IBM or Sun. I understand that you feel like Microsoft is the big evil (and in some ways I would agree) but you can't just dismiss everything they do just because it's Microsoft. You end up sounding more like a tool of the opposition rather than the thinking person I am sure you are.
Then again this is
Re:um (Score:5, Insightful)
Vendor lock in was what the Unix wars were all about. Microsoft didn't invent that, they just said 'hey, we have new stuff that's cheaper, and it runs on any pc' They never claimed that other software makers could do better, that didn't make sense back then, co-operation was for losers..
Before microsoft you would buy your computing solution, the software would be custom written for that hardware only, and you were locked completelly to one vendor for both hardware and software, they could and did charge what they liked, and if the software was crap? tough. Microsofts greatest hit was not being tied to a specific hardware set, they could sell their stuff to any computer manufacturer they pleased.
Yes microsoft has software vendor lock in. They emerged in an era where this was an improvement. Besides, all businesses cared about was that it worked, and would be compatible with what other companies were using. This was another problem in the unix wars.
You're making the mistake of taking current events and extrapolating back 20 years, that doesn't work. Yes microsoft aren't so nice now, but have you had a look at what IBM used to get up to? They make microsoft look soft, I'm telling you.
Re:Impressive Rebuttal (Score:1, Insightful)
Big step forward!
Mr Scrooge, May I Please Have A Lump of Coal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they improved on Microsoft's bad old way by copying someone else's good new way.
That clown Scoble's head is so far up Microsoft's monopoly that he thinks "innovation" means "new to Microsoft", even when they're copying tech from elsewhere. That the standard of comparison is the other people damned to working entirely inside MS monopoly so that they can't even tell something exists until MS gives it to them. Until which time they're crippled, though the rest of the world is stepping large and laughing easy.
Only the Wall Street Journal (and its fascist ilk) could pretend that such a debate is "fair and balanced": reason balanced by retarded corporatism.
Braking Suddenly? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Out of proportion (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be nice if the link you included actually supported your claim in any way whatsoever. Unfortunately it doesn't.
The link you included is to a discussion of the (admittedly confusingly-named) Cleartype fonts, which are a set of original typefaces that will be shipped with Vista. The name comes from the fact that they were designed specifically to take advantage of Cleartype itself. Cleartype is Microsoft's widely imitated font rendering technology -- e.g. Apple ripped it off in OS X 10.2, most Linux desktops now use a very poor imitation of it, Adobe has their own ripoff, etc.
You will see people claim it's just a ripoff of a technique used on the Apple II, but that's like saying that the automobile is just a ripoff of horse-drawn wagons. It's a genuinely innovative improvement of a technology that everyone thought had been obsoleted by multi-colour high-resolution monitors, until Microsoft invented a way of using it on modern computers.
By the way, they aren't in any way a "rehash" of any sort of "generic" fonts - they are all original typefaces, created by some excellent professional type designers. (For an example of an actual rehash of a font that could actually be described as generic, see Helvetica Neue, bundled with OS X.)
I guess I am the only person that thinks Microsoft's perpetuation of "Proud Ignorance" is troubling.
I find it rather ironic that this was posted by someone who appears to be proud of his own ignorance.
With many things, yes Microsoft is an innovator... (Score:2, Insightful)
In some things, MS is a serious innovator. For example, one project I'm working on is the RoundTable. It's a VERY unique video conferencing solution. Is the concept of video conferencing new? No. But this implementation is way beyond anything I've seen. It will change the way video conferencing is done.
MS is quite well served by Microsoft Research; there are a LOT of brilliant, innovative ideas coming out of that group and many will make it to public release. Will everything be earth-shakingly new and novel? No, but if you're looking to only qualify huge leaps as innovation then everyone short of IBM or 3M wouldn't be innovators.
Re:Give me a break (Score:3, Insightful)
An innovative UI is no less innovative then technical jargon, it's just a different field of innovation. Apple, anybody? And a non-innovative UI can ruin what might otherwise be a fine application -- I'm looking at you, GIMP. Whether Microsoft's ribbon concept will prove to be a leap forward or a laughingstock is anyone's guess at this point, but to dismiss it as unworthy of being called innovation is just tunnel vision.
That's almost exactly what the Apple II did (Score:3, Insightful)
I had the (mis)fortune of paying extra to buy an RGB video card and monitor for my Apple II, instead of using the composite output. So I got subjected first-hand to the consequences of Apple's sub-pixel line-smoothing technology. How you describe ClearType is is almost exactly how Apple's system worked.
You are incorrectly assuming that the display mechanism is a necessary component to this process. ClearType takes advantage of an LCD's layout of R, G, and B subpixels. Apple's version took advantage of the way the Apple II represented the screen image in framebuffer memory. Apple's representation of the display in video memory gave each pixel an intensity, and a color. The color choice was binary (GR or GB), not trinary (RGB) - hey, memory was expensive back then. ;) Since there were two types of pixels, they simply alternated at the highest resolution with one pixel being GR, the next being GB, the next GR, GB, etc.
The smoothing came in when you wanted to display white (or gray). Because of the binary pixels, a green line could be rendered at full resolution (your eye has the greatest resolution in green); bur red, blue, or white lines were rendered at half resolution. Apple realized that text was white and the display would look pretty crappy if you rendered it at half the max resolution. Then they realized that white didn't have to mean lighting a GR pixel with the GB pixel to its right. You could also make white by lighting the GB pixel to the left of the GR. And thus was born sub-pixel rendering - although the white pixels were fatter, you could position them more precisely in "half pixel" increments. That's exactly what ClearType does except using RGB (or RBG) subpixels, instead of GR and GB subpixels.
This all worked fine over the composite video output. My misfortune was that my Apple II's RGB card simply broke the pixels into GR+GB blocks, converted the pixel to RGB, and sent it to the monitor (it had a special hi-res mode for green so 80-column green text would render correctly). It would render GR+GB pixel blocks as white, but completely ignored the possibility of a GB+GR block being white. And so my color text was not white, it was white with flanges of color anywhere the sub-pixel addressing of white pixels did not line up with my video card's idea of an RGB pixel. It looked awful and made it nearly impossible to read 40-column text, and was distracting in games any time white was used.
Re:Give me a break (Score:3, Insightful)
Watch for yourself [google.com]. What they dont have a computer history class anymore??
Re:definitely an innovator (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a fundamental mental dysfunction I'm seeing in the USA that just drives me crazy... it is the main thing that allows corporations to have their way with our society.
Yes, implementation IS TRICKY AND IMPORTANT. Kudos to Microsoft to implement other people's already working ideas "cough" -- this isn't like drawings on a chalk board. But the fundamental problem is, it's part and parcel with the "those who win, right the rules." Microsoft is "GOOD" because they are powerful. Wow, what scary thinking.
Sorry to rant on this, and many won't get what I'm talking about. But its the same sort of disconnect that allows people to think; there is no such thing as greed. That it's either Free Markets or Communism, that un-checked opportunism allows for fairness. That we have to "debate" torture.
I know people will see this as flaming -- but I know some of you understand. I think it's why so many people "bash Microsoft" -- because we have this impotent frustration, with a company that continually abuses the marketplace. It steals ideas and then buries the competition -- it is everything that shouldn't happen in Capitalism, if we have a functioning government that provides oversight.
But our country is more or less Corporate controlled. And "bundled" with that, is the mindset that we exist for profit, and not the benefit of each-other. Anything that smacks of "greater good" is automatically thrown into the "Hippie pile." When we criticize Microsoft because they are being corrupt -- we are just "Bashing" and resenting "Winners."
So, success is it's own justification. That means we will continually have ENRON failures -- because we will allow anyone in the lead to abuse the marketplace as long as they win -- and the only check on them is the folly of their own greed.
Anyway, it's not MS business, or this persons comments in particular that so bugs me -- it's the sense that I live in a land full of blind people, who just don't see the big damn elephant in the room, about to step on their heads. It goes to an authoritarian mindset that values "Power" over "Decency."
Too harsh on Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Secure Audio Path in Vista. No other O/S will block what those pesky users want to do with thier music.
2) Tying the O/S to the BIOS/Computer. Why would a user want to move thier hard drive?
3) Universal Music fee for every media player sold. Only thieves buy music players.
4) Software Assurance. Lets get users to pay for nothing.
5) OEM license fees. Lets get users to pay us even when a computer ships with no O/S.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft is the only company thats done any of these things. Did I forget anything?
Enjoy,
Re:Innovator, maybe not (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that's particularly useful.
Instead, we should consider that "innovation" is "standing on the shoulders of giants". Creating a new way to do something, possibly based on an old technique, but still different enough to warrent an "innovation". ie, not simply putting together pre-existing parts in an obvious way.
By that definition, Microsoft (and Sun and Red Hat and others) Innovate all the time.