Ray Ozzie's Departing Memo a Warning To Microsoft 345
itwbennett writes "In a parting memo to Microsoft, Ray Ozzie urges Microsoft to 'really, truly, seriously start thinking beyond the PC,' writes blogger Chris Nurney. Nurney suspects that 'Ozzie has been making these points internally for some time,' and that the memo 'could be his way of putting it in the public record.' Some of the memo's juicy bits: 'It's important that all of us do precisely what our competitors and customers will ultimately do: close our eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look like, if it were to ever truly occur. ... Today's PCs, phones & pads are just the very beginning; we'll see decades to come of incredible innovation from which will emerge all sorts of "connected companions" that we'll wear, we'll carry, we'll use on our desks & walls and the environment all around us.'"
Re:MS is doing that (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MS is doing that (Score:5, Informative)
The phrase "survival of the fittest" actually came from a mistake that was made when Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was translated into German. The correct phrase, and concept, is "Survival of the most adaptable".
Since the phrase was first used by Herbert Spencer in 1864, writing in English, I don't think so. Darwin himself used the phrase "natural selection" and not "survival of the fittest," but in 1869 he did quote the "survival of the fittest" phrase (correctly attributing the quote to Spencer); and did it in English (not translating it into German).
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/340400.html [phrases.org.uk]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest [wikipedia.org]
Re:MS is doing that (Score:1, Informative)
Courier never existed in the form you seek.
It was always only a panicky response by Microsoft to try and steal some of Apple's thunder when rumors of the iPad surfaced.
There never was a real Courier as a product; just a tablet concept. A mock-up. A display model.
When IBM did a similar thing back in the '70s they were dragged into court.
Re:MS is doing that (Score:2, Informative)
iOS is designed fro the ground up to be a touch-based OS. It sits on top of a specialized OSX platform. Android is similar, but is made by Google and sits on top of Linux. The reason why Blackberry touch smartphones have sucked is that the retro-fitted their old apps, and aren't all optimized for touch. Windows mobile seems to suffer from similar problems. You need to think of it from the user paradigm rather than making it "A pc on a phone, or a PC on a tablet." Apple and Google have done a much better job at that
Windows Phone is nothing like that, though. Windows Phone's whole design philosophy is stated, repeatedly that "a phone is not a PC", and is pretty much a ground up device sitting on a windows core (just like iOS is sitting on an OS X core, and Android is sitting on an Linux core). So MS is getting there, even if it's a bit late to the party. And they're doing so with a log of interesting innovation.
Re:MS is doing that (Score:4, Informative)
Linux is a kernel, not a complete OS. The bits on top of the Kernel are Android OS. Lots of devices run the kernel, but have limited OS capabilities because it is easy to do and highly modularized. Android is more like Gnome or KDE (not exact though)
Windows is much much more monolithic.
Re:MS is doing that (Score:4, Informative)
Apple is not just Macs any more, and that is a big reason they are the new Microsoft, and #2 in Market Cap, possibly getting to #1 next year sometime.
Apple surpassed Microsoft's market cap in May, and remains second highest mcap in the S&P 500 to exxonmobil. MS is third. There is a pretty big gap between exxonmobil and apple, still. Unlikely to close in the next year. But I'm guessing you weren't taking petro companies into consideration in your rankings.
Re:MS is doing that (Score:0, Informative)
perhaps you havent seen the shift microsoft has made since WinMo6. since then Microsoft has come a LONG way in its development strategies and its relationships with its 3rd party developers. Microsoft is not the company it was in 1995, or even 2007. they are a big, slow moving beast, but not a stupid one. they are moving the right direction, and in fact Microsoft has pretty good SDK tools and training available here: create.msdn.com
Not quite (Score:3, Informative)
> they're not looking for 'superior' so much as they are looking to lock users into their
> App stores.
Actually not quite right.
This would make sense if....
the app store was launched with the iphone. But it was in fact an afterthought.
Originally Apple wanted everyone to get "Apps" which were web based (javascript/ html) things online. Developers wanted to write more persistant application that would run without an internet connection, thus one year later the App Store and the SDK.
Sometimes you make a device and the market shows up.
Re:MS is doing that (Score:5, Informative)
Fitness in the context of evolution doesn't refer to physical fitness.
Re:MS is doing that (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not a fanboi, but I do give credit where credit is due-- It's been a long time since Windows was as monolithic as you are suggesting. It is just as modular as any other OS now-- they just don't provide the users the opportunity to change the shell or other components. In this sense, it's perfectly reasonable to say that there's a modified Windows kernel, and WP7 just has a different interface to that kernel, same as iOS, or Android.
Re:MS is doing that (Score:1, Informative)