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.'"
Chasing tail lights? (Score:5, Funny)
Braking Suddenly? (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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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.
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only compared to the crap it was.
Which is the real secret to their success.
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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.
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Even that mode is copied, because the Japanese industry worked in that mode in the seventies and eighties.
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Are you talking about Microsoft's crap or other people's crap?
I mean if we are talking about the transition from Win95 to Win2000, I would say that is true but let us take a look at some examples when we compare other companies vs Microsoft:
1. Apache vs IIS
Apache crap? I don't think so. Ever had to admin IIS 4 or 5? Gah! I don't know about newer versions though, but I have a hunch there are still issues g
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Last I check, Microsoft didt take or use any of those products you in making their own products. Try reading comprehension some time, it helps out a lot.
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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 diff
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No, to my experience, this has always sucked and been unreliable, with very few exceptions
> Java script
> HTML
OK, I'll grant you they screwed these two over
> C++
OK, their C++ implementation in VS kinda sucks in a few aspects, but to my knowledge, they didn't massively kludge it any more than any other implementation, including GCC, Borland and Codewarrior did.
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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.
Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong; DTrace does sound like a very useful application, but real-time debugging was available on Genera [wikipedia.org]. Clinical debugging (as opposed to mortician-style debugging) has been around for quite some time.
I agree that TCP/IP was innovative.
XML is just a simplified subset of SGML; while XML is useful, it is hardly innovative. If you want to see innovative, you should look at Project Xanadu [wikipedia.org].
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If you want to see innovative, you should look at Project Xanadu.
Uh, yeah conceived in 1960 and finally implemented in 1998. Yeah that's innovation alright. Meanwhile around 1960 Douglas Englebart basically invented and demoing everything we use today: the mouse, GUIs, hypertext links (aka the web), email, groupware, video confrencing, etc in the "mother of all demos" [wikipedia.org].
Watch for yourself [google.com]. What they dont have a computer history class anymore??
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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
Re:Give me a break (Score:4, Informative)
You're thinking of Jean Paoli. Not quite. Paoli was made third editor of the XML spec after Tim Bray started working for Netscape (this being the days when these things mattered). Microsoft has always had an active role in W3C working groups (look at the list of names on the CSS spec, for example) but that's not the same as coming up with the ideas in the first place.
>>Microsoft did bring GUIs to PC users
Depends on a> your definition of PC and b> your definition of GUI. GEM was first on Intel machines. Mac OS first on, well Macs (people used to call any computer you could own yourself a PC, not just IBM compatibles (which we used to call...IBM Compatibles)), and both ideas were pinched from Xerox PARC.
>>Then again I wanted a Mac once I got to the store. Instead I got a Packard Bell!
Then you were doubly cursed.
Too big (Score:2)
MSFT is too big and bloated to be nimble and innovative. For the last ten years their product execution has been horrible. They show up late to the party with a buggy product and treat their customers like criminals.
Time for Ballmer to go. As long as he's in charge at MSFT nothing is going to change.
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.. but the product was created from conception to execution rather quickly
Well... it usually helps when you purchase a prexisting product (toshiba gigabeat) and start from there..
..and a interesting idea in the wireless sharing of songs
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..
Out of proportion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Out of proportion (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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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
Re:Out of proportion (Score:4, Informative)
Even if I use the unsupported Cleartype tuning applet, it simply cannot look as good as the fonts on my KDE desktop.
Re:Out of proportion (Score:5, Informative)
>> NO, I think Apple was "ripping off" Display Postscript, which was from Adobe. The NeXT boxes used display postscript to render everything -- but even THAT I think, came from a NeXT innovation in conjunction with Adobe's postscript printing language that they were trying to bring to the screen, but Adobe had the patents on Postscript so tight, they had to collaborate. DP was very resource intensive, and required NeXT to shell out real bucks for every computer that used it to Adobe -- hence, it didn't have much appeal to them when Apple bought NeXT (and was then taken over by NeXT). So it took some time to reproduce all of that in Quartz on MacOSX but this prompted an even bigger innovation by Apple to move these processes to the graphics card (though, AMIGA did all this right years before anyone by breaking down all sorts of CPU-bound functions into specialized components -- but I digress).
Anyway, anti-aliasing to the screen has been around a lot longer than you suggest. The "ripp-off" of clearer font display on OS X, was just the growing pains of Apple trying to re-invent what they had done years before in their previous OS, and also with NeXT computers.
The "Clear-type" technology, cannot compare at all to the quality of Display postscript. It basically rasterized all the vector data to the screen as though "printing" to it. Clear-type just used an efficient anti-aliasing technique that works better "in some situations." And people are confused by the issue because OS X did it wrong for a few years -- whereas NeXT had it PERFECT years before that.
And then there might be some SGI fans who will chime in that NeXT might not have been the first to market with Display Postscript.
"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."
That is really, really Ironic. I'm guessing the previous poster meant; "Proud Ignorance" to mean that; "people think Microsoft Innovates all the time, because they don't know the real history."
They didn't invent DOS -- it was a knock-off of CP/M.
They totally ripped off VisiCalc from a man who didn't understand the need for lawyers to create Excel.
Word from MacWrite.
Etc.
>> Anyway, this is an old, old debate. MS doesn't have the "Pioneer" business model -- and that I can understand and I don't fault them for that. I think this discussion should really be; "Does Microsoft hurt real innovation" and I would have to say; Yes, more than any other company in the computer field.
But hey, I'm much more worried about politics in the US over the past few years to even have worries about Microsoft on my radar anymore.
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Oh, and if you think all new fonts are "rehashes of the same generic fonts available to all", you're just ignorant. There's a hell of a lot to good font designing.
Impressive Rebuttal (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. Improved error messages in Internet Explorer. Which side of the argument is this guy on again?
Um... also did scoble outright lie? (Score:3, Informative)
I searched "scoble blog" at live.com and google
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=scoble+blog& mkt=en-us&FORM=LVSP&go.x=0&go.y=0&go=Search [live.com]
http://www.google.com/search?q=scoble+blog&ie=utf- [google.com]
Re:Impressive Rebuttal (Score:4, Interesting)
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$7 Billion in R&D money buys you things like Spec# [microsoft.com] and its verifier, C-omega [microsoft.com] for easy concurrent programming done right, and Singularity [microsoft.com] for a secure OS core, and... well a whole host of other things that are going to remain interesting research lab projects that MS will never get around to properly productizing and marketing.
Micorsoft does try to innovate (Score:3, Funny)
ActiveX - why not let others use your computer resources too
MicrosoftBOB - bwahahahahahahaha
Clippy - bwahahahahahahaha x 200
MP3 player with WiFi (crippled beyond belief)
Brown Mp3 players (my god - who told them brown was the in colour?)
PlaysForSure - but not on our player
ClearType (Score:5, Insightful)
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'Innovation' is a word that has been slapped to death in the last two years, and which has completely lost its meaning.
My default mode has now become to distrust everyone who happens to use the word 'innovation'.
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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?
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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
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Excuse me ?
Using IBM's name and money to build an OS where there were none before, for brand new standard of compatible personal computers that didn't exist before, is not exactly innovation. The innovation was from IBM then : the IBM PC. Their business model was basically screwing IBM with t
Re:um (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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yes indeed, don't you see that was my point? There were already operating systems, tens of the buggers. The problem was they lacked focus, chasing after each other and trying to trap customers. Go read about the Unix wars, you're history knowledge needs improving.
Well, that's not entirely true. There was CP/M, which ran on computers from several vendors (including several different processor families), and provided a common set of OS tools to the programmer. I'm not sure how great that was for end users, but it couldn't have been all that bad.
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..
That was true for "large computers", but not for "small computers". Of course it's true that there was a very small market for home computers at the time: Commodore PET, Tandy TRS-80, Atari, Apple, and several smaller pla
Innovation? Who cares? (Score:2)
yawn (Score:2, Funny)
Innovation, huh? (Score:5, Informative)
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That's almost exactly what the Apple II did (Score:3, Insightful)
Small improvements... like tabs in IE? (Score:2)
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.
You are confusing innovation with (Score:2)
They are not the same.
Innovating is creating something new or different.
So Zune is innovation. Is it a new market? no. Is it new or different? yes.
No I am not a MS 'fanboi' but lets use the correct definition.
Just for clarification: (Score:4, Informative)
-noun
1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
From dictionary.com
So, I guess technically MS does innovate, but they don't create new markets.
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"It's not a bug, it's.. uhm.. Innovation! That's it!"
Who to side with? Winer or Microsoft? (Score:2)
Microsoft are more pleasant to interact with, in my experience.
topic? (Score:2)
Okay, so where's the Apple icon that would seem to go with this story by implication? And what does the Hardware icon have to do with this? Or have the topic icons started making sense all of a sudden...except not?
Triv
Recent innovations (Score:2)
Most of Microsoft's most commercially successful products "borrowed" heavily from other applications on the market, at least to start with. But I think that culture is starting to change. Microsoft PowerShell is the most impressive operating system shell that's been released in a long time, an innovative, object-oriented departure from the old Unix shell paradigm.
If you need absolute proof that innovation lives at Microsoft, take a look at their experimental operating system: Singularity [wikipedia.org].
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Microsoft itself is innovative (Score:2)
Office was a great idea when it came out and has steadily improved. For some of us its entirely too much but it does the basics as well as enough fancy stuff to keep most business needs covered.
Xbox Live is probably their last great innovation. Everyone talks about o
The little things. (Score:2)
The little things are important, but not THAT important. Those are improvements, not innovations.
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.
Improved the error messages? (Score:2)
Don't make me laugh. The error messages in Explorer are pitiful, and haven't gotten any better, just more verbose. IE is not alone in this however. To illustrate the point, exactly the same goes for Oracle messages such as ORA-00942 "View or table does not exist"
So *which* view or table does not exist? The message can be made more verbose:
"The view or table that you tried to access does not exist. Check if the specified view exis
SQL Server 2005 error messages (Score:2)
"Syntax error near ','"
Ok, I figured it out... (Score:2)
These are NOT innovations, in *any* way, shape or form. They are product polishing. It seems that the only way MS have innovated is by creating their own definition of "innovation" to suit themselves (hmm.. this seems to be a recurring thing with them), and brainwashed the media to mak
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OK, so what is the last desktop app that you've seen that is innovative by those standards?
Not to sound trollish nor to apologize for MS bringing little new to the table but it's a tired argument that if someone takes something old, puts a new spin to it and finds acceptance than that person has created anything new, but rather stole from others.
It's like the music debate where a bunch of Zeppelin fans constantly go on an
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.
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I dunno, why don't we look it up:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=innova t ion Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source innovation /nven/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[in-uh-vey-shuhn] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
-noun
1. something new or different introduced: numerous innovations in the high-school curriculum.
2. the act of innovating; introduction of new things or methods.
[Origin: 1540-50;
Nope, nothing about markets. Lots about 'new' and a little
Worst "debate" ever (Score:5, Interesting)
No. It was a bloody awful debate, full of contradictory statements and non sequiturs.:
Guy 1: Microsoft doesn't innovate.
Guy 2: Yes they do! They innovate by improving their own software! So clearly they are more innovative than themselves!
Guy 1: Apple doesn't innovate either.
Guy 2: Ah, but what about Halo??
Guy 1: Um, Microsoft bought the company that made Halo.
Guy 2: That's just how they innovate: buying people who do! Um, I guess that's not innovation, so.... remember how much more Apple innovated in 1989, but then Microsoft made more money than them? That proves that Microsoft can innovate in this new horrible way that I just made up!
Guy 1: No, that doesn't make sense and you know it. I think Google is the top software company now because I use their products.
Guy 2: Well, Google shut down one of the things they do, and I like how Microsoft ranks my blog better than how Google does it! That's the kind of thing that makes Microsoft innovative: providing a better search result for a single query. Vista has an RSS aggregator. Is that innovative? Oh...no but it's cool. Also the XBox is popular.
Guy 1: Big corporations are all assholes and none of them innovate.
Guy 2: A friend of mine that works at Microsoft says he's happy that Google is innovating, because that means he gets to work on his projects to play catch-up...I mean innovate. Here's a bunch of random stuff Microsoft did that has nothing to do with innovation.
This uninformed waste of time brought to you by the Wall Street Journal.
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As if! (Score:2)
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....
Innovations (Score:2)
And this is meant as a demonstration of how Microsoft is innovating. I remember when I last got excited about making "cool looking charts in seconds", it was using a program called Harvard Graphics in about 1991.
It's 2007 and he's talking about "cool looking charts". To me this just demonstrates the extent to which Microsoft is holding back innovation...
ATM released in 1991; ClearType shipped in 2002 (Score:2, Interesting)
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Non-app innovations + what about PhotoSynth? (Score:2)
Double standard (Score:2)
The fact is that microsoft does a lot of cool, innovative things.
How about the most innovative thing of all, getting people onto commodity hardware and out of the clutches of the clutches of the tyrannical interated systems of the 1980s.
It depends (Score:2)
This is retarded (Score:2)
it should be noted... (Score:2)
They are both wrong. (Score:2)
Vista is XP with some minor changes and a cpu/gpu hungry graphics engine. XP is 98 with some minor security improvements and Playskool theme.
The two major changes at Apple have been the move to intel and the move to a *nix based OS.
Linux has been more of the same. Adding in functionality seen in other *nixes, more distros, more hardware s
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)
"Cool looking charts" (Score:2)
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.
Improved the Error Messages in IE??? WTF??? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem illustrated above is that Microsoft's thinking that providing a "friendly" error is useful is untrue. They SHOULD have added a button to click on called "Technical Detail" or some such that would reveal the real error as presented by the web server itself. This has been one of my gripes about IE ever since they went that route. Fortunately my desktop isn't polluted with MS crap. It's a Linux box and I use Firefox. So when there is a problem (like there was yesterday) with a web site, I CAN see the REAL error message as presented by the server. I know you can configure the IE browser to NOT use the friendly messages, but to be honest it should be a default that the friendly message displays WITH the option to see the real message.
Innovation my ass. As a second example of their failings in terms of being up on technology that is important, it took them until Windows XP to have proper MIDI support. And I'm not talking the crap MIDI that's on your soundblaster card. Having been a professional composer in a past life (1990s) I was faced with the decision of getting a Mac (which had proper MIDI support since 1987) or getting a PC. I couldn't afford the Mac, so I was stuck with getting a DOS/Win3.1 PC. To say the MIDI support was lacking is an understatement. There wasn't much hardware for professional outboard gear on the Windows side, and what little there was was REALLY backwards. But this was mainly due to MS not really giving a crap about a very important piece of musical technology at that time. The reason? Windows was a business OS at the time. It wasn't an OS for creative people. And Microsoft didn't really truly start paying attention to the creative people until Windows XP. Windows XP finally had a real 32-bit MIDI driver and supported 256 MIDI ports vs. 16 in the previous 16-bit driver that lived on through Windows 98. This was one of the main reasons I abandoned Windows as soon as I could. And here's the thing that REALLY burns me up. Back in the late 80s I was doing TONS of MIDI and audio work on an Atari ST that was pro level stuff. People were using Macs in the same way. MS didn't give a shit. Back then we were called musicians and it w
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,
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What BS ! Using illegal business practices, to the point of make you convicted of abusing your monopoly, is surely not an innovation, as the law already exits for it, so it has been done before. Using and screwing a big name like IBM is nothing innovative either, even in business.
Two examples of how they have changed ce
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"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.
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Microsoft is a marketing company, which happens to sell software.
I knew someone (in a course Linux, no less) who had done the same in the past with meat. He didn't produce anything, he just bought ready made meats and marketed them.
Cigarettes is also mostly marketing, although they have the advantage that their customers get addicted.
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, I am sure people can think of other companies which are much more marketing driven than excellence driven.
Re:Different kinds of innovation (Score:4, Interesting)
I think theres some kudos to bringing an idea or implementation to market and making it affordable for most people. I'm not sure innovation is the word here, but its real work and deserves real credit. I don't think its just marketing, as some cynics have already suggested.
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Is it ? I thought it was due to abusing monopoly and IBM name.
Regardless of whether or not they created the ideas, by far the most difficult part is putting them into practice
But the difficult part you talk about is no innovation.
This feat alone is a major innovation of the industry. An even greater feat is putting them into practice in large quantities
Feats are no innovation.
they have had success stories such as Direct-X too
Re:definitely an innovator (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, that's incredible. Microsoft is "successful [due to their] innovations [...] whether or not they created the ideas". Just think how much less work innovation takes if you don't need to think up your own ideas! Why, I might innovate the wheel this afternoon, if I can be bothered.
Truly it is an exciting new realm of discovery that awaits us.
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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. Bu
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