Microsoft Is Surprisingly Comfortable With Its New Place In a Mobile, Apple, and Android World (fastcompany.com) 73
An anonymous reader writes: The company that once held a mock funeral for the iPhone -- complete with dedicated "iPhone trashcans" -- now has a very different attitude about the company of Jobs. The Microsoft whose old CEO Steve Ballmer in 2007 famously predicted the iPhone had "no chance; no chance at all" of getting market share, now readily accepts and embraces a world where the iPhone and Android dominate personal computing. Microsoft talked a lot here at its Build 2017 developer conference about extending Windows experiences over to iOS and Android devices. And it's not just about fortifying Windows. Microsoft says it not only wants to connect with those foreign operating systems, but by bringing over functionality from Windows 10 (along with content) it hopes to "make those other devices better," as one Microsoft rep said in a press briefing yesterday. The developers here at Build cheered when Microsoft announced XAML Standard 1.0, which provides a single markup language to make user interfaces that work on Windows, iOS, and Android. In one demo, the company demonstrated how an enterprise sales app could be extended to an iOS device so someone could continue capturing a potential client's data on a mobile device. Windows not only sent over the client data that had already been captured, but also the business-app shell that had captured it.
Oh joy (Score:5, Insightful)
Inter-operative user data collection and sharing. I'm so excited.
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But it's the very best way to capitalize on existing synergies in order to maximize productivity while creating a new paradigm!
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But does it enable us to architect vertical methodologies while securing ubiquitous mindshare?
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No, but it does empower us to erect vertical mythologies while securing frivolous behavior...going forward.
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You're hired.
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I feel unclean just reading that.
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It can be used to expound about real world metrics that reflect upon the business use cases that will help us capitalize on the cooperative synergies.
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Seriously this is just PR fluff not front page stuff, Slashdot doesn't care what MS's mood ring says.
Yes they do. Microsoft stories generate craploads of traffic for slashdot all the time because despite people like you saying that you don't care you'll still go and read it, then go into the comments and post about it. They get you EVERY SINGLE TIME.
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Surprised. Very surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
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After Balmer left Microsoft, Microsoft seems to be operating like a normal established tech company. If they have competing products they will push the heck out of it, but the new MS seems to realize that they can't convert everyone. But with Balmer and Gates they was too aggressive after Microsoft became well established and no longer a startup company. And those sneaky underhanded tactics that served them well in the past just don't seem to fly anymore.
Superset of functionality (Score:2)
It has been clear since MS has been using its Cortana management software to control and manage services, notifications, and hooks into contacts/mail/messages/etc on devices from different vendors running different operating systems that they wish to manage everything through their own platform, making users go through them to get things done.
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Well good luck to them. I don't have any MS apps on my phone, don't intend to have any MS apps on my phone. I've surrendered my soul to Google! All praise the Almighty Alphabet!
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They had their chance in the 90's to play nice but they decided to be assholes for 20 years, and now everyone hates them. There's no coming back from that, ever.
Microsoft is the largest software company in the world. It takes adding the market cap of the #2 through #7 largest software companies to match Microsoft (as of May 2016). They are smaller than the largest computer hardware company (Apple) and the largest computer services company (Alphabet) but they are certainly at the same order of magnitude of these companies.
Being the third largest company by market cap in the world is not something you have to come back from.
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Translation: Microsoft is the smallest kid of the Big Players, and no longer has the influence it once had.
Microsoft's dominance now rests on Office/Backoffice. It's desktop dominance is a battle won, to be sure, but one whose returns are faltering.
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What better way to prop up the desktop business than by embracing the largest mobile platforms?
I know it sounds like buzzword compliance, but if they can create mobile/desktop synergy that improves the user experience it could keep desktop OS in good shape for years to come.
I also think this is also aimed a lot at Google. It wouldn't surprise me if some of this enthusiasm for iOS wasn't the result of a back room deal that guaranteed MacOS relevance within the Office world as well as further guaranteeing ac
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Office/Backoffice and the Stockholm Syndrome.
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Only paranoid nerds hate them. The rest of us couldn't care less.
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Yes, there is: it's called "mobile devices". More and more people are just giving up on desktop/laptop computers (or keeping them and never upgrading or replacing them) and using mobile devices for their home usage.
It's kinda sad because mobile devices are so limited in what they can do, and can't be programmed (you have to load apps from the walled-garden app store), but owning and maintaining a Windows computer is such a chore and an expense (calling Geek Squad to make a personal visit every time you hav
I'm very comfortable with my mortality (Score:5, Interesting)
SPOILER ALERT! (Score:2)
Microsoft has to accept it, as (Score:5, Funny)
there are no chairs left to throw....
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Steve Ballmer isn't even there to throw chairs!
They SHOULD be... (Score:2)
There are dumpster-loads, tanker-trailer, cruise ship loads of money to be made in these industries. They and others can be insanely profitable and yet not be dominant players. Just to be perceived as indispensable will make them rich, rich, rich. And if they are, in fact, ubiquitous, then well, the money will flow like a river.
Get over it, these companies and their products are just too intertwined in our lives to be anything but obscenely profitable. If that offends you, you know what to do.
This seems like a lot of work (Score:2)
Can you say "sour grapes", Microsoft? (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft: I'm so glad I'm a Beta (Score:3)
"I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And MAGAs are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to find the toilet in the back of the trailer." -- Microsoft
Please,.. please don't help us! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft says it not only wants to connect with those foreign operating systems, but by bringing over functionality from Windows 10 (along with content) it hopes to "make those other devices better,""
No, please... please don't "bring over 'functionality' from Win10... no, please, those foreign OS's are working *just fine*, they don't neeed WinFunc... (ie. code written by Sir Nose).
If in 15 years they can't improve the "functionality" of such core tools as the Services.exe or Performance monitor, and they keep fucking rearranging the goddamn interface *with every release*... causing UNTOLD HOURS of wasted time while poor sodding workers around the globe have to relearn basic tasks again and again... Then there's little they can "make better" on other systems.
Gawd help us.
LOL @ WinCE 20 year head start ... (Score:4, Informative)
WinCE was released in November 16, 1996 ... and yet they STILL couldn't do what Android did in 6 years: 2+ Billion devices.
So is MS finally comfortable with being a FAILURE in the mobile space?
Because that's all they have ever been, and ever will be.
Memo to MS: Keep your crappy Windows software off mobiles phones -- because you don't know what the fuck you are doing.
Remember Cyanogenmod, Inc? (Score:1)
No (Score:2)
"iPhone and Android" do NOT dominate personal computing. Just Android. iPhone still has very little market share. When will people get this through their heads? iPhone is still basically a niche market. Thankfully, it's all about Linux now, primarily powered by Android.
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Except Google just announced that they were redoing Android and no longer basing it on Linux.