Most people only briefly fantasize about writing a NY Times Opinion Piece about their former employer. Dick Brass lived out that fantasy today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html. To me it smacks of ‘old news’. Yes; Microsoft is a competitive tribal environment. Yes; Microsoft makes lots of $$. Yes; Microsoft is currently capturing the public imagination. What Brass fails to see is that imagination doesn’t always translate into $$. Microsoft has evolved it’s business (and perhaps in doing so left money on the table for Apple). I find it curious that not dominating every market is perceived to be a sin for Microsoft. Isn’t it OK to simply compete and make a solid profit at the same time. Does Microsoft always have to dominate every market (and in doing so incur the wrath of those who will inevitably cry ‘Monopoly!’).
Brass’ piece is indicative of America’s confusion about what their capitalist icons should be. He seems to imply that to be successful today a corporation needs not only have enormous marketshare, revenue, profit and a cult like following. I’ll skip the cult thanks…. and I’m sure most of Microsoft’s customers would be happy to do so as well.
February 5, 2010 at 7:30 am
A lot of that article was crap and the timelines for clear type were impossible. Cleartype was announced 1998, came out MS Reader in 2000 and XP IIRC (2001 time frame) – and what did he say? It had been languishing for a decade…?
So are we to believe that MS invented ClearType BEFORE 1988? As if.
The comments about the tablet’s inept UI have everything to do with MS’ addiction to Win32 IMO.
February 5, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Frank Shaw gave a nice response I thought. http://blogs.technet.com/microsoft_blog/?sms_ss=twitter