« | Home | Recent Comments | Categories | »

Microsoft’s Creative Destruction

Posted on February 5th, 2010 at 8:09 by John Sinteur in category: Apple, Microsoft -- Write a comment

[Quote:]

Another example: When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

They could have had what Apple is going to deliver with iWorks for the iPad almost a decade ago, if it weren’t for the internal politics…

  1. Roland Hesz on February 5th, 2010 at 10:19:

    I hate that. Another example of MS being on the wrong track. Full of creative, brilliant people, and a useless management.

  2. John Sinteur on February 5th, 2010 at 10:26:

    [Quote:]

    Think of Excel, a program that is now a tricked out spreadsheet application. Over the years users have been trying to push the limits of using Excel as a database. In a parallel universe you might think that a company would follow the lead of its users and extend or add the database capabilities and turn it into a true database management system.

    However this will never happen because of Microsoft Access which is their database management system. Between the Sales division, marketing, etc there is too much invested in keeping these silos. So what are the product managers and developers who work on the Excel team supposed to do when new versions are required? Rather than take the path of resistance they go into contortions coming up with “new features” that do not eat Access’ lunch.

    But then again, the Wall Street definition of “competent leadership” is “manages to get good quarterly results this quarter”, and Ballmer has been adequate for that.

  3. John Sinteur on February 5th, 2010 at 13:32:

    [Microsof responds:]

    We measure our work by its broad impact.

previous post: Comcast Rebrands Itself as Xfinity. Seriously? That’s… That’s All You Got?

next post: House of Lords: Record Companies have been harassing innocent users