back to article Microsoft in 2016: Is there any point asking SatNad what's coming?

Microsoft has never had to deal with a grumpy activist shareholder criticising the leadership – a grump activist who just happens to be its biggest shareholder ... and its former CEO. Steve Ballmer won't let go. He thinks the cloud KPIs Microsoft gives out are "bullshit", and its mobile strategy is fatally flawed. If Ballmer …

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  1. agatum

    > Any point asking this SadNad what's coming?

    No point. They have been told gazillion times what should be coming but they don't seem to deliver.

    1. Preston Munchensonton
      Linux

      Of course there's no point looking forward with Microsoft. Based on what's here and now, MS seems unable to do the one thing that you absolutely have to do to succeed: meet (and better, exceed) the expectations of your customers. Virtually every product in the MS stable doesn't match the expectations of consumers, and MS is waning in its influence within the very core markets that built MS into the company it is today.

      Will MS continue to be profitable? For certain. But at some point (in what seems like the very near future), the gravy trains of desktop OS, server OS, and Office will come crashing around them. All because MS doesn't seem capable of listening (and hasn't for at least 13 years). It's a testament to the monster that Gates and Allen built that it's taken this long for things to start looking so bad.

      1. Big-nosed Pengie
        Linux

        MS have never failed to meet my expectations.

        I've always expected it to be absolute shite, and it always has been.

    2. veti Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Asking Microsoft "what's coming" has always been a mug's game.

      For 20 years, the company has been pursuing its strategy of "fire and motion". They invent and promote new 'technologies', most of which will be abandoned within five years, often much less. Remember ADO.NET? RDO? Heck, Silverlight?

      The primary purpose of these technologies is to distract its potential competitors from doing anything that might - well - compete with what Microsoft really cares about. All the time you spend learning and adapting to these new technologies, is time you're not spending developing features that your customers might actually give a rat's arse about.

      Asking Microsoft "what's coming?" is like asking a tiger "what's for dinner?"

      1. kmac499

        Couldn't agree more, who in their right mind would build a business on innovative microsoft software. i.e. the latest TLA named 'technology'. (aka an API or function library)

        It can take at least a year to become fluent in the new shiny, assuming you don't get suckered into spending a fortune on enterprise developer packs and seminars cum training courses. You've then got maybe two years before it becomes obvious your new shiny toy is being left to tarnish with no real development. Then you may well have staff retention problems as the savyy guys see the end is nigh and abandon ship.

        What other industry would accept a major raw material supplier, changing it's prime materials every few years?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Any point asking this SadNad what's coming?"

      No. You wouldn't get a straight answer. Ballmer could at least vaguely stick to a decision, albeit usually the wrong one and made far too late. SatNad tries to hide his fearful and uncontrolled flailing behind a flimsy barrier of corporate nonsense-speak.

      The head's been removed, the body's still twitching, but if you are still unlucky enough to be a customer of Microsoft, make 2016 your year to break away.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Multinationals

    Would Microsoft stay profitable if it became an Irish company like Pfitzer? They have the option to pull out of the US everything except sales and support. What will people do? Given the time it took Munich to change over to Linux, nothing in a hurry. Meanwhile there is time to rebuild on a lower cost base outside the US.

    I know this is extremely hypothetical but it seems to me that Microsoft has quite a lot of leverage.

    1. Michael Habel

      Re: Multinationals

      Microsoft has lost quite a lot of leverege...

      To Tablets be the Apple or Samsung. Plus the fact that unless you live in that PC Mustardrace minority you're still riding out that old Core2Duo rig from nearly 10 years ago now Because it still works, or at least enough. 'Cause your NOT in the Mustardrace to care about pidly feamerates in that new muder sim. Is it really any wonder why the Industry is now imploding?

      Seems kinda logical to me. Though I wish they hurry up on that tactile touchscreen tech to make typing on these things a bit more natural. Otherwise unless its only something that can be done on a PC like updating some Firmware for some IoT Device (or Phablet), I just really have no need for it or MicroSoft. So yeah if they aren't careful they will be history before long. Of couse I imagine that Mr. Gates will have a quite chuckle before sheading a tear, as he lets the last of his Stocks in MicroSoft go.

      1. Code For Broke

        Re: Multinationals

        @Habel: Your use of English feels strongly multinational.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Mustardrace

        What?

        1. PNGuinn
          Happy

          Re: Mustardrace

          As he said, but....

          +1 for mustardrace

  3. IGnatius T Foobar

    If you want to know what Microsoft is doing next year, just take a look at what Google and Apple are doing this year. Microsoft does not innovate. It copies.

    1. Terry 6 Silver badge

      " Microsoft does not innovate. It copies."

      This may be the root of at least some of the problems - a failure to look at what the public want until they see that someone else is doing it.

      And the first part of that, seeing what the public wants may be at the root of all of it.

      I was close to being a Microsoft fan.

      But I've just about lost that.

      I had a Start menu in Win 7, that worked, though it needed improving to make it more manageable and to tame installations that were able to clog it by loading their own stuffed folders . They took it away in Win 8, instead of taming it.

      They brought it back in 8.1 because they had to, but left it a mess.

      And in Win 10 they made iteven more of a mess. with app folders that can't be directly organised unless you know where to find them by path, and fixed "apps" that can't be moved away from their alphabetic location - let alone got rid of or even just hide many them if they aren't what you want.

      Likewise the Control Panel, which also needed tidying up, so instead they decided, by Win 10, to spread the settings around a whole bunch of menus, some hidden so well you'd think it was a military secret secret ( create a restore point?).

      They had an Office suite that almost everyone used, With sets of logical menus that let users find what they wanted fairly easily out-of-the-box, but that could be customised to hide stuff you'd never use. It needed a bit of polishing, but it worked well. So they created a "Ribbon" that made it much harder to find what you wanted and stopped you customising the menus without immense effort. (You can hide and replace a menu, but not just change it).

      At the same time they decided to copy Google and try to use the OS as a way to gather user data, and yet choose to hide from the users ( and the world) what the are changing in their frequent updates.

    2. ZSn

      Fast followe

      But that's always been the case. It's a fast follower. For example: excel, internet explorer, visio, windows nt. If they can't copy it they buy it. They then integrate it well, not a bad thing to do, bleeding edge is all well and good, but you need the product to work.

      However they lost the 'working well' bit in the last few operating systems and the windows phone. Now it's just a follower.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fast followe

        Just, in the past, most acquisitions paid off - after all even Apple bought the multitouch technology, it wasn't developed in-house.

        Now, MS is able to fail acquisitions spectacularly - and multibillions ones. In the past products were integrated quickly into the offer - i.e. SQL Server, Access, Visio. Now products once acquired stay in some sort of limbo - for example Skype, Nokia was killed so fast there wasn't even enough time.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Indeed, 2016 will be another year of filling Google. I else expect them to continue to move their business to android (70 apps and counting), give up on mobile totally, ditch or sell the massively loss making and failing spectacularly Xbox and devices division.

      Microsoft will just be a cloud services company. Windows 10 1yr free will turn into forever free, as they realise nobody would pay for it. Office will be all but dead outside the office, again home users wake up to more suitable free offerings.

      Microsoft, the new IBM basically.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Microsoft == The new Blue

        Quote

        Microsoft, the new IBM basically.

        As everything of theirs is coloured blue (surface KB for example) I think that they should be labelled

        "The New Blue".

        Their form is just as erattic as Chelsea (Blue is the Colour) at the moment.

        Perhaps MS should sponsor them? A perfect fit (for relegation)

        Biased? Well I do support the team from up the road with a stadium next to the river. I look forward to playing them next year in the Championship.

        1. Fihart

          Re: Microsoft == The new Blue

          Blue Screen of Death.

          PS: why was previous post which used the common abbreviation for this "Rejected" ???

        2. Fihart

          Re: Microsoft == The new Blue

          BSOD ?

        3. Philip Lewis

          Re: Microsoft == The new Blue

          Lite Blue, surely?

      2. PNGuinn
        Devil

        ...filling Google

        I hadn't realised that Google had gotten emptied....

        Anyways, W10 free for 1 year might well become W10 free for 2 years ... until there are enough marks to turn it miraculously into... W10 service pack x SUBSCRIPTION edition.

        All your computerz and your firstbornz are now belong to uz.

  4. a_yank_lurker

    Direction?

    Slurp is at a cross roads. One direction leads to being a major enterprise vendor. The other leads to being in the consumer market. Slurp is best in the enterprise market, a rather lucrative if boring market. It is not sexy to the public but tends to more stable and long term. Businesses tend to want to use a limited number of reliable suppliers who are attuned to their needs. The consumer market is more fickle and in some ways more competitive and price sensitive. This market often will turn against a market leader if there is a shiny new toy grabbing attention. Ask Nokia or Crackberry about how they are doing with phones.

    Looking at Slurp's product line, to me it is best suited for businesses not consumers C#, a great language, only appeals to some geeks. The masses could careless about it. The masses may use their products more from inertia if anything else but the masses really do not need MS Office in all its fame and glory.or most of their major products.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The masses could careless about it.

      The mases couldn't care less about it.

      There, fixed it for you.

  5. NotBob

    Case could be interesting

    On one hand, you have Microsoft, who managed to pretty much get away with anything back in the day with the unfair competition claims. On the other hand, you have the "justice" department wanting to look powerful.

    Then there's everyone else. We just get screwed.

  6. regadpellagru

    mad, really mad

    "He (Ballmer) thinks the cloud KPIs Microsoft gives out are "bullshit", and its mobile strategy is fatally flawed."

    Is it ? Really, is it ? Remind me who decided to buy Nokia's mobile division back in 2014, that is, 5 years too late ???

    1. TeeCee Gold badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: mad, really mad

      Yup. My immediate reaction was that if Ballmer thinks they're wrong, they're almost certainly right.

      We can judge his record running MS with the 20/20 vision of hindsight and, let's face it, it stunk something awful.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: mad, really mad

        "My immediate reaction was that if Ballmer thinks they're wrong, they're almost certainly right."

        The trouble with that line of thinking is that there are more ways of being wrong than there are of being right. And over the years MS seem to have ventured into a good few of them.

    2. Paul Shirley

      Re: mad, really mad

      Ballmer would seem ideally qualified to question the figures given how much massaging of them happening under his (mis)rule.

  7. x 7

    "Steve Ballmer ......thinks the cloud KPIs Microsoft gives out are "bullshit",

    Any right-minded person thinks the utterances from Ballmer are bullshit. He's always had a reputation for speaking from his anus.......Given his past performances at MS events perhaps we should rebrand his comments as monkeypoo.

    Regarding Windows mobile.......maybe I move in strange circles but I see an increasing number of low-end Lumias in use. For housewifes, nurses, OAPs, people who don't need multiorgasmic fancy devices, but just a simple device which phones / texts / satnavs / takes photos /does farcebook, cheap Lumias are ideal and are being purchased in increasing numbers. For those kind of people the choice is a cheap Lumia or a landfill android..........and in that market the Lumia has the cutting edge.

    I'm convinced the sales analysts are missing the existence of the cheap end and are placing too much focus on the upper end of the market

    1. Dan Wilkie

      One of the places I work has just deployed thousands of them - the cheap low end ones because they do everything the company phone needs to do.

      The last update introduced some weird WiFi issues but on the whole they've been very well received (they replaced Blackberries which to the best of my knowledge were missed by 3 people).

  8. Gannettt

    Noble intentions, abysmal execution - sounds like Office 365 to me. We rolled it out at work recently, and what a dog's breakfast it is. People were really excited about the idea of being able to do work from anywhere, but utterly baffled by the clunky authentication process ("remember my credentials", there's a laugh!) and trying to figure out which SharePoint/OneCloud/OneCloud for Business they had stored that Word document in. In my opinion, they have lost.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    "he has a higher degree of tolerance for unfinished software than his customers"

    Sure, he's from India...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "he has a higher degree of tolerance for unfinished software than his customers"

      To the downvoter of that post.

      You obviously have no experience of having to fix all the issues in software delivered from S. Asia. The culture there (being general) is that is just not done to ask questions of your peers. If you do, you lose face and that would never do your chances of promotion any good. So we get crap release after crap release.

      The last one, they ignored all the fixes we put into GIT to correct their code and developed the next buggy release on top of an already bug ridden one. I had to go to Bangalore to read them the riot act because it too us another 3 months to get somethingt workable out the door.

      Then all these CMMI etc Code wizzards get jobs in the west (mainly the USA) with very bogus CV's. Just because a product was used somewhere on a project does not make them an expert. Good luck to those poor companies who employ them.

      There are some Indian Devs who are really, really good. most of these have been educated in the west. They get how to develop complex systems. Sadly these people are in the minority.

      Most Indian developers don't have a clue about how to solve problems.

      Rant over, I have an 07:00 conference call with my team in India. What tale of woe will they spin today? How long? etc etc

      1. Donchik

        Re: "he has a higher degree of tolerance for unfinished software than his customers"

        Same problem with outsourced CAD to India.

        Turn round of the job good... Content of the job abysmal!

        Usually takes our local CAD team another 150% in effort to rectify the mess!

        Strangely enough our management never notices this task as their bonuses are entirely linked to the amount of outsourcing, not the departmental efficiency.

        OK, rant over, back to Microsoft.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "he has a higher degree of tolerance for unfinished software than his customers"

          Ditto here. The board of this multi-billion financial services decided all Dev must be offshore. Fired 40% IT staff. Guess who sits on the board? IBM. Guess who is the premiere off-shoring contractor? IBM. Dev and design of the batch database app was off-shored. The India solution? Java: one row at a time to the Oracle server. Estimated completion time for the day 1 load of 100M rows? 300 days. I sure hope that was a good golf tournament the BoG were treated to. IBM has become a 5th rate off-shoring consultancy.

          1. Philip Lewis

            Re: "he has a higher degree of tolerance for unfinished software than his customers"

            hahahah - "one row at a time". Perhaps they should have loaded the entire load data set into memory first, because you know, memory is cheap and fast, right?

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: "he has a higher degree of tolerance for unfinished software than his customers"

        "The culture there (being general) is that is just not done to ask questions of your peers. If you do, you lose face and that would never do your chances of promotion any good."

        I think this has much to do with more than software development. It could explain a lot of the way Indian customer service centres work - or don't work.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "he has a higher degree of tolerance for unfinished software than his customers"

        It's not just India, for more than a year we've had to guess which changes and fixes we'd pushed to the repo mainline the USA client bothered copying into their release branch. How their copy works at all is a mystery, as is why they think we can even reproduce their bug reports.

        To add to the fun the other outsourced teams seem even worse at taking updates. At least it keeps the money flowing in as we try to fix the mess.

  10. John 104

    Screw Em

    While I'll continue to make a living off of their server and desktop products, I'm finished with them for my personal use.

    Last week their awesome windows 10 desktop decided to do a major update on my laptop. During the day. While I was in a paid SCCM class. Right at lab time. 30 minutes later I finally had my desktop back.

    Next day, logged into my wife's computer and it threw up a nag about updating to the latest version of Office for 50% off. Like I fucking care.

    When I buy an operating system or software I expect to be left alone.This isn't freeware. This is paid software. If MS makes deals with manufacturers and are giving their shit away, that's their problem. Don't try to upsell your end users and don't fucking upgrade my OS without my permission you ass hats.

    Installed Mint with Cinnamon and am so far loving it. I've kept my W10 install for netflix. Microsoft can kiss my ass.

    1. frank ly

      Re: Screw Em

      A fresh installation of Mint is faster than some Windows updates. (I've recently gone back to using Win 7 now and then for something 'special' and it is amazingly, frustratingly slow with updates and mandatory reboots.)

    2. Francis Irving

      Re: Screw Em

      As an aside - if you install Chrome on Linux, then Netflix works fine on that.

    3. PNGuinn
      Facepalm

      Re: Screw Em

      @ John 104

      If you're prepared to let ms that close to ... make sure you have the lube handy.

  11. Howard Long

    Cloud cookoo land

    And, as some of us have been stating for a decade, cloud services provided by any company with a US presence will have us.gov in a position to demand access to offshore data on little more than a whim.

    Ten years ago we were told we were scaremongering. Apparently not.

    1. Howard Long

      Re: Cloud cookoo land

      And yes, I can't spell cuckoo. Doh!

  12. Mikel

    No point to it

    >you can see why Microsoft needs it, more than you can imagine why you'd want it.

    The most insightful part of the article and, frankly, an apt summary of every Microsoft product since Windows XP.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: No point to it

      "you can see why Microsoft needs it, more than you can imagine why you'd want it."

      I think the reason is that the verbs should be swapped round. Microsoft (or IBM in the old days) want it more than the user needs it.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Microsoft don't seem to know where they are going...

    It seems that Microsoft keep changing everything and it makes them look like a company that doesn't know what they are trying to achieve. Nothing ever gets finished - and the average consumer gets confused.

    Examples: Outlook Express, Windows Mail, WLM, Mail 8, Mail 10...

    Internet Explorer, Edge

    Various versions of Skype

    Windows Live Mesh, Skydrive, Onedrive

    Windows Media Player, the Windows 10 app

    Various iterations of Start Menus, menus and ribbons, drastically changing Windows themes...

  14. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    FAIL

    Imagine this

    All the under the hood improvements of win8/win 10 with the desktop of win7

    Stir in optional stuff like your cloud drive and other gizmos related to data slurping

    Chuck on a browser that complies with standards , yet runs faster and is more secure than the rivals

    A decent e.mail / instand messaging client that can stand alone or be part of a company network

    And m$ might just have a chance of removing money from my wallet and transfering it to their bank account.(which to the shareholders is THE name of the game)

    But linux mint is the way to go for me, and even if I get a new PC next year, I'll ask for a win7 install.. or at a pinch, grab the code from this box and stick it on the new box.

    $5 says give it a year or 2 and win10 will suddenly be available with 'classic desktop' and no data slurping......

    1. Chika
      Coat

      Re: Imagine this

      $5 says give it a year or 2 and win10 will suddenly be available with 'classic desktop' and no data slurping......

      I really hope that you're right but consider that the "Classic desktop" has been a legacy item since they stopped distributing W7 and two whole versions have passed since then.

      They might just do it but I suspect that whatever they produce will be a panic measure and may not work right even then, especially considering that the W7 menu didn't include a "Windows App" section which is what they really wanted to have there, hence the W10 layout.

      I'll be staying with my W7/openSUSE Linux/occasional RISC OS setup for a few years yet, I suspect.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Imagine this

      The first person to figure out and execute a Win7 "skinning" of W10 will get rich.

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