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Comment by epoch1970 | Hacker News Reader

epoch1970

How exactly has Microsoft "faded into irrelevance"?

Various versions of Windows are used on probably 90% or more of desktops and laptops, in both home and business settings. It still sees widespread server use.

Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are widely used.

SQL Server is quite common within many enterprises.

Azure is a major player, and is seeing more and more adoption.

The porting of .NET to Linux and OS X is making Microsoft's development technologies available to a wider audience.

The Xbox brand of consoles is quite popular.

Microsoft has numerous offerings, across a range of sectors, that have huge uptake and are quite successful. I don't think that "irrelevance" is the way to describe Microsoft or their products.

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Since I seem to have ruffled some feathers with my statement: compared to how dominant Microsoft used to be, they're now just one of the companies offering a certain product in many markets. This is a good thing.

"Irrelevance" was perhaps hyperbole but if you compare it to their past, well...

I'd say the only product they have left where one doesn't have much of a choice (in business mostly) but to use it is the Office line and even that is debatable nowadays.

So while many businesses would trade with Microsoft's position in a blink, they are not the unavoidable powerhouse they used to be.

The difference with the past is that the landscape expanded. We now have web and mobile, two areas where MS failed miserably and the companies that emerged are equal or larger in size than Microsoft. Other than that they're still the behemoth they used to be. Given that most of us here make our living from the web we think that Microsoft is irrelevant, which is far from true.

If you engage with corporate America at all, you'll find that Microsoft is not only relevant, but immutably ingrained into the DNA of the company. Office, SharePoint and SQL Server are not to be trifled with in corporate America - do not make the mistake of discounting their relevance or significance in how work gets done in the VAST majority of companies with >1,000 employees here.

> Microsoft is not only relevant, but immutably ingrained into the DNA of the company.

For the current generation, perhaps. There was a time Microsoft reigned pretty much alone, where there were no other viable options. During that time, Microsoft defined what a PC was and dictated what everything around one looked like.

That's not the case anymore, and it hasn't been for quite some time. Where you find Microsoft is much like where you expected IBM mainframes to be in the 90's - in high-inertia systems. It's too difficult (and, frankly, not that cost-effective) to convert your documents to other formats or to cloud-based office apps. What you gain from it is not enough. It's too difficult to move your AD users. It's too difficult to port your apps to use other databases after you fell for writing stored procedures in TSQL for everything.

Mainframes are not dead yet and will stay around for a while. Microsoft will stay around for some time too, but it will never again dictate what a computer is.

After all, if you look at a chicken really close, you'll realize dinosaurs are still around too.

I get that some of the developers and enthusiasts that were around professionally during that period would be untrusting of MS (rightfully so), but to say they've been fading into irrelevance when they still hold the vast majority of the marketshare in desktop/laptop OS? To me, that just sounds like whining of a bitter fanboy.

It's far from irrelevance, but you can't deny they've lost a lot from where they were. Their dominance over the desktop/laptop OS market is still real, but the market is shrinking in favor of other form factors. In their other markets, they're attacked from every side.

Microsoft antagonists tend to generate very fuzzy and imprecise opinions. They are akin to conspiracy theorist, and like the religious you can almost never narrow them down to a specific objective thing.

You will argue with concrete-objective facts and they will reply with generalities and feelings.

Its a pattern -> learn to recognise it.

> ...you can almost never narrow them down...

That might be because the "antagonists" are motivated by something more complex than whatever bulletpoint you're focused on... like the concept of free software. Try to think of an elevator pitch for it, now imagine how that would hold up in an adversarial debate where your interlocutor likens you to a "conspiracy theorist" or "the religious".

> Its a pattern -> learn to recognise it.

Yes, you've perfectly demonstrated the association fallacy, learn to recognize it.

If you point out to a football team supporter, that what constitutes their team is always in flux. Player's change, managers change, staffs change, owners change, uniforms change. Sometimes even grounds change and names even change <- objective facts!

You will rarely be able to dimmish that persons passion and feeling for that team or convince them that the other team isn't as bad as they feel it is.

I don't think any further examples of the association fallacy are necessary. Isn't it obvious that such analogies are debate tools, not useful in actual conversation? Do you expect someone to further the conversation about FreeBSD preference by defending sports fans?

\1 I don't think you really know what association fallacy means. You conflate "analogy" with "association fallacy".

\2 Also this thread is not about FreeBSD preference, neither is the topic > the topic is about Microsoft supporting FreeBSD in the cloud.

> \1

I think you have below average reading comprehension. Adjacent sentences aren't necessarily conflated concepts.

> \2

Not football?

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