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Comment by mdda | Hacker News Reader

What always boggles my mind when I read this kind of article on an 'enterprisy' site is the comments. Many of them are extremely quick to defend Microsoft in the face of what they consider biased reporting. And J.Q.Public promises that MS will fix any problem mentioned. And that MS will come to dominate the field as soon as they chose to 'really turn on the pressure'.

Personally, I can understand Apple fan-people (after all, it is kind of magical). And Linux fan-people (after all, the whole Freedom thing is kind of magical).

But defending Microsoft (or Blackberry, to take another example)? To me, it seems like being a huge fan of Gap fashion (sorry, for the comparison, Gap). Or Con-Ed.

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When I saw the Simon Sinek video on leadership (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4), it quickly clicked with me that the supporters of Apple are also people who above all want a quality product, that has beautiful design and is easy to use.

Also, people who support Google believe in what Google believes - freedom, openness, personalization, and not getting overcharged and arm and a leg for the service they provide.

But when I thought of Microsoft, I couldn't get neither a quick answer, nor a good one. What are Microsoft's beliefs? What is their mantra? Why do they exist? I couldn't really come up with an answer - except "making money". 15 years ago Microsoft's mantra was about putting a computer on every desk. They've pretty much accomplished that mission. But Microsoft doesn't inspire that in me right now - what they inspire and makes me think about them is that above else, they want to make money.

Every company wants to make money, but we "believe" in the companies we love for different reasons, not because they want to make money. We love the companies that share our beliefs. What exactly are Microsoft's beliefs nowadays? To kill Google? Is that what makes whatever fans they have left to still love them?

I don't think that's enough to win over a larger crowd in the future, as they start losing their monopoly on "computing machines", and all the negative sentiment they are gathering with the patents right now, will come back to haunt them later and create a negative halo around all their products. They're forgetting "Android users" could very well be customers of other products of theirs.

>Also, people who support Google believe in what Google believes - freedom, openness, personalization, and not getting overcharged and arm and a leg for the service they provide.

Openness, unless of course you are talking about the one thing that brings them money, that is surprisingly not open...I am sure it is just a coincidence...ohhh, no wait, it is for the 'good' of the end user, I forgot. Luckily for them it happens to also work out perfectly since it is their dominant source of income.

People's blind belief that Google's motivation is solely the good of the world is amazing, especially for people that claim they are objective.

You want Google to open source their advertising framework?

I don't know if you were being facetious but I think he meant the search engine. Forget the search engine, how about their flavor of Linux that they made all their tens of billions off of? Nope, that's closed too and the improvements aren't available to Linux developers.

If Linux were licensed under the Affero GPL instead of theplain GPL, Google would be infringing.

> the one thing that brings them money

> their dominant source of income.

That's advertising.

(I admit to being slightly facetious, though).

> that's closed too and the improvements aren't available to Linux developers.

Are you sure those are improvements most people would want to have? Google has a remarkably narrow set of requirements for their servers and it seems more likely than not that if they made changes to their kernels, they would not be regarded as improvements by anyone with slightly different hardware.

I don't think very many people around here have the kind of absolute faith in Google that you're talking about. Most often, Google is seen as the yang to Microsoft's (and increasingly Apple's) yin.

Google doesn't have too hard to be seen as the more ethical corporate citizen, given how low Microsoft has set the bar. Remember, this is the company that brought you such treats as the AARD code and the Halloween memos.

What are Microsoft's beliefs? What is their mantra? Why do they exist?

Microsoft had a great mission statement, one of the most ambitious of all time: A computer on every desk, in every home and business, running Microsoft software. They pulled it off, basically, and there was nowhere to go but down from there.

Google was smart enough to pick a mission statement ("Organize the world's information") that can never be entirely fulfilled.

I think your point isn't actually about the beliefs (as Sinek puts it), but the marketing of those beliefs.

Are Apple products truly superior to everybody elses products? or is it that Apple has done a great job (much better than anybody else) of telling you that they make the most beautifully designed, and easiest to use products.

I think this is one of the huge reasons WP7 isn't gaining much traction in the marketplace. Nobody knows what it is about. I haven't seen any WP marketing. Though I do own a Samsung Focus and it's awesome.

Android had the big push from Verizon with the 'Droid Does' campaign, google did a great PR job with Android, and they are 'THE other' smart phone. Whereas WP, WebOS, Blackberry seem to just be 'other' smart phones.

WP7 started with a marketing campaign that was giving it a bit of identity with the 'really?' campaign. It didn't tell you much about the phone, but made a great point. If they had stuck with that it could have been something aspirational.

I often end up defending Microsoft (and, on occasion, RIM) simply because they often get a bad rap from people with an agenda and a lack of perspective.

Microsoft are a hugely successful company with some great products, but you wouldn't realise that from reading sites like HN where the only stories posted are along the lines of "MS are doomed". A surprisingly large proportion of the tech press follow a similar editorial line.

At the same time, you're drowning in a sea of overwhelmingly positive Google, Apple and open source coverage which often should be a bit more considered. As an extreme example, I will never understand the appeal of John Gruber.

>I will never understand the appeal of John Gruber.

http://consumerist.com/2011/05/mri-shows-apple-stimulates-fa...

Look at it from a Windows System Admin perspective. You want WP7 to be the phone OS because you are assured Microsoft will bring out tools for Windows 2008 to admin the phones. You can probably get another certification and you don't have to deal with Apple or Google. You can keep your full Windows stack and don't have to worry about something new. Blackberry was OK, but Apple and Google are not exactly a good thing.

But the enterprise-wide idea only works if "the powers that be" are ready to insist that all company phones are Windows too. Just a few iPads and iPhones here and there in the executive suite makes the Microsoft-must-be-everywhere argument look like an uphill battle.

Yeah, I am not saying anything different. If Windows phone market share keeps dropping, then all of the old arguments that kept other desktop OSes out don't work in the smart phone game.

I think this kind of thinking is at the root of Microsoft's current problems. When they held 95% market share they could afford to be this insular but they just don't seem to know how to maneuver in a heterogenous world.

I'm really not talking about Microsoft the company. I am pointing out a lot of people have their wagon hitched to Microsoft and make quite good livings in the current IT world.

There is always hope for Microsoft based on the following points.

1. Its early days for the smartphone market.

2. Nokia+Wp7 has a good chance of not flopping due to Nokia's reach, relationships and repeat customer base in countries outside of USA.

3. They have lots of cash

4. They've done this before (Xbox entered a fairly mature, very competitive market)

5. They have platforms they can leverage/integrate more (Xbox, IE, Windows 8, Facebook)

6. They haven't targeted the low end market yet.

The mass market (people not like us) still views Microsoft and Nokia as good brands so in that aspect Apple and Google phones don't have the same brand equity that keeps them super loyal/rabid to like us geeks.

Its early days for the smartphone market.

I'm not so sure about this. Customers and developers have significant investments in the existing app markets. Unless the mobile web catches up soon in terms of capabilities I think newcomers are going to have an increasingly hard time challenging the two incumbents.

I don't think so. Developers will go where the money. What's surprising to me is how many quality apps are showing up on WP today. If there was even a slight uptick in sales, I think they could match Android in app velocity.

Today users have no allegiance to Android at all. I know a lot of people with Android phones and no one, not one, is like, "I'm sticking with Android for my next phone too." They're all, "Maybe Android. But probably iPhone or maybe WP". iPhone users though are pretty diehard. In part because its still just the best phone, IMO.

But the lack Android allegiance is giving WP a window, no pun intended. Unless Android has some tricks up its sleeve for Ice Cream Sandwich, I think that WP can make serious inroads. Not 20% market share in a year, but climb back up to 10-12%.

I've noticed the same lack of allegiance to iPhones too (non-fanboys of course). As a WP7 users, I've often been asked about the phone, and heard comments like 'I could just get another iPhone, but I'm curious what the other phones are like'.

I'm not seeing an iPhone devotion among many people that I would have expected.

Its fairly early when you compare the install base of the dumbphones vs. the smartphone. (1.4 billion vs. 450million) but i agree that late 2012 will be where the window for 2nd/3rd places will be locked up until the next big disruption.

I think my experience exemplifies this: I bought a WP7 two days ago. WP7 phones are very cheap now. Sure, there are cheap Android phones too, but those run very old versions of Android that I can't upgrade. That doesn't exactly sound like 'open' to me, I'd immediately buy an outdated phone. And laying out hundreds of euros for a phone is beyond reason in my opinion. Mine cost 150€, the LG E900. I think Windows will grow in marketshare simply because it's the best, high quality option for its price.

>But defending Microsoft (or Blackberry, to take another example)? To me, it seems like being a huge fan of Gap fashion (sorry, for the comparison, Gap). Or Con-Ed.

The problem is that there are lot of technically inclined people who are either not knowledgeable about MS, or are already fans of Apple or Google or other non-MS tech like LAMP, RoR, etc. etc.

For example, lets take the Metro UI in WP7:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1sN2Q6ded8&feature=mfu_i... (short ad)

Longer articles, but with lots of pictures to glance through: http://www.riagenic.com/archives/487 http://www.riagenic.com/archives/493

Now lets see the iPhone UI elements http://www.mobileorchard.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/omni...

Android UI elements

http://smokingapples.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/android-...

Which ones look like this from over 20 years ago? http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI...

Who were you comparing to Gap again? If Metro were made by Apple or Google, people here would fawning all over. A Gruber article about how great and innovative Metro is, compared to all the regular UIs out there which all have UI chrome would get around 400 upvotes since it's a story about Apple disrupting the paradigm. The Windows 8 UI also seems to be ahead of the iPads'. But since it's MS here, we all like to hate on it on tech sites, regardless of actual merits. Was there even an article on HN about the Metro UI that got some traction? Gruber's article about the placement of a chair at a Jobs' keynote gets a few hundred upvotes though.

While stuff like .NET, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server may not get much traction here, they are quite good and work for a LOT of enterprises. Also, things XBox, Kinect, Windows 8 may not be magical but are still very cool to many many people out there, just not the HN/Slashdot crowd.

As to the comments about biased reporting, what do you think will happen if a big Blackbery sales are down to 0.1%? The reporter made a very silly mistake. First of all, Windows Phones means those with WP7 which is completely different from Windows Mobile(which mostly sucked, btw). The author lumped both together and made a very big WTF stupid mistake and got called out for it. What's wrong with that? The real share of Windows Phone rose from 0 to about 1-2% in 9 months which is pretty respectable for a brand new platform in face of strong competition from Android/iPhone/BB. Nokia is getting on the bandwagon. The headline and the article made it look like WP7 was bleeding marketshare since launch which is okay with you since you don't like MS and so would like unquestioned FUD to be levied against it? The tag line of the article: "Microsoft’s smartphone platform may be irrelevant before Mango update and Nokia devices arrive."Not to mention the fake anti-Vista FUD that was lapped up on Slashdot, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-we-dont-trust-devil-mounta...

The problem with that is that the FUD then becomes mantra on tech sites, like the whole "DRM in Vista" FUD backlash. Now see how many commenters and readers here and on other sites take the headline at face value.

You won't see much of that defending on HN because most MS fans have been driven out by the blind hate of MS on here and blind devotion to Google/Apple. You could clearly see the bias here when comment scores were displayed and it still happens with fanboy upvoting/downvoting/lack of voting.This article and your comment here is a good example of that attitude in practice. There will be a LOT of people reflexively upvoting the article since it's anti-MS but god forbid an article about the Metro UI gets on the front page. There is a big section of fanboys/haters and less real geeks on sites like this even though they pride themselves to be very objective. Nothing wrong with that per se, except that it's very imbalanced at this time against Microsoft, that's why you see what you see and need to realize that there's a whole world in tech outside of the HN news and comments feedback loop.

Edit: Thanks for all the downvotes HN. Nothing better than to see your comment grayed out while the parent comment and the following comments are still going strong. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2855328

I get it, I shouldn't be wasting time here on a saturday night. A walk outside instead would've served me better. Maybe paid shills are really required on such sites, it takes a thick skin to waste your time here Maybe should've started with 'I know I will be downvoted..." but then people don't like it because they think such comments are trolling for karma. If they only knew how much traction comments that are almost invisible and lower on the page get. This is like being a Democratic analyst on Fox News with all the anti-MS and pro-Apple/Google bias on here.

Ditto.

> Edit: Thanks for all the downvotes HN. Nothing better than to see your comment grayed out while this comment is still going strong.

As it seems to be my job to explain how messed up the voting patterns are on HN, here it is: Comments which express a opinion which people disagree with tend to be downvoted initially, because the first people to read the comments are often much more trigger happy with their downvotes. After that, if a comment puts forth genuinely good points, it tends to be upvoted if enough people see it. There are also some people who reflexively downvote comments which complain about downvoting.

I know how much it sucks to have a comment downvoted with no explanation or responses when the only reason seems to be that it expresses an unpopular opinion, especially when you've spent a lot of time writing it. But a lot of people on HN are calm and rational, and don't downvote comments simply because they disagree with them - hell, it might have just been one person who downvoted you, as that's all it takes to get a comment grayed out. But you're in the positive now, which shows that it averages out, right?

You're right that the comment is in the positive now(unlike some other times) but the point count is still seesawing wildly.Since HN doesn't allow people to change their votes once cast, this only means that there are a lot of downvoters who aren't even replying. Because HN only allows people to downvote if they have atleast 500 votes, it means that these downvote-without-reply-ers are otherwise respectable members of the community. You can draw your own conclusions from this.

Anyone complaining about getting downvoted gets a nearly automatic downvote from me at this point; it's extremely highly correlated with bad comments. It also violates the site guidelines:

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>Anyone complaining about getting downvoted gets a nearly automatic downvote from me at this point; it's extremely highly correlated with bad comments.

I think you mean "comments which are unpopular here", not bad comments. Also, by saying "extremely highly" you are implying that GP's commment is a bad one? Care to say how?

No, I mean bad comments. I've seen only a very few comments which both whine about downvotes AND have other interesting content.

The comment I replied to ("You're right that ... You can draw your own conclusions from this.") is a bad comment because it contains no interesting content, just whining about "downvotes without replying".

The site guidelines are there for a reason: everyone should follow them.

I've found upvote/downvote quality almost completely uncorrelated with comment quality. There's a little correlation with completely off the wall comments being downvoted. But if you look at comments where there is actual thought and some interesting statements, they are just as likely to be downvoted if their position is unpopular as a relative shoddy and cliche comment that supports a popular position is to be upvoted.

For this reason I generally don't care about comments at all, except for when comments are negative, as it inhibits the ability to read the comments. I'd actually like to see that practice eliminated, since I find that often comment "gems" have negative karma, but simply take on an unpopular position.

I could never understand all the Vista FUD. I can understand that debacle with the underpowered laptops and the vista sticker or driver problems in the beginning but going past that it was fine. Before I got my current Mac I was running Vista on a Pentium D with 4GB of ram and it never felt slow. (i was trying to save money by not replacing it until it died but I eventually said to hell with it and bought a new computer)

I think most of the complaints were about UAC, which was acknowledged to be overly chatty by Microsoft when they refined it in 7.

It wasn't FUD for me. I bought a computer for my wife, with no special whiz-bangs on it; she does quickbooks, and IE, and that's about it.

It had OEM Vista on it. It was the least stable windows box I've ever had to manage, and that's been a few. It wasn't particularly quick, but that wasn't a huge issue for me since it was a bare bones box, and I didn't expect it to be, but keeping it going for a whole week was difficult.

Good chance the comments you're talking about are from paid shills. There are a lot of un(der)employed bloggers these days, and Microsoft has never been above such tactics.

Yes, a tech reporter of an enterprisy site doesn't know the difference between Windows Phone and Windows Mobile but still makes bold predelictions of disaster based on it and the commenters who point that out are paid shills. Got it.

Yes, a tech reporter of an enterprisy site doesn't know the difference between Windows Phone and Windows Mobile

Whose fault is that?

Cognitive Dissonance explains most irrational support. Many (most in tech field) have staked their careers / life's work on MS. They aren't letting go of that easily.

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