Microsoft is starting to pivot | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is starting to pivot

tnl.net

26 pointstristan_louis16 comments

I'm sorry, but the writing is just absolutely awful. Content-wise there's nothing insightful or new here either. Just personal opinion, conjecture, and projections based on absolutely no hard facts at all. Seriously, this reads like a 16-year old's Reddit comment.

Why do people use the word "pivot" to mean "change direction"?

The word pivot has many meanings but most imply some sort of stability or immobility. It can mean a physical peg or stick around which things turn, or the fulcrum of a lever which is also stationary. According to wiktionary it can also mean turning with one foot on the ground or to turn in a single spot.

I can somewhat understand when startups like to use cool lingo to imply how agile they are by being able to change direction in an instant, although I still find it annoying.

But Microsoft? Pivot? As in change direction nearly instantaneously? The answer is no. The title itself acknowledges this, since it includes the word "starting". If you're "starting" to pivot you're not pivoting. You're changing direction.

I always thought the "one foot on the ground" was what it meant. You figure out a way to keep about half of your current strategy or assets or whatever fixed but applied in a new way to a new context, and change/recreate the other half. This is sort of what Microsoft is trying to do with Windows 8, they are keeping about half of their OS the same while radically changing the other half.

Compare with music theory for example - "pivot tones" are a way of making a smooth connection between chords in a harmonic progression, by keeping one or more notes the same while changing the others. Through a sequence of chord changes you can end up somewhere harmonically radically different from where you started, yet still keep each individual step smoothly connected to what came before.

I sympathise, but I fear the battle is lost :-) For a company, pivot = change direction.

On the article: this is truly a big bet by Microsoft and fascinating to watch.

piv·ot noun \ˈpi-vət\

: a shaft or pin on which something turns

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pivot?show=0&t...

I always imagined it as turning (pivoting) on one leg to change the direction you're walking

Which is precisely something a behemoth like Microsoft can't do.

Can an oil tanker pivot?

Having read the article I call FUD; Nothing to see and realy not worth reading. I could do better with a few grep lines a awk script and /dev/rand.

Then please do :)

This is tangential point but if you need to make images fit into a smaller bounding box, crop them. Do not just rescale with a different aspect ratio. Stretched/squashed images look terrible.

Thanks for the insight. I've been debating that for a while. I do create crop them initially and then do a rescale. Maybe I need to do something different.

I actually really like how you've kept the images as thin bands, really keeps the continuity of the text going. I'd just recommend that you use source material that looks good when cropped to fit such a wide aspect ratio without any stretching.

Other than that, great blog!

Does anyone else think that the DOJ would go after Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour if it sunk $10B into selling hardware below cost to move into a new market?

I would disagree here because of the situation. Microsoft is no longer the dominant force it once was and thus can do what it want to compete against a larger company (ie. Apple). The DOJ would probably not see it as anti-competitive as, in this case, it would be more of a question of trying to crack through a market that is dominated by another player.

The lack of crapware in the new products can be a good start.

I know you got downvoted and while I agree with you, it's not really Microsoft's fault. Microsoft is actually trying to stop it themselves by offering the same (sometimes) PCs in their own stores that come without the crapware.

Microsoft is trying to do something about that. They launched a program a little while back (the Microsoft signature program) but I don't think it's getting much support from the OEMs because they realize more revenue with the crapware :(

Reply on news.ycombinator.com