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Comment by sakopov | Hacker News Reader

My god, give them a break. Can we get at least one positive article about Microsoft on HN? It doesn't matter what Microsoft does they always get ridiculed for it. Any effort, no matter how good, gets completely obliterated. Microsoft hasn't been the most innovative company lately but they're slowly adjusting their line of products to at least try to get somewhere. Yes, Surface doesn't stand up to iPad, but it's a very solid product nonetheless. Yes, Windows 8 is a big deviation from norm, but it is an innovative move forward that needs a bit more work. Yes, C# and the entire .NET ecosystem isn't as popular as Rails and gets absolutely no love on HN but it is an incredibly powerful environment. For fuck's sake, stop hating Microsoft just to hate it and embrace their efforts to move forward and compete just like you do Google and Apple.

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I think you will find there's lots of people on HN who would love to see Microsoft hit a home run. Surface was highly buzzed-over, as were Windows Phone 7/8. There is genuine interest in the developer community for a really good alternative to the Apple & Google duopoly.

The problem is that Microsoft isn't providing a really good alternative. The buzzed-about products have all followed a depressingly similar trajectory: highly interesting on the drawing board, but then crippled on launch by some element of the product that MS just didn't get right. Windows Phones were hard to find on some carriers, for instance, and lacked apps. (This oversight was understandable for Windows Phone 7; less so for 8.) Surface manages to be too expensive to compete with tablets and too limited to compete with ultrabooks. And so on.

Say what you want about Apple and Google, but they at least know who their customers are and consistently nail the things those customers care about. Apple customers are consumers, so their products are heavy on style and sex appeal. Google customers are carriers, so their products are heavy on customizability and adaptable across a lot of form factors and spec sheets.

Microsoft's non-developer customers are... well, Microsoft doesn't really seem to know, and the products show it. They're a mishmash of interesting ideas and half-baked execution. Which makes them hard to cheer for, or to justify buying.

This is a matter of opinion, but here is my take: Microsoft has single-handedly delayed the progress of the Internet for over a decade. We have a very confusing environment, which we are painfully leaving behind, simply because they tried to own the Internet. What is the world GDP impact of trying to overcome the incompatibilities of IE?

And they have tried to tamper with my individual rights to use the computing platform I choose. Remember "Linux is a cancer", and bullying of manufacturers not to offer Linux? Where are my Linux laptops, please? I attribute 90% to the blame to Microsoft (and yes, I have a Linux laptop, no Microsoft tax attached. But the choice was very narrow)

For these reasons, even if tomorrow Microsoft announces the cure of cancer, I will despise them with all my strength. For decades to come. For the rest of my life.

There is no undoing the harm they have done to humankind. The only positive outcome, from my point of view, is for them to disappear as a company, and for their products to die (obviously, a very long death). Microsoft will never offer a product I want. It is really that simple.

And Apple is on a worse track.

No thanks. When you recall their once-titanic power, their vicious business culture, their decade-long seizure and stagnation of the entire web, the way they openly eat their own with gusto, and the incalculable amounts of money and effort thrown into the boundless swamps of their fetid platforms, you realize that watching them tumble and smash on the rocks below is never, ever, ever going to get old.

Yes, fully agree. Additionally the decline for Microsoft is good for us all, as it results in vendor diversification which bears choice, robustness (no single target), faster rate of improvement and competitive market dynamics.

Vendor diversification? As in Apple has diversified into computers, phones, tablets, TVs, music players, music sales, software sales...? If it's vendor diversification you like, you might want to hope that Microsoft manages to become a player in phones, tablets, etc., too, because otherwise we'll be stuck paying Apple-sized margins on hardware, software, and services.

Of course, my first choice would be to see Linux become a major force on more platforms in a power user (not consumer) form. Watching Apple, Microsoft, and major chunks of Linux in a race to convert all platforms to the "I don't understand folders, I just want my Facebook and buttons to poke to buy my entertainment" market makes me wish for someone to target the power user machines for getting work done market that everyone else is getting out of.

I'm looking forward to seeing similar things happen to Apple.

God forbid. At least Microsoft didn't control our hardware. If Apple gets the same kind of monopole as Microsoft over computers, tablets and smartphones, they would basically control the entire field of technology.

As for the prices, people pirated Microsoft, which kept their prices pretty low (otherwise no one would buy it). With a monopole for hardware, Apple can dictate its prices (already very high) however it wants and people can either pay or go for the small non-integrated OSes.

That would be a nightmare.

Why? Why wouldn't you want a company - any company - to do well, build great products, make their shareholders happy, and generally succeed?

Because I don't think their products are so great, and I believe they're having a negative effect on the industry.

If you find an ubuntu laptop with build quality equal to a MacBook Air or Pro, I'm all ears.

Same thing with the iPhone or iPad.

> If you find an ubuntu laptop with build quality equal to a MacBook Air or Pro, I'm all ears.

Ummm... what about Ubuntu on the MacBook Air or Pro?

That would work, unless you were determined to avoid Apple (I'm not)

Like forcing to make nice, durable, useable stuff?

All you guys going on about the hardware are missing my point. The vast majority of my tech support calls to family and friends are trying to work around Apple's Digital Restrictions Management on iPhones, iPads and similar.

Then there was the whole Apple/Samsung thing.

And the App Store policies. I've seen people come crying to HN time and time again because their app got pulled or they can't update it any more.

I don't consider them a nice company and I don't find their stuff nice or usable. So you can keep the rotten fruit away from me, thanks.

And you'll be waiting a long time because their motivations aren't even remotely similar. You know what a monopolist does to competitors? It gives products away for free to bankrupt the competition. Or it buys the compeitor out and shitcans the entire operation.

Apple is sitting on $100B in cash. If it really wanted to it could do a lot of damage with that much cash (not even talking about equity or assets, just cash). But it doesn't, it selectively invests while the tech journalists write articles about what Apple should be doing with that money.

C# and the entire .NET ecosystem isn't as popular as Rails

Is that true? I mean, I'm sure there aren't a whole lot of .net people on HN, but I always assumed that there's a pretty large "silent majority" of enterprise devs that use .net exclusively.

And also, MS got some serious love the other day when they released TypeScript (and rightly so). FWIW even though I'm a java/javascript guy I got my start in visual studio and it's a great toolset, and C# really is Java++.

.NET may not be popular on HackerNews, or for building your startup, but step into any bank or big-business company and you'll see nothing but .NET (it has slowly been taking over the area that used to belong to Java 5-10 years ago).

It's a shame how some people view .NET as a closed platform and not open source friendly, when Microsoft has been making a BIG effort to push .NET into the open, especially ASP.NET. Let not forget things like Nuget, which has completely changed the way most .NET programmers work. Then there's Mono, which is just getting better and better every month (Host ASP.NET MVC web sites on Linux... now you can, thanks to Microsoft open sourcing MVC and Mono supporting it)

All in all .NET has become a very embracing platform for open source. I use it for just about any job, with great success.

> It's a shame how some people view .NET as a closed platform and not open source friendly

That is a shame. Because Mono has advanced so far since a few years ago, and software such as Unity prove that robust, fast code can be written for the CLR and be relatively easy to port cross-platform. Its really an amazing feat.

Diving further into the rabbit hole with WPF/WCF, which as far as I can tell hasn't been implemented in Mono, was an absolute awesome experience developing an application. I would take that over iOS/Android platforms any day of the week.

It's not popular on HN for a reason. Even if you run everything on Mono, for practical reasons you are tied to Windows as a development platform and that's a major issue for just about anyone who does their development on other platforms.

Goodwill is earned, not given. In what way has Microsoft earned any in the last 20 years or so? Burned bridges don't spontaneous get rebuild just because one don't carry torches anymore.

I must also object to call windows 8 a innovative move forward. I have yet to see any evidence to suggest it's anything but a move backward. The question one should ask here is, if one put the same energy to polishing windows 7 and windows 8, who would come out on top in usability, stability and security? My money would be on windows 7.

> Microsoft hasn't been the most innovative company lately but they're slowly adjusting their line of products to at least try to get somewhere.

They're slowly adjusting their products in order to jump on someone else's bandwagon, instead of maximizing their own unique competitive advantage.

Why the hell is Microsoft making an ARM-based hardware platform in the first place?

> Why the hell is Microsoft making an ARM-based hardware platform in the first place?

Same reason as everyone else. People want devices with low power consumption. Until x86 can deliver that I would say it makes great sense to make ARM-based hardware. I keep hearing atom etc will be on par with ARM, however, I have yet to see devices who deliver on that promise.

> Same reason as everyone else. People want devices with low power consumption.

People want cars with good fuel economy and tasty, nutritious lunches, too, so why don't we see Microsoft Motors or The Microsoft Café?

I'm not focusing specifically on the ARM architecture, but merely pointing out that using ARM is just another quality of this product that fails to make use of any of Microsoft's existing advantages; the broader question is why MS decided to release any tablet at all in the first place

Yes, C# and the entire .NET ecosystem isn't as popular as Rails

That's a very bold statement. The .NET ecosystem is massive. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the PHP ecosystem is even much larger than the Rails ecosystem.

I'd actually go so far as to say that the PHP ecosystem completely dwarfs the Rails ecosystem, and until my mom can upload a Ruby file to any cheap shared server and just have it work it always will.

I'm a really big fan of the .NET environment but you have to admit there is something wrong with the end-user products in recent years. Looking at the modest success of the Surface RT, one might think it will end-up like WP7. You cannot recommend to buy a product like this for Christmass

The article has a very specific complaint - that Windows RT isn't Windows inasmuch as it doesn't run most Windows software and that this is confusing since Microsoft has trained us to expect that "Windows $FOO" will run Windows software. This has been the basis of their branding since 1995 at least, and a serious strength of that product line.

What's the problem with discussing that issue?

I'm not hoping for MS to die. I'd love to have some competition on the market and I'd love them to show some amazing products that inspire everyone.

That being said the writing was on the wall. Microsoft is blindsided by two cash cows and they're not willing to reinvent themselves.

Microsoft has Windows and Office that make them money. Everything else is secondary and helped them control that market. It's a Napoleonic approach to business (read Bill Gates' biography to understand that).

How Microsoft made its initial money was by undercutting everyone and selling a licence for their first OS to IBM so Big Blue had to spend less money per machine sold. It worked so well that MS became the richest and most powerful high tech company.

Now the open source community releases powerful office suites for free, Apple releases an amazing office suite for 1/5th of the price of MS Office and Google releases something essentially free that works online!

When everyone else is moving ahead... it's hard to have anything to say that is positive about the stubborn MS.

C# and the entire .NET ecosystem isn't as popular as Rails in start-ups.

However, in the world of enterprise development for corporate clients you won't see much Rails development. It is all .NET and Java.

So if Apple releases a lot of dodgy products, they are entitled to a break next time they screw up one of their new releases?

> Can we get at least one positive article about Microsoft on HN?

No we cannot. Anything non-critical of Microsoft(even a product announcement) usually gets flagged off the front page if it manages to reach it. Same with many articles critical of Google. I agree MS has dropped the ball in regards to Windows RT branding but the HN front page is a joke when it comes to Microsoft related stories.

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