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Comment by ashot | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised you didn't make the larger point: this is true for every product Microsoft has ever made. Copy, improve, persist. Basic, DOS, Windows, Office, IE, etc.

They are not a creative company (or as Jobs would have it they have no taste - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upzKj-1HaKw ).

Their business does not revolve around creating new things but about copying and improving things that already exist in the market. And to be fair, this strategy has worked out quite well for them so far, so why would they change course?

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It worked for shrinkwrap software, where release cycles are large. It has not worked for web software, where releases can happen daily. They can never catch up.

It worked for shrinkwrap software when they had an OS monopoly they could abuse to drive their competition out of business, and likewise it worked for their OS business when they could negotiate illegal anti-competitive terms and conditions with their licensees.

I'm sure they have done some great work, but it is hard to look at their track record and figure out how much of their success was earned on the merits of their products and how much was earned on the "merits" of their business practices.

It also worked before they had an OS monopoly. After all, that's how they got their monopoly.

Ah, no. They rode IBM's success to their monopoly and even in their first business dealings they had anti-competitive goings on. For example, it was possible to purchase an IBM-PC with DR-DOS instead of PC-DOS, but you ended up paying for PC-DOS and DR-DOS, so it was always cheaper to stick with PC-DOS.

Again, I'm saying that it is hard to look at their success and disentangle their products's merits from their business practices.

Making a good product is not always about revolution. Many times it is about improving and refining.

Remember the story of Microsoft and Lotus? Microsoft Excel won because it was a better product. Nothing revolutionary. Just better. Microsoft Word eventually replaced Wordperfect. Where are those companies today?

Really? There was no special advanage their applications group had from their relationship with their OS group? Also, I recall Microsoft telling everyone to invest big in OS/2, and I recall Lotus and Wordperfect buying into it big time. Then I recall Microsoft investing big in Windows instead, and thus everyone else was way behind on Windows because they had developed for OS/2.

DO I miss-recall that moment in history when Microsoft's applications lept ahead of everyone else simultaneously?

Excel really took off on the Mac platform -- at first. So at least there they had no advantage. I agree that on Windows they always had an edge. But the truth is - everyone ignored the platform (everyone except users).

Microsoft was heavily invested in OS/2 as well. Just had the courage to ditch the platform when Windows was gaining market.

Point is: you don't have to leap ahead of everyone or be super innovative. Just make products that are useful and provide some advantage over the competitors (another example is the Flip video camera).

Excel really took off on the Mac platform -- at first

I remember that. I also remember that Excel was limited to using no more than 1MB of RAM. When they ported Excel to Windows, they fixed that so it could use as much RAM as your machine had, but strangely they didn't fix the Mac version. So, if you wanted to use Excel for very large spreadsheets, you had to use the Windows version or you had to go with a different Mac product.

But of course, if you wanted to share docs within an office, you would go with Excel and then gradually the Mac users in the office would be forced to switch to Windows :-)

Well said!

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