amaks

I'm curious why Symbian and not Android?

But that's what didn't work with Windows 8. For majority of consumers UI is operating system. Hence the confusion with difference between Windows RT and Windows 8. Hence the perception that Windows 8 has two isolated operating systems in it.

A sobering analysis:

"“We are the only ones who can harness the power of software and deliver it through devices and services that truly empower every individual and every organization. We are the only company with history and continued focus in building platforms and ecosystems that create broad opportunity.”

One hesitates. Either Nadella knows this is BS but thinks we’re stupid enough to buy into such pablum. Or he actually believes it and is therefore dangerous for his shareholders and coworkers."

Or the opposite, Bitcoin is just hard/impossible for Russian government to be placed under its control.

It requires a Google account. There is no such thing as Google Plus account.

Apparently you don't know what you're talking about. Source Depot at Microsoft (rebranded Perforce) can do it, while TFS cannot, therefore half of Microsoft stores its source code in TFS and half in SD. Git scales really well, at least well enough for the Linux kernel which is not much less than Windows kernel.

>> "When you care enough about software, you'll make your own hardware" -- Alan Kay.

Sure, but why it has to be a low margin, overcrowded smartphone market? It's better to focus on new category of devices such as thermostats;-). Microsoft's situation is different here because they have no choice - Nokia pretty much the only vendor for WP.

What a great post from Gruber. I generally don't like his posts because they are always fanboyish, but this one just nails it.

Exactly. That's why I believe nothing will change in Microsoft with the new CEO, open sourcing of ASP.NET and other moves. It's simply not in their DNA to change and become fast followers. Lock-ins, closed silos - that's Microsoft areas of domination ever since.

>> While Indian newspapers were over the moon about Nadella’s elevation, with some justification, there is another side to the story we need to consider: why is it that India’s tech and other geniuses flower only in the US or Silicon Valley?

The assignment of Nadella to CEO role appears to be a very smart move from Microsoft board for many reasons:

1) He's not involved into scandalous business decisions as Elop 2) He's internal candidate and been in Microsoft for 22 years 3) He's Ballmer's man, and 4) Ballmer and Gates are still on Microsoft board, so no uncomfortable decisions and surprises for MS board from the new CEO. 5) He's Indian, which brings even more diversity to Microsoft LT.

Given all of the above, I doubt any drastic and revolutionary changes will happen at MS.

We'll see, Gates and Ballmer are going to stay on Microsoft board. I'm wondering how much freedom Nadella is going to have in making decisions.

This is racist. Anyway, Satya should be having elevated political skills, by being able to climb the ladder that high.

I wouldn't go that far as describing him to be in charge in lives. He's their boss, yes, but he cannot possibly control all aspects of their lives by "being in charge". This is not a feudalism, is it?

How can we be certain that a stronger, with a strong developer engagement, Microsoft will not start creating proprietary closed systems and protocols again, siloing open systems into a closed ones (by using its embrace and extend tactics)?

I'm curious what's going to happen to Stephen Elop now. I was under impression he was aiming for the CEO position at Microsoft himself.

unfortunately Microsoft in all its infinite wisdom will likely tone down the metro concept instead of fixing it.

typical for !Microsoft management, why I am not surprised?

What an awesome gesture. Go Seahawks!

Bing is what I referred to as "services". Also, AFAIK, he never worked in Windows, at least before Bing.

You do realize that you're confirming the previous point of the "consumer side days are numbered". Platforms for business applications are not good for consumers.

Big mistake IMO. I can't imagine Satya "the enterprise guy" being CEO of the devices company (he's probably qualified to be CEO for the "services" part of Microsoft). I'm wondering if him and Elop would work as co-CEOs, but history shows that's not a good idea either.

>> awesome UI design concepts for al long time, specifically in mobile

Hmm, would you give an example of the "awesome design in mobile" from facebook? I hope you're not referring to their "facebook" mobile app.

I agree, it seems that new facebook strategy is to spread the use of their platform using mobile apps. This will increase their mobile ad presence. But, I'm curious if this is an indication of the weakness in their mobile ad exchange because other mobile apps which use facebook platform doesn't seem to satisfy them.

>> I have the feeling that at Facebook they tend to half-ass things, like Home or the redesigned Newsfeed.

That's their motto, is it not? "Move fast and break things". It's hard to expect anything well designed with an engineering attitude like this.

If only FB graph search worked as advertised. However, it's far cry from Google search and knowledge base.

Exactly. Interesting, Yann LeCun in his G+ post (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+YannLeCunPhD/posts/LnKBPi9cCWm) explicitly mentioned that the acquired ML scientists have been focused in reinforcement learning. Also, they have published ArXiv paper on the subject: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.5602v1.pdf.

I'm not surprised that facebook ad is a complete waste of money. First, lots of people block ads in facebook newsfeed. Second, who would click on ad of a game when people are busy posting baby's pictures?

I'll probably end up deleting my facebook account. Wait, is it even possible to do?

I'm pretty sure they do, in development. But even if they don't, it's a growing huge market.

"Bing exists than it is that it is equal to or better than Google in every way"

How is Bing better than Google (Search) in every way? With worse relevance and smaller index? Although, IIRC, Bing used to train their neural net based on Google search results to match the Google search quality (remember the 'torsoraphy' incident)?