aseem

I've always wondered why Apple doesn't put navigation items on the bottom of the screen much the way Android has soft keys on the bottom. It would solve this problem and also make one handed navigation easier (or possible at all).

This would be fun response to the usual interview white boarding question.

“But think about the scenario of a loan officer talking to a prospective client. To software people, that looks like voodoo. The idea that you can sit across the table from somebody and get a read on their character is just nonsense."

This coming a Venture Capitalist...

I think this is another prime example of building a vitamin instead of building a medicine. Do I really need this? How is this different from FlipBoard?

It seems like it's just a way for Amazon to avoid paying transaction fees on real money. With their margins, this could make sense and be a worthwhile endeavor.

I'm afraid this article will lead people to mis-prioritize their decision making. When doing a startup, all of your focus needs to be on the building the best product possible. If you can do that as a single founder, great! But if you need more people, you should do that if that's what the product calls for. In my opinion, making decisions based on future equity and payout is poor management.

Everyone complains about coporate CEOs who are so focused on the stock price that they forget to make good products. Focus on the product, and the $$ will take care of itself.

Shouldn't the answer be 42?

One could certainly make the argument that Zuckerberg is suffering from a form of business myopia. He's leveraging the main competitive advantage he has, which is the social graph. Perhaps he should think more broadly and take advantage of Facebook's financial resources and intellectual capital. Companies such as Apple and Microsoft thought beyond their narrow set of competencies to become full fledged technology companies. It will be interesting to see if Facebook will move in the same direction.

In all fairness to Zuckerberg, one could also make this argument about Google. While both Google and Facebook dominate their areas because of powerful network effects, nothing lasts forever. Imagine what the Union Pacific Railroad company could have been if they stopped thinking of themselves as a railroad company, and started thinking like a transportation company. It's tempting to stick to riding the one horse you have, but rarely has this worked out long-term in the tech industry.

I don't think Microsoft executives are losing sleep over "Microsoft Hatred" as much as they are losing sleep over "Microsoft Irrelevance". How many college students know how to program on Win32? How many even know what Win32 is? In 10 years, these college students will be the senior developers at their respective companies.

Certainly, any good engineer will choose the best tool for the job. But I find it unlikely that those that know little of MS technology will promote those tools later in their careers.

/* What is Microsoft? */

You certainly note some fair examples for your point. However, I was referring to Apple's choosing of HTML5 instead of Flash. The easy choice that probably benefits mostly in the short-term is to play nice with Flash. Ultimately, Jobs and his team felt the best customer experience was to ditch Flash much to the malign of developers. Would Microsoft made such a decision? And who at Microsoft makes those decisions? Where does the buck stop?

As Microsoft CSA, Ozzie had to live up to the legacy of Gates while steering the direction of hundreds of product groups. This is certainly no simple task.

Ultimately, he was doomed to fail. His job was to advocate the right technologies at the right time. Yet MS rarely makes the right choices in this area. Technology decisions are made by political GMs who want to hold on to their empires. They are made by VPs who don't want to sacrifice short term profits for a longer term vision.

Steve Jobs made an excellent point at the D conference this year about how Apple tries to pick technologies that are in their "Spring". These are technologies that are on their way up. Certainly Steve has the luxury of not worrying as much about backwards compatibility, etc. But he certainly has the courage of his convictions to pick a path that's best for his company and customers.

I don't think Ray had that kind of fortitude, and unfortunately, I don't think he had that kind of power. Ultimately, the CEO needs to push the technological vision of Microsoft. Leaving it to mid-level managers will only result in further mediocrity.

Does that mean the new runtime will be called FlashLight?

Do people really believe that if Facebook goes public that it will be worth more than Google when it went public? I want to know the details of how people (i.e. Forbes Magazine) came up with the $33B valuation.

I think there are too many people on the internet who are making money telling others how to make money on the internet.

Clearly God is an Object Oriented programmer. Universes inheriting from each other, time being an inherited property... Nice.

I think Andreessen's words should be taken with a grain of salt. His underlying premise is that a startup's ultimate goal is to get really big. This may make sense for a guy who has his own VC fund, but I'm not sure it makes sense for every entrepeneur.

While having a market is certainly important, I don't think someone should disregard the niches that are out there. Is a large market more important than the product? While I agree with Marc on iteration and speed of execution, I can't quite convince myself that I would take a large market over a solid product and team. I'd love to see a response from DHH.