Tech Paladin

The Microsoft of today is the Apple of yesteryear; directionless, adrift, unpopular, deserted by the technical elite, and home to mostly shitty software. Microsoft produces a thousand different products with no unified vision or purpose, and most of them bleed money. Like the Apple of the 1990s, research labs belch forth an unending stream of interesting but irrelevant tech-demo-products that suck away funds and talent from the popular products and the money-makers.

Windows Live Writer, for example. I’ve heard it’s quite good, but why isn’t it bundled with Vista or XP? Since you have to go out and find it to use it, its audience will be very small, dooming it to near-irrelevance in the elephantine-huge scheme of things. It’s also got no real business model behind it save a tenuous link to Windows Live, which itself is free and relies on ads to support itself. Soooooo… what’s the point? Has the product group in charge of Windows Live Writer actually produced anything valuable to Microsoft? If WLW were bundled with Vista or Office or sold for a profit, then it could begin to contribute value to the company. As is, it does nothing. It’s subsidized freeware with a small audience.

And what about Windows Life Photo Gallery? How does it differ from the Windows (non-Live) Photo Gallery that comes bundled with Vista? If you already uses one, what’s the benefit of the other? How does it enhance Microsoft’s bottom line or contribute to its technological prowess or enhance existing products?

For that matter, why does Windows Live itself exist? Microsoft isn’t any good at search and doesn’t make money from it, so Live Search is a dud. Windows Live Hotmail likewise doesn’t earn the company anything, and it’s a constant poster boy for poor software design among nerds.

And what about PhotoSynth? Sure it makes cool panoramas, but where’s the money for it coming from, and what revenus it it bringing in? None! Nada! Zippo!

This stuff is exactly what Apple did during the mid-90s. Its research labs produced plenty of amusing curios, tech demos that never materialized into successful products, and free add-ons for the Mac OS that did nothing but suck resources away from the money-making products. The Newton, for example, was hailed by its few users, but at the time it was a failing product that merely drained Apple’s coffers. An adjunct to the Newton was the eMate, a low-cost laptop with a lilliputian stylus-driven monochrome touchscreen. It was unclear at the time why Apple was producing such products when its Macintosh line was stagnating and public opinion was turning against them, and it was years before Jobs returned to trim the fat.

This is what Microsoft must do: trim the fat. Reduce the bloat, concentrate on Windows and Office, and produce only software that can either be sold for a profit, or comes bundled with the operating system to enhance its value. Apple did this and turned around its fortunes in a year or two. So can Microsoft.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Software, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.