I really don’t think MS had the consumer product vision at the time to pull anything like a music store off. Apple had the vision to get from point A to point B and have huge swaths of consumers hop on board for the ride.
Wild oversimplification, but I always felt that MS suffered from their monopoly during the 90s in that simply never had to make products people really cared about. Apple did. And when the consumer market exploded — especially after touchscreen phones hit — MS just didn’t have any good muscles to use in the fight. They’d been sort of cheating it for so long that the stuff they kept bringing to market was just a total mess.
Steve Jobs and Apple can put together a music store and iPod prototype that was sexy, easy to use, and wowed the music executives who knew Napster and iPods were the future. Meanwhile Microsoft still manages to infuriate their own users with things like Windows 11 start menu. Not to mention the Microsoft Zune was definitely a dud.
> Not to mention the Microsoft Zune was definitely a dud.
Can't comment on the ecosystem since back then my only option was piracy, but the second and third generation players were very good. The HD is still one of the sleekest pieces of hardware that I used. But Apple couldn't be beat at that point.
Windows Mobile 10 was pretty garbage, until the last release or two, after it was already very discontinued and suddenly the UI performance got good. If it had launched like that, and if Intel hadn't dropped x86 for phones days before the Continuum demo, and maybe if Microsoft had kept their promises about WP8 devices being upgradable to 10 and relatedly if WM10 was viable on low end hardware like wp 7 and 8 were... It might have been worth it for developers to rebuild their apps as 'universal windows' apps that only worked on windows mobile 10, not the versions that actually had an install base.
I don't think Windows Phone was necessarily going to get beyond a strong third place, but WP 8.1 on a low end phone was a lot more usable than Android on similar specs, and Apple had/has no desire to touch that part of the market. Continuum on the high end, if the desktop side included win32, could have anchored the other end of the market.
Would have been nice if they hadn't told Firefox they couldn't build for WP though. Mobile IE was garbage, and Mobile Edge for WM10 managed to be worse.
> Windows Mobile 10 was pretty garbage, until the last release or two, after it was already very discontinued and suddenly the UI performance got good.
Oh I can guess what happened. Management and the talkers in general lost interest so some programmers could finally do what they wanted without anyone removing the start button or putting it in the middle of the task bar.
Windows phones hadn't had the start button since it was dropped in the WinCE to WP transition, so positioning of the start button was never an issue. ;p
I had all generations of Windows phones, and the experience was very good from the beginning.
The keyboard felt incredibly fast and the entire UX felt "slippery" in a good way. Things just seemed to move and slide under your fingers. I thought I'd get back to that feeling with an Android 120hz display, but it still doesn't feel the same.
Of course, the browser sucked, and it didn't have many apps. It also took forever for Samsung (and I think Nokia) to add a front-facing camera.
Zune HD hardware might've been solid, but the UI/software was slow and limited. I remember it taking ~5 seconds to load the calculator app. Not to mention nobody wanted a device like that without a robust App Store. I get people liked the Zune brand, but I think people overrated it.
There's another batch of emails from those times (can't find the link, but they will definitely appear again) where Gates is fuming that Apple has iPods, and none of their partners that have privileged access to Microsoft (like Creative) can come up with anything even closely resembling it. A few years later MS came out with Zune (so they had to do this themselves), but yeah, it was already too late.
This. It's always been wild to me how tone deaf Microsoft has always been. I always read these internal emails thinking how wildly out of touch with their own users they are.
Microsoft is not, and never has been, a consumer company. They’re a business that does things for other businesses. They understand that really well.
MS has had one successful consumer product: the Xbox. That seems to have been given total autonomy. And they have still screwed up a few times (Xbox One launch) by falling into old patterns.
Apple was a user company under Jobs. Is still kind of is (they clearly don’t care about businesses), but not as much, and I’m getting a bit worried.
I think the real tell for Apple’s future will be who Tim Cook chooses to replace him. Financially, Apple is incredibly strong. You could argue that operations was Apple’s weakest point when Jobs left, and that Cook was the right choice to cement profitability and the ops side of the business as CEO. Now it’s time for some new product lines to cannibalize existing products and bring the company forward. If Tim picks another business / operations guy to run the company instead of a product person, I do think the product first culture and DNA Jobs left will die out over time.
I know it was purposefully stated that way. Gates recognized “normal Microsoft” would ruin it. And I think they still tried by trying to get it based on normal Windows at one point as opposed to something highly custom based on the same kernel.
That’s just a Windows computer. They’re well reviewed, but I’m not sure they’re very consumer focused. I know plenty of business users use the too.
The Surface models with an ARM (can’t remember the name) were clearly more consumer aimed, but those flopped.
Really I meant more non-computer.
WebTV never set the world on fire (though it seems to have been more popular than most people realize). Zune was supposed to be pretty good, but initial marketing kind of killed it. And WMP wasn’t exactly loved software the way iTunes was. Remember when iTunes was great?
The Active Mates toys didn’t take off, though that’s not a surprise. Spot watches! And shoving Windows CE in the Dreamcast didn’t help.
I’m struggling to think of things MS has done outside of computers, peripherals, and the Xbox. There are probably tons, they’d try anything in the 90s.
Sometimes I start edge when something does not work in firefox. Everyone knows you want your browser to be quick, snappy and use few resources.
What does Edge do? It shows you a unskippable, un-closable "how-to" (as if I've never used a browser), and a make-an-account-and-sync nag. It takes a minute to click though, what a turn off!
It hasn't popped up for me in a while, but it definitively happens sometimes.
Interestingly I've had the same experience with firefox, I keep it installed as a fallback if something isn't working in chrome but every time I (infrequently) use it I have to dismiss several popups about new features and how to switch to it as my primary browser/import history etc.
I think I saw this too with firefox. My memory is a little hazy on this detail, but the _critical_ difference with firefox is that ctrl+t let me open a new tab and leave the sync-a-nag alone. Edge did not allow that, and I actually hat to wait while it was "Working on it".
This resonates so hard. I really wish that SW stop assuming that if they are just installed, then the user is a complete ignoramus who needs to be educated and onboarded. I (for reasons) frequently install OSes from scratch and all the boilerplate is so tedious.
Well, this is coming from the people who brought you the old Edge; the first browser with a input queue, so that the stop button waits until the browser engine is ready to stop it; and then all of your many other button presses play out after that.
Edge as a Chrome reskin is better than that at least. But then again, so was IE.
Microsoft also had the PlaysForSure platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PlaysForSure . This platform included standards and certification for hosting music for sale and for physical services that would download and play such DRMed music.
Rhapsody was one company that hosted a certified marketplace and sold the iRiver line of devices that worked reasonably well. They went on to buy the Napster brand eventually.
They (Rhapsody) even had a MUSIC SUBSCRIPTION service many years before anyone else did and it worked well. Everybody trashed it though saying nobody wanted to rent music.
Then of course Microsoft Zune didn't use the platform and developed their own thing. I think PlaysForSure is dead, but maybe some stub lives on.
EDIT: clarified subscription service was Rhapsody, not Microsoft
These two things are ~20 years apart. I don't think Microsoft in 2000 could have made iPod, but Apple also these days commonly fault on software experience.
> the Microsoft Zune was definitely a dud
I'm not too sure. There's a directly line from the Microsoft Zune to Window's modern design language. I don't think that's too much of a dud.
I think they're being "Appled" by Sony and Nintendo in the gaming industry though. The Xbox division has been on a downward spiral. Brand loyalty and Game Pass is arguably the only thing keeping them around. But as Sony continues to put out killer first party titles only on PS5, they will suffer.
I think a lot of Xbox Series X/S buyers wish they had a PS5 or buy a PS5 as well to play Sony first party titles. And come next generation, if Xbox doesn't have anything to compete with the quality of Sony's games, then I think they're dead. We're 2.5 years into the current generation and Microsoft has almost nothing to show for it except Forza and Halo, which was a delayed mess of a game. Add in to that the fact that most third party games perform better on PS5.
They've been on a downward trajectory after Xbox One, where they refuse to state how successful it is, with analysts predicting the PS4 outsold them 2-1. Xbox One was a terrible announcement and launch.
Xbox Series X/S are great pieces of hardware but they just can't compete with PlayStation in every other aspect. They've let down developers with the Series S since developers have to target 2 separate SKUs for Xbox, increasing developer effort. And in some cases developers are withholding their games from Xbox if they can't run on the weaker Series S, as you are not allowed to launch on Series X only (see Baldur's Gate 3). If Microsoft changes the rules around this it will benefit developers but it will let down consumers. PS5 is predicted to be outselling the Xbox even more so this generation. There's practically no reason for a consumer to buy an Xbox unless you're a fan of their exclusives, which they have done an excellent job of killing interest in.
I think next generation will be when Microsoft taps out and leaves the gaming hardware market, except for maybe their controllers. They will pivot to software only and focus on selling Game Pass for PC players and game streaming for the remaining consumers. Personally, I don't think that will have a good outcome.
It seems obvious to me that they want to move to more of a service model where you pay for an "Xbox" subscription and play on whatever devices you have and leave the traditional model behind. We can quibble about the wisdom but it seems like you're calling them a failure for doing exactly what they want to do.
I think Microsoft has put Sony in an impossible spot and, with the Activision merger about to go through, Sony is going to have an even harder time. The pandemic, I believe, has masked that people are migrating more and more to PC. Migrating to PC is a win for Microsoft. Kids play Switch and then are jumping right to PC. I don’t hear about a lot of Gen Z kids talk about PlayStation and have even heard it referred to as a boomer console and anecdotally the PlayStation crowd seems to be predominately 30+.
> I think Microsoft has put Sony in an impossible spot and, with the Activision merger about to go through
MS is being accused that they cant innovate themselves and have to buy other companies for their innovative product. This acquisition is just supporting that claim.
Afaik relative market share of consoles vs PC for gaming has stayed about the same with single digit shifts in the last few years.
Consoles are still dominant. I’d like to see statistics back up what you’re saying though.
PC gaming being a win for Microsoft doesn’t make a ton of sense to me. On console, they get a cut of every game sold. On PC they only get to profit of game pass games.
The only major win I see is preventing users from moving away from their OS.
> I don’t hear about a lot of Gen Z kids talk about PlayStation and have even heard it referred to as a boomer console and anecdotally the PlayStation crowd seems to be predominately 30+.
Has "boomer" slipped into meaning "people older than me" now? There are no boomer consoles.
I would say that they seem to recognize that they need to appeal to the users of their products and not just those users’ managers. And that means playing ball with the ecosystem and not just trying to crush it. Baby steps, I guess.
But a lot of their product line remains a mess. (Although the Xbox shouldn’t be discounted — that was a consumer success.)
I would say that they seem to recognize that they need to appeal to the users of their products and not just those users’ managers
Some of them recognize it, but not everyone. The company also seems to be pretty heavily invested into monetizing users to the hilt with telemetry and advertising. This is the sort of approach that will slowly drive people away from the platform, as users gradually tire of the ever-increasing intrusiveness of the ads.
Games consoles are a strange consumer product. They live and die on the ability to make deals with third parties and only a small number of companies have ever had sustained success.
I loved my Surface Book too. Until during the pandemic, Microsoft updates ran constantly. So I let the Surface Book powered on for several weeks. Foolish me didn’t realize that the CPU was maxed out and the heat would eventually cause the battery to swell and cause the display panel to become unglued.
I'd argue it has slowly gotten worse at Microsoft, and that's pretty bad.
I login to windows and everything feels like they're coding / designing AT ME. It's like nobody making decisions is thinking about me accomplishing anything, more how they can make me do whatever it is they want.
Don't get me started with the dozen (ok maybe not exactly a dozen) or so design languages inside Windows and how unfriendly some are.
That’s still the case until today. Microsoft has zero innovation capabilities. Nothing they built themselves since the 90s became even remotely a product which consumers enjoy. Everything they have today is Office which is kind of okay and the rest are acquisitions.
I think for a company to innovate, you need both to have a) an innovative person or team, and just as importantly, b) give them a lot of freedom/power. Just having one or the other doesn't work.
I've been at companies with innovative people, who just get stifled by higher ups, get bored, then leave. Most big companies have too many layers of power in place to keep anyone from shaking things up.
I guess that's to say, I wouldn't single out MSFT. It's a disease of every large company.
In the context of innovation, the original Xbox truly was a trailblazer. Standard PC processors, onboard storage and high-speed networking in every unit, online service subscriptions, downloadable updates and content, game achievements, huge and ugly: the following three console generations have closely followed the path cut by Xbox 20+ years ago.
Honestly I think the only reason it's anywhere as close this generation is because of the PS5 supply issues until very recently meant many people gave up and bought a Series X. I don't think it actually has that much to put it ahead of the PS5 other than availability, and the Xbox One generation was such a flop that it seriously dented their network effects
Yep. They know what they want to build and make fewer compromises than Microsoft. If Microsoft had developed the iPhone, it would have launched on every carrier possible and to do that, they would have had to allow the carriers to junk up the phone and restrict all kinds of user features. Remember the days of $3 ringtones and carrier run app stores?
For all the problems we have with Apple and their products today, they did move us forward.
Wild oversimplification, but I always felt that MS suffered from their monopoly during the 90s in that simply never had to make products people really cared about. Apple did. And when the consumer market exploded — especially after touchscreen phones hit — MS just didn’t have any good muscles to use in the fight. They’d been sort of cheating it for so long that the stuff they kept bringing to market was just a total mess.