~mkw

Average guy, above average luck...the blog of M. Keith Warren

AppleMatters: How Microsoft Will Die...

http://applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/423/

Sometimes when I read stuff like this I seriously think it was originally written for “The Onion”

Having a point to point argument with this guy would be like beating up a kid in a wheelchair but I thought I would bring up a few of the wackier points for good laughs.

“Shoddy software practices are forced on programmers due to incompetent managers which in turn produces the mess that is Longhorn.”
– Those terrible managers and shoddy practices, that’s the problem. Please tell me though, do you know any of these managers? Can you detail these bad practices? Have you even seen the “mess” that is Longhorn?

“Then on the server side Microsoft has finally realized that they are fighting a losing war.”
– Yeah and the fact that so many people are tossing Windows 2003 for other things just amplifies this…

“Now factor in the ITMS and how profitable it has been.”
– Forget the fact that Microsoft makes twice as much PROFIT in one month than ITMS has done in total revenue its entire lifetime.

“News flash! Longhorn is going to be drastically overshadowed by Leopard and Macs running Intel.”
- So everyone will be excited for the 200 people who still use Macs while no one will care the 200 million + users will be getting an upgrade.

“Throw all of the current Windows code away. All of it. Everything from 9x to XP to Longhorn, everything has to go. It’s all crap and its time to jettison those reeking piles of poorly written, buggy code.”
– I love proclamations from people who expose themselves in this way; I wonder how many lines of code this guy has written (hint: HTML does not count).

“There is no need to make IE so deeply attached to your kernel. Bad things happen when you do stuff like that.”
– OK, can you even give me a salient definition of a kernel? IE has never been part of the kernel, it will not be in Longhorn either.

And the one I like best is his suggestion for what Microsoft should do; suggestion number one, top of the list...Admit Defeat!

Ha! I love a good laugh.

Posted: Jul 01 2005, 02:06 PM by mkeithwarren | with 11 comment(s)

Comments

Keith Free Ellis said:

can't resist....but html is so nice and friendly it should count haha
# July 1, 2005 3:40 PM

davidr said:

Good rebuttal! I agree the article is a joke...you should post it in the comment over there.
# July 1, 2005 3:50 PM

Tom said:

I have to admit I agree with a lot of the guys sentiment. Microsoft is going through a really hard time right now and they (at least in public) don't seem to realize it. That's a problem...

That said, I don't know what this guy looks like, but if I wanted to find out my first stop would probably be to the Dictionary to look up Moron and see if there's a picture there.

Yes, Longhorn had some features cut, so Microsoft should just toss the entire code base (including all that Win 9x code in there *rolls eyes*). Oh, and Ballmer should be fired for it because we all know he's running the project personally. My personal favorite though is, sure Apple only has 3% of the market, but they have something MORE valuable...MINDSHARE!!!

Yeesh...
# July 1, 2005 7:13 PM

Dave said:

While your rebuttal is more factual than that piece of crap, it also suffers from the same disease..... falsehoods and too much emotion.

(1) Falsehoods....

"Forget the fact that Microsoft makes twice as much PROFIT in one month than ITMS has done in total revenue its entire lifetime"

Um, yeah.

(2) Too much emotion....

"Have you even seen the “mess” that is Longhorn?"

Rebuttals should at least address the points. This implies that Longhorn, something that will be at least 18 months late and contain very little of the PDC '03 bits (much less the three "pillars" presented there) is somehow NOT a mess?

"So everyone will be excited for the 200 people who still use Macs while no one will care the 200 million + users will be getting an upgrade."

(3) A little of both....

Okay. Where does one start here? With the blatant falsehoods? Or how about the completely illogical way it was put? And PLEASE, don't tell me you worded this for effect.... save that for the baldfaced PR stunt that was Gnomedex a week ago.
# July 1, 2005 8:50 PM

M. Keith Warren said:

MSFT Profit last year was just under 12 billion giving it an average monthly profit of 1 billion; take that against the 450 million total songs given through ITMS, consider the Pepsi 100 million give away and you would be generous to assume 425 million songs were sold @ 99 cents giving a liberal estimate of LESS THAN HALF of Microsoft monthly PROFIT.

# July 1, 2005 9:36 PM

Andrew said:

You know what I always think is funny is when Apple fans write articles LOL. Why do I see that as being funny because I always have to ask, "who owns more of the market share?" and you know what its always Microsoft and you guys can try to place blame on all of these things but you know what they are mewt because Apple and MS run (on at this point) 100% different hardware and 100% different software and to say that MS is going down hill is like saying we won Vietnam.

To think that one is the same as the other is false. People have a choice and you know what they chose MS for there so called "Shotty biz practices" and "incompetent managers". So again I ask who owns more of the market share? Because the people buying these products are the one who are telling you and me who is on top and I am sorry to say they are buying MS products.
# July 1, 2005 10:51 PM

Scott said:

"“Now factor in the ITMS and how profitable it has been.”
– Forget the fact that Microsoft makes twice as much PROFIT in one month than ITMS has done in total revenue its entire lifetime."

You're comparing the profit of an entire company to one application by Apple? Seems a bit lopsided to me. ;)

"Those terrible managers and shoddy practices, that’s the problem. Please tell me though, do you know any of these managers? Can you detail these bad practices? Have you even seen the “mess” that is Longhorn?"

I can tell you about them. I know Softies. My friend and I just celebrated the end of a short contract he had with MS. He was glad to get away from the endless meetings and levels of middle managers that he had to deal with in just the 4 weeks he was doing some discovery work for them. One Monday he sat down at his workstation and had 7 meeting invites in his inbox. That's more than insane, that's symptomatic of a deeper problem, a corporate culture problem. I hear the same kind of complaints coming from other friends of mine that either have worked or are working at MS.

Just the fact that the build number changed from "4xxx" to "5xxx" ought to tell you something went wrong. They started over at one point. Throwing away the old Windows code is exactly what MS is doing. Server 2003 is more representational of the new attitude MS has towards security and coding practices.

That's not to say the author of that article isn't a total wackjob and Apple fanboy. There are some real problems at MS with Longhorn and Apple has a real chance to catch up. At the very least, maybe a little serious competition will kick the Windows division in the can and some really good software will start coming out of Redmond. For a recent example of that see the reformation of the IE team due to Firefox.

Of course the irony of my comment is that I'm typing this while I'm RD'ed into my Windows XP Pro box from my iBook. I'm so confused in the technological sense.
# July 1, 2005 11:39 PM

Swaroop C H said:

I'm a Linux and Mac user and haven't used Windows in over 5 months ... but I still find that "article" ridiculous. These people make the perennial mistake of underestimating MS.
# July 2, 2005 1:28 AM

what does mewt mean??? said:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=mewt

"The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search box to the right.

Suggestions for mewt: "...

try:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=moot

# July 3, 2005 10:59 PM

Loc said:

If a national government prohibits selling closed source software products in their country, because it *deprives consumers* of enhancing the product features and performance, then it will have a cascading effect on rest of countries in the world.
# July 4, 2005 3:12 AM

mkw performance mkw 9 said:

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# May 2, 2008 2:03 AM
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