Cook hasn't damaged Apple nearly as much as Ballmer hurt MS. During Ballmer's tenure, Microsoft launched the Zune, the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone, Windows 8, and the Xbox One (which halved its marketshare vs the 360). Cook may not be innovative, but he has yet to have a real failure, much less a disaster on the scale of those.
> the various disastrous incarnations of Windows Phone
Surprisingly the phone was loved. What wasnt loved was the one desktop everywhere so when they tried to push 'Metro' to the PC, tablet and phone it struggled. But the tiled phone interface was good, and a lot of people liked it.
I really think Ballmer and Cook are manifestations of the same person. Mac OS quality is the worst it's been in probably a decade+? Hardware design for the laptops have been under massive scrutiny. Cook brought the Watch to the table which is a massive success. Their services business plan is just a money grab like their approach to accessories. But Apple isn't innovating much, they have been cashing in in recent years (besides the watch imo, maybe airpods but Id personally disagree)
As a consumer, I loved the phone. As a developer, I was afraid to touch it. Dumping the old Windows Mobile platform for Windows Phone was understandable, but the compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was really off-putting.
Though I think the biggest problem there is that it didn't happen in a vacuum. It was one more event in a fairly long list of Microsoft technologies and APIs that were shipped to much fanfare, and then abandoned shortly after release. It made it hard to feel comfortable trying any Microsoft tech that wasn't at least a fewy years old. Including mobile APIs. Which, given what happened with Windows Phone 8, did not turn out to be an overabundance of caution.
The problem hurt more than Windows Phone, too. A lot of people got sick of having the rug repeatedly yanked out from under them, and started developing on non-Microsoft tech stacks. Which then removed a lot of the need to run Windows Server, and things sort of snowballed.
Despite all his infamous ranting about the importance of keeping developers happy early on, the Ballmer years turned out to be the era when Microsoft perfected the art of alienating developers.
If you bailed out after WP8, you missed the really tragic one. Windows Mobile 10 changed everything again (and had the gall to call the new one 'Universal' apps), and they missed their target of all the wp8 phones being upgradable to wm10, and for those that were upgradable, the OS was awful for the first year, and Edge was a worse experience than Mobile IE (which says a lot).
Oh, and they decided to only target the high end of the market, instead of a full range, so they lost the low end market that was selling a lot of phones in poorer nations.
/rant of a dedicated windows phone enthusiast.
At least firefox lets me put the urlbar at the bottom now! And Android picked up dark mode from WP as well.
I think part of that was the size of the paradigm shift MS tried to accomplish. It was a huge gamble and its important to take chances like that, but to change all three platforms so drastically made it hard for developers (table, PC and phone). And then I dont believe MS either A) invested enough or B) gave it enough time so when they pulled support developers definitely felt it.
They were also a couple years late, as for android and iphone had considerable market share.
I think the same can be said for google these days, there is no reason to risk investing time or money into one of their new technologies because it will get dropped if its not one of the big 4 (search, ads, youtube, GCP, maybe arguably android)
Indeed. I'm actually in the middle of dealing with blowback from some Google product yanking right now.
The big difference is, Google pulls stunts like that small things that aren't critical to the company's business. Microsoft, on the other hand, was blithely jackhammering away at the foundation of their business.
They did fine, insofar as they're still profitable and well-capitalized, but one has to wonder what things could have been like for them if they hadn't spent the aughties playing Dr Strangelove's Hand with themselves.
OTOH, one could argue that spending a decade eating humble pie was a necessary step in teaching them how to play nice with others.
> The big difference is, Google pulls stunts like that small things that aren't critical to the company's business. Microsoft, on the other hand, was blithely jackhammering away at the foundation of their business.
For sure, I think MS was panicking tbh. They missed the mobile revolution (This was Ballmer and Gates), and then cloud was starting to take off and realized their OS and Office products were not optimized or read for that shift. I think they realized they had to change, and change fast and as a result didn't go well. But at least it started the change we see today with MS (for good or bad).
> "Dumping the old Windows Mobile platform for Windows Phone was understandable, but the compatibility break between Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 was really off-putting."
My memory is fuzzy on the specifics but the breaks weren't done just for the fun of it. If I recall correctly, refactoring on a titanic scale on the Windows Phone OS was underway along with the same on Windows itself to both make Windows a componentized OS that would work on anything from a tiny mobile device to a huge server and to synchronize the architecture of WP to Windows. By the time of WP10, as the old joke goes, "the operation was a success but the patient died". It's kind of a pity.
It's not that they didn't have a plan, it's that the plan was so thoroughly ill-conceived and ill-executed.
iOS has not been unified with OS X, and Android has not been unified with Chrome OS. And all four OSes are quite successful despite the lack of unification. Meanwhile, the Windows RT Surface tablets never took off, and the Windows 8 unified experience was universally recognized as an unmitigated disaster on launch day, if not earlier.
They were always going to struggle to get app developers to port to Windows Mobile, so I'm not sure it was ill conceived to provide a single target for desktop and mobile, with the hope that more developers would take the time to support all form factors if they could use a single code base.
It was a gamble that enough native desktop apps would remain for this strategy to pay off, but they lost to web and electron apps.
Tried to push Metro on servers too. I remember the brief time where Server didn't have a start button but you could go to the bottom left most pixel to get the start menu to show. What were they thinking? Metro is fine now but that first iteration was a disaster
The last iteration of the phone was loved and was genuinely an interesting product, but by then it was way, way too late. The disastrous limitations and compromises in the earlier iterations doomed the series.
The phone carriers doomed Windows Phone. AT&T and Verizon both agreed they didn't want to sell three OSes, they barely wanted to sell two. You could have the best phone OS there is, but if no one is selling it it doesn't matter.
MSFT could have opened up retail stores with their boatloads of cash like Apple.
But they didn’t want to take the risk with a low margin high cost center activity like providing in person support and expanding headcount. Hence no reward.
And with their recent closing of Microsoft stores, it’s clear that they are doubling down on rent seeking from Office and Windows licenses.
I still think Retail Stores were a red herring. Even if people bought unlocked Windows phones directly from Microsoft Stores they couldn't get SIMs from half the major carriers at any given time as Microsoft was forced not to support given Verizon SIMs as one point due to a dumb war with them and Verizon flat out refusing to allow the devices on to the network. (At a different point AT&T almost did the same thing, but relented.)
On top of that, even though that was towards the end of the era of massive phone hardware subsidies from the carriers, it was still the era of massive phone hardware subsidies from the carriers if you bought directly from them.
Apple had/has "luxury brand" caché that Microsoft couldn't build into its stores if it wanted to, and first mover advantage on top of that. Many consumers didn't blink if there was a huge sticker price difference between the iPhone in the AT&T Store and the unlocked one in the Apple Store, because it was a luxury brand. Microsoft was never going to earn that. Additionally, if a lot of people showed up to an AT&T or Verizon store with an unlocked iPhone and were refused a SIM that would be a major scandal, and would get a lot of luxury good "entitlement" people out of the woodwork. People told that they couldn't buy an unlocked Microsoft phone and use it on their carrier just shrugged and moved on (to an iPhone or an Android).
> And with their recent closing of Microsoft stores, it’s clear that they are doubling down on rent seeking from Office and Windows licenses.
Windows and Office are still getting improvements, it is a bit disingenuous to consider those products "rent seeking".
Xbox and Surface are doing just fine with or without Microsoft-specific Stores.
Besides, both before and after the Microsoft Stores, Microsoft had good retail relationships with Best Buy and others. It's not like there is "zero" Microsoft retail exposure without Microsoft owning their own boutique retail stores.
> Apple had/has "luxury brand" caché that Microsoft couldn't build into its stores if it wanted to, and first mover advantage on top of that.
I disagree. It takes time, money, and effort to earn people’s trust, but it’s possible. They obviously weren’t going to reverse a decade of shipping malware ridden computers, but they could have put out quality Microsoft products, and spent years earning back people’s trust.
And yes, maybe it wouldn’t work, and taking risks is part of business. But this is one of the most profitable companies in the history of the world, and they could have afforded it.
Up until the Surface line, Microsoft never shipped any computers at all, much less "malware ridden" ones. I think that exactly illuminates how high of a mountain Microsoft would have needed to climb to earn people's trust when Microsoft is also in general mainstream mindsets saddled with the problems of other company's behaviors.
But if the point was to save the marketshare of Windows phone products via retail store presence, Microsoft didn't have time, they were racing a losing money clock and the shareholders were watching retail operations worried Microsoft was just "throwing good money after bad".
Owned one. It was a damn good phone, had a great UI that remains unsurpassed to this day, but it clearly came at least two years too late to gain the critical mass needed for a thriving ecosystem.
I loved the UX on it too, but the crappy locked-down web browser killed it for me.. I don't even use apps, but since I couldn't load Firefox with uBlock on there, and there weren't any single-purpose apps, it was really rough
I think the software was loved. It was years before Apple and Android did their own 'natively digital' designs which echoed Metro and Zune's design aesthetic.
> The software was not loved and the app store was lacking.
The app store was definitely lacking. In my own circle of real life users I did not meet one person that did not really like the phone (software included). Granted this is just my own experience so very limited but its also a group of non-technical people just sharing with me. I never heard one complaint in fact it was usually more accolades.
The phone had great software and could run on incredibly low-end hardware like the Nokia 520. I had that phone and it was functional, fast and far better designed than any of the Android equivalent low-ends at the time.
Biggest flaw at the time was Google's shady nonsense involving banning Google Maps/Youtube on Windows Phone without a native app.
So who is “innovating” more in electronics hardware?
As far as the Macs, outside of the keyboard fiasco which has been rectified, the recent Macs are getting good reviews from people who were rightfully critical a few years ago. The ARM Macs will soon be as far ahead of equivalent PCs as the iPhones are Androids when it comes to processing power.
Things like USB ports, touchbar, etc... Mac still makes a good laptop, but in a historical sense I think this is a still a lowpoint for their hardware comparatively to themselves in quality and functionality.
Apple has been aggressively ditching “legacy” ports since the first iMacs in 1998. How is Apple going USB-C only now different than the original iMac going USB only?
USB-C is fine, its the number of ports that is the issue and not consumer friendly..
And I think USB-A isn't quite legacy just yet (it's OK they ditched the VGA and/or DVI ports), there are still a lot of need for one of those ports. Same with a card reader slot. I also think there is a need for a headphone jack even though bluetooth is qutie viable.
There was need for all of the “legacy” ports when the iMac was introduced. The idea of getting rid of ports and standardizing on one when it became technically possible didn’t start under Cook.
The ARM processors will not be "far ahead of" PCs. They will almost certainly give better battery life, but their performance will not trump what Intel and AMD are doing by a long shot. Don't buy into the hype
I'll concede the Xbox One wasn't Ballmer's fault, but he still gets a fair share of the blame for WP. It was (or should have been) Microsoft's most important new initiative for years, Ballmer could clearly see that it was failing, and yet he kept promoting Myerson and giving him more power. A better CEO would have intervened.
