This one is for all the guys who HATE Microsoft to the core 
There is an article – “Why I hate Microsoft”, the complete story of (not so innovative) Microsoft !!!
From the pages that I have read so far in the (lengthy) story, I liked the following:
Gates: don’t develop, copy
By the time PC-DOS took hold, Gates had already shown that Microsoft’s future would hold very little innovation indeed. Gates’ views on development are probably best illustrated by the following:
From: ‘Programmers at work’, Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA [c1986]:
Interviewer: “Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?”
Gates: “No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system.”Seldom have both Microsoft’s lack of innovation and their kludgey, ad-hoc approach to software design been explained so concisely. It’s also interesting to note that while many people have called Microsoft products copycat, trash or garbage, most of them probably had no idea how close to the truth they really were
Read the complete chapters of the original MS story here
Thanks Mahesh for sharing this wonderful link with us !!!
Dude watch “Pirates of silicon Valley”
google it for more info!
Gates is a freakin’ genius. I think whoever writes this crap ought to get a life.
Hey Lakshman,
I have already watched “Pirates of the Silicon Valley” and enjoyed it as well..Can be put here 🙂
-Himanshu
Hey Mark,
It depends from individual to individual,I personally find Jobs as one of the most electrifying business personalities but that does not mean I hate Gates 🙂
-Himanshu
Just imagine your life without Microsoft. Whatever Microsoft did, put it aside for a second and think what could you have achieved today without microsoft into existence?
Gates is THE MOST intelligent guy in the world! Now, if I can not see other’s success, I can write anything, that all depends on the attitude.
If I want, I can tell, Google want to capture everything about every individual (including private things!!) are they going to be bad? They are not, because they are genius..
Well, even I think that it is stupid to comment on Microsoft. They are innovative and no one can challenge that. I don’t think that providing competition to any product is bad at all…they did it using Microsoft windows and with good marketing skills and their target of making it user friendly got them popular and no wonder they are the biggest IT company till date from so many years.
If you actually want to check innovation by Microsoft then I think one should check out Microsoft surface, Photosynth etc.
Hi Himanshu,
I agree with Jigar.
Hiral
One more thing, No body is Perfect in this world. but what Bill did….was amazing…..I must say, his rpm for thought process is >1000 of ours per minute.
and without him can you imagine desktop @ home to home?
One more thing, No body is Perfect in this world. but what Bill did….was amazing…..I must say, his rpm for thought process is >1000 of ours per minute.
and without him can you imagine desktop @ home to home?
-Hiral
I was wondering if not-so-innovative story(as per the writer) could lead to this big success(business view), what the hell Gates must have done with something innovative!
Doesn’t it require innovation to create business with not-so-innovative concepts?
Only genius do such things!
@reviewsaurus: Photosynth was a startup that was purchased.
Surface is old hat. For god’s sake it’s a glorified $10,000 touchscreen. It’s been around as student projects for years. Remove the marketing hype and you’ll find the student projects far superior.
The problem with Microsoft is that they’ve grown too huge to innovate effectively anymore. With 70,000 employees and 12 layers of management, it just ends up as a competition between internal projects, with a lot of infighting (or so I’m given to understand).
Here are some links:
Video of systems pre-dating surface
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsXIgYQ5PNg
Commentaries on Microsoft in the industry today
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IsMicrosoftLosingTheAlphaGeeks.aspx
http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html
While Microsoft is still doing a lot of good stuff, much of it fails to reach or benefit the end user. Often, differnet arms of MS contradict each other. Witness the hiring of John Lam to build IronRuby under a (sort of) open source initiative, while elsewhere threatening to sue OSS practitioners (see the Scott Hanselman link above).