I’ve been thinking about this for awhile but I only decided to sit down and write about it now since I’ve kind of need a break from my work writing. This time around I want to take a little jab at a company that used to make a difference in the tech world: Microsoft.
Back in the days when I was in college, Microsoft was a company that everyone both hated and loved at the same time. This was a company that owned the operating system market as well as the desktop office application world. I remember the days of me and my friend Chris saying that Bill Gates was the devil because his software was everywhere. NT4 came out and eventually lead to Windows 2000 and beyond. Many corporations were moving away from Novell and taking on the Microsoft platform and it just seemed like they were a big company that was never going to go anywhere.
Then, in 2000, Bill Gates stepped down as CEO and took a back burner to new CEO Steve Ballmer. Gates remained in some capacity for a few more years until eventually giving up his controlling interest to allow Ballmer to do more on his own with the company.
Now, Windows XP was released in 2001 and this is an OS which quickly became the standard for all desktop PCs. Everywhere you looked there was XP. This was the first desktop OS to be released after Gates had stepped down as CEO. Now given that Gates still controlled some of the direction of the company, XP came out of that. That was also the same year that the XBox came out. Yes, there were other software releases as well but those are definitely two things that stand out as perhaps the last big things to hit while Gates still had some control of the company.
After that, the next “big” thing to come from Microsoft would be in 2007 with the release of the much anticipated new desktop OS, Vista. This would be the first major desktop release under Ballmer’s stewardship. After suffering an onslaught of delays, code changes, feature changes and removals, the software hit the shelves. This was supposed to be the replacement to XP and was supposed to be the next greatest thing in desktop OSes. It fell flat. Considered one of the biggest blunders in Microsoft’s history, the flack they got over Vista was enormous. Many machines wouldn’t boot, wouldn’t activate, and countless supposedly supported hardware didn’t work with the OS at all. It was a complete and total disaster.
It would take two years for Microsoft to finally admit that they had made a mess and fixed it with Windows 7. Ballmer himself even admitted that they dropped the ball on Vista. But that was just the beginning.
Microsoft released Office 2007 with what was considered the single worst UI “improvement” in Office’s history. The “ribbon” incorporated into the product was abhorred by users everywhere. Countless requests and calls came in for that feature to be pulled and changed back to what was working just fine before.
Since then, Microsoft has released several versions of it’s mobile platform, which has never really gone anywhere. Their tablets have shown to be subpar compared to what Android and iOS are doing. They released their long awaited follow up to Windows 7, Windows 8 (gee that’s original) which has been somewhat panned by critics as being a miss of tablet attempt vs desktop overhaul.
It seems that in a world that is now moving away from the PC, Microsoft is sitting in the back waving it’s hands and saying “Hey!!! We still matter!!!” while not bothering to put out anything of actual use.
I find myself wondering where Microsoft will be 10 years from now. At one time I would have thought that this is a company that wasn’t going anywhere. But now it seems that everytime they release something new, it just seems so out of date compared to what other companies are doing. They continue to play catch up and aren’t really doing much in the way of innovation. Their inability to understand that the mobile market is really where things are moving is going to be their undoing. Unless they find a way to successfully transition the traditional PC desktop to something more mobile, the days of Microsoft’s king of the hill status are numbered. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Microsoft one day end up much like Word Perfect did so many years ago. Pushed out of the way by other products who had a much better mass appeal.
Personally, I think Ballmer needs to go. Microsoft is falling behind and the best way for them to restart is to pull the plug on the man who brought us Vista.
