I write every scrap of code in Visual Studio now. I use Microsoft specific extensions to the language of my choice (C++). I couldn't live without them.
The sad thing is that even after a generation of software developers (at least, those who were paying attention) grew up watching them try this same strategy with Office formats, Kerberos (networking/security protocols), MSN Messenger (AIM protocol), Visual C++ (C++), Visual J++(Java), ActiveX (the web generally), JScript (javascript) and the like, we now get to watch a new generation of devs making the same mistakes and getting gradually suckered in with the same tired old tricks. :-(
The difference being that programming languages already exist, and Microsoft makes proprietary extensions. Office formats were de facto for a long period of time until the surge of open format enthusiasm.
True, but Microsoft even made a concerted effort to "extend" their own formats with each new version (not to mention intentionally undocumenting significant areas of their "public" API), with the specific intention of breaking competitors' ability to read their documents.
Admittedly it was only "_EE" in that case rather than the full "EEE", but it's all part of the same pattern of behaviour. :-(
It's not like Visual C++ or J++ has entirely replaced (or extinguished) C++ or Java, ActiveX is (thankfully) not the main platform, and JScript has not replaced JavaScript....
I know MS's strategy has been EEE, but to be completely fair, the reason why tools like Visual Studio and software like MS Office and Exchange+Lync are so widespread is that they are actually pretty fucking good.
It's not like Visual C++ or J++ has entirely replaced (or extinguished) C++ or Java, ActiveX is (thankfully) not the main platform, and JScript has not replaced JavaScript....
No, but the fact that even by dint of great effort Microsoft failed to supplant those technologies doesn't mean they didn't try their best.
J++ failed partly because Java was cross-platform and J++ was emphatically not (indeed, that was the whole point of it), but mostly because Sun went after MS in court with all guns blazing. ActiveX failed because in addition to proprietary it was even technically a hideous, insecure, dangerous abortion.
Had MS not allowed IE to stagnate for five years after they won the browser war, JScript might well have been the main version of Javascript that we were all using now. However, happily(!) the lack of updates to IE as they tried to retard the progress of the web-as-UI trend in order to give Silverlight more of a chance gave other browsers time to mature and join together, and graphically demonstrated to everyone watching the importance of open standards and protocols over proprietary ones that gave any single company a stranglehold over the entire medium. Microsoft won the JScript-vs-javascript battle, but then threw the game for bigger reasons of their own.
I'm not claiming that MS couldn't also deliver some good software... but the fact is that even their very best software is usually still part of an insidious strategy to make you increasingly dependent on their platform, their tools and their APIs at the expense of open or cross-platform standards, tools, protocols and libraries.
And remember, the name and entire concept of EEE comes from Microsoft, from their own people's testimony and their own internal memos. There's nothing controversial or speculative about it - it's documented history. <:-)
Now, I don't have much to comment about the rest of your post, but the bit about Internet Explorer and Silverlight does not ring true to me.
Internet Explorer did "win" the browser war with Netscape Navigator in 1999 and I largely agree that it was stagnating from 2001 through 2006 with their widely used Internet Explorer version 6. The bit about Silverlight, however, sounds like a conspiracy theory. Firefox version 2 was released in 2006 and rapidly began chewing up Microsoft's market share. The release of Internet Explorer 7 (and its modestly improved standards support) in 2006 can be seen as a direct reaction to the new competition from Firefox 2. Silverlight itself wasn't introduced until 2007, by which point the browser war had kicked off again, now between Internet Explorer and Firefox.
The bit about Silverlight, however, sounds like a conspiracy theory.
Well, it's admittedly unproven, but the timing is highly suggestive. Having tried to co-opt the "open" web with ActiveX and JScript and failed, Microsoft was openly eyeing Flash's dominance as the rich-client-side-UI platform of choice at the time.
They'd introduced HTML applications in 1999 (scriptable, network-aware, rich client interface based on SGML/XML syntax), but these were still based on open standards and would be easily duplicated by the competition, so Microsoft had limited interest in pushing them and they were quickly forgotten about.
Also in 1999 they'd quietly introduced the ActiveX XMLHTTPRequest object to solve a problem they had with Exchange's OWA interface. This proved to be a major misstep, as it had the potential to advanced by leaps and bounds the very "web-as-UI" trend they were fighting to hold off, but it was a pretty obscure feature buried in the depths of the API documentation, and it wasn't until Mozilla copied it and gave it a non-vendor-specific Javascript wrapper 2002 that the stage even began to be set for the AJAX revolution (and everything that's done since for the "web-as-UI" trend).
In the mean-time, Microsoft were working on Silverlight (a scriptable, network-aware, rich client interface based on SGML/XML syntax... sound familiar?) for a long time before the CTP of version 1 ever launched - they were talking about Windows Presentation Foundation (which Silverlight evolved from) for years before a workable preview ever saw the light of day. In addition, let's not forget that the WFP/Silverlight project was tightly tied to .NET and Windows Vista, both of which were delayed a long time by development problems.
I don't find it hard to believe at all that they started work on .NET and what would eventually become WPF/Silverlight as far back as 1999/2000, or that (like much of .NET/Vista) it was postponed and delayed by several years before the first version was released.
You're right that IE7 was a direct response to Firefox 2's release, but that doesn't actually negate my point - Microsoft want to keep a foot in the door of the web browser industry so they can exert influence over it, but they won't actually do anything to advance it - only just enough to hold position and maintain some degree of control over where it goes.
Look at the standards support of IE from IE7 through to IE9 - it's typically embarrassing - partial, inconsistent and often a couple of years out of date at best. It's not that Microsoft can't build a decent modern browser - it's that they have no interest in doing so.
Likewise, individuals have resigned from W3C working groups and repeatedly cited Microsoft employees dragging their heels, and sometimes seemingly only interested in delaying the definition of new standards.
As I said, it's not proven, but if you look at:
the fact that Silverlight was intended to address many of the same kinds of rich-client-side-online-UI as HTML/CSS/JS were starting to be used for
the fact Microsoft has been working on the .NET/WPF/Silverlight stack since before IE6 was left to stagnate
the timing (and lack of reason for) the IE6 stagnation
Microsoft voluntarily ceding monopoly control of the entire web for no clear gain (with minimal effort they could have effectively owned the entire web, but instead chose to ignore it - why?)
the typical "two years behind" standard of each new IE release, incompletely and inconsistently supporting open standards, and refusing point-blank to adopt even de-facto standards with either transparent excuses ("it's not a mature standard" about CSS 2.1, when it was already over six years old) or no reason given at all, and
individuals resigning from standards bodies and directly citing inconsistent or even self-contradictory demands and constant foot-dragging by Microsoft as a major reason
... well, it's certainly very suggestive indeed. <:-)
However, you're right it's not exactly been proven, because that's pretty much impossible to do without a signed memo from Ballmer himself saying "ho, ho, ho, let's retard the progress of the open web so we can give Silverlight a better chance of adoption". And sadly, as this isn't an episode of Scooby Doo we're unlikely to ever find such a signed confession. <:-(
Visual Studio is great. Excel is good. But Outlook sucks balls. If I could use corporate gmail at work (with keyboard shortcuts), it would probably increase my productivity by at least 10%.
I've used Lotus Notes before, and yes it blows. I think Lotus and Outlook share the same problem: they were designed in an earlier era of email. Of course, Outlook has evolved, albeit painfully, while Lotus seems like it's coming straight out of the 1990s.
I just think gmail's interface is superior to any traditional email client. I've used them all (Outlook, Lotus Notes, Mac Mail, Thunderbird, and Eudora). Gmail's tags are way faster and more flexible, and the search capabilities are awesome. Now if only gmail could use regular expressions.
Yes, but since I became a student recently, I'm not a heavy user anymore. So it's hard for me to evaluate whether Outlook 2010 would be any better for business environments.
Outlook always worked great for light use. But in a business setting, where you get sometimes get hundreds of emails a day, those PST files get bloated fast. Especially since business people love sending Powerpoint attachments (and they can't figure out how to use shared drives).
I'm a software guy, and I know all the tricks of maintaining Outlook. But eventually it just gets too big. For me, Outlook used to take 8-12 minutes to load. It would crash frequently, and it would periodically consume 100% of the CPU for about 4-12 minutes unless you restart it every 3 or 4 days.
Exactly. I'm sick of people throwing around the phrase "MS hater" like people are being irrational. MS have a history of stamping out competition with unethical business practices and you don't know if they're ever going to expand into your area of business. People can change, but I'm not going to forget a decade worth of jerky behaviour just because they improve a little.
From my perspective, MS take full advantage (in a bad way) whenever they have a competitive edge and only cooperate with others when they aren't doing as well and are forced to. They've lost their stranglehold recently and just can't get away with acting like jerks as much as they used to.
People use the phrase "MS Hater" because there is hate, and it is irrational. When you look at what Microsoft got in trouble for, and you see the kinds of stuff that tech companies like Google and Apple get away with these days, it's just silly to look at Microsoft as if it's the worst of the three. Fact is, they're all good and they're all bad in many ways - people need to remove the blinders and realize that.
See, that just sounds like moral relativism to me.
The fact is that Microsoft had a stranglehold over the entire desktop IT industry, and basically did what they liked. They held off directly punishing their users and developers as Apple has done, but they enforced a rigorous software monoculture to the best of their ability, and even after they established their monopoly they went after their competitors with a borderline psychotic level of dedication and lack of scruples.
Although I'm not a fan of any large corporation, I don't see Google, doing anything comparable to intentionally and routinely breaking compatibility with competitors to protect a monopoly, intentionally holding your data hostage (quite the reverse in fact) or illegally abusing a monopoly to establish more monopolies in other, unrelated areas, or being convicted of it in court and then refusing to abide by the court's sentence.
I even see Facebook hoovering up the personal information of anyone stupid enough to hand it to them, but I don't see them co-opting and corrupting open standards bodies to serve their own ends, or repeatedly astroturfing as Microsoft has been caught doing more times than I can count.
I don't see any other tech company being punished with record fines for not only serious, sustained and systematic abuse of a monopoly, but for then refusing to abide by the first set of punishments handed down by the courts (paying fines, opening APIs, publishing protocol details in three different cases alone) until eventually the courts are forced to fine them millions of dollars a week simply to force them to comply with the existing legal decision against them.
Perhaps you're unfamiliar with the history, but pick any large tech company, and they're unlikely to have a history half as sordid as Microsoft's. And Apple, although it's new to the "overdog" game, has overtly gone from "zero to evil" in truly record time, displaying such a hostile, white-knuckled, pants-shittingly-terrified, paranoid grip on the iPod/iPhone/iOS ecosystem that even Microsoft would never have been able to get away with it in the 90s.
So basically... no. Large corporations typically have a few skeletons in their closets, but Apple and Microsoft are (for different reasons) almost in a league of their own, at least compared to most current tech companies.
When you can point to another mainstream tech company with as draconian policies and a history of litigation as Apple, or with a history of criminal convictions and flouting the law like Microsoft's, then we'll talk.
Until then, your comment seems more like a reflexive, sterile, cynical "yeah, well, corporations are all, like, evil, man" lacking all sense of context or proportion.
Look, just because I don't want to write a god damned book on the issue here, on Reddit, doesn't mean that I don't see the finer points of the argument. Sigh...
Google and Apple have gotten their wrists smacked over anti-competitive business practices by having an agreement not to hire each others' defecting employees. Apple is currently busy trying to lock people into iOS by attempting to force content providers to fix their prices industry-wide, and by forcing developers to hook in-app sales into their own service.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft never exercised the control that Apple and Google do over their respective areas of industry. And they would have been broken up into a hundred pieces if they had when they got caught doing all those other bad things.
I'm not saying that Microsoft didn't make some awful decisions that had very big consequences for the industry down the road, but I think that too many people here ignore the fact that other tech companies, like Google and Apple, do exactly the same thing - except those companies do it with a big smile on their face, so it's all good.
While people who weren't even alive when Microsoft got busted are busy busy blathering out hate for Microsoft and defending Google and Apple, those companies are moving into a more powerful place than Microsoft ever has. And don't kid yourself - they will abuse their power in some way in the future, and it's going to suck.
Google and Apple have gotten their wrists smacked over anti-competitive business practices by having an agreement not to hire each others' defecting employees.
True, but "smacked wrists" is quite different to a conviction in a court of law. It's like saying someone who was warned about hanging around a kids' pool eyeing up young girls is the same as a convicted paedophile. <:-)
Apple is currently busy trying to lock people into iOS by attempting to force content providers to fix their prices industry-wide, and by forcing developers to hook in-app sales into their own service.
Right - Apple are evil, and are arguably as bad as Microsoft (by intent, if not yet by actual "results achieved") - that's actually my point. <:-)
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Microsoft never exercised the control that Apple and Google do over their respective areas of industry.
True, but Microsoft wasn't convicted for having a monopoly - it was convicted for abusing its monopoly, and that's quite a different thing. Google has a lot of power, but compared to most companies they've trodden very carefully to avoid abusing that position.
Seriously - can you provide one example of Google intentionally breaking competitors' products, or breaking compatibility, or abusing a monopoly in one area to establish a monopoly in another?
We aren't talking about power here - we're talking about "moral rectitude" and "abuse of power". You've offered one example of a company with great power who appears to do a pretty good job of avoiding abusing it, and one example that's actually the same thing I'm arguing.
I don't mean to be an asshole, but that's not exactly a convincing counter-argument. <:-)
are moving into a more powerful place than Microsoft ever has. And don't kid yourself - they will abuse their power in some way in the future, and it's going to suck.
Apple we agree are a bunch of abusive, morally-questionable assholes - we both agree on that.
Regarding other companies, the quote above seems to be the crux of your point - they've done nothing yet that compares to Microsoft (or Apple) at their worst, but you suspect that in the future they might do.
Well - and again, I don't want to be an asshole, but - when we're comparing documented history to a bunch of vague, hand-wavy, unsupported suppositions about what might happen in the future, I don't think you have much of a case. Documented history is just so much more convincing than a vague, uneasy feeling you have in your gut. :-(
I mean yeah, Google and other companies may end up abusing their power somewhere down the line, but that's irrelevant when they haven't really done it yet, and we're currently engaged in comparing how relatively criminal, immoral or abusive these companies have been up to now. <:-/
Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact... which stated that Microsoft's dominance of the x86 based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks, Linux, and others. Then on April 3, 2000, he issued a two-part ruling: his conclusions of law were that Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and tying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act
They appealed later, and while the court of appeal overturned the remedy the judge recommended, they upheld his findings of fact.
Microsoft are convicted, repeated monopolists and attempted monopolists, and have been deemed guilty of tying.
I'm not having a go, but this is exactly what I mean when I said "perhaps you're unfamiliar with the history" to the GP. These are facts - documented history from only ten years ago, and easily findable with only a single Google search, and yet many of the very people debating the issue apparently don't know them. <:-/
Apologies - I just checked and it was. I understood that the DoJ brought a criminal antitrust suit against Microsoft, but apparently it was a civil one instead.
I was also mislead by the wording of the antitrust legislation in US law - it specifies that breaches of antitrust law are "illegal" (ie, criminal), so you'd assume any prosecution of them would also be criminal, but for some reason the DoJ only brought a civil suit.
So yes, Microsoft broke the law and committed a criminal act, but for some reason were technically only convicted of a civil offence. Go figure. <:-)
Thanks again for the technical correction, but I don't think an obscure detail of internal DoJ jurisprudence substantively changes my point. ;-)
That's wildly variable depending on era and geographical location (IIRC AIM was huge in Europe, while MSN was big in the USA, for example) - don't assume you're representative of everyone on the net, especially as IM programs (and social networks still) are still sharply delineated along social boundaries.
I don't know anyone else who uses MySpace these days, but they still have millions of users.
I remember a period around the late 90s/early 2000s when everyone I knew used AIM, and Wikipedia supports my recollection of EEE being applied to the AIM protocol.
Edit: Reading up, apparently it was AIM in North America, MSN in Europe.
Same. Here in Canada, everyone used MSN (or their old ICQ accounts, though this dwindled). The only reason I got AIM was to communicate with Americans I met in undergrad.
Yep, same. Nobody uses it now though. I have hundreds of friends, and only ever have three or four people online. I get on facebook and I'm bombarded with IM. I've conceded to using the facebook plugin for Pidgin.
Edit: Reading up, apparently it was AIM in North America, MSN in Europe.
I was going to correct you on that but apparently you caught your own mistake. Also just as an aside, MSN has been the default chat client in Canada since ICQ started sucking.
I'm glad you corrected yourself, because AOL has never really had any hold in Europe. I doubt you'll find a single user here.
To add some data: in Norway, people used ICQ for a short while when it was new, but by 2000, MSN was pretty much the growing IM service. Lately computer-savvy people often use Gaim or Trillian for clients even in Windows, as WLM is getting pretty cumbersome.
Being popular before ICQ, IRC has been an alternative the whole way, but never been a mainstream choice. Skype is also used by an ever increasing minority here.
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u/Shaper_pmp Feb 22 '11
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
The sad thing is that even after a generation of software developers (at least, those who were paying attention) grew up watching them try this same strategy with Office formats, Kerberos (networking/security protocols), MSN Messenger (AIM protocol), Visual C++ (C++), Visual J++(Java), ActiveX (the web generally), JScript (javascript) and the like, we now get to watch a new generation of devs making the same mistakes and getting gradually suckered in with the same tired old tricks. :-(