{"id":1130,"date":"2009-01-01T17:22:26","date_gmt":"2009-01-01T16:22:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1130-five-things-right-five-things-wrong-from-microsoft-in-2008.html"},"modified":"2009-01-01T17:22:26","modified_gmt":"2009-01-01T16:22:26","slug":"five-things-right-five-things-wrong-from-microsoft-in-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1130-five-things-right-five-things-wrong-from-microsoft-in-2008.html","title":{"rendered":"Five things right, five things wrong from Microsoft in 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just saw this Network World article on four things Microsoft got right in 2008<\/a>. It says: Windows 7, Hiring Yahoo talent, Windows Azure and Server 2008.<\/p>\n

I partly agree (I am not sure about Azure, or the significance of Yahoo hires). Here\u2019s my own five right moves, with my usual developer bias.<\/p>\n

1. Not buying Yahoo at what now seems a ludicrously inflated price. <\/p>\n

2. Windows 7 preview. It was kept reasonably well under wraps, smoothly delivered, and looks promising though not revolutionary from a technical perspective.<\/p>\n

3. Windows Server 2008<\/a>. Same kernel as Vista SP1, and broadly a delight to work with. Hyper-V virtualization is great too.<\/p>\n

4. Silverlight<\/a>. It is probably too late for Microsoft to out-flank Adobe\u2019s Flash, particularly as the cross-platform story is confused. Nevertheless, the Silverlight browser plug-in is well done and evolving rapidly. It gives a significant boost to the .NET platform.<\/p>\n

5. SQL Server 2008<\/a>. The last of the big Server 2008 products to ship; and I respect the SQL team for taking its time and delivering a high quality release.<\/p>\n

In other ways, Microsoft has stuttered. Here are five Microflops:<\/p>\n

1. Online presence. Live Search continues to stutter. As a whole, Microsoft\u2019s web sites are confusing to navigate, inconsistent and slow. There are many broken links. Like many others, I use Google to search Microsoft. See Danny Sullivan\u2019s brilliant post<\/a> for more analysis.<\/p>\n

2. Live Mesh as an application platform. Sorry, the more I think about this, the more I think Microsoft\u2019s strategy is all wrong. See my Reg article<\/a> for more. I am sorry as I had high hopes for this.<\/p>\n

3. Database APIs. Microsoft\u2019s old bugbear. Infinite flavours of LINQ, ADO.NET Data Services, Entity Framework, SQL Data Services, Windows Azure storage service, Mesh data feeds, what have I missed? There is no shortage of good technology and ideas; but there is lack of strategic discipline.<\/p>\n

4. Community forums. There are the old MSDN forums<\/a>; the new MSDN forums<\/a>; strange escapees like the Silverlight forums<\/a>; the old TechNet forums<\/a>; the new TechNet forums<\/a>; no doubt others too. Is it so difficult to have a single jump-off point for Microsoft forums, or to do smooth migrations that preserve old messages, or to prioritize fast response times above pretty formatting? <\/p>\n

5. Windows Mobile. There are a number of things I like about Microsoft\u2019s mobile platform, including the ease of programming with the .NET Framework. Still, Apple\u2019s iPhone<\/a> and the rise of Netbooks like the Asus Eee PC<\/a> show separately the extent to which Microsoft\u2019s mobile team has got it wrong. Remember Origami<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Technorati tags: microsoft<\/a>, windows<\/a>, silverlight<\/a>, server 2008<\/a>, windows mobile<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just saw this Network World article on four things Microsoft got right in 2008. It says: Windows 7, Hiring Yahoo talent, Windows Azure and Server 2008. I partly agree (I am not sure about Azure, or the significance of Yahoo hires). Here\u2019s my own five right moves, with my usual developer bias. 1. Not buying … Continue reading Five things right, five things wrong from Microsoft in 2008<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adobe","category-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}