Farewell to Microsoft's Sun Tzu: Thanks for all the cheese, Kevin Turner Kevin Turner’s departure as Microsoft’s chief salesman after 11 years marks the final passing of the Redmond old guard. Chief operating officer Turner - KT, as he was known - was a chief of the old-school corporate kind; sales, marketing and Microsoft’s stores all reported into Turner. His departure is part of a massive sales …
They DO? Well, all I can say is that if MS wants to be liked, they have a very odd way of demonstrating that. Most of us, if we wanted to be liked, probably wouldn't go around sneaking software onto other people's computers. Especially when most of the computers have software that works fine and is good for another 4 years or more, and the new "improved" version will likely be costing them $ well before 4 years goes by. Also, we probably wouldn't take the attitude that we are entitled to do whatever snooping on other people's computing that we feel like. In trying to convince people to try a new product, we probably wouldn't either nag them to tears or use malware techniques to force that new product onto their computers.
How many of us, if we went around behaving like that, would be expecting kudos instead of curses? Frankly if I went around doing that, I'd expect to be arrested and prosecuted.
To me, MS's behavior sounds like they feel they OWN all our personal computers, and possibly our data as well. And unfortunately, the vast majority of users don't have the background and knowledge to seek out alternatives to MS on the desktop, so MS will mostly win, despite the fact that so many of those of us who do understand the alternatives will (or already have) adopted alternative operating systems.
Paris because I honestly don't see how anyone, with the possible exception of Paris herself, could think MS's current behavior would lead to anyone liking them.
Maybe I read too quickly, but I came away with a feeling of "poor sot, just didn't catch on, did he?" What happens when there is a near complete, continual mismatch between one's own perception of 'now' and actual reality? And that seems to describe Microsoft's recent history (last 2 decades?)
Will they confuse "being liked" with the reality of everyone just feeling sorry for them?
Who the hell is feeling sorry for Microsoft ?
Microsoft built its fortune by screwing customers over and locking them into Office at every turn using every single underhanded tactic available.
It continued by undermining every standard it could get its claws into, repeatedly launching new products/functionalities, getting people to invest in them, then dropping the whole thing, missing entire markets through hubris then wasting billions trying to play catch up, and topping it all off by burying its own rulebook on UI functionality and fisting the new version down everyone's throats.
Feel sorry for Microsoft ?
There's no way I can get drunk enough for that.
From the article I'd guess that 11 years means he was hired in 2005?
And what has happened SINCE then? How much of this guy's influence has gone into product development?
Marketing OFTEN dictates what THEY believe (or more likely, 'feel') is the direction the market is going, and development WILL comply with that.
And it seems obvious to me that this guy, if he was driving development, could NOT have been more wrong...
With the exception of Windows 7's "backpedaling" to give people a MORE XP-like and less "buy new expensive hardware" experience (without actually BEING XP 2.0), we have Vista, "Ape", "Ape point 1", and Win-10-nic. NONE of these was a marketing success.
And there's this (from the article):
"It took years for people to adjust to the new Office 2007 UI, hurting sales. Windows Vista? That was Windows 8, before Windows 8 was Windows 8."
Whereas previous (prior to THIS guy) versions of Office had a MORE FAMILIAR interface, something people wouldn't SCREAM about after upgrading or buying a new computer with the new software on it.
THIS guy may be the source of "force the market to change so we can dominate it" kinds of thinking that *I* believe are behind Micro-shafts STUPID moves in product development.
Vista tried to force us AWAY from really cheap (yet functional) PCs. Fail. UAC and signed driver requirements just made it all WORSE.
The 'new' office paradigm (which I haven't used, but have heard complaints about) REALLY angered people into "not upgrading". Or, they went with Open Office or Libre Office. I did (even on Winders).
The 'new' look of Windows "Ape" (8) was even MORE appalling (to MOST people). It helped to KILL new computer sales (along with Moore's law no longer compensating for Micro-shaft OS inefficiencies, so "keep what you have" instead of "downgrade to a 'new' model").
And *NOW* we have Win-10-nic. And Satella is kicking this guy out the door, but making it look like a "re-organization". I think the board of directors may have played their hand in this one.
But here's another question: Was THIS guy responsible for GWX? If I understand the description of him, he may very well BE "the guy" who THOUGHT IT UP!!!
You raise some interesting points. The Windows group supposedly is the driver at MS. If not company wide, at least for themselves. He's marketing which is how to push sales, cash flow and profit. I'm wondering if his leaving isn't related to the GWX nightmare. MS has had enough bad press about it, people are resisting, etc. And then there's issues with the OS itself not being ready for prime-time.
Maybe he's falling (or being picked up and tossed) on his sword over this?
What I do know is that after he came on board, they kept rearranging the partner requirements, benefits, and especially compensation. I couldn't be bothered so I stopped being a partner. If you do look at what Microsoft software I use, most of it predates 2007, just saying.
UAC was actually a good thing. I read a TechNet magazine article (back when TechNet was still a subscription service and still sent out the magazine) about UAC and how it worked. The reason why UAC broke many programs is because quite often lazy programmers did not follow best practices. Each program is supposed to have a per-user setting, with global settings only performed when installing/uninstalling. Many programs were not doing that, a change in the settings was global instead of limited to the current user. This is one example of how UAC forced programmers to up their game.
"The reason why UAC broke many programs is because quite often lazy programmers did not follow best practices."
In part you're right. UAC has its benefits, as well as its irritations. When 7 'mellowed it out' it became palatable. It's a good point to make.
However: the REAL fix would have been to re-do the security model to be friendly to the idea that running as ADMINISTRATOR is to be DISCOURAGED, and ALL steps should be taken to make applications run NOT as administrator without any real difficulty. This last part is problematic, even with major applications. You'd think they could put their files into a place where you don't need to be an administrator to access and/or modify them... (or prompt for admin privs to update them, as needed).
Anyway, I've vented my spleen on how Micro-shaft is "doing it wrong" countless times already. Or more like "The right way" "The wrong way" and "The Micro-shaft way".
The security model is already there since Windows 2000. It's too many lazy clueless developers keeping on writing software as if it still was Windows 95. Countless times I reviewed code and told 'do you know this and that requires admin privileges?" Answers ranged from "I always did it this way (and I do not want to change)" to "just write in the requirements it needs admin rights!"
And tell me, how could you discourage someone from not doing something without doing it more difficult if not impossible?
Writing applications that not require admin privileges is easy. Just you can't take easy and lazy shortcuts (as storing data in the app directory). You need to know how to ensure each new user get app settings initialized properly. It just requires a little more code, and write correct setups.
But too many developers just want to code as they always did, and write less code they could. It's not a problem of Windows only. I've encountered a lot of custom Linux code that needs root privileges to work.
"I've encountered a lot of custom Linux code that needs root privileges to work."
Can you name some? I don't mean software like OpenVPN that DO need privileges to start the tunnel and add the appropriate routes, but drop privileges once it's done... unless the user is too lazy to put 2 directives to do that in the config file.
And let's talk about signed drivers... (most) drivers run in the *kernel*. Blindly loading any driver *is a big security risk*. It's funny to see Microsoft blamed - rightfully - when it made its system unsecure, and blame it again when it made them more secure.
Can we stop using him as an exemplar, please?
An entire army of the period could be taken out by a modern platoon of infantry and a helicopter. Strategy isn't tactics, and modern rulers seem pretty crap at strategy, but an ancient manual on fighting wars really shouldn't be a guide to salesmanship.
The one bit of classical advice that I really think Bush and Blair, not to mention Obama in Syria, might try heeding is the one from Confucius: "In the spring and autumn there are no righteous wars."
(It has two meanings: the obvious one, that wars in the plating and harvesting seasons led to famine. But The spring and the autumn is the name of an official Chinese history of the period believed to have been edited by Confucius - so it could be more of a blanket condemnation of warmongering.)
Also, Sun Tzu knew what the heck he was talking about (including the notion that the object of the exercise is to win with the least bloodshed; better to persuade your opponents that they can't win and have them join your cause willingly through enlightened leadership). MS leadership has been a dismal failure by Sun Tzu's standards.
"The future is more boring and more worthy but that’s probably a good thing – for Microsoft, anyway."
That is you assuming M$ has a future!
I'm betting my money on Google and Apple instead.
Google is not so much better slurpwise, but at least they don't charge you insane amounts of money for software you have no intention to use;
An interesting insight into the workings of Microsoft. Given the sophisticated nature of the products it's a surprise to find a blow-hard old fashioned sales manager. From experience in ad agencies, I've met a few of these guys as clients and they usually spell death to creative work, pouring scorn on anything that they don't quite get. Perhaps why Microsoft is seen as the ugly sister while Apple (doubtless just as ruthless and uncaring) comes across as hip.
There has been this monstrous environment built up around PC's and that environment outside the servers has been largely co-opted by Microsoft. That monopoly was gifted to MS by the foolishness of IBM. IBM put the PC's together because corporate management had this unreasoning fear of the retail environment represented by the TRS-80 of Tandy/RadioShack. IBM didn't know how to spell retail and did not want to learn. The general idea was to build the PC to destroy RadioShack and then pull the plug on they what they considered an unimportant and temporary offshoot of their business market. That is why they allowed Billy boy and company to so easily take control of the OS (DOS at the time). IBM also encouraged various parts of the PC supply chain, thinking they could pull the plug on the whole thing...oops.
MS did so little creative work that it is hard to credit them with much until Windows and they stole all those ideas from Xerox PARC through Apple. Those of us who had been around for the whole show laughed when MS and Apple got into a pissing match over the basic ideas that both of them had "borrowed". The internet was gifted to us from the Unix world and its predecessors. MS sought to ignore it or own it until one fine day when Billy did an 180 and declared that the internet was his top priority.
Only an almost complete monopoly inherited from a different but also almost complete monopoly could survive that type of stunt. All the rest of this has been like the process of the dinosaurs dying when the asteroid hit. Monocultures are dominant and last until something finds or exposes their weakness(es). This has now happened and the rest will be history written from our current events. The arrogance of Gates and then Balmer and Turner merely accelerated this round of such change. The rich potential of the computer hardware and software market has been held back far too long by the arrogant monopolists. The king is dead (or dying), long live the king...but who or what is the new king.
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