* Posts by walnut

3 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Dec 2010

Microsoft: The MORE Surfaces it sells, the MORE money it loses

walnut

Re: Not sure I'd be impressed as an investor

This makes little sense. Sure, sales is responsible for bringing in the money, but is the sales teams' fault for the debacle that was Surface RT? Was it sales' fault that Apple (and then Google/Samsung) was able to snag most of the phone market even though Microsoft has been in that space for longer than either one? This is a leadership and a market vision issue, and that takes a lot more than press-friendly rhetoric like "establishing the persona".

It's the '90s all over again: Apple repeats mistakes as low-cost tablets pile up

walnut

Missing data = bad analysis

Price wasn't the only thing that differentiated Apple and Microsoft back in the 90's: software had quite a bit to do with it. Microsoft was able to improve on Windows 3 with Win95 as a stopgap while the long-term WinNT bet played out, while Apple was stuck with an OS that had more in common with Windows 3. The truly amazing thing was how much mileage they were able to get out of an OS with no protected memory; sloppily-written apps like Netscape Navigator made the whole OS look unstable as it locked up all the time. Not that they didn't try their own Win95 trick with "Copeland" but we all know how that turned out: they had to look outside the company for a new OS to save their bacon, resulting in the return of Mr. Jobs.

Now the tables are turned. NextStep has been leveraged into an incredibly flexible platform running on desktops, phones and tablets and allowing for accelerated innovation and great stability. Microsoft is still trying to catch up, and Android is playing the "good enough" card. Ignoring the software in the equation makes this analyst's opinion worth about as much as the paper it's printed on.

THE TRUTH on the Californian NASA POISON ALIENS

walnut

Volcanic Yosemite?

For the record, though Yosemite National Park is indeed near Mono lake, it is not an active volcanic region. Most of the local volcanic activity is located South of Mono lake, particularly in the Mammoth Mountain region, which is well-known to ski enthusiasts in Southern California as well as the business community at large, which gets their collective panties in a bunch every time possibly destructive volcanic activity is predicted.