His anecdotes, from this time running tablets at Microsoft – a type of computer the company believed was the future – are chilling, revealing the destructive level of competition between some divisions. For instance, someone in his group developed ClearType, Microsoft’s font smoothing tech that was developed to sell ebooks, but other groups at Microsoft freaked out and actively sabotaged project, or tried to steal it from the tablet division, which is why it took 10 years to actually make it out into the world.
His other example is ridiculous too: The head of Office believed so strongly in the keyboard and mouse, he refused to develop a version optimised for tablets. Which is the exact opposite of what Apple showed last week, obviously, with a fully redesigned, multitouch version of iWork for the iPad. And it’s the lack of software that doomed tablets from Microsoft.
Lastly, Brass blames a dated corporate culture that’s afraid to take the risk of building integrated hardware and software products, a thought relic from the ’70s, when hardware was risky. And if you look, Microsoft’s best products lately are from the Entertainment & Devices division, where they’ve designed and built the hardware themselves: Xbox 360 and Zune HD. In fact, E&D is the one place innovation you can safely say that innovation keeps on rolling, largely because J. Allard was allowed to insulate it from the rest of Microsoft for so long.
But here’s a question: How do you turn around a ship that big? [NYT via Gartenberg]
Steve
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 8:44 AMsink it! :D
attila
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 9:23 AMThe 360 may be “one of their best products” (I have one and use it a lot) but its hardware is awful – a failure rate of above 50% (close to 100% if my friends are a representative sample) is a terrible result.
steve
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 9:43 AMimposter! get him!
olearymo
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 10:18 AMSome excellent points. I’m a Microsoft fan – they *do* innovate at times, and they have great ideas.
Unfortunately, as you’ve pointed out here, idiots inside the company ruin it. It’s a real shame. At Apple, if someone sabotaged something, they’d find themselves kissing pavement. Not that I agree with Jobs’ way of doing things, they need to make some changes at Microsoft.
How do you turn around a ship that big, indeed. Here’s hoping they can.
Also attila, the Xbox failure rate is actually much lower now.
adelaide dancing
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 11:03 AMwow, very insightful, politics is everywhere!
matt
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 11:11 AM“innovation” is for people with small attention spans.
what the hell is innovative about the xbox?
one true thing, something Sony could learn as well, make your company ONE COMPANY not several little one’s that only share the name. And have one psychotic person running it, like Jobs. I doubt there is such internal sabotage at Apple.
Thomas
Friday, February 5, 2010 at 11:49 AMInnovation isn’t the same as invention. Innovation is about making things that exist better. I believe microsoft does very well at this, as had apple up until recently. Microsoft may pale in the face of innovation into areas that they have never delt with before. In the last year microsoft continued it’s approach of making its existing operating system better and brighter, wheras apple has released the ipad, with same technology as the Iphone and Itouch except bigger.
So is microsoft really so bad at innovation, or is it improving in areas which will actually improve computing in the long run? Tablet PC’s could be the world of tomorrow, but the Ipad just feels like the best news of 2007.