Microsoft - Not an innovator ?
On a daily routine I read all kinds of jokes about Microsoft such as Congress should legislate that Innovation and Microsoft should never appear in the same sentence etc. Recently some of my friends got together, an usual weekend samosa, tea chit-chat that is so common here, and started discussing stocks which later meandered in to an heated discussion about Apple and Microsoft. Now I'm not a big Microsoft fan even though every computer product I have is from the Microsoft stable (I know you all crying hypocrite). I hate the sheer size of the company, a slumbering dinosaur. I love the nimbleness of the Linux developers, their cooperative attitude and commitment to sharing of knowledge. This aside, I was surprised to find myself defending Microsoft against Apple.
Many people consider Apple to be the epitome of innovation. Far from it, Apple was the first stealer on the block. Yeah you heard it. Apple was the first to get inspired from someone else's innovation (very much like our own desi music directors...). The real innovators behind the first Apple computer were not the people of Apple but the people in PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). PARC was funded mainly by Xerox company (talk of a company that gave rise to , Computer, Ethernet, Adobe etc but still did not make a single dime out of any of these innovations). Steve Jobs was visiting PARC, saw the computer there with a seperate monitor, mouse and keyboard, came back to Apple and created his version. So why do people fault Microsoft for doing what Apple did, getting inspired ?
In my opinion Microsoft and Apple are two completely different companies. They just cannot be compared on innovation. Microsoft was the first to create an online travel company and spin it off (expedia.com). Now how many companies has Apple spun off ? Apple Ipod is to mp3 players what Windows is to the OS-es. It's not the greatest thing but has a big marketing muscle behind it. There are much better players from Creative and other companies. Let us accept the fact that Apple failed to capitalize on its head start in the computer area. Much like how IBM closely guarded OS/2 and lost out to Windows, Apple was very protective of its computer where as Microsoft openly embraced OEMs and gave away it's operating system.
Another point that was raised was the competitiveness displayed by MS. Heck that's the same type of competitiveness that Intel exhibited against AMD. This is a tough business world. You either eat or get eaten. We should be glad that a company like MS is not in Larry Ellison's hand. He is the worst of the breed. He is a kind a guy who would rather pay the fine and land his aircraft in San Jose airport after the airport is closed because it's closer to his home.
On the question of innovation, MS has innovated a lot more than any companies in question. Could it have done more ? May be. But you should consider that this company competes with everybody on this planet. It competes with Yahoo, Google, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Sony not to mention the innumerable Linux companies. Who does Apple compete with ? With Microsoft and some PC OEMs like Dell, Hewlett-Packard on the computer front and with some lesser mortals like Creative in the mp3 world. Now they have MS in this arena. Given the level of competition that Microsoft has it will be big challenge just to survive. Even with such competition it has put out some wonderful products like XBox, Visual Studio .NET and the office suite of products.
There's a wonderful field called Operations Research in this world. This field owes its existence to Microsoft Excel. I have worked in both IBM's Websphere application development (WSAD) and .NET. I'll tell you I'll never go back to WSAD. So much so that the consultant who recommended Java to our company as a standard (which we did adopt as standard) started using VS.NET after he left our company.
Comparing Microsoft and Apple is well not an Apple to Apple comparison. Let them all innovate, compete and fight against each other. Finally the consumer will win.
Many people consider Apple to be the epitome of innovation. Far from it, Apple was the first stealer on the block. Yeah you heard it. Apple was the first to get inspired from someone else's innovation (very much like our own desi music directors...). The real innovators behind the first Apple computer were not the people of Apple but the people in PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). PARC was funded mainly by Xerox company (talk of a company that gave rise to , Computer, Ethernet, Adobe etc but still did not make a single dime out of any of these innovations). Steve Jobs was visiting PARC, saw the computer there with a seperate monitor, mouse and keyboard, came back to Apple and created his version. So why do people fault Microsoft for doing what Apple did, getting inspired ?
In my opinion Microsoft and Apple are two completely different companies. They just cannot be compared on innovation. Microsoft was the first to create an online travel company and spin it off (expedia.com). Now how many companies has Apple spun off ? Apple Ipod is to mp3 players what Windows is to the OS-es. It's not the greatest thing but has a big marketing muscle behind it. There are much better players from Creative and other companies. Let us accept the fact that Apple failed to capitalize on its head start in the computer area. Much like how IBM closely guarded OS/2 and lost out to Windows, Apple was very protective of its computer where as Microsoft openly embraced OEMs and gave away it's operating system.
Another point that was raised was the competitiveness displayed by MS. Heck that's the same type of competitiveness that Intel exhibited against AMD. This is a tough business world. You either eat or get eaten. We should be glad that a company like MS is not in Larry Ellison's hand. He is the worst of the breed. He is a kind a guy who would rather pay the fine and land his aircraft in San Jose airport after the airport is closed because it's closer to his home.
On the question of innovation, MS has innovated a lot more than any companies in question. Could it have done more ? May be. But you should consider that this company competes with everybody on this planet. It competes with Yahoo, Google, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Sony not to mention the innumerable Linux companies. Who does Apple compete with ? With Microsoft and some PC OEMs like Dell, Hewlett-Packard on the computer front and with some lesser mortals like Creative in the mp3 world. Now they have MS in this arena. Given the level of competition that Microsoft has it will be big challenge just to survive. Even with such competition it has put out some wonderful products like XBox, Visual Studio .NET and the office suite of products.
There's a wonderful field called Operations Research in this world. This field owes its existence to Microsoft Excel. I have worked in both IBM's Websphere application development (WSAD) and .NET. I'll tell you I'll never go back to WSAD. So much so that the consultant who recommended Java to our company as a standard (which we did adopt as standard) started using VS.NET after he left our company.
Comparing Microsoft and Apple is well not an Apple to Apple comparison. Let them all innovate, compete and fight against each other. Finally the consumer will win.
Labels: Apple, Innovation, Microsoft
posted by Karthik S at
9:08 AM
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