Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, OS, Apple
Dvorak says Microsoft is dead in the water
Usually John Dvorak is telling us that Apple is going to switch to Windows
(honest! Just you wait and see) but now he turns his sights on Microsoft. He argues that Microsoft is, simply put, boring
and he is right (shocker!). Dvorak says that Microsoft will continue to make lots of money, but nothing that they are
working it is very innovative (at least nothing that isn't in Microsoft Research Labs).I have to agree with him, Microsoft is past the point when it can take chances with its OS. Too many businesses and users depend on it, so gone is the opportunity to try something new and exciting. You won't see Microsoft completely changing their OS architecture like Apple did because they simply can't.
It almost makes me feel sad for the folks in Redmond. Almost.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
J.T. Mill said 3:56PM on 5-04-2006
And yet, no matter who's side Dvorak takes, he still ends up on the Apple news sites ^_^
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Gerald Buckley said 3:58PM on 5-04-2006
Why in the world does ANYONE let this goober into their R&D facilities any more?
He's just a bundle of happy, happy, joy, joy isn't he?
Now, I disagree on his point Microsoft isn't doing new and exciting things. They did Expedia (remember that?) and made a healthy dose of money in the process. There are others, though I'm hard pressed to think of them top of mind... I'm just not a MS fan. There are other A list bloggers who will smoke JD out of his hole. If I was a shareholder for the past little bit I wouldn't be too happy... other than that they're good at their game (copy and baste).
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oxjox said 4:08PM on 5-04-2006
This guy's an ass - I'm so tired of him. Dvorak is all about marketing himself and this prooves it. He doesn't seem to have (or publish) an oppinion of his own, only what he thinks will make the headlines and provide the most hits on his site.
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Brian Baute said 4:09PM on 5-04-2006
Hold on. You say, "Too many businesses and users depend on it, so gone is the opportunity to try something new and exciting." If that's really the case, then isn't Apple dead in the same pool of water once its market share climbs above x%? Won't it fall prey to the same necessary stagnation? Surely not. The issue isn't that Microsoft's market share is too big but that its imagination is too small. With enough imagination surely Redmond could crank out stable "professional" OS'es and more creative (if a bit more disruptive) iterations of its consumer OS? Then the consumer OS could become a bit of a test bed, with features moved into the enterprise OS once they've been tested enough in the consumer world?
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Wheels said 4:22PM on 5-04-2006
Do they still make Expedia?
To paraphrase Emo Phillips - John Dvorak is schizoid...he's good people.
He'll be back on Microsoft's bandwagon tomorrow.
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zadig said 4:25PM on 5-04-2006
I have news for him... Microsoft has *never* been innovative. Virtually everything interesting to come out of there, from MS-DOS on up, has been acquired from someone else's hard work. There may be a few exceptions to this (although I'm hard pressed to come up with any), but that's the rule. Acquire, improve, ship, repeat. Nothing about "innovate" in that formula.
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jerome said 4:59PM on 5-04-2006
hmmm
"The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a 'mouse.' There is no evidence that people want to use these things."
John C. Dvorak, San Francisco Examiner, 19-02-1984
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Josiah Pugh said 5:21PM on 5-04-2006
I normally don't agree with Dvorak, but he's got this one right.
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PoS said 7:42PM on 5-04-2006
microsoft, dead in the water? I guess that depends on your definition of dead in the water. In terms of Silicon Valley, dead in the water means your stock drops down more than 50% and you have to lay off half (or more) of your employees. That hasn't happened to microsoft yet. They have never been innovative and they've always been about making a ton of money. So what has changed? Nothing. So, we all like to poke fun at microsoft and for good reason, but Dvorak is just as full of dew-dew now as he has been. I truly believe he throws crap out there just to raise the ire of his target group (in this case MS desciples) just to be controversial and raise his readership.
I for one, am not going to bite, I don't visit his site or any site he writes for and I don't listen to the TWiT podcast in large part because I'm not interested in anything he has to say.
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Reg said 8:12PM on 5-04-2006
That's just his style...
1. Pen something provocative, poorly thought out, and/or total BS.
2. Watch as massive amounts of web traffic, inbound links, magazines fly off the shelf.
3. PROFIT!
By the way, PoS, I wouldn't stop listening to TWiT just because you don't agree with what Dvorak says. The others seem to have his number and can often be heard good-humoredly mocking him. Where do you think the whole "gets NO spam!" tag came from?!
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Montecore the Tiger said 12:54AM on 5-05-2006
Have you guys given any thought to this guy just making up wild theories so he gets attention?
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EatingPie said 4:58PM on 5-05-2006
"Hi. My name is John C. Dvorak... I write speculative articles on technology."
"Wow! THE John C. Dvorak?"
"Yep!"
"Cool... hey, are you ever right?"
*Shrugs*
###
-Pie
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