Is Microsoft Clutching A One Way Ticket To Nowhere?

Image via CrunchBase

Microsoft isn't really as smart as people think and it probably isn't as smart as it thinks it is, either. Its fortunes were set by being in the right place at the right time with a piece of operating system software it didn't actually code - it bought it in. Seattle Computer Products' QDOS was to become PC-DOS and, in a moment of brilliance, was licensed rather than sold outright to IBM for the company's new Personal Computer.

The result was a gravy train for Microsoft, which promptly did the dirty on IBM by licensing MS-DOS to makers of PC clones. Why IBM put up with it is anyone's guess. but by the time Compaq released an 80386 based machine ahead of IBM and took effective leadership of the PC market, Microsoft had its own version of a goose in every pot and a wagon in every barn - pretty much every PC in the world had Windows and Office installed and MS was printing money.

The OS/2 body swerve was a final blow to IBM's dream of getting back dominance of the desktop and was to start the chapter in the company's history where it exited the PC market Jobs' Apple had cheekily welcomed it to in 1981. IBM eventually sold the business - saved, in the meantime, by its ThinkPad laptops - to Lenovo just in time to avoid the current spiralling decline of the PC.

Microsoft was so busy thinking it was smart, rather than being merely an accomplished rider on the PC clone gravy train, it missed the Internet. Entirely. Netscape nearly pulled off its coup - creating a platform for third party software that would disintermediate Windows. But Gates turned MS on a sixpence and brought the company's crushing market dominance to triumph in the 'browser war' that followed. They got in late, but they got in with such venom it appeared they were unstoppable. They weren't.

The win cost Microsoft a punishing - and embarrassing - trial at the hands of the US Department of Justice. Reeling from the whole bruising process, a four year trial ending in 2002, Microsoft found itself fighting a number of persistent enemies, including Sun Microsystems, Oracle and a growing horde of passionate Linux backers - a party that IBM joined with a $10 billion investment in the open source software. By the time the next big thing came, Microsoft missed it as badly as it had the Internet - the trouble was, it wasn't one big thing but several.

Google's IPO in 2004 showed an astonished world how very big the company had grown from absolutely nowhere (today, ten short years later, it's a more valuable company than Microsoft, BTW). Three years later, Steve Jobs launched the iPhone and then Google bought in a piece of software that was to achieve precisely what MS-DOS had achieved almost twenty years earlier for Microsoft. Android.

Meanwhile, Microsoft was busy screwing up Windows in an attempt to rekindle the 'must have this year's version' of the WinTel heyday. The awful Windows Vista stalled adoption, many electing to stay with the stable and 'not broke' Windows XP. Windows 7 rectified the awfulness of Vista, but arguably it was already too late. People were playing with new toys: tablets. And Microsoft had no way to compete with iOS or Android - and no plan to, either.

Why didn't Microsoft turn on a sixpence again? Because it had nowhere to turn - its dominance of the desktop didn't stretch to the new wireless world of smartphones and tablets. And its eventual attempt to face the conundrum is all too clear from the schizophrenic Windows 8.

But it's bought Nokia - and it has the chance now to join the smartphone and tablet market with a better version of Windows that'll put the faults of Windows 8 (which is an absolutely fabulous mobile OS, strangely enough given Microsoft's long history of awful mobile OSs. Windows CE anyone?) behind it.

Only Microsoft hasn't got a huge and successful content-rich ecosystem like Amazon, Google or Apple. And it doesn't have the support of a wide enough base of applications developers. It's got Bing losing to Google, Azure losing to Amazon - too many fights on too many fronts. And too many innovations taking place away from the source of the majority of Microsoft's revenue - the desktop.

Is the party over? Yes. But does Microsoft have a ticket to the next party?

Windows 8. Regrets, I've Had A Few...

I have to report, the road  to Windows 8 has not been a smooth journey. There's much to like about Microsoft's new OS but the whole experience has left me feeling rather as if I'm the only person in this place to have actually upgraded to it.

First there was the great Firefox debacle - the badly documented fact that Firefox doesn't support Windows 8 (and, by the way, Chrome doesn't support Windows RT) only came to light after I had gone on a long journey to find out why Skype had stopped working. It's stopped working again but this time around I simply can't be bothered. I'm using the iPad for that instead.

Now Explorer, by no means my browser of choice, has also stopped working and I don't know what to do. There's no obvious option to repair or reinstall it. You can almost hear Barney's whiny Midwestern sing-song, 'Heyy, li'l guy! That's under the bonnet! You don't wanna go snoopin' around under the bonnet!' The support forums for Windows 8 have each got four or five topics on them, as if there are only about a hundred people in the world using this software. Microsoft support is so hard to find (particularly with a half-broken browser), I've just given up and installed Chrome.

The great selling point for Windows 8 is that it's touch enabled. If you've found yourself habitually reaching out to swipe a laptop screen, you'll appreciate the fact that you can now do it and have something happen. All of the great versions of Windows have had a 'raison d'etre' - Windows 3.0 sealed Microsoft's outright leadership not only of the OS market but of the application market, by breaking the DOS 640k barrier and simultaneously leading competitors to develop for OS/2. Windows NT didn't break. And Windows 7 wasn't  Vista.

With that in mind, Windows 8's great USP is touch, but it hedges its bets with a desktop. So you have, effectively, two interfaces - the 'Metro' swipey interface and a desktop interface that isn't quite so touch friendly. So don't go putting that mouse on Dubizzle quite yet.

There are some parts of Windows 8 that really work. It's more intuitive and things are generally where you'd expect to find 'em. There's very little 'getting started' help - I had to Google how to close an app (a much clunkier gesture than Apple's) because there was nobody from MS telling you. Likewise, the relationship between the Metro interface and Desktop is something you're left to find out for yourself. Microsoft's Mail app is cool, but won't let you use the Search features within Gmail. It all feels a bit 'give a little, take a little' to tell you the truth.

And this is why I fear for Microsoft and Windows 8. If there were a major, mass-market interface competitor (if Google were hardcore about Chrome OS), this would be a very dangerous time indeed for Microsoft.

Windows 8 is an inflection point - and inflection points in technology are always terribly dangerous times. We're locked into technology by familiarity, and the greater our investment in an interface, the greater our 'stickiness' as users is. When you ask me to relearn that interface, you're asking me to go through the same pain barrier as deserting you and going with another provider.

The trouble with Windows 8 is it's a halfway house. The next version of Windows will have to complete the move to touch and finally junk the desktop, because Windows needs to do something huge, not something whimpery and tentative. That means applications written for touch - and there are very few of those out there right now outside games and the like. At this rate of adoption, developers won't be leaping to embrace Windows 8, either.

Having moved to Windows 8, I would probably counsel anyone thinking about it to stick with Windows 7. The pain of the move has been infinitely greater than any benefits I have gained. If that's the feedback from other users, the already reportedly slow adoption of Windows 8 is not going to speed up anytime soon.

I never thought I'd see the day, but Microsoft looks extremely vulnerable right now.