Ballmer admits the mistake of Vista, in 2001 I kept my mouth shut and switched to Windows Server team

Steve Ballmer had an analyst review this last week and one of the top stories covered is Ballmer discussing the mistakes made focusing on Windows Vista.

Ballmer Blames Vista for Microsoft's Smartphone Failures PC Magazine - ‎13 hours ago‎ Microsoft's outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer this week admitted that Redmond was so focused on the much-maligned Windows Vista a decade ago that it missed the boat on smartphones. "If there's one thing I guess you would say I regret, I regret that there was a ...   Ballmer Blames Vista for Windows Phone's Failure DecryptedTech - ‎5 hours ago‎ So you all remember Windows Vista right? It seems that Microsoft and Steve Ballmer also remember that failed OS (despite current appearances with Windows 8). In fact Steve Ballmer is usingWindows Vista as an excuse for their late entry and poor ...   Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer blames Windows Vista for his company's ... TopNews United States - ‎2 hours ago‎ During the course of a Q&A session at Microsoft's recent meeting for financial analysts and institutional shareholders, the company's outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer said that Microsoft's excessive focus of the doomed Windows Vista OS a decade back was ...   Ballmer: Blame Vista for Our Mobile Woes NewsFactor Network - ‎3 hours ago‎ The Vista issue did take Microsoft's -- and Ballmer's -- eye off the mobile ball and focused everything on the operating system. The organizational ... "It would have been better for Windows and probably better for our success in other form factors." Timing Is ...

I have worked on Client OS from 1988 to 2001 at Apple and Microsoft.  After Windows XP in 2002 came the next version of Windows code name "Longhorn", aka Vista.  There were political battles on who would head up the developer relationships for the platform and I threw in the towel before the fight to Vic Gundotra (Director of Windows Developer Relations) who now is Sr VP of Eng at Google.

Why did I turn my back on Windows Vista in 2001?  After 10 years at Microsoft, I had learned my lessons, kept my mouth shut and just move on.  What would have I said?

Windows Longhorn will fail because management has told the OS team to innovate.  Everyone needs to be innovative. You cannot tell a whole OS team to innovate and expect it to work.  The kernel team, the graphics system, printing team are all creating new ways to do things, and a simple thing like print will not work.  This is what happened when Apple created the Pink OS (taligent) and faced the reality of Blue (System 7) was more realistic to ship.

Bill Gates is quoted as being surprised that Taligent was insignificant in the industry.

In 1997, when Bill Gates was asked what trend or development over the past 20 years had really caught him by surprise, his reply was:

"Kaleida and Taligent had less impact than we expected."^[5]

Windows Vista was also despite 5 years of painful development shipping in Jan 2007 insignificant in the industry.  While this was all going on I switched to Server OS team, then management tools, and left the company in 2006.  I never touched a Windows Vista release (2002 -2007) until 2008 when I got a new laptop and it ran Vista.

The mistake made by so many executives when ordering innovation is they don't understand how the pieces work together.  The team that needs to innovate works best if they know parts of the system will not change.  If you try to build a new innovative building with a ground breaking foundation, state of the art super structure, with never before used electrical and mechanical systems, and new finishing material, you would need to build the building at least 3 times to get things to work.

There is a way out of this predicament.  If you design the process to have many iterations of small changes with the teams working closely together it is possible.  But, this team should be as small as possible and as far away from executives with top down edicts.  Kind of like a SkunkWorks.  When you end up with the smaller team you can make the decisions on where the innovation needs to come from and not everyone should innovate.  

The mistake made is when you measure the success of a team based on how innovative they are, you have people taking risks they don't need to.

Windows Vista failed because the top down order was everyone needs to innovate to build the new version of Windows.

What end users and the media think is innovative is many times the result of many iterations of failure.  Windows Vista failure. Windows 7 success. Windows 8 failure.  Next OS?????

Oops, took a knife in a carry-on

I just got back from Iceland and took my camera gear.  After a few days going through my gear in the hotel I saw one of my folding knives was in the camera bag.  I made it through security once, but I wasn't going to try again so checked one bag with the below knife in it.

 Here is a video of the knife.

Why did I have a knife in my camera bag?  When you have $3,000 worth of camera and lens, and another $3,000 Mac Book Retina it's a bit of insurance to have when walking around with the gear.  Plus its handy to have a good knife.

How did I get through security?  With all the camera gear batteries, cables, tablet in the camera backpack it was probably hard to see the knife since it was in a side pocket position like this to the X-ray scanner.

Next time I'll double check the side pockets of my camera bag to make sure I take the knife out. :-)

Unplugging from the Cellular Network feels good

I am Iceland for this week and on the way over I decided to turn off the cellular data on my iPhone 5.  I am on AT&T so cellular coverage should be good.  What feels better though is not being a slave to my phone and having to check e-mail, text messages or phone calls.

One of the best things not being in a corporate e-mail environment is the amount of e-mail I get is magnitude less or more.  Direct e-mail to my greenm3.com e-mail address is about a dozen a day.  My business partners on another project where we have our own domain and e-mail we can see a month's worth of e-mail on one screen of gmail.  Aside from my family my phone rings 2-3 a week.  And, text messages again aside from family in general can go days or weeks with no messages until I head to a conference.

Ironically as little as I get e-mail, text, and phone calls it is still burden to get disturbed by random things.  So, just turning off the cellular data seemed worth a try.

Mobile is driving an always connected society.  To do quality work requires time to think and no distractions.

When I go back home I'll pick one day a week to just turn off the cell phone data when working from home.  The phone won't ring, text messages will be much less.  My family can still reach me with iMessage or just not on my office door.

I knew I would learn some interesting things on this trip to Iceland, but I didn't expect that unplugging from the cellular network would be one of them.

Give it a try. Turn off your cellular network.  

BTW, the cool thing is the iPhone 5 battery lasts a long long time with cellular turned off.

One Theory on what would explain the unexpected retirement of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

It is mystery why Steve Ballmer decided to retire earlier than expected.  Talking to a friend he had an interesting theory that seems plausible to explain the event.

First let's take a time sequence of facts.

1. Steve Ballmer announces the One Microsoft Strategy on July 11, 2013.

2. On Aug, 23, 2013 Microsoft announces Steve Ballmer will retire within 12 months.

3. On Sept 2, 2013 Microsoft announces its acquisition of Nokia Devices and Services.

4. After the Nokia acquisition announcement the story is out that Microsoft has been negotiating with Nokia since Jan 2013.

I just posted about John Sculley discussing the role the Apple Board had in firing Steve Jobs.  When you read about the Microsoft acquisition of Nokia devices, there is no mention of the Microsoft Board approving the deal.  It would seem like the Microsoft Board would approve the deal.

What happened between July 11 (Microsoft announces reorg) and Aug 23 (Steve Ballmer Retires)?  The Nokia negotiations had been going on for 8 months could they have had an affect on Steve Ballmer's retirement?

This graphic has been used to describe how Tech companies are organized.  Could there have been someone who held a gun to the Microsoft Board to get them to push for Steve Ballmer's retirement?

Here is an interesting idea that one friend threw out.  What if Steve Elop who left Microsoft in 2010, put on the table with the Microsoft Board he wouldn't bring his Nokia team to Microsoft unless Ballmer was not the CEO.  The Board faced with the situation of investing in Mobile with a Nokia acquisition or keeping Steve Ballmer as CEO for 4 more years realized they needed Nokia's mobile expertise more than Ballmer.  At the same time this was going on, Ballmer was selling the Nokia acquisition as a strategic move Microsoft could not miss and he had a good deal on the table.  

There is no data I know of to support this idea. The above is a "thought experiment" on what could explain the surprise Steve Ballmer retirement announcement. I first heard this idea yesterday and it seemed worth throwing out there.

We'll see if the story comes out what happened at the Microsoft Board level for why Steve Ballmer was retired (or fired).  It took 26 years for John Sculley to tell the story of the Apple Board's role in removing Steve Jobs.  So, it may a long, long time before the story is told on why Steve Ballmer retired early.

With Steve Ballmer's Retirement and Acquisition of Nokia Phone, the Microsoft Hardware will be a priority

Microsoft has made billions of dollars from hardware.  Long before XBOX which makes a meager profit, there was, is the Microsoft Mouse business.  Here is a paper from 1989 on an early Microsoft Mouse.

Paper presented at "Interface 89" The Sixth Symposium on Human Factors and Industrial Design in Consumer Products Human Factors Society POBox 1369 Santa Monica California 90406 Microsoft Mouse: Testing for Redesign Bill Verplank, Kate Oliver, IDTwo

ABSTRACT

As part of the redesign of the Microsoft mouse by Matrix Product Design, a series of user tests were performed by ID Two. We used artificial tasks representative of typical mouse use allowing repeated measures of time and error.

 

One of the Microsoft old timers told stories of how no matter what he presented in a product review with Steve Ballmer, he could never win.  As there was no way the hardware could achieve the margins of software.  With Xbox, Surface, and now Nokia phones, Microsoft has the reality of having a low margin hardware as part of its revenue stream.

Microsoft has pushed the general purpose software SW licensing model for the longest and made the most amount of money.  Google doesn't sell a one time purchase of SW.  Their service are either free or a subscription service.

Amazon tries to break even or lose as little as possible on a hardware sale, making up the money on services.  Xbox is the same.

Making hardware is hard.  Making money on hardware is even harder.

The technology world is changing and it is just the beginning.