What's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance?

[nicholas]

You can take my silence as having a life outside here.

Sure.

More like you talked a load of bollox as usual, don't let silly little things like facts get in the way though.

[persia]

I know it was the old Oracle worries but splitting the effort across two office suites was really not smart.  Apache's Open Office and Free Software Foundations LibreOffice are based on the same buggy code and now they have double the work to fix it.

@smerf

Use LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice, it's much better.

http://www.libreoffice.org

[commodorejohn]

Stop backtracking. Your justification was that it was all that time ago, you weren't taking into account that it was recent. Although being along time ago is still relevant.

"Your justification is irrelevant except for its actually being relevant!"

Whatever. Got any actual evidence yet?

[psxphill]

Sure.
 
More like you talked a load of bollox as usual, don't let silly little things like facts get in the way though.

You don't believe I have been out all day and have just returned? You have serious mental health issues.
 
 

Whatever

No, not whatever. You lied.
 
 

So no, you don't have any evidence at all that what you claimed happened actually happened, other than comparing it to that one time twelve years ago that they got in trouble for bundling IE because Netscape went crying to the government about it - and they've kept bundling IE ever since, along with an assload of other software, and had how many other such instances, exactly?

 

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the EU and their lawsuit-happy ways. But I'd "feel more wrong" if I'd actually said there weren't any other times instead of asking whether you were referring to any other instances.

Maybe you should feel more wrong now.
 
"That one time" means "there weren't any other times".

[nicholas]

ou don't believe I have been out all day and have just returned? You have serious mental health issues.

I believe that you are an arrogant prick who is unable to respond to his lies being corrected by facts without restoring to ad-hominem attacks to deflect from his own obvious failings.

Please don't speak to me again.

[commodorejohn]

No, not whatever. You lied.
 
Maybe you should feel more wrong now.
 
"That one time" means "there weren't any other times".

Eh. Even if I had lied instead of simply having forgotten, that would, as they say, just make two of us. I mean, at least I just forgot and didn't invent a conspiracy out of whole cloth with no supporting evidence whatsoever to explain something that's far more easily explained as a simple cost-cutting measure.

[psxphill]

Eh. Even if I had lied instead of simply having forgotten, that would, as they say, just make two of us. I mean, at least I just forgot and didn't invent a conspiracy out of whole cloth with no supporting evidence whatsoever to explain something that's far more easily explained as a simple cost-cutting measure.

I provided a lot of reasons why I believe Microsoft received pressure to drop DVD support. You might think it's a conspiracy theory, but to me it would seem unlikely that WinDVD or Cyberlink wouldn't try getting Microsoft to remove it when other companies have been so successful when they did it. I never disputed that it was also a cost cutting measure.
 
Are you saying you made an incorrect statement by accident or were you aware that what you said wasn't true?

[commodorejohn]

I provided a lot of reasons why I believe Microsoft received pressure to drop DVD support. You might think it's a conspiracy theory, but to me it would seem unlikely that WinDVD or Cyberlink wouldn't try getting Microsoft to remove it when other companies have been so successful when they did it. I never disputed that it was also a cost cutting measure.

Whether it seems likely to you or not, you still made the claim that it happened without having any evidence that it did, in fact, happen. Not that "I would bet that maybe" or "I kind of suspect that," you claimed that that actually happened, even though you admit that you have no evidence at all to support that.

Tell me again, which of us is lying?
 

Are you saying you made an incorrect statement by accident or were you aware that what you said wasn't true?

I quite clearly said that I made an incorrect statement by accident (on account of having forgotten.)

[Fats]

What you're suggesting is that no patents should be valid because if you buy the parts to make something legally then anything you make shouldn't be able to violate a patent.

No, what I am saying is that the right to play back a DVD should be included when buy the DVD and playback should not be restrictred by software patents. Software patents are an abomination of the patent system.

[persia]

Agreed.

[paolone]

No, please, don't force me to read 9 pages of discussions just to understand how the topic turned from "what's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance" and "the right to play back a DVD should be included when buy the DVD and playback should not be restrictred by software patents". It would be overkill ;-)

Anyway, back to original topic, I don't think there's a fall from dominance by Microsoft. It just happens that a NEW market, different than PC ones, has born in the meanwhile, and Microsoft didn't pay enough attention to its future relevance. Result is that Microsoft is still absolutely dominant in the PC *and* server market, although in the new, different MOBILE market its competition to Google and Apple has just begun. I wouldn't underestimate Microsoft here, though: I already know some people switching from iOS to Android to Windows Phone, and all of them agree the last one is the stablest among the three. This trend may diffuse if vendors of Android phones won't stop kidding with customers and decide to upgrade their products in a better way. Microsoft also bought Nokia, which in the past was the best seller competitor in the cellphone market, so they have all the know-how they need to succeed again. In a nutshell: Microsoft's fortunes might have been built on questionable marketing behaviors in the past, but they had many success stories and made many mistakes to learn from. I wouldn't bet Google and Apple share the same valuable experiences, even if they had a glorious histery behind them.

All in all, we're still at the beginning of a new era, and it's good to see all that competition that was just driven out from the computer market long ago. It will bring customers better products after all.

[psxphill]

I believe that you are an arrogant prick who is unable to respond to his lies being corrected by facts without restoring to ad-hominem attacks to deflect from his own obvious failings.
 
Please don't speak to me again.

Good, hopefully that means you won't start trolling or insulting me again.
 
All I got to do now is stop commodorejohn from doing the same and this place will be good again.
 

No, what I am saying is that the right to play back a DVD should be included when buy the DVD and playback should not be restrictred by software patents. Software patents are an abomination of the patent system.

Well that would be new, because VCR's, tape players etc were all covered in patents that manufacturers had to license. Software feels different because once you've made it once the cost to reproduce it are lower. But someone fitting algorithms together and designing structures has a right to patent their work, whether that is created in software or hardware.

[Duce]

If Microsoft is suffering a "fall from dominance", I wish I'd experience a fall from dominance of their caliber with my own business.

MS did EIGHTEEN BILLION DOLLARS+ in one quarter in revenue (period ending June 30, 2012).  In one quarter of a year, folks.

If that's failure, most people would give their eye teeth to experience a failure of that caliber.  They are making money hand over fist, and it'll be a long time before Enterprise weans itself off MS product - if they ever do.

Honestly makes me giggle how people figure MS make the lions share profits wise off the consumer market on their products.  Enterprise and Office sales make up the bulk of their revenue - they make millions of dollars a day off enterprise and/or Office suite sales, and their cloud offerings are really picking up steam and is one of the most increasingly profitable arms of the corporation growth wise.  Office 365 and Azure are great offerings.

I'm not a MS apologist at all.  I really am not a fan of the default Windows 8 experience, and that's coming from a MCSE/MCSA.  Estimated number of Windows 8 sales are over 40 million copies, and while the initial offering for W8 was a bit of a stinker, 8.1 is a lot more enterprise friendly.  I could honestly park you in front of my 8.1 machine, and you'd be hard pressed to find it gimped in the least.

But hey, don't let me interject irrefutable numerical sales numbers into your arguments

[fishy_fiz]

To inject a little bit of amiga talk (who'd have thunk it), do OS4.x and/or MOS have DVD playback "out of the box?
Given their commercial nature Id hazzard a guess not (given the fact that, if what is written in this thread amongst the nonsense is accurate, it should be illegal).

If memory serves me correctly MOS doesnt, but OS4 does?

[nicholas]

Good, hopefully that means you won't start trolling or insulting me again.

Reading comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point, my request was quite clear and correcting your lies is not trolling kid.
 

All I got to do now is stop commodorejohn from doing the same and this place will be good again.

This place was great before people like you came along in the last three years or so.

Don't waste your time replying as i will be blocking your posts from being visible to me from now on.

[nicholas]

No, please, don't force me to read 9 pages of discussions just to understand how the topic turned from "what's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance" and "the right to play back a DVD should be included when buy the DVD and playback should not be restrictred by software patents". It would be overkill ;-)

Anyway, back to original topic, I don't think there's a fall from dominance by Microsoft. It just happens that a NEW market, different than PC ones, has born in the meanwhile, and Microsoft didn't pay enough attention to its future relevance. Result is that Microsoft is still absolutely dominant in the PC *and* server market, although in the new, different MOBILE market its competition to Google and Apple has just begun. I wouldn't underestimate Microsoft here, though: I already know some people switching from iOS to Android to Windows Phone, and all of them agree the last one is the stablest among the three. This trend may diffuse if vendors of Android phones won't stop kidding with customers and decide to upgrade their products in a better way. Microsoft also bought Nokia, which in the past was the best seller competitor in the cellphone market, so they have all the know-how they need to succeed again. In a nutshell: Microsoft's fortunes might have been built on questionable marketing behaviors in the past, but they had many success stories and made many mistakes to learn from. I wouldn't bet Google and Apple share the same valuable experiences, even if they had a glorious histery behind them.

All in all, we're still at the beginning of a new era, and it's good to see all that competition that was just driven out from the computer market long ago. It will bring customers better products after all.

I don't know what industry you are in but MS is *far* from being dominant in the server space it's not even close.

UNIX-oids are by far the most used overall except for niche markets that are by definition tied to Windows like .NET etc.