Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft was published many years ago – maybe you read it – maybe not. Regardless, what you should read is Kirill Pankratov’s well composed statement of the state of Microsoft’s innovativeness and trap of the Innovator’s dilemma. The post is long but very enjoyable due to the well crafted sentence structures, language, reasoning, and concepts.
Supporters of Microsoft often claim it as an example of relentless innovation and technical brilliance. This is hardly credible in recent years. The rate of innovation in Microsoft products themselves was absolutely dismal in the last decade. Consider just one example. In the five years of intense competition from 1981 to 1986, before the Microsoft dominance, enormous strides were made in the user interface - one the most important aspect of personal computer technology. It evolved from primitive, barely legible screens of a dozen lines of greenish letters, where user had to precisely type some obscure, hard-to-remember commands, to the very usable system of windows and icons (first commercially implemented in Apple's Macintosh) which everybody could still recognize and use today.
Why do I bring up a June 2002 post? Even years later there are people who thrive on hating Microsoft but every Tableteer knows there are key products Microsoft must push forward – the Tablet PC, Microsoft Vista, and Microsoft Office. From my vantage point – Lora, Frank, Michelle, Ken, Tetsuo, Tina, Lori, Deana, Tim, Hilton, Koji, Shawn, Ian, and Arin need new pairs of boxing gloves for Christmas. Maybe you could send them express mail or just express your love of the Tablet PC. There will always be people who just do not get it – and it is their loss. However, this holiday season – maybe a nice smile on our faces – showing our appreciation for the Tablet PC would be a nice gift. Maybe just a big “Thank you Microsoft” is in order. What say ye?