They had great devices before iOS/Android and then again after. That Lumia phone was awesome. They had one of the best cameras. Their live tiles they had on the phone & desktop OS were really good. Even Windows 8 had a cool CRM app in its infancy that tried to link all your social media & email accounts together.

They killed all of that even with multiple chances to win people over. It seemed they wanted to win the new markets in less than a year.

For as much flack as Google gets for short lived awesome products, Microsoft is right up there. Which is why when they've announced new things like Blazor, MAUI, etc., no one expects them to live long enough to trust their apps on.

I also strongly question their enterprise MOAT when most kids are growing up on Apple & Google devices the past decade. Microsoft seems to lack long term strategy.

There are a lot of different combinations of variables done for both tilling and not tilling depending on many factors.

Builders - let's build awesome stuff with great experience.

Execs - need to meet next earnings reports goals. Let's sneak a few features to help M$FT stock price at expense to our users.

Product suffers... Execs then allow builders to make the products better. Then execs step in again because they need some quick wins. Visual Studio and .NET really seemed to exemplify this a few years ago as Code was eating into Visual Studio's user base.

I for one hope ending quarterly earnings reduces patterns like this in companies.

For a lot of specialists like drywall, the really good people seem to never want to deal with small jobs. They get paid better & it's easier to do large jobs.

The info on his podcasts isn't telling you who to short. It's more who has gone under & general knowledge.

https://podcasts.apple.com/bz/podcast/the-real-eisman-playbo...

He's one of the "Big Short" guys but more importantly he has great guests on. Everyone is trying to teach & inform, not sell.

He's been calling this risk out for over a year, especially once the White House started trying to allow retirement accounts access to private credit. For a lot of people that was the big alert, even before Jamie Dimon said he saw "cockroaches".

Other part of me is arguing that old annoying Dropbox/Box Hacker News scenario where all us tech people aren't impressed but this makes it easier for non-tech people.

Tiny tinfoil security part of me is cowering in fear.

Acquired podcast had Ballmer on this past year. Gives interesting take of how he was never a true CEO, always had Gates still running things.

I imagine Microsoft probably has about 5-10 CEOs running it right now. Nadella is just the face. Amy, Brad & Kathleen for sure. Would not be surprised if Bill still has a lot of say. Guthrie probably doesn't have enough say.

Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors.

The only 2 that have run are not a good example.

A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State.

Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.

The values you mention are timeless & should be taught to all.

Hopefully technology continues to be a thing that rises all boats & that more people can get said boat.

I fear the current tax laws, political contributions & financial regulations favor those with more wealth so much that when you factor in compounding, their wealth will continue to grow at extreme levels compared to those with less wealth. Retail needs to start pulling their money out of stocks until large companies reduce executive pay to reasonable levels. Otherwise we just blindly keep supporting this current chaos. I believe we also need to start taxing margin loans, instead of going down a wealth tax road.

Is it worth the risk/work to move everything over? For a lot of enterprises, their needs to be a huge cost savings or risk reduction. Risk usually being the most important factor the bigger the company.

I can only think of short snippets in history where they moved in that direction for maybe a year or two & then went scatterbrain.

Microsoft has benefited from a monopoly in the enterprise and has never been forced to innovate from a product perspective. See Slack/Teams as a case study of how they have operated when even slightly pushed.

* Edit - .NET, C#, TypeScript teams are an exception to the above. Highly underrated. Amazing talent there. Not sure who all gets credit. Anders & Mads for sure though.

PowerPoint is underrated.

For enterprises it almost always comes down to - does it reduce risk, is it easy to manage, authentication & authorization features, is it good enough & is it compatible with our current stuff.