[Sigia-l] WhatsWrongWithU

[Ziya Oz]

Will Parker:

> Microsoft's default business strategy, ever since the OS deal with
> IBM, has been to think of a product not as an end in itself, but as a
> means to secure future revenue streams.

Another way of looking at that has been the so-called Jim Allchin
Windows/Office "tax" whereby each new Microsoft product/service would have
to, first and foremost, further the dominance and lock-in of those main cash
generators. I've heard many MSFT designers and product manger types over the
last decade either complain about or ascribe their strategy to that fact.
MacBU does that on occasion, too. :-)

Yes, this notion of considering products as "assemblages of features"
serving purposes other than the main customer UX has been a fundamental
problem with MSFT. Can it change before MSFT becomes largely irrelevant in a
few years? I don't know. They tried with XBox and then turned around and
gave us the Zune. So who knows!

When does inter-product "synergy" become an albatross around a company's
neck?  I guess when Sony implodes. :-)

----
Ziya

"If I had asked my customers what they wanted,
they would have asked for a faster horse." -- Henry Ford