Owen’s
General Theory of MicrosoftOwen’s
General Theory of MicrosoftWed 2/03/2010 2:23 pm. It’s really quite simple. As with many liberal demons, Microsoft is characterized as both fiendishly evil and stupid. Their products certainly are often quite stupid, but Microsoft is clever: they ingeniously compete against people who are really stupid — WordPerfect, Lotus, Borland, Novell — and they invariably triumph. ... But the iphone wiped their clock....
I realized this when I read a 2003 (?) leaked Bill Gates memo describing his ridiculously-stupid experience trying to download Microsoft MovieMaker or something: it sounded just like the rest of us, screaming at the incredibly dumb things Microsoft does. ... Subsequently, some interviewer asked him about it, and he said he wrote memos like that all the time: that was his job....
The point being, Gates knew
the company was dumb. ... In another (video) interview I saw Gates try
to explain to the perky interviewer how dumb his competition was; she
wasn’t interested. ... Nor, in general, are the Americans. This, I
suspect, is part of our puffery-based culture, years and years of
relentless advertising: Americans, and most of the world for that
matter, are brought up to believe
that everything is good, and the only way any entity dominates another
is by cheating (the fiendishly evil part).
In reality, sadly, the truth of our world is that Microsoft or General Electric don’t have to dominate by cheating; they dominate by competing against people who are stupider than them — of which there is an endless supply....
And after all, many people have had the experience of coming in contact with giant corporations, stupid management, and wondering how these people manage to execute elementary human functions. The entire Dilbert comic strip is based on this! ... Perhaps that’s the best way of thinking about this challenging mystery: when the average company competes against Microsoft, it’s like two Dilbertesque mobs slugging it out, falling over and injuring themselves constantly — and the stupidest bunch loses....
These thoughts came up when I was decommissioning the LOL’s old “smart” phone, replaced by the iPhone a few months ago. ... For “smart” you should read of course “stupid”: it’s a Windows phone. ... I hadn’t tried these things but I figured maybe I could use the camera feature for some low-rent activity. ... It was ABSOLUTELY APPALLING. ... It was like Windows 3.1, hopped-up on some debilitating drug....
And this was how Microsoft was fighting it out in the phone market and, while scoring no KOs, still doing OK from year to year. ... Until a working device showed-up and destroyed their evil schemes. ... And as all mankind knows, Apple’s done this with music players — of course — and with higher-end PCs, particularly laptops — there I’m assuming Microsoft doesn’t really enjoy the netbook/low-rent ghetto they’re more and more confined-to, and would much prefer being back in the premium high-markup winner’s circle....
So that’s the secret to competing with Microsoft: don’t be stupid....
