{"id":21049,"date":"2018-04-02T13:15:56","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T17:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=21049"},"modified":"2018-04-02T14:02:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T18:02:29","slug":"microsoft-is-ready-for-a-world-beyond-windows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/02\/microsoft-is-ready-for-a-world-beyond-windows\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Is Ready for a World Beyond Windows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Warren<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Microsoft announced a new reorganization<\/a> yesterday. It’s the fourth major<\/a> shuffle inside the company over the past five years, and the most significant of Nadella’s tenure. Microsoft is splitting Windows across the company, into different parts. Terry Myerson, a 21-year Microsoft veteran, is leaving the company and his role as Windows chief. The core development of Windows is being moved to a cloud and AI team, and a new team will take over the “experiences” Windows 10 users see like apps, the Start menu, and new features. There’s a lot of shuffling going on, but Nadella’s 1,300 word memo<\/a> leaves little doubt over the company’s true future: cloud and AI.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Ben Thompson<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

What is more interesting, though, is the story of Windows’ decline in Redmond, culminating with last week’s reorganization<\/a> that, for the first time since 1980, left the company without a division devoted to personal computer operating systems (Windows was split, with the core engineering group placed under Azure, and the rest of the organization effectively under Office 365; there will still be Windows releases, but it is no longer a standalone business). Such a move didn’t seem possible a mere five years ago, when, in the context of another reorganization, former-CEO Steve Ballmer wrote a memo<\/a> insisting that Windows was the future (emphasis mine)[…]<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

To put it another way, Nadella’s shift to a post-Windows Microsoft is the right one; to have done the same a decade sooner would have been better. It also, though, may have been impossible, simply because Windows was still the biggest part of the business, and it’s not clear the markets would have tolerated an explicit shift before it was painfully obvious it was necessary; without a rising stock price, Nadella’s mission would have been much more challenging if not impossible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2018-04-02): Maynard Handley<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Did it HAVE to turn out this way?<\/p>\n

What if MS had been willing to keep improving Windows instead of just essentially polishing XP?<\/p>\n

Of course to do that would have been disruptive (ie would have caused people to complain about changes).<\/p>\n

So what do you do?<\/p>\n

Accept that you can’t serve BOTH Enterprise (world never changes) and Personal (we want change)?<\/p>\n

IMHO MS should have seen this tension years ago and created a separate personal OS. Put in a Windows Blue Box but make it Apple-level clear that that is legacy and goes away. Also make it clear that the new OS is constantly improving -- don’t coddle developers who lag.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Warren: Microsoft announced a new reorganization yesterday. It’s the fourth major shuffle inside the company over the past five years, and the most significant of Nadella’s tenure. Microsoft is splitting Windows across the company, into different parts. Terry Myerson, a 21-year Microsoft veteran, is leaving the company and his role as Windows chief. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2018-04-12T01:13:16Z","apple_news_api_id":"433d9ead-f8b4-4a24-9209-4e37cfa26470","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2018-04-12T01:13:17Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AQz2erfi0SiSSCU43z6JkcA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1351,35,37,219],"class_list":["post-21049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cloud","tag-microsoft","tag-windows"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21054,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21049\/revisions\/21054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}