Richard's Notes

Microsoft’s Creative Destruction

Former Microsoft employee Dick Brass on how the company has failed to innovate over the years.

Some of us have seen this pattern brewing at Microsoft for years. Couple this with the idea that the release of Apple’s iPad seems to be less about hardware, more about a statement that some (maybe many) users are fed up with the complexity, instability, and poor design of their computing experience and you have a real problem for Microsoft going forward.

As Brass says, Microsoft makes most of it’s money from selling the Windows OS and MS Office for desktop and laptop computers. Desktop computers may not go away any time soon, but simpler devices that do fewer things more easily are on the rise and are eating into that space.

The other interesting idea here is that both Microsoft and Apple and other computer companies as well as companies that make smart phones have been going after convergence products for years: products that are attempting to be all things to all users and do a lot for them. Maybe the end of that quest is Apple’s Knowledge Navigator and maybe the iPad or some tablet computer could evolve into that. But, I’m betting that we’re entering an era where “divergence products” like the iPad will do well, partly as a reaction to the difficulty many people have with general purpose computers (both with Windows and OS X on them).