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Steven Sinofsky

9 Sep, 12 tweets, 3 min read

With early success in a product there's often a strong desire (or rush) to "make it a platform". Having an app is great and making it a platform is better.

How Microsoft and Apple worked *together* to create Macintosh is a huge lesson on building a platform. 1/

2/ Apple saw the value of having VisiCalc on Apple ][ and IBM saw that for PCs with 1-2-3.

The common thread is that platforms benefitted from a third party betting their future business on the platform. It was existential for the platform to have companies doing that.

3/ Conversely, third parties came to realize that betting their business on a platform can create a stronger relationship--an influencer relationship--with the platform. Bill Gates saw that potential with Macintosh.

4/ As shared in hardcoresoftware.substack.com, a few years (a lifetime) before I got to Microsoft, Bill made a clear bet on the graphical interface *platform* for Microsoft's spreadsheet (after a distant # 2 in character mode). Windows was late. Macintosh was first--the bet was on Mac.

5/ My second manager, mentor, and friend Jeff Harbers was the Microsoft engineering manager on point to work with Steve Jobs. While Excel was the most influential project, Microsoft had a shelf of Mac products in year 1 (these are the red boxes, the first boxes were green).

@jondevaan

6/ InfoWorld told this story about Jeff and his work with Steve in their launch issue on Mac (5 years to the day before my interview to work at Microsoft!) -- The Microsoft/Macintosh Connection. A few others on on twitter worked on this stuff like @jondevaan.

7/ The key thing about building a platform that Apple realized was how much there was a mutual dependency. Gates said (above) that half of Microsoft's Applications revenue would be Mac. And at launch a significant percentage of Macs would have Word and/or Excel.

8/ This dependency was true *even though* Apple would give away MacWrite (and MacPaint) with Mac just as Microsoft had Write and Paint in Windows.

Many think that these first party tools can substitute for the platform having strong partners. It is never so easy.

9/ Platforms can build Apps and can often replace third party utilities, but to be a healthy platform requires companies making "half the revenue" kinds of bets on the platform. Too often in adding platform is thought of as filling in holes in a product, not creating a business.

10/ What great platforms learn about building a platform is the importance of creating economic opportunity for "apps". This could be from IP, distribution, or other leverage. Aligning your Apps interest with the platform is the other half of the two way street. // END

PS/ Jeff was a great friend and mentor lost to us all too soon.

PPS/ Anyone figure out what Mac Enhancer is? :-)

And/ Is this a Microsoft ad or an Apple ad. That’s a platform <> app partnership.

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More from @stevesi

Steven Sinofsky

@stevesi

14 Sep

@GeekWire

Study of Microsoft employees shows how remote work puts productivity and innovation at risk geekwire.com/2021/study-mic… via @GeekWire // This is a paper out from a large group of researchers at Microsoft (and others). I have many thoughts on this. 1/

2/ My intention is not to comment on research per se but on how it might be misapplied. Studies of electronic communication in orgs--have been put forth ever since MSFT introduced email. At best this is telemetry and at worst it can be used to imply causality.

3/ I have no doubt that this research accurately captures the flow of information using digital tools around the company for over 60K people. That's a huge amount of work and analysis. Kudos. The challenge from the outset is that it conflates that flow with "collaboration".

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Steven Sinofsky

@stevesi

8 Sep

I know it is difficult to believe, but there was a time when key tech leaders and influencers of the world were dead set against the graphical interface.

In 1985, less than a year after Macintosh was unveiled the naysayers were out in full force... 1/

2/ About 2M Apple ][ had been sold in total. About 3.5M IBM PCs (8086). About 8M Atari, TRS-80, C64 all combined. This was early. ~20M computers sold, worldwide, total.

Dr Dobbs, InfoWorld, Byte magazines were supreme. We're in "Halt and Catch Fire" S1. Joe MacMillan reads IW.

3/ If a hobbyist magazine printed a story you didn't like you probably just ranted at your user group meeting thursday night.

If it really bugged you, then you'd write a letter to the editor. Maybe they would print it a few weeks later. Then a few thousand people would see it.

Read 8 tweets

Steven Sinofsky

@stevesi

6 Sep

Incompatible Files, Slipping, Office 97 RTM— new post in “Hardcore Software” …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/045-incompat… // “Reviews” were a key part of the early days of the PC era. In the context of shipping Office 97, this post looks at how reviews were changing as the industry matured. 1/11

2/ From the earliest days through Windows 95, personal computer reviews were primarily done by “tech enthusiasts” and aimed at same. Basically hobbyists reviewed products for hobbyists. That was the industry. Here’s BYTE giving Office 97 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ across the board.

3/ Such enthusiast outlets were our key constituency as most all sales were driven through retail channel and most retail customers were buying magazines like these by the pound (at the peak, an issue of BYTE or PCMag was hundreds of pages, mostly ads). So victory.

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Steven Sinofsky

@stevesi

1 Sep

"Making the Laptop Commonplace" - NY Times 1985. A great example of challenges in forecasting progress in technologies when improvements are happing at exponential rates. Article asks what happened to all those predictions from last year (!) that laptops would be a big deal? 1/

2/ "People don't want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper."

What if the laptop were the place to read those!

3/ "Right now laptops cost considerably more than the equivalent desktop computer."

What if the need to innovate in laptops not only made components smaller, but cheaper, and at the same time consume less energy? Then who wouldn't want a laptop *instead* of a desktop?

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Steven Sinofsky

@stevesi

17 Aug

The “gyrations” through Apple’s beta cycle since WWDC when it comes to Safari UX are fascinating—some might even say not very “Apple-like”. Changing is fine. But where the design seems to be ending up is suboptimal for a platform, IMO. Here’s why, but not why one might think /1

2/ Moving address bar up/down and/or having a separate address bar are rational design choices that people will (vigorously) debate. I have an opinion too.

What one has come to expect from Apple is a “point of view” in product design expressed through “the way it should work.”

3/ There was a lot of feedback about the early design and implementation. It was rough. That started the feedback loop from developers (those are who use the beta) that it was never going to be right. Developers of all people should know it could change. But momentum gained…

Read 16 tweets

Steven Sinofsky

@stevesi

15 Aug

1/ "Clippy, The F*cking Clown" **new post** Looks like you're trying to do a section in "Hardcore Software" on the origin and behind the scenes of Clippy. …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/042-clippy-the…

2/ If you would have told me in 1997 that I would still be talking about the paperclip in 2021, I would have LOLed and OMGed. I definitely want to go through reasoning and choices of the feature because it is super interesting. But the real story is not as much why, but how?

3/ In 1995, Office was half of Microsoft's profits. Through the release of Office 95 there were over 12 million licenses sold (about 100M Windows capable PCs had been sold since 1990). Still, there was competition from two billion-dollar companies, leaders in the DOS era.