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Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

4 Nov, 9 tweets, 3 min read

BONUS: Competing with Lotus Notes - new bonu$ post in Hardcore Software. // Today most all biz > N size use Exchange as their mail server (most in the cloud). Yet before Exchange arrived Lotus Notes was a successful and innovative product. A story /1 …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/bonus-compet…

@rozzie

2/ Notes was a wildly innovative product brought to life by @rozzie and an incredible team. It was also one of the most significant and innovative products on Windows 3.0 and so Ray was honored as a Windows Pioneer.

3/ Notes strength is detailed in the post (from my perspective of course) and amazingly that strength is exactly why Microsoft had so much trouble not just competing but figuring out what Notes was exactly.

Was it an app? Was it a platform? Was it email? What is groupware?

4/ Notes became a dominant force in a category it created called Groupware. Ray and team were uniquely qualified to create this product and in doing so innovated across many dimensions--database, programming, networking, and more.

5/ Microsoft made several classic mistakes--deeply rooted cultural mistakes--that are detailed in the post:

◆ Distill a competitive product into component tech

◆ Consider the whole (the app) as an afterthought

◆ View the product team response through current org structure

6/ We really thought we were in trouble when IBM acquired Lotus. IBM was on an upswing and with its enterprise account control and Notes innovation it posed an incredible challenge. We were just getting started in Enterprise software. Yikes.

7/ Click through to this $ubscriber bonus post for the details of how Microsoft responded--and ultimately won--even though we never addressed the category of groupware or even developed the technologies in Notes. …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/bonus-compet…

8/ My view is Notes was the most formidable competitor and biggest risk to a prosperous Microsoft future than any other BECAUSE it cut across so many parts of Microsoft.

I share some of those lessons and even a crazy memo I wrote trying to develop tactics to compete. // END

PS/ Most of the entirety of "cloud" part of Office 365 (eg not Word/XL) is due to Exchange, not Server, not AD, not SQL. Putting this battle in context, today's MSFT could not possibly exist had Exchange—incredibly sticky on-prem Exchange—not won in early 00s. Wild to consider.

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More from @stevesi

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

6 Nov

@MKBHD

M1 Max MacBook Pro Review: Truly Next Level! // Definitely watch this review by @MKBHD who does a fantastic real world and "totally understands the product" review, not a rush or fast take, but real world use.

2/ Watch the review but some things to call out
• "never heard the fans spin up audibly"
• "could have had higher end ports"
• "could have had ethernet on powerbrick"
• "effectively a mini Pro Display XDR"
• "best speakers on any laptop"

3/ Best analysis: the notch. I feel other reviewers should take note.

• "easy to complain when you're not using it"
1) "seems like it is part of the design language"
2) "ok to put the notch there as you don't really notice"
• "Cuts into display area you _didn't_ have before"

Read 5 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

5 Nov

https://twitter.com/aarthir/status/1456404991367802880

We're live now...come join in what is sure to be an fascinating conversation.

https://twitter.com/aarthir/status/1456404991367802880

@typesfast

The mix shift due to the pandemic is driving the supply chain crisis -- the demand shifting from services to goods, because people are in pandemic mode and finding stuff to buy for at home. —@typesfast

At the core of this topic is the shipping container—a magic box invented in the mid 20th century that revolutionized freight.

A fascinating and classic history:

The Box That Changed the World: Fifty Years of Container Shipping - An Illustrated History smile.amazon.com/Box-That-Chang…

Read 5 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

31 Oct

New in "Hardcore Software" is a post about "strategy tax" and when these first started to show up at Microsoft c. 1998 or so. MS was going through a transition from retail to enterprise products... 1/ …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/053-strategy…

2/ The first time I really saw a broad strategy tax in play was on a trip to Japan and seeing the amazing Sony VAIO PictureBook--first laptop I used with a webcam. Amazing PC. Also it added a "Memory Stick" over time as did everything Sony made. Seemed crazy and annoying.

3/ BillG was in Japan at the same time and I guess he'd been briefed by Idei / Morita about it, of course loved it (DRM!)

In an umteenth meeting on storage, I made a joke about using "local storage" like Memory Stick. BillG "Yes, that’s called strategy. Why can’t we have that?"

Read 11 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

26 Oct

@anandtech

Super fun deep dive on new M1 Pro/Max chips by @anandtech Do go read in context. anandtech.com/print/17024/ap… HT @jensenharris @roundtrip

Many nuggets such as:

"Apple doesn’t advertise any TDP for the chips of the devices–it’s our understanding that simply doesn’t exist." 1/

2/ This is such a huge deal. Intel is certain to bring something new to the table with respect to graphics, but then the question moves back to power consumption.

3/ In the interim, the idea of shipping a laptop with two GPUs in order to compete will seem attractive (and actually higher margins) but will almost certainly lose out and generally not work well--to complex, too flakey, and too much futzing.

Read 4 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

25 Oct

"Alleviating Bloatware, First Attempt" in «Hardcore Software» Software bloat is something we've all heard of, complained about. What is it really? And what do you do about it? It can't just be too many features, or is it? Our first attempt taking it on 1/ …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/052-alleviat…

2/ As we were developing Office 2000 the constant rumble of "bloatware" grew louder. Everyone seemed to have a different idea of what that meant. Too much disk space. Too much RAM. Too many features. Too many buttons. Review of Office 97 (a huge success) really stung.

3/ We had many positive reviews. This one really hurt. Every graph was somehow about scale or size.

- IT Manager "couldn't care less"
- "4,500 commands for features useful and arcane"
- "Nothing from a business point of view that was compelling to upgrade"

Read 10 tweets

Steven Sinofsky – stevesi.eth

@stevesi

19 Oct

Apple’s M1 Pro/Max is the second step in a major change in computing. What might be seen as an evolution from iPhone/ARM is really part of an Apple story that began in 1991 with PowerPC. And what a story of innovation 💡 1/ [Quick thoughts]

2/ If you studied Computer Science in the 80’s then you were deep into the raging debate of RISC v. CISC. And what a debate it was. Out of that debate emerged an implementation at IBM, the POWER processor/instruction set. And a SV company MIPS.

3/ PowerPC was a huge investment from IBM—an effort to regain end-to-end control of computing, starting with workstations. They had no software platform really (though Unix was all the rage for workstations and OS/2 all the hope) so the big bet was on Windows NT.