Windows, every mention

Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired Jul 22, 2024 · 100 mentions

• ▶ 2:00:52 Ben Gilbert And so you had the NT lineage of, I guess, maybe even you could say it started with OS two, but Windows NT, Windows 2000, and then Windows XP.
• ▶ 2:00:52 Ben Gilbert And so you had the NT lineage of, I guess, maybe even you could say it started with OS two, but Windows NT, Windows 2000, and then Windows XP.
• ▶ 2:01:03 Ben Gilbert So everybody's running XP now.
• ▶ 2:01:42 Ben Gilbert But, you know, Windows XP, plenty of people were importing digital photos off their camera to Windows XP.
• ▶ 2:01:51 David Rosenthal A lot of Napster clients running on Windows XP machines.
• ▶ 2:03:44 Ben Gilbert Another thing about Windows XP, there was a new release of Office right at the same time as XP.
• ▶ 2:05:16 David Rosenthal And yes, that is true for all the traditional reasons in the XP timeframe, the reason it was also true in part one of our Microsoft series.
• ▶ 2:06:01 Ben Gilbert And I think this XP time frame is
• ▶ 2:06:10 Ben Gilbert The other thing to know about this XP timeframe is, last episode we talked about the incredible secular growth trend of the PC.
• ▶ 2:06:37 Ben Gilbert The crazier thing is, even as late as 2001 with Windows XP, they were still riding this tailwind.
• ▶ 2:06:57 Ben Gilbert By 1997, 13 years later, it grew to 37%, and after a couple years of XP being in market, 2003, it had grown to 62%.
• ▶ 2:08:23 Ben Gilbert Windows 95, they shipped DirectX, that changed the world, they became a real gaming platform.
• ▶ 2:09:31 David Rosenthal So, just like a couple weeks after the XP launch, it was a big time for Microsoft.
• ▶ 2:15:02 Ben Gilbert So, there's a little tail off of XP that'll lead to Vista.
• ▶ 2:15:02 Ben Gilbert So, there's a little tail off of XP that'll lead to Vista.
• ▶ 2:15:08 Ben Gilbert So the Windows XP codename, David, was what?
• ▶ 2:15:11 David Rosenthal Whistler.
• ▶ 2:15:22 Ben Gilbert The ski mountain right next to Whistler is, yes, Blackcomb, which became the name for the theoretical release that they wanted to do, like, just a year or two after Vista.
• ▶ 2:15:42 Ben Gilbert Another reason they had to push the date out was Windows XP for all of its usability and reliability was very insecure, and so Microsoft had a whole thing where they thought they were gonna spend like three months putting out a service…
• ▶ 2:15:55 Ben Gilbert They spent the better part of two years iterating on Windows XP to come out with a release that really people and enterprises could trust as no viruses, you know, this is safe to deploy your enterprise.
• ▶ 2:16:36 David Rosenthal Longhorn, baby.
• ▶ 2:16:37 Ben Gilbert That sounds like a great name for a modest release to follow XP before we get to the big hard changes that are gonna come in Blackcomb.
• ▶ 2:16:50 David Rosenthal So I remember being like a teenager in high school at this point in time, and reading all about Longhorn, Blackcomb, all this stuff on the internet, you know, on these new tech sites, these blogs, being like,
• ▶ 2:17:05 David Rosenthal I remember downloading, like, new shells for Windows XP to mimic the Longhorn UI with the sidebar and the clock on the side.
• ▶ 2:17:05 David Rosenthal I remember downloading, like, new shells for Windows XP to mimic the Longhorn UI with the sidebar and the clock on the side.
• ▶ 2:17:17 Ben Gilbert Well, this was part of the belief behind Longhorn.
• ▶ 2:17:33 Ben Gilbert And so everyone got really well versed in what was coming in Longhorn.
• ▶ 2:17:38 Ben Gilbert And then everyone was kind of sitting on their hands like, where's Longhorn?
• ▶ 2:17:42 Ben Gilbert They've been really telling us about Longhorn in a way that you would never see today.
• ▶ 2:18:21 Ben Gilbert Anyway, Longhorn is teased for five years.
• ▶ 2:18:35 Ben Gilbert David, what was the initial technical spark that was supposed to be the cornerstone of Longhorn?
• ▶ 2:18:54 David Rosenthal And then they were like, no, no, we're going to pare it down to Longhorn, but it all ended up getting added back into Longhorn.
• ▶ 2:19:18 Ben Gilbert All these code names ended up referring to multiple things because it was emblematic of the organizational disarray inside the Windows development team.
• ▶ 2:19:45 Ben Gilbert Saying the next new release of Windows, which is five years since Windows XP, they really, really are counting on a new version of Windows to drive PC sales, and the one that they're getting requires pretty good GPUs.
• ▶ 2:19:45 Ben Gilbert Saying the next new release of Windows, which is five years since Windows XP, they really, really are counting on a new version of Windows to drive PC sales, and the one that they're getting requires pretty good GPUs.
• ▶ 2:20:06 Ben Gilbert But, if you did buy a nice PC, and you did eventually end up with a copy of Windows Vista, this is why you got to see the new, what, ah,
• ▶ 2:20:53 David Rosenthal I think it was kind of a fever dream of, like, let's stuff the internet fully into Windows.
• ▶ 2:21:06 Ben Gilbert If you remember from the last episode, we talked about Chicago, Windows, and Cairo, this theoretical thing
• ▶ 2:21:06 Ben Gilbert If you remember from the last episode, we talked about Chicago, Windows, and Cairo, this theoretical thing
• ▶ 2:22:07 David Rosenthal And what you're talking about here is the third pillar of Longhorn slash Blackcomb, which is WinFS, right?
• ▶ 2:23:24 Ben Gilbert They never built Longhorn.
• ▶ 2:23:32 Ben Gilbert And they ended up reforking from an old Windows Server version or something.
• ▶ 2:23:59 David Rosenthal So, okay, Longhorn Vista, this is truly a disaster for the company.
• ▶ 2:25:19 Ben Gilbert Even as late as 2009, so three and a half years after launch, something like that, three quarters of corporate PCs are still running XP and had never upgraded to Vista.
• ▶ 2:25:19 Ben Gilbert Even as late as 2009, so three and a half years after launch, something like that, three quarters of corporate PCs are still running XP and had never upgraded to Vista.
• ▶ 2:25:32 David Rosenthal You may have this in your notes, but Microsoft OEMs were so unhappy because consumers didn't want to buy Vista machines.
• ▶ 2:25:39 David Rosenthal Microsoft had to extend the ability for their OEM partners to keep selling XP machines to consumers for another two years after this.
• ▶ 2:25:50 Ben Gilbert This was kind of the Windows culture at its worst.
• ▶ 2:27:06 David Rosenthal One, so when Vista actually shipped, just sort of, you know, process-wise, it was, Ben, as you're saying, a complete reset.
• ▶ 2:27:15 David Rosenthal So, Brian Valentine comes over from Exchange, you know, in Windows Server in the enterprise world to take over managing, getting something out the door and just cut all the features, cut all the pillars of the Windows Longhorn vision.
• ▶ 2:27:15 David Rosenthal So, Brian Valentine comes over from Exchange, you know, in Windows Server in the enterprise world to take over managing, getting something out the door and just cut all the features, cut all the pillars of the Windows Longhorn vision.
• ▶ 2:28:30 David Rosenthal When you're a CEO, you have to engage with your OEM partners, you have to engage with enterprises, you have to engage with customers, and not that it's all Bill's fault by any means, but this Longhorn Black Home disaster, Ben, as you say,…
• ▶ 2:28:48 Ben Gilbert And if he's only spending his time on technical decisions, he needs some introduction into that feedback loop, some governor on how deep to go in re-architecting Windows for re-architecting Windows's sake.
• ▶ 2:29:48 David Rosenthal At the same time as Vista actually is coming out in late
• ▶ 2:30:17 David Rosenthal But the point is not that Apple is taking massive amounts of market share from Windows.
• ▶ 2:31:06 Ben Gilbert Market share is rising, and Microsoft comes out with Vista.
• ▶ 2:31:19 David Rosenthal This sets the stage for the iPhone, because Apple now, in stark contrast to Vista and with these ads, is training consumers with the benefits and the joy of it just works.
• ▶ 2:32:36 Ben Gilbert Who is writing Vista apps?
• ▶ 2:33:07 David Rosenthal Nobody is writing Vista apps, but the only people left who are writing Windows apps period are enterprise developers writing custom software for enterprises.
• ▶ 2:33:32 David Rosenthal Facebook is not writing a, ah, Windows Vista app.
• ▶ 2:33:37 Ben Gilbert So, the biggest things to hurt Microsoft coming out of Vista are what we just talked about losing developers, what we just talked about losing users.
• ▶ 2:33:48 Ben Gilbert I mean, consumers who are excited to buy a computer, they're just not excited to buy a Windows Vista PC.
• ▶ 2:33:59 Ben Gilbert I mean, Vista was a black hole.
• ▶ 2:34:26 Ben Gilbert I mean, IE is peaking and about to start falling off a cliff and are completely consumed by Vista.
• ▶ 2:34:46 Ben Gilbert Vista consumed a bunch of the smartest people, even if they had the right vision to be chasing, and the DOJ had just crippled
• ▶ 2:34:59 David Rosenthal In that conversation that we had with Steve, where he, you know, made the comment about my acquisitions, my mistakes, we just lost money on the bad ones, the genesis of that conversation was about Vista.
• ▶ 2:35:41 David Rosenthal And he goes and spends two years getting Vista out the door and then goes to Amazon.
• ▶ 2:36:19 David Rosenthal Let's do search, let's do mobile, Windows eight, Zune.
• ▶ 2:49:44 David Rosenthal Satya joined Microsoft first in 1992 from Sun Microsystems, and he joined as an evangelist for Windows NT.
• ▶ 3:02:12 Ben Gilbert No one would have been saying this about Microsoft in the Windows-ninety-five timeframe, but after the obsession with enterprise, the complete failure in consumer markets, but importantly,
• ▶ 3:05:01 Ben Gilbert One of which was Bill Gates was always talking about mobile computing, so much so that in the key slide in the Windows XP presentation, one of the big bullet points is mobile computing.
• ▶ 3:05:42 Ben Gilbert In the world of, I suppose they were early smartphones, Microsoft had developed Windows Mobile.
• ▶ 3:05:55 Ben Gilbert What Windows Mobile was, was an operating system for handset makers to adopt and put on their handsets, and, you know, these things kind of looked like Blackberries, or mostly keys with a little screen, and when you looked at it, it looked…
• ▶ 3:05:55 Ben Gilbert What Windows Mobile was, was an operating system for handset makers to adopt and put on their handsets, and, you know, these things kind of looked like Blackberries, or mostly keys with a little screen, and when you looked at it, it looked…
• ▶ 3:06:11 Ben Gilbert It had a little start menu, and it was much like the rest of the enterprise strategy, David, designed around all working seamlessly together with your Windows PC and Exchange and your corporate network.
• ▶ 3:06:58 Ben Gilbert You know, they, Dell could install some more stuff on top of Windows and customize the installation, but it was still
• ▶ 3:07:03 Ben Gilbert Windows XP.
• ▶ 3:07:09 Ben Gilbert That really wasn't the case with Windows Mobile phones.
• ▶ 3:07:13 Ben Gilbert The handset makers could modify the code of Windows Mobile.
• ▶ 3:08:00 Ben Gilbert Yes, they had Windows Mobile, but no, it was nothing like what smartphones would become because of the way that the iPhone reset everything.
• ▶ 3:08:10 David Rosenthal And at some point in this journey here, post iPhone, but still in this sort of weird Windows Mobile era,
• ▶ 3:11:09 Ben Gilbert But Windows Mobile was that old paradigm.
• ▶ 3:11:22 Ben Gilbert So, iPhones start selling, they're selling well, it's 2008, apps start coming out, it's 2009, sales start really picking up, and finally, Microsoft decides, hey, what we're gonna do is, we have this old asset, Windows Mobile.
• ▶ 3:11:42 Ben Gilbert We can repurpose some of that to make this new thing called Windows Phone, but unfortunately,
• ▶ 3:12:15 Ben Gilbert And the new strategy had to be, we will dictate really intense hardware requirements, because now with Windows Phone, we are making a promise to users to compete with the iPhone, where Microsoft is backing that up.
• ▶ 3:17:39 David Rosenthal And it's funny, you know, Microsoft did have Bing at this point in time, so they did have a business model that they could have used if they'd been willing to go free on Windows Phone.
• ▶ 3:21:57 David Rosenthal Let's talk about, let's start with Surface and Windows eight, which we got to talk briefly about Windows seven before that, because Windows seven was awesome.
• ▶ 3:21:57 David Rosenthal Let's talk about, let's start with Surface and Windows eight, which we got to talk briefly about Windows seven before that, because Windows seven was awesome.
• ▶ 3:22:10 David Rosenthal After the Vista disaster, he gets drafted to come over and run Windows.
• ▶ 3:22:29 David Rosenthal So he comes in for Windows seven and he does that for Windows.
• ▶ 3:22:44 David Rosenthal That's what Longhorn was.
• ▶ 3:22:48 David Rosenthal And he comes in, and he makes Windows Seven the Toyota Camry of PC operating systems.
• ▶ 3:23:07 Ben Gilbert Everyone's like, hey, it's like XP, but modern.
• ▶ 3:23:10 Ben Gilbert Or it's like Vista without all that random stuff and all the regressions that Vista had.
• ▶ 3:23:26 Ben Gilbert I honestly can't tell you a feature that launched in Windows seven.
• ▶ 3:23:31 David Rosenthal I have no idea, but I remember I had a Windows seven laptop when I first joined Madrona and it was great.
• ▶ 3:23:59 Ben Gilbert A lot of what the team was doing with Windows seven was, yeah,
• ▶ 3:24:03 Ben Gilbert yeah, we feel like we can do seven with our arms tied behind our back, but let's start thinking about the future, about what we're really gonna do now that we have all the infrastructure in place to really ship an interesting product.
• ▶ 3:24:20 Ben Gilbert Yeah, so Windows eight vision had kicked off.
• ▶ 3:24:30 Ben Gilbert They're awesome to watch the original vision of what Windows eight should be.