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Why doesn't Microsoft out-innovate Apple?

techblog.dallasnews.com — Microsoft spent $7.4 billion last year on research and development. Apple spent $844 million. Yet Apple seems to deliver far more innovative products to market.

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  • eggyacid, on 04/28/2008, -55/+208it's not in their DNA
    • rickcarson, on 04/28/2008, -10/+100Microsoft's modus operandi is to be third to market.
      Someone proves that a thing is possible (Visicalc)
      Someone else proves that you can make money off it (Lotus 1-2-3)
      Microsoft steps in and proves you can make enormously much more money off it by marketing it correctly (Excel)

      This pattern is repeated time and time again. Also, just because they fail to get it right the first time, doesn't mean they won't keep trying.
      • rudy23, on 04/28/2008, -36/+25Doesnt look like their strategy is working anymore.

        Zune is a huge failure.
        So is Vista
        and Microsoft Live (whatever it is anyways)
        • StormlordElite, on 04/28/2008, -27/+13Vista I agree with, but how is Zune a failure?
          • NYC10004, on 04/28/2008, -16/+22I don't see how either Vista or Zune is a failure. How did either of them fail?
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -10/+4Zune fails because they intentionally broke WM-DRM 10 to chase Apples business model. Thats really more of a failure on Microsofts part than Zune though.

            They are selling quite well though compared to the playsforsure stuff, though i do hear lots of people simply don't like using them. I've played with the flash one, the old 30, and the 80. I hate that flick interface.
          • DarkSamus, on 04/28/2008, -2/+12keep talking like that and you'll get a brown zune in no time
          • LOVEANDEQUALITY, on 04/28/2008, -7/+8zune= stupid!

            ipod touch= knowledge!
          • Kerrigore, on 04/28/2008, -1/+9Because everyone compared it to the iPod, thus because it didn't sell as well as the iPod, it is deemed a failure.
          • zapass, on 04/29/2008, -2/+2zune like xbox and vista are providential alternatives for the "me-too but not snob" crowd.
            the crowd that puts up with massive mediocrity just to make a point that they're not part of the elite.
            it's very republican, it's soft fascism everyday, on your screen, your phone, your car...
            it's kinda crappy, buggy and dull but OTOH, it gives you that warm feeling of belonging to the VAST MAJORITY
        • Charlotte_Web, on 04/28/2008, -4/+14Microsoft's had a lot of hit-or-miss stuff; this is nothing new. Microsoft Bob, anyone?

          They don't need for every product to be a success. Just a few key products in select categories.

          I wouldn't necessarily lump Vista in there, since Vista is merely the latest iteration of a product category they conquered a long time ago.
          • evenson, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Not a great example. Microsoft Bob was released in 1995 and wasn't the lynchpin of the company. You're right though, they don't need every product to be a success - just the ones that maintain their monopoly, i.e. Vista.
        • kipmartin, on 04/28/2008, -19/+17Zune is a failure because...they didnt sell. how about a hard question?
          • scbysnx, on 04/28/2008, -7/+25.. they do sell so.. how about a real answer?
          • 2shae, on 04/28/2008, -3/+6They don't sell well. In fact, the hardly sell.
            Have you even seen anyone on the street with a Zune lately?
          • jakem1, on 04/28/2008, -4/+5@2shae: Big deal. I've never seen anyone with an iPhone here in London but they still make Apple money. I'd probably buy a Zune if Microsoft would release them over here.
      • punkcat, on 04/28/2008, -13/+6they bought Lotus, and undercut competing office products, thats not a whole lot of what i would call R&D.
      • Lounger540, on 04/28/2008, -1/+33.2 steps.
        Screw it up the first time.
        Release under new name
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiPlan
    • NoCt1, on 04/28/2008, -28/+13No one wants to work for MS.. Thats the main thing.. Most people want to go to Apple or Google where they can have more freedoms..
      • kidcodea, on 04/28/2008, -3/+38oh yeah, the freedom at APPLE is astounding!
      • TheG2, on 04/28/2008, -5/+24Are you kidding? I'm on a college campus and Microsoft is one of the top 3 most highly sought after employers here. Google and Apple being the other two, but I personally know 6 people going to work at Microsoft at the end of this year.
        • NSResponder, on 04/28/2008, -14/+9Tell them to read the Mini-microsoft blog for a while before they do.

          -jcr
          • TheG2, on 04/28/2008, -1/+6Most of them/us have Co-op'd at Microsoft before and know exactly what it's like working there.
      • m0tbaillie, on 04/28/2008, -5/+13Seconding the guy above me. You're clearly just making ***** up because I know several CE/CS majors that have gone to work at Microsoft. They pay pretty well and offer great benefits/stock options.
      • chriskeyes, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2There's a video created by a Microsoft employee showing all his neat perks everyday at Microsoft. It's real.

        http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ik0T_O5FZNA
    • KiraDnote, on 04/28/2008, -20/+8Steve Ballmer is grossly incompetent. He's the corporate equivalent of GW Bush.
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -3/+3Hes a PR monkey, one that makes noise in public. I see no evidence that hes incompetent at all, i see him being used as the mouthpiece for what microsoft wants to say sometimes.
        • FlyingSpaghetti, on 04/28/2008, -3/+4"Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!"
        • Darph.Bobo, on 04/28/2008, -2/+1"I see no evidence that hes incompetent at all.."

          Can you say ZUNE?
    • MoofTheStoof, on 04/28/2008, -14/+20The thing to remember about Microsoft is that when they see somebody do something potentially profitable, they immediately yell, "Well, we're shipping the same thing in a couple months, why buy this when you can buy our version?" That effectively sucks all the buzz out of the competitor's product, and then MS ships a really crappy knock off. They ship on time, but never with enough time or vision to make the product a quality one - and usually the flaws take several upgrade cycles to get worked out, though by then the upgrades have introduced their own problems. At least they don't have to worry about their competitor, anymore, who shriveled up and died about the time the MS product shipped. Apple, on the other hand, doesn't even announce until they're almost ready to ship a very polished product. They don't self-impose impossible deadlines and they won't ship until it's ready. The result is far, far superior products... that Apple then practically gives away as long as you pay the premium they charge for Apple-branded hardware.
      • NSResponder, on 04/28/2008, -8/+10"They ship on time,"

        Your description is about a decade out of date. They used to do what you describe, but their ability to squelch the competition with vaporware announcements was dealt a huge blow by the Longhorn disaster and the Zune fiasco.

        -jcr
        • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -2/+9Same old MS, those things they DID ship are mere shells of what was promised. Longhorn is Vista plus some kernel improvements, new driver subsystem, new A/V stuff and a new window manager. Compared to what it was supposed to be, longhorn is STILL vaporware.
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -3/+5Yea im not awake yet, longhorn is ws2003/xp plus some stuff blah blah blah
      • vanscott, on 04/28/2008, -3/+2This isn't apples to apples. In terms of computing, MS encompasses a much greater space than Apple. MS is deep into the the enterprise market where Apple is mostly deep into the consumer market. Sure there is a great deal of overlap, mostly at the expense to MS however the amount of product which MS ships dwarfs that of Apple.
    • punkcat, on 04/28/2008, -2/+7its a true statement, Microsoft's business model is "developers, developers, developers." they make the ground work and rely on the outside to fuel the need for Windows.
      i don't think it was until recently that that model has been perceived as having faults.
    • etcimon, on 04/28/2008, -16/+49Buried as inaccurate. Microsoft Research is a real research group looking to patent new technologies. Apple only builds on their existing products with existing technologies.
      http://research.microsoft.com/Research/Projects/
      What has apple done? See below.
      http://www.apple.com/acg/archive.html
      • kipmartin, on 04/28/2008, -27/+7dugg down because i drank a lot of coffee and dont have time to go to microsoft and aple links. put it in your post or move on.
        • duniyadnd, on 04/28/2008, -2/+15Dugg you down cause I too drank lots of coffee and don't feel like reading your whining
      • homercles337, on 04/28/2008, -10/+12I was going to say the same thing. Comparing the two is apples and oranges. As in apple does not innovate at all, they market.
        • superkendall, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Microsoft markets the hell out of everything they do, in case you had not noticed.
        • Boondoggle, on 04/29/2008, -0/+3Have you ever heard of Firewire homer? That is just one Apple innovation that comes on almost every PC.
      • ThinkBox, on 04/28/2008, -8/+11As I recall, Apple had several hundred patents on the iPhone technology. How does that fit in with your limited description.

        And your point almost makes Microsoft seem even worse... the article points out that Microsoft has all this money and all this R&D and yet they refuse to make an innovative competitive product.

        • jakem1, on 04/28/2008, -2/+4The article I read (if you even want to call it an article - it seemed more like a brief blog post) didn't say that Microsoft "refuse" to make an innovative competitive product. The other thing to remember is that there are a number of innovations (that word is so overrated) in many MS products like Vista but they are just behind the scenes.

          Edit: I just noticed that rasmasyean made the same point but explained it better below.
      • superkendall, on 04/29/2008, -2/+3But what of practical use has come from Microsoft R&D? Not much the consumer ever sees. Meanwhile Apple probably issues just as many patents (remember how they were talking up the iPhone patents) and actually delivers products too.

        Microsoft R&D is, I am convinced, a golden tower meant only to keep bright people from prodcuing things for other companies, not really meant to make products Microsoft can use. It's more like a Zoo for impressive researchers.
    • DigiRaven, on 04/28/2008, -5/+37Why do people insist that Microsoft only makes vista, xbox, and zune? Microsoft's development goes far and beyond from what the average consumer will ever see in their lifetime. A lot of backbone goes into corporations. If Apply develops as much software as Microsoft you will see a big budget from their side as well.
      • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -8/+23Apple is mostly in the consumer business. Microsoft is mostly in the industry business. So if you never worked in IT in a corporation or something like that you only notice 5% of the MS products or parts of products at most. Apple has great user interfaces yes, but they are no where near MS innovation in whole. Any time you see an .aspx in your URL…that’s MS but it’s transparent to most people. Some URL’s you can’t even tell it’s MS. Ever see a WM streaming video? Ever banked or shopped online? I can tell you that none of them are Apple servers run or run by Apple software. There are so many products behind the scenes that integrate with each other saving corporations billions of $$ a year that are run by MS software that is not in the Windows Family.

        This article was obviously written just to attract Ad traffic to the news site.
        • VenTatsu, on 04/28/2008, -12/+5"I can tell you that none of them are Apple servers run or run by Apple software."
          If you can tell me than please do, and could you provide a little evidence to back it up? I mean it would take some substantial proof to be able to state that not one bank or e-commerce solution on the entire internet runs on a Mac server. While Mac servers are a niche market the idea that not a single online store is hosted on a Mac seems a bit odd.
          • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -4/+6Well...it could be out there. But the chance of you hitting one is pretty small that it's practically zero.

            If it is good, then we’ll see if it captures more market in a couple of years. But the only thing I can think they are used for is internal applications for like advertisement companies and such.
          • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -6/+7OK...here's a quick google result (2/28)...

            Top Server Market Findings

            Microsoft Windows servers showed positive growth as revenues grew 6.9% and unit shipments grew 9.8% year over year. Quarterly revenue of $5.7 billion for Microsoft Windows servers set an all-time high for a single quarter and represented the single largest revenue segment in the server market with 36.6% of overall quarterly factory revenue.
            Unix servers experienced 1.5% revenue growth year over year when compared with 4Q06. Worldwide Unix revenues were $5.2 billion for the quarter, representing 33.3% of quarterly server spending and reflecting continued IT investment in this server market segment, with particular strength in the midrange enterprise segment of the Unix market which comprises 53.8% of all Unix spending.
            Linux server revenue reached $2.0 billion for the first time in any single quarter on 11.6% year-over-year growth. Linux servers now represent 12.7% of all server revenue, up more than 1 point over 4Q06.

            http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS2111 ...

            They don't mention Mac anywhere in the article.
          • rasmasyean, on 04/29/2008, -1/+0adadfaf
          • mp93, on 04/30/2008, -0/+2@rasmasyean

            "They don't mention Mac anywhere in the article"

            Unix Servers?
        • soopafly, on 04/28/2008, -5/+7You're right, but most banks run on linux.
        • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -4/+4Linux is popular for data processing. Linux might be more gaining over older mainframes.
          But on the app and web server side, MS is encroaching fast. You can process data on MS servers too but it’s not as reliable and has too much overhead. But as CPU speed goes up and cost go down, i.e. you can have many redundant backups and load sharing…MS servers are also being favored. They don’t put anything on it like you do on your PC so it doesn’t slow it down to the Windoze as much that everyone keeps experiencing. The advantage is that it integrates easier with existing MS stuff. Yeah it’s a monopoly I know…but to a company, if it’s cheaper in the long run…it’s the best.
          • mrBitch, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Your links to "sales" of microsoft web servers doesn't actually represent the true percentage of actual web servers in service. Since most Linux web servers were never "sold" there is a vast difference when using "sales" to try and drum up what the percentage of actual MS IIS web servers Vs Apache web servers.

            Here's the real stats for web servers and what percentage MS actually holds of the web server market :
            http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_surve ...
            (Active Sites : web server stats as of March 2008)
            Developer March 2008 Percent April 2008 Percent Change
            Apache 33,011,740 49.38% 33,463,198 49.41% 0.04
            Microsoft 23,533,801 35.20% 23,272,840 34.37% -0.83
            Google 5,571,311 8.33% 6,347,034 9.37% 1.04
            Sun 172,218 0.26% 183,992 0.27% 0.01
            lighttpd 77,483 0.12% 76,653 0.11% -0.00

          • rasmasyean, on 04/29/2008, -1/+0You may be right about “web servers”. Fair enough. Anyway, considering that Linux is far older than MS IIS however, that makes your data seem less impressive for Linux and it looks to me that market shift is favoring MS IIS as mentioned elsewhere by someone on this page.
            But “web servers” aren’t all “banks” or other places use. As a matter of fact, only places like The Pirate Bay and Digg or equivalent who’s sole business is traffic have a relatively large web/other server ration. Most servers in businesses like banks are NOT web servers. Even if you include internals “web intranet application servers”, there are still much more server CPU used for something other than serving HTML pages. i.e. when you get a “System is currently being updated. Please try again later.” The web server is not doing anything. There another computer (usually cluster of them) churning away with programs that take several hours to run…on several multi-CPU computers.
      • superkendall, on 04/29/2008, -2/+4All of that is stolen from UNIX so it's not like there's much innovation there either. At least Apple uses open source for the back office stuff they include...
        • rasmasyean, on 04/29/2008, -3/+0So what is NOT originated in some form from Unix? That's like the oldest crap there is and hasn't changed much. Someone's gotta evolve it. Who was a leader in that? Sun??? That company has colapse pratically. You can say all of this is "stolen" form IBM assembler too.
      • Boondoggle, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2All that backend stuff is about as well done as Vista, and yeah, it was all done on UNIX first.
    • SpeedSteamBoat, on 04/28/2008, -21/+19It is indeed not in their DNA. Microsoft has almost literally never innovated on anything in the entire history of the company. Everything they do builds on either someone else's technology, proven formulas, or both. When they attempt to actually innovate they only prove their complete inability to do so. The development cycle of Vista provides ample proof of this. A slew of new, good in theory features scrapped because Microsoft simply cannot build its own technology. The result is quickly becoming obviously warmed over versions of older software.

      The two things Microsoft has practically always had going for them are an incredible marketing department and (of course) bottomless pockets with which to dump money into something until it becomes profitable. The question now becomes "How long can you keep selling practically the exact same thing with a new face and name?"

      Really, how many times can you change the tires and the paint job and still convince people it's a brand new car?

      We shale see.
      • specialK16, on 04/28/2008, -9/+19http://research.microsoft.com/Research/Projects/

        You see, things are more than what they seem to be.
      • jakem1, on 04/28/2008, -3/+11I thought everyone knew by now that many of the features in OS X were stolen from early builds of Longhorn and ideas Microsoft publicised.
        • mrBitch, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1So Microsoft's "ideas" (which have no substance, only vapor-ware which doesn't show up until 6 years AFTER they "announced" their ideas) were "stolen" by Apple which actually SHIPPED a real product ( OS X shipped in 2002, where as Microsoft "announced" that they would start working on Longhorn in 2001).
          http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/9E ...
          "OS X Jaguar was delivered in 2002; it offered many of the key features intended for Microsoft's Longhorn (which MS said would be ready in 2003).

          Apple then rapidly delivered OS X Panther in (2003), OS X Tiger (2005), and then moved OS X over on to Intel in 2006.

          Meanwhile, (by 2006) Longhorn hadn't gone anywhere but back to the drawing board. "
      • CovardeAnonimo, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1for decades, actually.

        if in doubt, check the intertubes how long the VW beetle or citroen 2CV remained in production. the mini is also following that road.

        if a product is so good it can stay decades in the market, what's the problem ?

        i still think they should've kept win2k pro on the market...
    • davidkeithjones, on 04/28/2008, -19/+6Riiiight, thats why MS is a juggernaut and Apple is still a tiny company in comparison. MS does innovate.
      • Malacandra95, on 04/28/2008, -3/+11So, size and wealth only accrue to those who innovate?
        Nonsense. Pioneers get arrows in their backs - the settlers who come afterwards get the land.
        • davidkeithjones, on 04/28/2008, -3/+7Innovation brings in new money. You can only ride your current products for so long before revenue dries up. MS is experiencing this issue with Windows right now. Over time new products with over take the Windows cash cow.
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -3/+5Apple is a tiny company who pulls in half of Microsofts revenue, so yea by your metric they are totally screwed.
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -1/+14I would refer you here:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft

        Have a look at the revenue for 2007. Microsoft = 51 billion, Apple = 24 billion.

        This tiny company is making half the revenue of Microsoft while having a much smaller installed base. I'd say they are doing just fine.
    • jgtg32a, on 04/28/2008, -5/+19Because innovation is trademarked by Apple.
      If Apple didn't do it its not innovation.
      • lharrod, on 04/28/2008, -7/+7Apple doesn't have a monopoly on innovation, but then again they kinda do. This is why the computer industry (not just fanboys) sits at the edge of their seats whenever Apple makes an announcement. Their influence is unmatched.
        • jgtg32a, on 04/28/2008, -6/+10Name something that has never been done before that Apple did first.
          Apple takes a bunch of nice ideas puts them together and gives them a flashy interface and calls in innovation.
          • Hamletlere, on 04/28/2008, -4/+9You need to check your definitions.

            invent: create to design (something that has not existed before)
            innovate: make changes in something established, esp. by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.

            Apple may not invent a lot of things, but I think they innovate plenty.
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -3/+5*****
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -1/+3Thats what i get for being clever and using pseudo-html tags in a digg post :D

            Then it told me my comment didn't exist when i went to edit lol
      • glock22ownr, on 04/28/2008, -1/+7iNnovation (tm)
    • tao52nyc, on 04/28/2008, -4/+2I think it's really an issue of one company "playing to win" while their competitor plays "not to lose". A subtle distinction in attitude, perhaps, but an important one. And generally, those playing not-to-lose ultimately do in the end.
    • glock22ownr, on 04/28/2008, -6/+4Sure it is... They are just innovating in a totally different area which may not be as visible to the general public. Compare XCode to Visual Studio for example... Part of me thinks Microsoft is spread too thin, Apple is narrow and deep with every product. Microsoft tries too hard to do it all. Now if they released a MacOS version of Visual Studio that would make my nipples wet.

      Both companies have strengths and weakneses, Microsoft just has a ***** ton more money.
      • intellimouse, on 04/28/2008, -2/+6XCode sucks compared to any version of Visual Studio. So, what's your point?
      • Tahiri, on 04/29/2008, -1/+4That Visual Studio counts as innovation
    • orangedude, on 04/28/2008, -8/+3That's like asking "Why can't an elephant outmaneuver a tiger"?
    • ChappyChaps11, on 04/28/2008, -5/+1You know, the funny thing about innovations is it implies new ideas. And the funny thing about THAT is, Apple and Microsoft products all have the same applications, just developed by different companies. Gimp, Photoshop, its all the same.
      • brettmurf, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Gimp vs Photoshop was the best (wrong) comparison you could come up with for an Apple vs Microsoft similarity?
        Have you used Windows, MacOS, Photoshop, or Gimp before?
    • superkendall, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2I dug you up thinking that was a subtle reference to Sony somehow.
    • eth0, on 04/29/2008, -1/+0Apple's innovation takes place in making existing technologies:
      * More efficient to use: takes less time to accomplish a particular task
      * Easier to learn: operation can be learned by observing the object
      * More satisfying to use

      The usability factor, which many people tend to overlook as it is hard to define and to be rational about, is what captures consumers.
  • moisie, on 04/28/2008, -21/+77With a company like Intel it isn't about innovation, they need to spend in order to just maintain natural progression. You really do wonder what MS spend the money on though.
    • rudy23, on 04/28/2008, -11/+57replacing broken chairs.
    • yohnstoppable, on 04/28/2008, -23/+11Are you implying that only Microsoft uses intel chips? Or were you just going on a complete tangent?
      • wejmahtin, on 04/28/2008, -1/+9He was referring to the money it said Intel was spending in the article.
      • halleyscomet, on 04/28/2008, -1/+15No, he read the article, which mentions Intel and uses it as part of the comparison. You however didn't read the article and therefore had no clue what he was posting about.
        • yohnstoppable, on 04/28/2008, -8/+2i actually did read the article, and it mentions that in fleeting. The main purpose of the article was about microsoft's spending and apple's innovation. This guy mentioned it without any other explanation, as if it had anything to do with the main premise of the article, which it didn't.

          Idiot
    • TypeEE, on 04/28/2008, -19/+13to buy macs so that they have something to look at for their feature planning. You know, mac are expensive.
    • illt, on 04/28/2008, -4/+28One of their many attempts to enter many different markets.
      Apple's market diversity is much smaller than microsofts.

      Let's also not forget some innovative stuff coming from MS like photosynth
      • Gir53457, on 04/28/2008, -2/+20And Sync.
        • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -7/+14Sync....hm. You know, lots of car manufacturers were building iPod integration in to their cars and radios without Apple having to step in at all. When Microsoft wanted to do the same thing they had to do it themselves, and even then they had to convince ford to let them.
          • jgtg32a, on 04/28/2008, -4/+8everyone owns an iPod. There was already a market for transmitters for the iPod.
            Sync has more functionality and should prove to be popular.
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -0/+5Well thats the point here isn't it, the iPod was doing well enough that car manufacturers were jumping all over each other to support it. Zune isn't doing so well, and MS had to step in and do the integration themselves.
          • jgtg32a, on 04/28/2008, -1/+6Sync has more functionality than just the Zune.
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -1/+1Sure Sync does more, but if MS wanted car manufacturers to support the ZUNE they had to do it themselves. That was the actual goal, to provide integration for the Zune in a world filled with iPod supporting cars and head units.
        • lskywalker, on 04/28/2008, -3/+4Uh, lots of companies had voice recognition to control car features several years ago. Ford had to buy it from Microsoft because they couldn't come up with something themselves.
      • sonstone, on 04/28/2008, -5/+38Let's also not forget that innovation doesn't just mean nice shiny laptop and music player for the masses. Businesses pay huge amounts of money for software that many don't know anything about. This is a game that apple doesn't even play in, so making blanket statements and comparisons like this is absurd.
      • kipmartin, on 04/28/2008, -5/+4and the Zune. kidding!
      • halleyscomet, on 04/28/2008, -8/+7How about the massive money pit known as the XBOX line? The first XBOX never turned a profit, losing quite literally Billions.

        A lot of that R&D goes into integrating, or at least tying to integrate, some of their purchases. Navision for example... *Shudder*
      • wejmahtin, on 04/28/2008, -12/+0Their target market is almost identical.
        • Ramble, on 04/28/2008, -0/+10No it isn't. Microsoft go for enterprise and business, Apple go for the home.
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -1/+5Microsoft goes for the home too, they just don't care as much.
          • wejmahtin, on 04/28/2008, -0/+1Since when has Microsoft not been after the residential market?
      • simg, on 04/28/2008, -2/+37and .NET
        and Visual Studio
        and Mesh
        and XNA
        and Silverlight
        and SQL Server

        I could go on.

        I'm not an MS fanboy, but they are developing a *lot* of stuff
        • CCB0x45, on 04/28/2008, -17/+4Well just to be fair apple has hit these markets as well..
          Objective C 2.0
          Xcode
          Core Animation and lots of other frameworks
          quicktime and h264

          they dont have anything like silverlight cause that is just trying to compete with flash, but apple does do a lot of innovation under the hood of their software and from a developer stance.
          • Theli, on 04/28/2008, -0/+10Apple invented h.264?
          • jakem1, on 04/28/2008, -0/+11Sorry but Apple doesn't have anything as powerful as .NET.
          • intellimouse, on 04/28/2008, -3/+4Haha, you fail mactard.
          • Tahiri, on 04/29/2008, -6/+1"Sorry but Apple doesn't have anything as powerful as .NET."

            Applescript/talk/Hypercard?
        • soopafly, on 04/28/2008, -9/+2Silverlight? That's like Flash right?
        • zigunerweisen, on 04/28/2008, -0/+15What does Apple has to do with H264 other than using it?
        • ilikechaitea, on 04/29/2008, -0/+6good point dude. People who've never used .NET or Visual Sutdio just don't realise how powerful and developer friendlty these tools are. Look I'm a .NET developer but I'm no MS fanboy....in fact I'm thinking of quitting .NET development only because I have to develop in Windows, and I'm limited to Windows platform or Web....unlike something like JAVA, or for example, I'd love to develop for the iPhone but obviously can't use .NET.. But the point is, if .NET ran on an open Virtual Machine like JAVA, and I could use Visual Studio in other operating systems, I'd never switch. MS doen't always get it right, but they understand development....I love the MS dev enviroment....if only it was open......
        • Atomic1fire, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Mono?
    • flashback99, on 04/28/2008, -15/+6Lawsuits & fighting linux...
    • spinaltap87, on 04/28/2008, -11/+10hookers, blow
    • SpeedSteamBoat, on 04/28/2008, -1/+23I don't understand your comment. Are you implying Intel doesn't innovate? If so I believe you may be mistaken. They didn't get this far out ahead of AMD by sticking with NetBurst. And really, when you get down to how the most modern Core Duo chips operate compared even to the original Core line there is a lot of very innovative stuff going on.
      • krische, on 04/28/2008, -0/+1Actually, I thought I remember reading on digg that much of the architecture of the Core 2 Duo chips were previously patented by University of Wisconsin - Madison.
    • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -5/+15For one “popular” technology, look up Microsoft .NET Framework. This is a dev tool that integrates Office, Web sites, Microsoft Servers of various types, mobiles, laptops, industrial PCs…and any computer device you can think of in an office or factory floor (and on your body these days too). They got their hands on it. .NET Framework is overtaking Java, and C++ as well (for those of you programming types out there).
      • CCB0x45, on 04/28/2008, -7/+8yea, an interpreted language that runs on lots of platforms, what insane innovation.
        And taking over C++? you are obviously not one of those "programming types"
        • intellimouse, on 04/28/2008, -4/+3Take a look at the number of jobs available for .Net programmers and compare that to the number of jobs available for C++ programmers. Do you see your complete and utter failure? No? Okay, well ask Steve Jobs to stop teabagging you and maybe you'll be able to see a little better.
        • kieranmaine, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3Surely because you have C++ .net it less of an issue anyway. You can stick to your C++ syntax but use anything in .NET you find useful.
          I've never used C++ but .NET seems pretty flexible to me. MS are moving in the right direction by becoming alot more unit test focused as well. Check out this http://research.microsoft.com/Pex/ - I don't fully understand it but anything to speed up unit testing is a good move. Plus ASP.NET 3.5 is a great move. The MVC model is nothing new but it's good they've gone there. Plus you see the likes of Scott Gu (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/) using jquery as opposed to the bloated asp.net ajax.
          • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -2/+1C# = C++ ++ (stack the two "++" s on top of one another)
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -2/+7If you mean in business environments, no it isn't, java is still king much as i hate it. If you mean on large websites, maybe, but I doubt it. If you mean in consumer app programming, like photoshop etc, no not there either.

        .net is nice but lets not pretend its already taken over the world.
      • mlavergn, on 04/28/2008, -7/+6.NET Framework is overtaking Java, and C++
        Sorry to burst your bubble but no, it's not:
        http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/t ...
        Applications are overwhelmingly written in Java and C/C++.
      • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -2/+5I said it’s “overtaking”… not “more prevalent”. Java and C++ have years of head start. Look at the chart. Java and C++ both have negative slopes. They are decreasing. C# and VB is increasing. At this rate, it will become more prevalent in a couple of years maybe. But it looks like if you add C# and VB, it MIGHT be more. But of course the future is unpredictable…
        • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -1/+6Java has a head start yes, and Microsoft spent a large number of years trying to lock Java to windows by implementing proprietary extensions. They got sued by Sun for doing so, which is why Java isn't shipped with Windows anymore, and why MS had to develop .NET, because they like to lock things to Windows.
          • jakem1, on 04/28/2008, -1/+7Who cares if it's locked to Windows. The fact that just about every language out there from Cobol to C# to Ruby can target the same framework is unbelievably cool. Also, there has been some (if only limited) interaction between Microsoft and Mono and hopefully this will increase now that Microsoft are helping with Moonlight. There was also talk (about a year ago IIRC) of Microsoft working on a .NET port to OS X. This too would be very cool although I doubt it will happen.
          • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3Don't get me wrong, .net is incredibly cool, i love this stuff. Microsoft has some serious talent working for them and it shows. I just never know what to make of Microsoft, they are a multi headed monster. Some heads are good developers, others are marketing idiots, others are chair throwing monkeys.

            I reserve my praise with Microsoft though, because they have a history of using stuff like this to prop up Windows even when they could have made substantially more money just providing a vendor neutral platform for development.
    • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -1/+16What??? Putting double the amount of transistors in one square inch of silicon every year is not innovation? What do you want? Warp Drives?
      • mrsteveman1, on 04/28/2008, -0/+7isolinear memory, bitches
      • ORBAT, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3Where's my flying car and personal robot servant? I was PROMISED I'd have those by the year 2000, and that was 8 years ago.
    • jabberwolf, on 04/28/2008, -7/+13How about MS working with just about every Vendor under the sun ?!?!

      And Apple? They work with few vendors and have pissed most of them off.
      Yep, innovation - WHAT INNOVATION? Sorry but the only think that Apple has done right has been the iPod or iTouch.
      Everything else has either been bought borrowed or taken.
      • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -5/+4They innovate in "Human Factor Design". It makes computer users out of computer idiots. Like your Grandma theoretically. You can argue whether that's an "innovation" but it has yeilded profits that shareholders don't disagree with. LOL
        • drouk1556, on 04/29/2008, -1/+2People can use Windows pretty easily too, you know.
          • rasmasyean, on 04/29/2008, -0/+0YOU may think so…but it’s about “psychology”. You have to understand that many people use their “emotions” to help learn. When the experience is enjoyable because it’s all pretty and intuitive, it helps a lot of people. Young people (prolly much of the Digg population) grew up with computers. Older people grew up with paper and pencils and manila folders. If stuff on Windows…like too many settings and too many “clicks” and “menu trees” to remember frustrate them, it makes it harder to pick up and they don’t want to use it anymore. It’s more of a chore than a hobby. Ever heard the adage “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”.
            It’s also somewhat true generally for emotional versus logical people. Vulcans loves Linux. And take a look at Mac markets…Advertisement, Art…all the professions where emotional workers are. They don’t want the extra settings and “power” and fine detailed control. They want to be “happy” and get the basic things done and over with.
            And don’t give me that “games” make you happy crap…That’s not what I mean. haha
      • frisk415, on 04/29/2008, -2/+0LOL!!!!! GAAAYYYYY GUUUYYYYYY!!!!!
      • mrBitch, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2@jabberwolf re your comment : " How about MS working with just about every Vendor under the sun ?"
        Errm, every company that MS has ever had a "partner" relationship has been shafted by MS (every single time).
        A few examples :
        1. MS partners with IBM to provide DOS (which MS bought from a guy who called it "quick and dirty OS"). Result : MS shafts IBM and sells DOS to every other clone PC manufacturer under the sun.
        2. MS partners with IBM to create OS/2. Result : MS shafts IBM by developing Windows NT instead (and hiring away most of the IBM engineers to then write Windows NT 4 for MS).
        3. MS partners with Apple to develop desktop apps for the Apple Mac. Result : MS shafts Apple by copying most of the GUI design concepts & calling it Windows 1.0
        4. Microsoft partners with Toshiba to build the "Zune" (actually, most of the Zune 1.0 hardware was just a Toshiba GigaBeat on the inside). Result : MS shafts Toshiba (and all other "PlaysForSure" partners) by changing the type of DRM on the Zune to work differently to all of the other "PlaysForSure" branded players.
        5. Microsoft partners with Toshiba to push the HD DVD standard. Guess how that worked out?
    • Rileyluck, on 04/28/2008, -2/+1to answer your question sir,
      hookers
    • buggu, on 04/29/2008, -3/+1The author forgets that MS has more products than just an OS. It's true they aren't as innovative as Apple, but then again, as the market leader, they don't need to be. Besides, MS is working and researching several technologies at once. Concepts like MS Surface, the integration of MS products with cars, Windows Mobile, MS Office and working on the next OS (Vista itself had billions spent on it, I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of that R&D money went towards Windows Seven).
  • philodygmn, on 04/28/2008, -45/+81I'd hate to see them try. We'd get more "innovative" "standards" like OOXML, "unique" takes on W3C compliance, and a software platform so perniciously incompetent it'll absorb all effort which would have gone into real innovation redirected into contortions required to counteracting the damage.
    • rickcarson, on 04/28/2008, -5/+13Check out Singularity

      http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080304-sing ...

      That's some interesting stuff they've got there. Not just an OS but a language (Sing#) as well.
      • ORBAT, on 04/28/2008, -2/+3Oh great, a managed code kernel. Tell me again why "Trusted Computing" (look up NGSCB) would be a good idea?
    • scrumdiddly, on 04/28/2008, -8/+4Why the hell are you being dugg down for that?
      • coldpockets, on 04/28/2008, -6/+8It's nothing but inflammatory FUD. All it served was to let us know that philodygmn doesn't like Microsoft.
        • wejmahtin, on 04/28/2008, -4/+5Philodygmn is right though. They've only taken other technology and put their own proprietary spin on it, claiming that it's inventive. Look at what they tried to do to Java and XML. And take for instance the fact that Microsoft was the last operating system on the plant to incorporate an IP stack in it. Oh and then there's the browser, the ripped off look and feel from NeXT... I could go on...
          • jakem1, on 04/28/2008, -2/+3Java deserved everything it got. Whether you like it or not IE gave you AJAX. They do do some things right.
          • coldpockets, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1I think there is a VERY important distinction between breaking standards just for the hell of it and innovation. Web developers will have to deal with inconcistencies among browsers, it's unlikely that will ever change. Introducing new features into your browser that developers can use in parts of their web app. that they can degrade gracefully really isn't a bad thing, IMHO. If you don't like it, don't use it, if it's useful enough, other browers will adopt at it, and eventually so will the W3C, begrudgingly.
    • FutureGuy, on 04/28/2008, -6/+16MS is in many ways an innovative company. 2 of the top 10 most brilliant gadgets from 2007 as per popular mechanics are from MS http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industr ... MS is much bigger and diverse company then Apple is or would ever be. If you are browsing a website (IE,IIS,SQL), playing games (XBox), listing to music (Zune, Window Media Player), driving a car (Sync), searching the net (live.com), finding directions (maps.live.com) and doing many other things you might be using a MS product, ohh wait did I mention they also make an OS and office productivity products.
      • luchid, on 04/28/2008, -12/+6LOL @ IE, IIS, Zune, WMP and Sync. Those are all really pathetic products.
        • specialK16, on 04/28/2008, -9/+19Lol @ iTunes, the ***** music player ever.
          • QurrUm, on 04/28/2008, -5/+5iTunes actually isn't that bad on a Mac. It's only crap on Windows. That could just be really good marketing on Apple's part.
        • FutureGuy, on 04/28/2008, -3/+12IE was the first brower to contain HTTPServerObject with which MS pretty much invented Ajax http://garrettsmith.net/blog/archives/2006/01/micr ...
          IIS, .Net and ASP .net, Visual studio suite is arguably one of the best development platform for web applications
          Zune 2 is one of the best received MP3 players around and WMP and iTunes are the only 2 decent all round media apps
          Sync was one of the 2 products to recieve the popular mechanics 2007 top 10 most brilliant product list, funny you mentioned that.
      • eboulian, on 04/28/2008, -2/+6Let's not forget that they hold a strong market share in server OS (by strong I don't mean huge as *nix does) and also produce Visual Studio which they likely hold at least an 80% market share in the development aspect.
      • robbiemuffin, on 04/28/2008, -1/+2MS had to push the entire programming community onward from C++ ... therefore obviously they've been too busy to really innovate in the Wii Fit and iPhone sort of way.

        (Yeah ok, that's huge credit to .NET and it sounds funny at first... but think about it. where was C# before .NET ? )
      • superkendall, on 04/29/2008, -1/+3But the reality is that if I am browsing a website (Safari, Mozilla) playing games (PS2) listening to music (iTunes/iPod) driving a car (plain car) or searching the internet (Google) or maps (Google) chances are that in fact I am not using a Microsoft product, for most of those things except for thr browser chances are slim indeed I'd be using a Microsoft product. Microsoft may do many things but it doesn't mean they do all of them well.
        • eboulian, on 04/30/2008, -0/+1Reality is, if you are browsing a website, it could be sitting on an IIS server. Playing games, you could end up buying an Xbox or a 360 (not you, but everyone). Driving a car, same applies. Listening to music, same thing. Searching the internet, well using google they are likely using a slew of *nix servers, but ultimately the site you choose to navigate to could be running Microsoft.

          I'm trying to be a devil's advocate here. I am 100% PS3/Linux fan, however, I give credit where credit is due. Microsoft wouldn't be the leading software manufacturer in the world if they didn't do what they did. The average user is a Microsoft user. The average developer, uses Studio. A lot of government institutions use Windows XP and Windows Server for their systems (as they can point a finger to someone of something goes bad).
    • shadowfoxmi, on 04/28/2008, -2/+2seriously..
    • etx313, on 04/28/2008, -2/+3Ding Ding Ding!!! We have a WINNER!
    • gcnaddict, on 04/28/2008, -2/+5http://research.microsoft.com/

      ...and on that note, you just lost.
  • philodygmn, on 04/28/2008, -53/+5I'd hate to see them try. We'd get more "innovative" "standards" like OOXML, "unique" takes on W3C compliance, and a software platform so perniciously incompetent it will redirect all effort which would have gone into real innovation instead into being absorbed by contortions required to counteract the damage.
    • rickcarson, on 04/28/2008, -3/+8Or comment systems with double posts?
    • PabloMac, on 04/28/2008, -2/+3Buried for repetition and redundancy.
  • amanilaenvelope, on 04/28/2008, -30/+15you know one might think that all that money going into R & D would've at least produce something, but it seems with Microsoft it always backfires.
    • elpohl, on 04/28/2008, -3/+6I don't know if it's already been mentioned somewhere in this thread, but some huge portion of that budget - I guess - is going to Microsoft Surface... and it really shows. It destined be THE next great thing.
      • mrBitch, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1If you think that "Surface" is the next big thing, then you really got sucked in by those marketing geniuses hired by MS.
        "The Surface doesn't even use a touch screen, but rather a projector and a set of infrared cameras that sense the positioning of objects and direct manipulation occurring on top of its bathtub base.
        This is technology hobbyists have been building on their own for years, not the result of some top secret project.
        Microsoft Surface should have been called Vista Veneer. "
        and :
        "At last month's Maker Faire, homebrew robot makers were showing off a rear projection lucite table that similarly responded to finger touches from multiple users. I stuck my hands on it. Did they spend six years inside of a Microsoft bunker to whip together that free demonstration? No, they built it in their garage from spare parts."
        http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/BE ...
    • Aensland, on 04/28/2008, -1/+6It always backfires... right. I guess that explains them going belly up that day. Oh, wait-
  • clak, on 04/28/2008, -45/+32Both companies had 2 totally different starts.

    Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft while porting BASIC to the Altaire.

    Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started Apple creating a computer that had color graphics and an integrated keyboard, innovations that made the Apple II the industry standard for almost 2 decades.

    So Apple had innovation from its inception.
    • confoundedjoe, on 04/28/2008, -2/+16what 2 decades are you talking about?
    • logan074, on 04/28/2008, -2/+9From 1977 to 1997 apparently?
      • wejmahtin, on 04/28/2008, -0/+4Color macs and the Apple II were developed in the 80s. The LCIII came out in like 92, and they had color machines long before then.
    • TheG2, on 04/28/2008, -4/+19For the record, baring laptops, building a keyboard directly into a computer is a horribly stupid idea.
      • PabloMac, on 04/28/2008, -2/+8Maybe now, but it wasn't so bad at the time.
      • ORBAT, on 04/28/2008, -0/+2Guess you've never used Amiga 500s, C64s or their ilk?
  • cquinnd, on 04/28/2008, -21/+376Their innovations are targeting completely different markets.
    Apple has Itunes, MS has XBox.
    Apple has iLife, MS has BackOffice.
    Apple focuses their development on Apple branded products. MS has focus in many different areas of the computing landscape, working with many different brands for partnerships on products and services.
    • clak, on 04/28/2008, -81/+19The Xbox isn't innovation. It's just a copy of the Sony Playstation. Microsoft doesn't enter markets unless someone else shows them a business model they can copy.
      • asskey, on 04/28/2008, -7/+19They innovated with Xbox Live. Though if PS3 Home ever makes it out I can't see anyone bragging about that ever again...
        • giant.robot, on 04/28/2008, -10/+15XBox Live is a progression from the MSN Internet Gaming Zone which itself was purchased from another company in 1996 and then rebranded. Most if not all of the XBL features were first introduced in the IGZ.
        • Myztry, on 04/28/2008, -15/+4Meh. Xbox live is just what GameSpy and the lieks would have been if they'd been in controlling situation like Microsoft.
        • paulsmith288, on 04/28/2008, -7/+5you to young to remember gamespy??? Quake used to rule the online world.
      • buenit, on 04/28/2008, -2/+41So by your logic, that would make playstation a copy of sega cd.
      • FutureGuy, on 04/28/2008, -1/+19Right PlayStation was original, no one ever came up with a game console before /s
      • jasongdx, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3Too bad Sony took the idea and name for a disc-based console from Nintendo.
      • brettruffenach, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1When they tried to research Apple's market, they got the Blue Screen of Death

    • skywake, on 04/28/2008, -2/+69Microsoft (as much as I hate them) also fund a lot of third party research projects. A lot of the stuff that comes out of it are the sort of things you don't buy off the shelf. There are other areas of computing outside of the consumer and small business type stuff.
      • HoratioHellpop, on 04/28/2008, -11/+2And you hate them because .... you're a linux fanboi? Or a better reason (outside of the usual drivel)?
      • rasmasyean, on 04/28/2008, -3/+13You might hate Windows…but trust me, MS products have benefitted you much more than you have noticed. There are MS products everywhere. Even in some cars if you can believe that.
    • kipmarlowe, on 04/28/2008, -22/+6What you're saying is actually true but, as with so many things, it's a bit more complicated than that. Believe it if you need to make yourself feel better, I suppose, but here's an explanation that makes just as much sense . . . (I choose to believe some of both.)

      "Posted by Gary @ 4:18 PM Thu, Apr 24, 2008

      Bear in mind that Microsoft from the beginning has taken "shortcuts." They got started by buying someone else's (Seattle Computer's) refinement on the industry standard CP/M (called QDOS for "Quick and Dirty" OS), sold it to IBM to use as "PC-DOS" for its new computer, and once IBM's rep in the business world made its computer the new standard, repackaged it again and sold it to everybody else as "MS-DOS." This was a quick ticket to massive financial success, but not to "authenticity," innovation or creativity."
      • sonstone, on 04/28/2008, -1/+17And that is different from apple purchasing NeXT in what way?
      • Ramble, on 04/28/2008, -0/+8So? Microsoft made software a business, the implications of that were mind boggingly huge.
    • plasticxme, on 04/28/2008, -7/+28Really? I do not recall ever seeing a PSX, PSOne, or original PS2 come with both a HDD and built-in Ethernet port. Come to think of it, Sony was even too lazy to create a polished online experience like Live.

      Using your logic, one could say that the Sony Playstation was a complete rip of Nintendo's SNES. I mean, PSX was originally being developed to be an add-on for the SNES so that it could run games off of disc, in 3D.
      • paulsmith288, on 04/28/2008, -10/+2lol , yes they did introduce the HDD. XBOX original was a nice console - shame about the noise.
        BUT THEN THEY TOOK IT OFF FOR THE 'NEXT GEN' 360!!!
        Major techno step backwards - but seems like a reasonable business decision
        Not sure about ethernet port as the ps2 does have that in the newer editions. Dreamcast have one?
        • Forsakenmantra, on 04/28/2008, -1/+9I am not sure what rock you crawled from, but where did you ever get the idea that the 360 has no HDD? Just because its detachable (which is actually a handy feature), or you were a fool and bought a core system you are just flat out wrong. Also, the hdd in the xbox original was only 10 Gb.
          • EtherGnat, on 04/28/2008, -3/+3Actually I think not having a hard drive standard was a huge mistake by Microsoft. Not being able to count on a hard drive limits what developers can do with it. A mandatory hard drive would have gone a long way towards offsetting the PS3s Blu-ray space advantage for gaming, because data could have been cached to the hard drive. That's just my $0.02 worth anyway.
    • TheUngod, on 04/28/2008, -5/+55Sadly people assume that Microsoft means "Windows." They forget about things like SQL and such other things that Apple doesn't have.
      • sonstone, on 04/28/2008, -3/+30SQL is just the tip of the iceberg...
      • pdbailey, on 04/28/2008, -8/+3Just for the record, IBM invented SQL.
        And there is no sense in which Apple doesn't "have" SQL.
        • mrBitch, on 04/29/2008, -2/+2Why is pdbailey being dugg down? He is absolutely correct, SQL was invented by an IBM engineer, while working for IBM.
        • TheUngod, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Inventing it isn't what we're talking about. We're talking about development, and that is what Microsoft is currently doing with SQL
        • adc86, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1No, a quick glance up at the title bar shows the subject-- to "out-innovate." Not to out-develop. While development is a means of delivering innovation, the innovation has to happen first.
      • eth0, on 04/29/2008, -2/+2Microsoft did not invent SQL, which is where the innovation took place.
        Their implementation of it is not particularly impressive.
        • TheUngod, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1Compare SQL2000 with SQL2005 and try telling me that again with a straight face
    • dajernts, on 04/28/2008, -2/+39MS aims to build infrastructure while Apple aims to build single encapsulated products. Metaphorically speaking, MS builds the room and allows you to put whatever furniture you want in it while Apple builds the room and furnishes it. As such, MS's innovations are less noticeable as the room must be easily adaptable by furniture makers while Apple's innovation are much more noticeable, as they have free reign to build the room as they wish. Either situation has it's benefits. Most people don't buy fully furnished houses though.

      /long winded metaphor
      • eth0, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1I think they would if they could.
        People do hire interior decorators for this purpose.
    • MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/28/2008, -8/+11Anti-Trust Lawsuits broke the spirit of Microsoft.
      Half the stuff they should do to move forward they can't do because the EU would give them Billion dollar fines.

      ie: Securing the Vista kernel.
      • ORBAT, on 04/28/2008, -4/+4Er, why would the EU fine Microsoft for securing the Vista kernel? Or is this just a generic, "damn European commie hippies interfering with the God-given rights of US companies"-kind of rant?
        • MacSuxWindozSux, on 05/01/2008, -0/+1Look it up. Anti-Virus companies lead the assault.
      • dajernts, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3Your wrote "ie"securing the vista kernel. I'm sure you didn't mean it but it was good pun. The EU gave them hell about including internet explorer in vista too.
    • smakusdod, on 04/28/2008, -6/+16C'mon, let's be honest, Apple doesn't spend ANY money on making iTunes better... only fatter. And not the PH kind of fat either.
      • adc86, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Maybe not so much any more, what with stuffing it full of compatibility with the new iPods, iPhone, AppleTV, etc... From what I could find out, though, Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 was the first version to allow sharing, and I'm not even sure if that's Zeroconf... (Correct me if I'm wrong as I think this illustrates the point of the article). If that's the case, it was released in october 2006. iTunes got ZerfoCont subnet & ip sharing in version 4.0 -- 2003.
    • mirunit, on 04/28/2008, -9/+5If you think about Itunes really is not that impressive of a feat compared to the Xbox - technologically speaking. I bought an Apple laptop because I liked the way it looked (form factor etc) and the fact it easily dual-boots. I do not use Itunes on OSX and do not even have in installed in Windows.
      • ThinkBox, on 04/28/2008, -6/+6do you remember when you had to use winamp and a folder structure to manage your music?

        iTunes was a better library player long before anything else. Windows Media Player is still a jumbled confusing mess
        • kinglenster, on 04/28/2008, -5/+4yeah what is everyone's problem with iTunes? What the hell do you use to put songs on your ipod? iTunes is great, and I have never bought a single song from it.

          Microsoft software in general has the tendency to be jumbled and confusing. That is the number one reason that people choose Apple.
          • Kilometers, on 04/28/2008, -2/+4People hate iTunes because it takes up far too much memory. Try using a large browser such as Firefox and iTunes at the same time, it doesn't work. I put songs on my iPod through iTunes but listen to music through WinAmp.
          • Twee, on 04/29/2008, -2/+2Sounds like you need to upgrade your Vista box to 4GB of ram if it can't handle running iTunes and Firefox at the same time.
        • mirunit, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2I currently use Nero.

          "What the hell do you use to put songs on your ipod?"

          I have a series 60 phone (N95) , no need for iTunes.
      • CycloneTH, on 04/28/2008, -4/+2"iTunes was a better library player long before anything else. Windows Media Player is still a jumbled confusing mess"

        You've clearly never used Winamp
    • Genma, on 04/28/2008, -1/+16yep some random mac user who blogs for some random newspaper sees a bunch of random budget figures (in a sane comparison) from wsj and immediately pukes up some fanboy blurb comparing something completely irrelevant to his arch nemesis. hey cisco and hp both have products in direct competition, let's compare their r&d budgets for no apparent reason.
    • worldsbestgamer, on 04/28/2008, -3/+14Wow. Someone who didn't tout Apple got 130 diggs. This site still has a spark of hope.
    • ClevelandBrown, on 04/28/2008, -0/+6YES, thank you, finally someone realizes it.
    • gcnaddict, on 04/28/2008, -2/+6http://research.microsoft.com/
    • sniper68, on 04/29/2008, -3/+2Apple has iPhone, MS has Surface
      Apple has iPod, MS has Zune and Sync
  • LANjackal, on 04/28/2008, -73/+219FACT: According to an IEEE survery. MS is the top software industry innovator: http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9836499-16.html?p ...

    Author of this article needs to do his homework. Buried.
    • timusca, on 04/28/2008, -46/+43Since when is a survey about an OPINION considered a FACT? Exactly how has Vista shown more innovation than Leopard?
      • MioTheGreat, on 04/28/2008, -17/+39What exactly has Leopard innovated?

        Half the stuff in Vista was copied by competitors while it was still in beta.
        • jeriqo, on 04/28/2008, -10/+5huh?
          competitors?
          who?
        • ikkefc3, on 04/29/2008, -2/+0Leopard has copied some artwork/window manager functionality and included a backup solution.
      • protogenxl, on 04/28/2008, -7/+19When it comes to enterprise management Microsoft is in the vanguard. Active Directory blew Mac's out of the business environment and Apple has been playing catch up ever since.
        • Markie1006, on 04/28/2008, -10/+3What?

          Oh, you mean embraced & extended LDAP & Kerberos. *nix systems have had that for years.
        • MacSuxWindozSux, on 04/28/2008, -2/+8Active Directory is based on LDAP but they aren't the same thing.
          • mrBitch, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Actually, that's another Microsoft partner that got shafted (thanks for reminding me).

            MS Active Directory is a complete copy of "StreetTalk Services" which was developed by James Allchin while he was working for Banyan Vines.
            "Microsoft hired James Allchin, known as the "Father of StreetTalk," Microsoft ran into technical difficulties, particularly in world-wide synchronization of Active Directory across time zones. Not afraid to use outside expertise, Microsoft actually partnered with Banyan in one of Banyan's last strategic and, many would argue, ultimately fatal partnerships, as Banyan sent a team of its most experienced StreetTalk engineers to Redmond to "fix Active Directory." With that "fix" purported to be highly successful, to many, both internally as well as in the Industry, Banyan had written its own death warrant. "
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banyan_Vines
      • sonstone, on 04/28/2008, -1/+16Because these companies only make an OS. And because each of these companies have the same requirements for their OS... I'm sorry, I like leopard as much as the next guy; but the reality is that MS has a much more difficult job making an OS than Mac does because of how deeply entrenched it's install base is and the wide variety of system implementations being deployed on it.
      • RetlawST, on 04/28/2008, -0/+7But that the survey actually happened, is a fact. How does one even judge innovation to begin with? It's all pretty much opinion.
        • dig1x, on 04/28/2008, -0/+0The point of a survey is to take "opinion" and render it into something objective.

          Opinions -- taken together -- have meaning. individual opinions dont have much weight.
      • coldpockets, on 04/28/2008, -4/+14Reading comprehension?
        "FACT: According to an IEEE survery. MS is the top software industry innovator"
        not "FACT: MS is the top software industry innovator"
        The "According to an IEEE survery" is the key part there. Which is a fact, is it not?
        • dig1x, on 04/28/2008, -3/+1"According to an IEEE survery" would mean that the survey's results would be even more reputable.

          This isnt a survey "according to diggers" - which would be considered (by a sane person) a little less worthwhile. You make a good point for sure, but it only re-enforces the GP's point.
      • kretik, on 04/28/2008, -3/+1When the opinion criticizes Microsoft, of course. Welcome to Digg!
      • quikboy, on 04/29/2008, -0/+5Desktop Search and a Widget-like system were present in the Longhorn preview offered at PDC 2003.

        Tiger came 2 years later.
      • Zera, on 04/29/2008, -1/+5"Since when is a survey about an OPINION considered a FACT?"

        Because the IEEE's opinion is no mere opinion. The IEEE is your daddy, whether you know it or not.
        Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE

        Highlights for the no-attention span: (prepare to catch your jaw)
        "IEEE produces 30 percent of the world's literature in the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields"
        "In 2005, IEEE had close to 900 active standards, with 500 standards under development."
        "The IEEE has the most members of any technical professional organization in the world, with more than 365,000 members in over 150 countries."
        • nitewing98, on 04/29/2008, -3/+1"In 2005, IEEE had close to 900 active standards, with 500 standards under development."

          All of which MS is busy breaking.
    • BuddingMonkey, on 04/28/2008, -10/+60FACT: Bears eat beets. Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica.
    • deadmantalkin, on 04/28/2008, -15/+4The only thing that Microsoft has done that seems innovative of late is Surface, and even that's been delayed.
    • insanebrain, on 04/28/2008, -18/+5So the IEEE is right ?? I think the consumer is right, and the consumer ISN'T buying Vista .. buried you for lame comment.
    • davidkeithjones, on 04/28/2008, -11/+7Oh no! Not facts! Fact + Digg = Blackhole
    • davidrools, on 04/28/2008, -4/+7Exactly. Just because Apple gets lots of publicity for shiny new toys and skinny notebooks they're perceived as the most innovative. I'm not a fan of Microsoft by any means but they've done a ton of innovating over the years with Windows and Office alone, in addition to all the behind the screen stuff. I run linux on my laptops but installed Vista on my HTPC and it's a feature packed, snappy OS.
    • DulcetTone, on 04/28/2008, -9/+3Innovation comes from creative people, not people who think any professional ambition will be seriously advanced by membership in IEEE. Creative thinkers aren't generally drawn to acronym-based professional organizations that form a sort of a purgatory for government employees.
      • trevorh, on 04/28/2008, -0/+6That is quite the statement are you saying that the world's largest technical professional organization does not have creative members.
        You, sir, are an idiot.
      • pdbailey, on 04/28/2008, -0/+4Excellent points, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce wee just idiots. Flimsy founding silicon valley, coming up with Al-Si based transistors, and co-inventing the IC.
    • nitewing98, on 04/29/2008, -2/+4Without defending whether Apple's an "innovator" or not, I'm SURE that MS isn't. GUI? Xerox and Apple had it first, no innovation there. File serving and networking? Nope, Novell had that first. Roaming profiles and/or users having their own space & settings? Nope, Unix was first. DOS? No, Apple again had a DOS of its own long before PC-DOS came out. Media players? Nope, Real and QuickTime were there first. Browsers? Nope, Netscape was there first.

      Just exactly what do you claim MS innovated? Illegal business tactics? Monopolizing the computer industry? Kicking smaller companies (who had something MS wanted) in the crotch?

      Face it, MS makes money with companies because they don't innovate, they use "tried and true" things that other, more adventurous companies have innovated. I don't hate MS but please, let's be objective here.
      • daftman, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Innovation is not invention.
        Innovation is doing something better than it is originally doing
        Invention is doing something completely different in a new direction that has not been done.

        Alot of people including yourself seem to mistake that.
        Putting rubbers around wheel is an innovation. Making the wheel is an invention
        Microsoft doesn't need to invent the GUI. All they need to do is to make it Better than it was.
        I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but you need to give them credits for taking an idea and make things better. Apparently all these AJAX things that helps digg, google map started out from Microsoft. Look it up.
    • MarkFranklin, on 04/30/2008, -1/+1Buried. You claim to be reporting facts when innovative is subjective.
  • flipmeat, on 04/28/2008, -12/+24Here's the best explanation why that I have seen so far. http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows- ...
    • NSResponder, on 04/28/2008, -3/+8Exactly. MS's problem is management incompetence, and there's no prospect of that changing while the all-time #1 example of the Peter Principle is in charge of the company.

      -jcr
    • mcnasby, on 04/28/2008, -1/+3Great article - thanks for sharing! That's the same problem most people face when trying to be "innovative" in corporate America. Lots of red tape (read: management) and safe ideas (read: suckling the teat of the stockholder). But it's okay - there's an Apple in every industry - a company that doesn't just create, but innovates and in turn can shake up an entire industry.
    • Tyrghast, on 04/29/2008, -2/+2Best response to the title though: Apple doesn't innovate. They're a corporation like everyone else, they buy ideas and repackage them for the consumers.
  • rudy23, on 04/28/2008, -24/+11Dinosaurs . . .
  • Smurph0404, on 04/28/2008, -10/+51I talked to someone who worked at Microsoft Research earlier this year. He told me that the atmosphere is almost academic- People are more concerned with scholarly work than producing products. He said he moved back to a development team because he didn't want to write academic papers.
    • sonstone, on 04/28/2008, -6/+38Or possibly he couldn't cut it. It's 10 times more difficult to write those papers than to chug out code. Coding is cake...
      • bfisch1983, on 04/28/2008, -6/+1......and the cake is a lie? I'm so confused, is coding like imaginary numbers?
      • Aadain, on 04/28/2008, -6/+4I'm sure he feels very humiliated working on actual products that the company can make money off of and consumers can use to make their daily lives a little bit better/simpler/more efficient. Those guys writing papers must be really smart, since their only product is a piece of paper and possibly, maybe, in a decade or so the seed for a new product idea.

        Just because the academic process is harder doesn't mean its better. Sometimes you a great idea out of it all that leads to an industry shifting/defining product. But most of the time you just end up with a bunch of pie in the sky ideas that have little to no relation to reality that only impress other academic types. That's why you see more people going for a Software Engineer type job instead of a Computer Scientist. One works on making ideas reality, the other spends a little time in reality as possible.
        • controlguy, on 04/28/2008, -0/+7While the software engineer references algorithms in books and papers that can be used to make a product work, the researcher is busy developing, analyzing, and publishing such algorithms. It doesn't mean that one is "more important" -- you need both -- but researching algorithms is more difficult (meaning that fewer people are capable of being successful at it).

          "But most of the time you just end up with a bunch of pie in the sky ideas that have little to no relation to reality that only impress other academic types."

          If you understood academic papers, they wouldn't seem to be so "pie i the sky." Keep in mind that nearly all of the most basic tools and concepts in computer science that are used by software engineers to make "ideas reality" were created by academic-types.
    • XtheXlanternX, on 04/28/2008, -6/+1Yeah, I would attribute the (perceived) lack of innovation as a culture/focus issue. They are probably either developing things that most people don't notice or developing novel ideas which are small yet progressive, not huge leaps forward like, for example, the iPod.
      • specialK16, on 04/28/2008, -2/+1Oh *****.
      • spectecjr, on 04/28/2008, -1/+6The iPod was a huge novel idea? Funny, I had a Creative Nomad before the iPod ever existed.
    • Kazbaeden, on 04/28/2008, -0/+10Very true. Here is a page by Microsoft researcher Ken Hinckley whose work I've been following closely.

      http://research.microsoft.com/users/kenh/

      He mostly does work with pen input. My personal favorite publication is "Stitching: Pen Gestures that Span Multiple Displays." If you don't want to read the papers, there are videos for many of them which act as an abstract.

      But this is an example of what goes on in MS research, and there are thousands of people just like Ken who have a similar research portfolio.
    • ZippyV, on 04/28/2008, -0/+8A research department is not meant to produce off the shelf products.
      • superkendall, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2Not directly. But a company that has an R&D department does expect to take some ideas to market, sometime - and tat conversion is what Microsoft cannot seem to do well.
        • ZippyV, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1The Office 2007 ribbon was a good example.
    • piratearggghhh, on 04/29/2008, -1/+4This is absolutely true. When I visited microsoft for my own research, I found out that a large percentage of people there have a PhD. The brain power there is very impressive - they're not really that much about creating stylish things but more on theoretical models etc. I went there around 2 years ago and their OS development is 3 generations out - meaning, before Vista's release, they were already working on Windows 7 and another unnamed OS. All theory at this point but that just gives an idea of what they're about over there.
  • Hincapie, on 04/28/2008, -27/+7hiring the best people as vs hiring the cheapest people
    • Tyr7BE, on 04/28/2008, -2/+14Are you serious? Microsoft pays out the wazoo - far better than Apple. This is from someone who had equivalent prospects at both companies (I eventually chose a third offer, as I heard some pretty nasty things about what goes on behind both sets of walls).
    • dajernts, on 04/28/2008, -0/+7That doesn't come across as a very researched claim.
  • plucas, on 04/28/2008, -33/+12Steve Jobs. It's that simple.
    • logicalnoise, on 04/28/2008, -5/+24you've got some jobs nut hair on your chin....just there.
    • DigiRaven, on 04/28/2008, -2/+9Steve is a false idol. Quit worshiping him.
      • ORBAT, on 04/28/2008, -1/+2Shh, I bet he has a golden statue of Jobs in his bedroom.
  • jcrewyayo, on 04/28/2008, -8/+39http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
    http://labs.live.com/photosynth/
    • froinlaven, on 04/28/2008, -13/+3Windows XP SP2 and Vista Only

      The Photosynth technology preview runs only on Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.
      • confoundedjoe, on 04/28/2008, -2/+14are you complaining because it doesn't run on your mac?
        1- its a tech demo
        2- how many apple products don't run on windows?
        • Darrelc, on 04/28/2008, -4/+7"2- how many apple products don't run on windows?"

          iTunes for one.
          • confoundedjoe, on 04/28/2008, -1/+2either you read that wrong or are trying your hand and sarcasm because you didn't get the point. i didn't say none ran on windows.

            but all i can think of really is iTunes and Safari
          • dajernts, on 04/28/2008, -1/+7I think he was going for sarcasm. Itunes blows on windows.
          • Darrelc, on 04/28/2008, -2/+1Yeah, I was been sarcy cos ITunes runs like ***** on windows. good program though.
        • jakem1, on 04/28/2008, -1/+1Quicktime as well.
      • mancat, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3And?

        XP SP2 is 4 years old now.
      • redxxx, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3iMovie doesn't run in OS9; Apple does not innovate.
    • lilricky, on 04/28/2008, -3/+10Photosynth is very impressive, but if you take in the fact that its been in technology preview stage for 3 years, and no actual product, its not really innovative nor new anymore :( Same with WW Telescope, theyre running out of time for their : "Coming in Spring 2008"
    • dajernts, on 04/28/2008, -1/+6The Photosynth technology looks to be one of the coolest things I've seen this decade. Combined virtual earth's satellite imagery and immense amounts of user date it seems a single user could view any place on earth.
    • Kazbaeden, on 04/28/2008, -0/+4Here's another link for you:

      https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Welcome.aspx
    • dig1x, on 04/28/2008, -0/+3And another one;
      http://www.popfly.com
  • rossisdead, on 04/28/2008, -26/+311This article would be better titled "Why doesn't Microsoft put out popular, flashy end-user products like the iPhone?"
    • MioTheGreat, on 04/28/2008, -12/+97Because Microsoft puts out the tools to let other people put out flashy end-user products like the iPhone.
      • ThinkBox, on 04/28/2008, -6/+5so how did MS aid in the production of the iPhone....?
        • zigunerweisen, on 04/28/2008, -3/+7I'm sure people on the iPhone team has used products such as Word, Excel, etc.
          • ThinkBox, on 04/28/2008, -4/+5thats like saying that bananas are linked to Einstein's theory of relativity because he ate them during his life.
          • zigunerweisen, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Einstein probably didn't etch physics equations on his banana. But I bet some pretty important documents about the iPhone exists in Excel.
    • headzoo, on 04/28/2008, -3/+73I think that sums it up pretty well. I keep seeing commercials for cars (or is it just the stereo?) that can respond to the driver's voice, and of course it's powered by Microsoft. That's the kind of stuff MS does. They develop technologies that aren't necessarily tangible, but the tech is everywhere, and we're using it everyday without even knowing about it.
      That's the Microsoft way. They develop technologies that they can license to manufacturers. Apple on the other hand develops technology that they can sell themselves.
      • sifontes, on 04/28/2008, -1/+2This argument is among the more reasonable I have seen here.
      • adc86, on 04/29/2008, -0/+1Again, BMW and even GM in their Cadillacs had voice-activated sound-systems and information displays, though Cadilac's wasn't very good. I refuse to accept the notion that Microsoft's technology is ubiquitous because of its innovative qualities. Read a list of the companies they have acquired. The IE story tells it best: license the thing from SpyGlass, drive them out of business, "embrace and extend" (innovate?) the standards, and cause a massive headache for web developers for years and browser generations to come. Microsoft's technology may be everywhere, but the only thing innovative about it is the business practice that got it there.
    • MacTyler, on 04/28/2008, -10/+2Are you saying that's a bad thing? Oh yeah, and you forgot the words powerful, efficient, minimalistic and practical.
    • Kyderdog, on 04/28/2008, -16/+4Zune.... what else is there to say on the subject..
      • MioTheGreat, on 04/28/2008, -2/+11Second best selling hard disk based mp3 player in the US?
    • Gamer2k4, on 04/28/2008, -3/+19That's a good point. Apple isn't more innovative than anyone else; they just take nice features from other products and hype them like crazy.
      • brian1625, on 04/29/2008, -0/+2I agree, and I dugg your comment, but one thing that I find particular good about Apple is that they know how to bring the right ideas together and sell the ideas that the others couldn't. That's classic Steve Jobs. and that in itself is innovative. But like you said, in the grand scheme, they're not anymore innovative than anyone else.
      • adc86, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1What "nice features" did Apple borrow to create the iPhone? Did they get these from existing mobiles? How about Cocoa (although, obviously, this was a NeXT innovation, Jobs was driving NeXT)? How about moving laptop keyboards back away from the user? What did they borrow that idea from?

        If you could cite a list of what people would mistakenly call Apple's "innovations" and prove that a majority of them are unimpressive, your "take nice features from other products" claim might have a shred of validity.
    • SillyRabbits, on 04/28/2008, -2/+21Or to put it another way, Apple works on innovations that make the Starbucks' crowd go ohh and ahhh.....Microsoft spends their efforts on innovations that make the IT guys go ohh and ahhh. It takes a lot of time and money to fix the non-sexy things "under the hood" that the average consumer will never notice. It's a thankless job.
    • Catch_ME, on 04/28/2008, -0/+4The reason Microsoft may spend so much on R&D is simply because they are a much bigger company with there hands in much more stuff. This is understandable. This is why the iphone has to support Microsoft Exchange to get a better foot in the smartphone market!! Because Microsoft already spent the R&D to develop it so apple fanboys are shamed that they have to use Exchange.
    • mcnasby, on 04/28/2008, -5/+3Not at all. They even neglected their most recent flagship product release - Office 2007. It's like the same old *****, in a new flashy, hard to open wrapper. It's a shame - they can't even get the flashy part right.

      PowerPoint 2007 has the EXACT same features as Powerpoint 2003, except with the fresh coat of paint on the outer layer. Hell - when you add a drop shadow in PowerPoint 2007 it looks like the same exact grainy and clunky drop shadow as in PowerPoint 2000. And from Apple's track record, I know the next release of Keynote will actually have actual, tangible improvements. If PowerPoint isn't a good enough example. Look at Visio 2007 - besides the top ribbon, the rest program functions and looks like it's from 1998. If OmniGraffle was available for Windows, it would eat Visio for dinner.
  • BXRWXR, on 04/28/2008, -12/+39Because they don't have to.
    • TheSpook, on 04/28/2008, -6/+3...but they claim to WANT to!
    • MWeather, on 04/28/2008, -2/+5I remember this story. The tortoise wins.
    • smrekar, on 04/28/2008, -2/+2They can't. China is the same. It is not in their DNA to innovate anymore. They are copiers now. Damn good at it, but that's it. Obviously i am generalizing, but so is the article. The MS table and Vista are clues to some innovation.
      • dillibob, on 04/29/2008, -1/+1ya, they're such a terrible company. thats why they can offer to buy yahoo for 40 billion
  • misterteenwolf, on 04/28/2008, -16/+61all i know is that i love my xbox 360 for numerous reasons
    • TheSpook, on 04/28/2008, -17/+4I bet it's the narrow, comfort snug CD tray...
    • paulsmith288, on 04/28/2008, -15/+3I cannot imagine they spent lots of money innovating there. The Live 'experience' maybe.
      But the console is horrible. No other company would have survived the Several billion dollar RRoD problems.
      However, I expect the game developers must have had some money thrown at them.
    • diggrim, on 04/28/2008, -11/+5is Red Ring of Death one of them?
    • dig1x, on 04/28/2008, -2/+6Could it be the expanse of AAA award winning games? The properly designed cont