Ask HN: What do you want to tell Microsoft?

Personally, I think Microsoft needs to make the strategic "pivot" to selling experiences - not necessarily operating systems.<p>They've done a great job of this with Xbox and Windows 7. I was incredibly sad when the Courier got cancelled. This was a big <i>head pound</i> moment for me. At it's core, MS sells software, but increasingly, it seems apparent that consumers are going to spend their dollars on hardware/software combos (this is primarily a nod to Apple, but look at the care that Google invested with Android - the G1, the close relationship to Droid, and Nexus One, and RIM making all their devices). It's no longer enough to say "here's an operating system, do what you want with it." This was the previous mobile strategy, and now it's gotten them into the position their in.<p>Mobile seems to be figured out already - MS will be fighting for 3rd place (at least for the next 5-7 years). Tablets is still a potential area for innovation - the iPad leaves a lot to be desired, ChromeOS seems to be dead, Android Tablets have yet to really take off.<p>Overall - there seems to be an inherent political culture at MS. It's intriguing that Apple has a higher market value with 10% of the employees. I know so many brilliant, smart people that work at Microsoft, but I haven't heard from them in the past 5 years - they seem to all be cogs in a big machine.<p>Encourage employees to start their own companies. Maybe have a blanket policy of providing seed money to any employee that wants to - YC style. Take a lot of smaller risks instead of few big ones. Zuckerberg would have taken $10,000 for 10% when he first started - now 1.6% cost you $240,000,000! You could have invested in 200,000 ideas for that price. Let your people run with their own ideas, without having to sit through 80 million meetings and having their ideas suffer death by 1000 PM's.

Microsoft's advertising still doesn't do it for me. Frankly, most commercials makes me think more about their lameness than the product.<p>The exception is Xbox ads. As 'rakkhi' noted, the Xbox product line is actually great, and I think its advertising is one reason for its success. Xbox ads, everything down to the cool logo/sound thing in each one, make me think about the <i>product</i>, instead of making me feel sorry for the company that made the commercial.<p>Start by throwing out all the copycat stuff. ("I'm a PC"...I get it. Stupid. Is that the best you can do?) If you're going to copy anyone, copy yourself: take Xbox ads, and extend their style to the rest of the product line. Then go even further.

Dog food their own software and systems more, and where it's unpleasant to use - improve them.<p>Far too much of my Microsoft using experience is of a solid technology which is idiotically annoying, and a new version which ups both desirable features and irritation at the same time.<p>I mean the remote desktop client which has a ton of user experience flaws which hasn't improved for years, then developed another security warning to pass through every new connection.<p>I mean the mess of software licensing which got no better, then worse with KMS/MLK keys.<p>I mean the web browser which is now a web browser with a first time startup wizard full of pestering questions.<p>I mean the event log viewer which was basic and fiddly, and is now massively complex looking and still fiddly.<p>I mean the scheduled task list which is now a scheduled task maze.<p>I mean the Control Panel which is now a Control Panel Advent Calendar.<p>I mean the Exchange Management Console which morphed into a Half-a-management-console-half-a-scripting-language.<p>I mean the Windows Explorer which locked up a Pentium 4 when accessing an optical drive or network still locks up a Core i7 920 when accessing an optical drive or network only now it tries to hide the optical drive first.<p>I mean the IIS6 tree which became an IIS7 "lets arrange everything inspired by our favourite abstract artist!" mess.<p>On and on and on, they sell me on industry leading desirable features like Branch Cache and Outlook Anywhere and yet my everyday experience is Microsoft the Bully.<p>"Come here, jodrellblank, we have a brand new system for you to try with $newfeature!"<p>"Wow! <i>run run run</i>"<p><i>Security warning tripwire</i>, Are you sure checkbox, Did you notice the information bar? Would you like to move or copy files from this location? Error 0x28003210D ha ha! F1 for help? Sorry, we removed that help system in this version. Online search? Ours is awful, you'll never find that error. Helpful utility? You no longer have rights to run it, "admin".<p>Want $feature? Why don't you just come and get it then? It's right here... FOREVER OUT OF YOUR REACH.<p><i>cries in a corner</i>

I would ask Steve Ballmer whether he is aware of the fact that Microsoft's licensing for Windows and SQL Server makes scaling out impossible and hence knocks their platform out of the race for cloud computing, at least when it comes to web apps.<p>I would ask him whether he really thinks that SQL Azure with its $100 per month for 10GB price tag is anything but a sad joke.<p>I would ask the people who design the Microsoft partner programs why their programs as well as their websites are so incredibly bureaucratic and complicated.<p>As a Microsoft shareholder, I would ask them to show me growth or raise the dividend so I can participate in the slow but still profitable decline that is the inevitable consequence of their current strategy.

I recently got a windows 7 machine. Some things that bug me as a programmer using it, and make me wish I just paid up and got a mac:<p>1) WPF - I am trying to use this in my work life. It scares me when I hear your ex-product manager twittering that it's dead. I now feel like I should've done my app's front-end in qt or swing.<p>2) Will microsoft create in-built, tested, virtual desktop support already? More people use laptops that need it even more. I use virtuawin, but things just don't work elegantly. Mac OS X supports virtual desktops natively, and it works without a hitch.<p>3) The one thing I actually do like that comes out of microsoft are your office products. I think as people actually go paperless now, it's a good time to double down on investing in OneNote as a platform used across tablets, phones, and PC's. Also allow for one to sync it to say, their windows home server, and let one define tags to be whatever they want -- and you may have something that will make me committed to the platform.<p>4) It's 2010 and I still use cygwin or a virtual instance of linux just to have a console with the commands I want. Windows PowerShell came wayy too late for me to want to bother spending time learning it. Mac users don't have this problem.<p>5) Start defining some rules for say "windows experience" PC's. This can be an upper-tier for laptop makers to try and not be cheap. This comes from my frustration last april when trying to buy a new laptop. Go into any b&#38;m store, look at the windows machines - feeling like cheap plastic, glossy screens, and meh build quality - then walk over to apple's corner. It's a night and day difference. There's high-quality PC laptops made (ex: lenovo T series, HP envy), but they're hard to find in stores, and are typically only found online. Microsoft needs to define some rules on what a great PC has, similar to what they're trying to do with windows phone 7.

To Ballmer: Steve, you've done a great job. You have enough money. You have nothing left to prove. Now is your time to enjoy your life. Step down.<p>To replace you, choose someone no one would suspect. Choose someone young, with a fairly strong technical background and mainly with a lot of vision. (And make sure that person can communicate that vision.) Choose someone who can inspire. Line up (in-house and acquire) some really great technologies and launch them with this person's takeover.<p>Shed whole divisions; trying to do too much has distracted you.<p>People have stopped being in awe of Microsoft. Restore that. And then go enjoy yourself.

Microsoft absolutely needs to completely drop the whole "do it our way, or hit the highway" attitude. It may have worked to build MS into the giant it is, but it will absolutely be their eventual undoing. It is because of this attitude that Microsoft has already lost the mindahare of today's young developers. I have never met anybody under 25 years old that is a Windows software developer. At the very least Microsoft needs an internal hippie movement.<p>Here's some steps that could right a sinking ship:<p>1) Stop integrating IE deep into the operating system, port IE to Mac, and Linux -- non Windows developers need to develop and test IE, period<p>2) Stop leveraging your operating system as the sole way to compete and crush competitors (you should know this already)<p>3) Develop non-Windows software (you need to hire software engineers that aren't drinking your own Kool-aid, ones that are willing to stand up and say "hold on maybe we shouldn't be such assholes")<p>4) Learn from Apple's OSX strategy -- start developing a "clean-room" Linux or BSD-based mobile operating system, make it a skunkworks project, make the sole aim of the project to one day entirely replace the Windows OS<p>5) Embrace altruism - provide funding for open source projects that directly conflict with your business model (something like fund development of the Hurd kernel)<p>A more radical strategy would be to consider breaking the company up into 3 or more separate companies. OS &#38; Mobile, Software &#38; Web, Xbox &#38; Hardware. This would allow each group to innovate without the Windows-only and MS culture hamstrings.

The company needs to split in two internally. One side can be the "MS Stack" side that continues with the current strategy milking it for every last penny while it dries up, but the other side needs to become a software company again (as opposed to a stack company). Start bringing your software to other platforms. Why was Office canceled on Mac while Mac is gaining market share? Don't you want money from all the people that are switching their OS but still want your office tools?<p>Make your products for Linux as well. You could really innovate here because I don't know of any players selling home user level software on Linux. You could even make your own distro to make Linux friendlier without having to take it on as a long term maintenance project (make it open source almost from the start). Then you could even put little stickers on your Linux software that says "Runs best on MS Linux".<p>The peasants have tasted freedom, you're never going to be able to herd everyone back onto Windows desktops. Those that are gone will stay gone so stop trying. You <i>have</i> a platform to easily be everywhere if you wanted to. Port .Net everywhere and then releasing your products on different platforms becomes extremely cheap. This is really something you could have over all your competitors.<p>I really think this stubborn insistence that everyone be on <i>your</i> operating system is hurting you. It should be obvious by now that you're not going to out-innovate Apple or even Google so stop trying to. Let the big dogs fight. Get back on everyone's minds again by making sure there is no platform out there where you don't have a best-of-breed, highly talked about product. Make money off them both. Go back to your roots.

* Dual-monitor remote desktop! Please??!!<p>* What are you guys doing with Windows Installer (MSI)? You create this installation standard which everyone adopts, then you stop supporting it yourself, making people install Office 2007 and Silverlight with BS desktop startup scripts. WTF?<p>* As alluded to by others here, stop making stupid UI changes for no reason. I've been using Windows since 1992, upgraded to Win7 a couple months ago, and STILL can't find anything. I'm in support, and it's basically impossible to lead a user through anything over the phone anymore, because (for example) getting to the screen where you uninstall a program looks different on almost every Windows version I support, often with multiple variations per OS.<p>* The .NET runtime gets corrupted ALL THE TIME for our users. This is at least partially because you release patches that fail to rollback upon unsucessful install (see <a href="http://blog.usabilitythinking.com/2010/06/root-cause-for-corrupted-net-framework/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.usabilitythinking.com/2010/06/root-cause-for-cor...</a>). This was enough of a problem before you started bundling .NET with Windows so that now I can't even have a user uninstall/reinstall it without really messing with his OS.<p>* This may make me sound silly, but I miss VB6 -- not the language itself, but rather the ease with which you could easily throw together an executable and send it to a user and have it just work. Now, I have to build a whole installer unless I want to have issues with missing .NET versions or weird .NET security issues.

Windows needs proper package management. Having each application be responsible for its own installation, uninstallation[0] and updates is so last millennium.<p>Debian and its derivatives have done a good job of it in the Linux world, though they haven't done as well as they could at convincing third-parties to integrate. Google Chrome is an example of how to do integration right: the download is a .deb, and installing it adds Chrome's repository, so you get automatic updates through apt. A repository containing almost every library dependency that's likely to show up along with automatic dependency resolution and updates makes life better for both users and developers.<p>MS could provide similar functionality for Windows. The lack of an (almost) everything is open source culture on Windows would, of course make some things harder, but it's also a huge opportunity for MS: they could integrate an app store. How best to run an app store is still being explored, but here's what I'd do if I were in charge of such a project at MS:<p>* Make the standardized packaging format very preferable. Make the tools for creating packages open-source and easy to use. Make the question asked of the user clear and friendly ("Do you want to install Foo app from Bar company?", not "This requires administrative privileges..."). Make verifying your identity as a developer to sign apps with a MS-issued key free and easy.<p>* Allow side channels: packages installed by other means could add their own repository and use the central update mechanism. Allow them to hook in to the payment mechanism too, otherwise we'll see annoying in-app payments.<p>* Avoid any attempt to lock in developers to your store as the sales channel: developers will prefer it because users will prefer it. If users don't prefer it, make it better.<p>* Allow anything non-malicious, but tag things that would offend a large percentage of users. Hide those by default.<p>[0] Yes, there's a centralized UI for uninstalling well-behaved applications, but that's not the point

An understanding that if you're asking us for ideas like this, that if you don't already know what's wrong despite everything that's been written and everything your developers could tell you, you're in deep trouble?<p>More constructively, I'd like to see Microsoft taking more risks and leading more. Kinnect and XBox Live are good examples of Microsoft being first in or coming up with the best thing out there. You could make a case for elements of Bing too.<p>So be more ambitious. Too many MS entries into markets now seem me too relying on the MS brand to prop up an otherwise ordinary product (Zune?). You need to either be better on day one or moving with such momentum that you're confident that you will be very quickly. How are you going to move with that momentum? I'd suggest less management and less marketing. Yep some of projects which don't have the current level of guidance are going to bomb out heading in totally the wrong direction, but the ones that succeed will be better than what you're producing now and get there a lot faster.<p>Your historic approach of watching markets develop and muscling into them using Windows and Office as leverage won't work any more. Windows isn't an effective lever in the new markets and the competitors (Apple and Google) don't shift as easily as they used to. You need to be in earlier and better.<p>Your developer tools are pretty good but your licensing is a quick route to insanity. I've honestly recommended Oracle in the past because for a proposal I had to put together very quickly, working out the licensing cost for a complex SQL Server implementation was simply too time consuming.<p>Mobile - you seem to have become obsessed with the iPhone where frankly you're ill equipped to fight. Aim at corporate, go for RIM. You're strong in corporate and if you can't do a better integration with a corporate infrastructure (which is likely based around Exchange) then you shouldn't be playing at all. Once you've got that sorted, then look at the consumer market building on that.<p>But also good luck. Though I don't think you'll ever be what you were historically, I honestly believe MS could be a company turning out great products and the more competition in the market the better.

I would like Microsoft's Developer Division to start supporting Linux more ... Windows servers are too expensive for me making scale-out strategies a PITA and IMHO technically inferior to Linux from a startup perspective.<p>Biztalk/Webspark are nice initiatives, but not enough.<p>And I would totally shell out the cash for a MSDN subscription / Visual Studio if I could choose Linux for deployment.<p>Better yet, collaborate more with the Mono project from Novell. Open-source more of the .NET platform.<p>The few open-source projects from Microsoft built around .NET don't really have an open-source development methodology ... let others contribute to the DLR, IronPython and IronRuby. Don't fear getting your property tainted ... how many projects from Apache have had such problems, or not getting used by the Fortune "whatever" companies?

When it comes to Internet related technologies, Microsoft should stop trying to innovate in a Microsoft centric view of the Internet. Of couse this view does not help Microsoft promote their operating systems and tools but it does open them up to be more about standards everyone cares about and not just the Microsoft circle. There is so much innovation in web development in an ongoing basis, it doesn't make sense for Microsoft to always be playing catch-up or keeping their developer base only in their sandbox.<p>A good example of a Microsoft centric view of the web is when I was lobbied by Microsoft to add IE8 specific code for enhanced IE8 specific functionality to my site. "Other browsers will just ignore the tags" was the reply to my question about cross-browser compatibility. This is a wrong-headed view of the Internet. Make open standards that are valuable enough for everyone to adopt and lead in that area. IE8 only functionality doesn't help anyone but people who will only ever service IE8 users.<p>Their adoption of jQuery for use in their tools and participation in the community is a good example of where they are doing what I am advocating. Silverlight, on the other hand is an example of a Microsoft only view of the web.<p>I find my very smart, very talented Microsoft focused web developer friends are often late to the latest trends in web development because they're so focused on what Microsoft is doing and not where the Internet in general is going. I'm sure this is not representative of everyone who is a Microsoft focused developer, but it does seem to be a case with a majority of people I speak with in that area.

You want strategy? Ok, here is strategy:<p>Do something bold for a change, really bold. Open source windows or office, do whatever scares you most and then make a go of it. With the talent pool you've got there you should easily be able to out-compete the market when you've done something like that, it will go a long way towards getting forgiveness for deeds done in the past and it will align your goals with the world much better than where you are today.<p>If this scares you realize that in the longer term this is where software is going to be. Developers have wised up to lock-in and other tricks and corporations are more and more moving to solutions that they control. The writing has been on the wall for years.<p>Oh, and stop funding stooges to attack third parties.

The biggest thing Microsoft should do is make the desktop king again. This is possible - users <i>don't care</i> whether they are using web applications or actual apps, but there are huge benefits (in terms of what you can do) to desktop applications. This is evident in the amazing rise of Apple's App Store.<p>But there's a problem. Web programming, while allowing generally crummier applications, has some benefits that far outweigh this. This is why startups tend to focus on web applications - they're just so much better for startups, for a few reasons. Find a way to give these benefits with desktop applications, and you'll have people rushing back to Windows programming, because you <i>can</i> give a much richer use experience.<p>The benefits of web apps are:<p>* Not having to worry about deployment.<p>* Not having to worry about versioning (because the deployment forces everyone to have the latest version).<p>* Being able to collect feedback almost automatically, ala Google Analytics. Preferably all kinds of different feedback about exactly how people are using your application.<p>* Making life easier for the end user - no install, no configuration of things like which folders files are saved in (all the data is saved online automatically), etc.<p>At the end of the day, all of this is achievable outside of the browser - it just requires a completely new framework for creating applications, which gives all these benefits for free. Not all desktop applications will be able to use it, but this will allow rich applications to be made without sacrificing the amazing benefits written above, which is why so many people turn to the web.<p>P.S. I don't know much about Silverlight, which <i>might</i> be Microsoft's attempt to do just what I've outlined above. If so, then good going, but it still isn't being pushed hard enough since developers like me don't really know enough about it.

Interesting if real. Ok lets go for benefit of the doubt, starting with the highest priority items:<p>Mobile technology - The Windows phone 7 will not succeed. Sure you will sell a few phones but for the marketing and sheer executive brainspend on this you will not get a profitable return within 5 years. I had a good debate on Quora about what sucess looks like for Microsoft and I don't think this is realistically achievable: <a href="https://www.quora.com/Will-the-Windows-Phone-7-succeed-Why-or-why-not" rel="nofollow">https://www.quora.com/Will-the-Windows-Phone-7-succeed-Why-o...</a><p>So the best decision would be to give up on the OS and focus on applications such as MS Office and XBOX game centre for iOS and Android devices. Alternatively buy RIM - it is such a good synergy with the current MS business and getting cheaper by the minute.<p>Consumer operating systems - The days of big desktop being a true star are dead, it is a cashcow at best. Why do you really need more than a XBOX / PS3 and a tablet &#38; phone now? Focus on building from scratch an OS like Chromium that will run on a tablet, boot in under 3 seconds, have IE 9 as the browser and run office.live.com with proper offline mode. Use the Wintel partnership to get firmware optimization with this and use Dell, Acer and HP to get this new OS out on a powerfull (maybe dual screen) tablet by Q2 2011.<p>Browser - IE9 looks promising but it is a straight up rip off of Chrome no questions. Where is the real innovation - hire some people that will really think outside the box on a browser e.g. how about something like Cardspace from WebOS - organize browser and OS activities by task rather than by tabs and applications<p>XBOX - This is the one shining light in the last 5 years for MS for me. Focus on leading the industry not following it - how about a true cloud gaming service using optimized RDP or equivilent to allow full 3D rich client emulation gameplay on tablets, TV's and phones<p>Zune - must support full cloud based music streaming service - do it before Google music.<p>Augmented humanity - do something to lead and the define to way to private and secure augmented humanity: <a href="http://rakkhi.blogspot.com/2010/09/privacy-in-age-of-augmented-humanity.html" rel="nofollow">http://rakkhi.blogspot.com/2010/09/privacy-in-age-of-augment...</a>

A modest request: please, with each version don't make it more and more difficult to make the Windows explorer behave as in Windows 95. I mean having a folder tree and detailed view. Some people still work a lot with files and folders "the old way".<p>Bonus points for not moving the configuration screens around.<p>Things that have changed with explorer: less space for content, caused by adding not-so-useful toolbars, folders tree replaced by "selected" or "favourites" pane, "easy mode" tree navigation that prevents opening more than one branch at the same time, default to "libraries" in Windows 7, default to views other than detail, sometimes very difficult to change, hiding file extensions, folder redirection... Most of the changes can be reverted touching some registry or configuration setting, but it's increasingly difficult and time consuming, and sometimes impossible.<p>I guess the changes are intended for new users, but it would be very welcomed to have a "classic mode" switch somewhere. Usability is important, but please consider that old users have different usability requirements. For me Windows is less and less usable with each version.<p>About the config dialogs, I've recently had to make a novice user to change the DHCP settings for Windows 7 over the phone. It wasn't an easy task.

I'd like to see Microsoft reach out and genuinely contribute to more open source projects, Microsoft has great technologies, lots of smart people, a few pockets of progressive change, but overall, I feel like everything Microsoft gives away or open sources is still part of a grand strategy geared towards locking us all into Microsoft Windows OS and expensive products.<p>As an open source developer, this was a major factor in shifting my focus from .NET to Java and Python. Even though I still miss real generics :)<p>Lock-in is a major turn off, and we can smell it. In the long run, I know from experience that open platforms will eventually win, and my expertise there can be more valuable than some certification in a captive technology. Because otherwise in order to sell my services as a developer, I'd have to sell your stuff. I see what you did there... but this may not be best for my customer. No thanks...<p>Instead why not sell products that we <i>want</i> to use and pay for, that is so customizable and modular that it is simply a better technical choice? Stop trying to trap us!<p>And please start using the same OSS licenses everyone else is using. Even if it's not the intention, your special MS OSS licenses make us suspicious of your motives. First think that comes to mind when I see a special MS license is "uh-oh, is this another 'shared source'?".

Please abandon IE only interfaces for your enterprise products. Having a fully functioning web interface for outlook web access or sharepoint shouldn't be a big deal, but it is a constant problem, you cant force people to use IE, embrace the alternatives.<p>Added features are not always good, we know Office is a cash cow, but it is also heavy as hell, offer a slim down office suite, not in software, but in features, or at the very least, allow people to easily turn them off. And please please dont do this format change again (from doc to docx) it was a real dick move. oh yeah, embrace and promote open formats.<p>While we are on the office issue, WHAT THE HELL is your problem with full compatibility between office for mac and windows office, where is access? why did you remove vbscript from the apple product? did you think people will abandon macros? seriously, what the hell are you doing with this one<p>Add single instance storage capability to your entire server line, it may sound as a minor feature only but it would make your server line better, also simplify your licensing schemes across the board, it is antiquated and annoying for IT staff who wish to be compliant. while we are at it, powershell and cmd, should incorporate unix commands, why not?<p>Xbox development should open up more, the Xbox market should be more plugin oriented, services like Pandora would give the best product Microsoft had in years, extra boost.<p>It wont hurt Microsoft to acknowledge the brilliance of other companies, parroting the line that Microsoft invented the Tablet form factor in the face of the ipad and latching windows7 as an alternative to Ios is shortsighted and makes you look outdated and somewhat ridiculous, paradigm shifts should be acknowledged. Please reconsider the courier.<p>While we're at it, Crapware and glut should be abhorred and disdained and discouraged. if i buy a new windows7 machine, i dont want to reformat it to get rid of the trialware, crapware that is loaded on the average dell etc... Do you know how much of a performance degradation this stuff does? its comical. the speed (and often stability) gained by the computer you just bought when you perform a clean install, makes it feel like a different computer. you will also save time for small business IT.<p>Microsoft, you are rarely loved, and only admired with caveats. Work on your image better, you outspend Apple on marketing but still manage to look bad, you are not getting your money worth. Get Microsoft Surface technology to museums and public serving institutions, it will help them serve the public, it will help you look cool.

The major thing for me is Simplicity!<p>Buy Opera. They have an awesome browser and such a small market share. The perfect browser to replace IE. If not at least make IE use Webkit or Gecko. Pref. Gecko so its split 2v2.<p>When I plug a new monitor in I want it to detect it and turn it on, default to extend my screen or ask me what I want to do. Win+p is nice but a lot of people don't know it.<p>When I plug in new speakers I want the sound to change to use that, or again ask me. I don't want to pull up the damn control panel every time I change speakers.<p>.Net needs to be able to run on mac and linux. Yes there is mono but its not the same.. I want an official release, same for Visual studio make it run on all 3 major OS.<p>I want to be able to install IE on linux. And make IE6, IE7.. Installable side by side.<p>I want something like GnomeDo built in. The startmenu is ok, but not the same.<p>Drivers are getting better but I still end up having to go download drivers from nvidia, hp or whoever. PITA<p>Microsoft needs a software marketplace built in similar to the one in Ubuntu. Its so nice being able to open up a software center and click download. No searching the internet nothing.<p>Same goes for a webapp center within IE.<p>Release an enterprise IE and a standard IE. Make the standard auto update like Chrome and make the Enterprise version have longer support cycles (basically the enterprise version is what IE is now)<p>Improve your web apps. Yes you have an alternative to almost everything google has but they are all (arguably) worse.<p>I think thats enough for now :)

Do something courageous with web browsers - deprecate the IE line of browsers and create a completely new browser based on WebKit. Offer both to users for a few years with a view to phasing IE out completely within X years (say 5).<p>Maybe offer a way of providing hints (maybe through AD GPOs) of which sites should be opened using which browser - that would probably make short term adoption within enterprises less painful.

1. Fire your browser team - the entire division. IE is the dead, stinking remains of 90s technology. Save yourself a ton of grief and money and standardize on Gecko or Webkit. Then make it a mandatory upgrade. Do what Apple did - change or get left behind. It may hurt in the short run, but it's paid off in the long run.<p>2. You know that buzz that Apple and Google have? When was the last time you heard <i>anyone</i> who doesn't work there say the same thing about Microsoft? Your mindshare is a dead stinking corpse in the middle the street that no one cares about.<p>3. Get smaller and get faster. Mozilla updates every couple of months and its like a party. Safari updates whenever Apple feels like it (which is still faster than you guys). Chrome updates whenever they take their ritalin. They all update faster than you guys. You've got 40 million programmers up there and this is the best you can do?<p>4. Other platforms exist. At a minimum, your browser should be on them (see point 1 first, though). Us Mac users thank you and curse you (well, I do, anyway) for allowing to have Office. Now go do the same for Linux.

Say to Ballmer?<p>I'd tell him to move aside. Ballmer's a sales' guy. He is clearly a good sales' guy. But he's the wrong person to be determining strategy at Microsoft.<p>I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Ballmer had gone to Sun, as the sales' guy. Is there an xkcd for that?

I have nothing to say to Microsoft or Ballmer because Microsoft is so irrelevant to me now - both as an internet professional and in my personal life.<p>I remember installing Windows 3.11 from floppy over my MS-DOS install on a 386 and I've used every version of Windows through to XP since.<p>But you lost me, all my machines run OS X or *nix, I've never run Windows on the server, I don't own any Microsoft software and I don't use any online Microsoft products (Bing, etc).<p>My love for computers bloomed when the Internet became available to the measses, C1992. That's when you decided that you wanted to own the Internet so you created your own, MSN Home. It didn't work, and you never really got the Internet until it was too late.<p>You are irrelevant, Microsoft, and due to the way your company is set up to profit mostly from selling Windows + Office to corporations you will never see any reason to stamp out the irrelevancy until it is too late.<p>In many ways it's very sad.

Fire your marketing department. Like seriously, I mean it.<p>1. What's up with the 2 page long name of each products? Windows Live Security Essentials 2. What's up with bazillion version of each OS? 3. What's up with all the ads? Windows 7 launch party with that crappy video, seriously? Is that the best you came with?<p>Zune was a good product and it was killed because of the marketing strategy. I guess these are problems when you get big and have 100k employee.

I would start with a version of Windows that is not backward compatible with really old APIs (i.e. removing a lot the old cruft) and making the remaining OS be super fast and have low memory usage.<p>I ask for this because although computers are getting faster all the time, booting and using Windows these days is still an exercise in patience, even on my high end laptop.

An operating system roadmap that promises to get leaner, smaller, faster on future versions.<p>Not to flame but I switched to Ubuntu after Vista and never looked back.

Some points:<p>- It's annoying in this day and age to be forced into using the entire MS Stack when I need to work with one specific technology. For example: if I want to test a web app on various versions of IE, I have to run Windows. OK fine, even though IE is the only browser that is tied to one OS, I'll let that go. However, if I want to use the Microsoft-provided free MS Virtual Machine images, I have to run them on Virtual PC despite the fact that I have a perfectly good VMWare installation. On my Mac, this means running windows on VMWare, and then Virtual PC inside that virtual machine. This is insanity. I'm trying to support your product, you should be making it as easy as possible for me. Even Apple ported Safari to Windows. As a developer, this just makes me feel hostile to MS. Another case: MS SQL Server. It's a real bear to connect to it from unix since (last I checked) there are no official drivers. You have to use some unix ODBC open source stuff and it's just not suitable for production work. My organization has a huge SQLServer instance I can't use because the Linux support is brittle. Contrast that with Oracle who has official drivers for practically every OS under the sun. The Windows for everything attitude has got to change. MS is a software company, not a Windows company. I know MS doesn't have a strong history of "playing nice with others", but it's sorely needed.<p>- Figure out a way to get corporate IT departments into regular upgrade cycles. The fact that lots of stubborn companies refuse to upgrade because the costs (perceived or real) are high is madness. It's a drag on the whole Microsoft ecosystem and heavily rate-limits the cycle time for new products.<p>- The segmentation of different Windows versions is just silly. There should be one version of Windows and that's it. It's simple for people to understand and it makes licensing a breeze. Artificially creating different versions doesn't really help anyone. Having a server and a desktop version is plenty (since they are genuninely different).<p>- MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix. I know this is tantamount to heresy inside MS. But if you look objectively at how Apple has used open source and unix, you see they are able to get incredible leverage for their size. Not having do to everything in-house and relying on the broader community is pretty good business for them. It lets them focus on the places where they can add value. At some point, it's not efficient for MS to maintain a parallel universe of "invented here" stuff. A proprietary Windows GUI/userspace on top of a unix core (like Mac OS) could really revitalize the whole Windows brand if done properly. It might even draw some geeks back from Mac OS. I became a Mac user because I was tired of dual booting Linux and Windows. I like having first-class email, word processing, photo sharing, etc... but I also want the unix underpinnings for my software development and scientific computing needs. Geeks aren't a big market by themselves, but they really make an impact on the decisions of others.

The Xbox (bar it's heating issues) is a damn good product. The advertising still has a little way to go, but over all it's a nice package and it is a good user experience start to finish.<p>Similarly, C# is a nice language, but I'm not (personally) overly keen on Visual Studio, I like smaller IDEs (personal preference here!).<p>The main issue that I see is the obsession with integrating everything with Windows. Notice how iTunes is cross platform(ish)? Python is cross platform? Apache is cross platform? Chrome &#38; FireFox are cross platform? I don't think that it's an accident that those are fairly popular -- any one who uses them is not in inherently tied down to Windows, Mac or any other operating system.<p>I've said this about IE9, cross platform is generally better. Broaden your application's user base and correct the issues with advertising and you'll stand a real chance at turning things around, in my opinion.<p>Contrary to popular belief, throwing money at an issue does not correct an issue. With the creative markets, you'll need to get hold of genuinely creative people -- scout university campuses, advertising agencies (and anywhere else) and find those who are really passionate about creating something special.

I would like to see .NET framework penetration numbers. A lot of .NET developers still target 2.0 for desktop apps because the perception is that that 3.0+ have a much smaller installation base - even though numbers posted on statowl.com and Scott Hanselman's blog suggest otherwise. This is definitely one case where more transparency by Microsoft would benefit both them and the developer community.<p>I would also like to see the Certificate Revocation List checked less frequently. Microsoft Office add-in developers actually get penalized for having digitally signed add-ins, since the (daily?) CRL check slows Office application startup significantly.

I know probably no one will care here, but I'd really like to see WP7 availability more than this shameful list here: <a href="http://developer.windowsphone.com/Help.aspx?id=fd9b5508-6436-4503-9174-45bf532b9dfd" rel="nofollow">http://developer.windowsphone.com/Help.aspx?id=fd9b5508-6436...</a><p>I'm in Croatia, I have friends in Slovenia (EU Country) as well as Hungary (EU Country)... this is just sad.<p>Also, I'd like to see XNA spread to web. You can make a prototype game or a full indie game already for Windows, XBOX and WP7 from the same codebase, so why not extend that further to either Silverlight or a plugin like Unity? That would rock.<p>App store for PC would be a nice idea for windows, if done right.<p>And, finally, Windows Live for games tied into that app store would be neat, but I think it would even be better for microsoft to buy Steam platform and integrate it into windows. Yeah, I know - a far fetched dream.

The main point that could be a real changer for me (being a web developper) is : Make sure everybody has the latest version of your free softwares (and I'm really thinking about internet explorer here). It's a real pain to have to support IE6 still because our clients use it and now that IE9 is coming out, we know how it will take years for everyone to switch. Their release cycle is completely broken and they will be left in the dust by competitors if they keep doing this.

That's ok, Steve gave out his contact info at TechEd 2005: <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06TechEd.mspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06Tech...</a><p>Here's my question: I was a blue badge in Program Management for four years. I left in 2007 because I didn't want to deal with an atrophying bureaucracy, nor did I want to play corporate politics just to get a 5% raise each year.<p>I know a ton of other people who have left over the past three years, and more who are considering leaving now. I talk with ex-MSFTs who ended up at Google or Amazon, and their only regret is not leaving years earlier.<p>How do you stop this sort of brain-drain, and turn Microsoft back into a company where the industry's best want to work again?

Please twist everyone's arms as hard as you can to get them upgraded to IE9 ASAP.<p>Please get modern browser in Windows Phone 7.<p>IE7 makes my job miserable.

About IE9:<p>* add support for websocket<p>* add support for webgl<p>* make it cross-platform<p>* make trident open source<p>Yes, I do realize the last two are very unlikely and probably webgl too as MS tends to boycot everything opengl but if they added SVG maybe there is hope for this one.<p>Also, try to stop BS marketing such as:<p>* <a href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/products/ie-9/compare?T1=tab2" rel="nofollow">http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/product...</a>

MS should be smart enough to make the best RDP client (the app to connect to Windows machine) for iPhone with the best encryption. And to work with XP too.<p>Also forget the "effects" that are not good over the wire. The goal is the best possible experience when the desktop is accessed remotely.<p>Rationale: There are enough people that need the power of the Windows based computer (power means the software developed in all these years) but who want to access their desktops from iPhone. Even if iPhone is the competitor, if you allow users to use your system from it the users will be more committed to the desktop Windows platform then if they have to look for the new solutions for everything.

* you still have time to do the right thing with IE9 to introduce chrome like auto-update, and shorten your 2 year release cycle to at least half a year<p>* don't drop support for xbox 360 as soon as the next one comes out, that really hurt with the first one<p>* windows is a great development platform if you work with Microsoft tools. Make it more friendly for other technologies to. For instance: make a unix/linux compatible shell, so I can use all the tools, that I now have to ssh to some server, locally (cygwin is a pain in the ass).<p>* for the love of all that is holy do something about IE6&#38;7

Stop with things like the funeral parade for the iPhone. Really guys, that was really lame.<p>MS should refocus on its priorities. Every now and then comes out the iPhone killer and fails. Even if you have a good product with Windows Mobile 7, iPhone should not be your target. Android is eating your market share. The iPhone is a closed box from Apple, Android is the OS that runs on phones from different manufacturers, which is the same strategy of WM7 (by the way, why does everything get called Windows at MS? You don't even have the window concept on a phone).

I really wish Microsoft would stop making half assed versions of stuff that other people have done better just because they somehow think they should.<p>Each time I see something like Bing or Zune I just wonder why MS does it, they're pissing away their credibility by desperately trying to be google or apple when patently they're not.<p>I'm an app developer for iPhone and I would <i>love</i> Microsoft to up it's game in Mobile. Apple are a bunch of elitist control freaks that piss me off every time they open their mouthes, google just want to sell more advertising and are desperate for the chance to do that in your pocket as well as on your laptop. Build me a platform I can port my app to with a minimum of fuss and I will jump at the chance.<p>Now if I were them I think I'd try and build on the one area they've been a success in the consumer arena. xBox. Build xbox mobile, do a deal with one of the other major carriers (who isn't at&#38;t) for the exclusive ability to do multiplayer gaming over their 3g network for a flat rate. Get your existing game developers to build for it, but make sure it's possible for independent developers to build for it as well. Doing that would be something seriously exciting and would offer a choice that doesn't currently exist.

SQL Express Server 2005 does not come with SQL Server Agent so no schedule backups and many apps have manual backup only. (did they fix this in 2008?)<p>Put some resources behind the Event Log "more information" links that takes you to the Microsoft website and says "We're sorry" no additional information is available even for MS products. At the very least, configure the link to do an Event ID and Source google search instead of the worthless "I'm sorry" web page.

1) Change the name of Microsoft Security Essentials so people will have an easier time finding it and knowing what it does. Market it better, while keeping it free.<p>2) Have more free options available for small businesses and teams running the .NET stack. BizSpark is a step in the right direction, but for cash-strapped startups who want to test ideas out in a production setting, it still doesn't compete with the free open-source alternatives.<p>3) Focus more on getting program installations done right. For example, SQL Server 2008 has taken a step backwards in terms of installation. Errors happen quite frequently during the install/upgrade process--it shouldn't take several hours of fighting one installer to get it working properly.<p>4) For popular third-party programs that work correctly with Windows, it would be nice if Microsoft had an online database of checksums that Windows can transparently check the program against. If everything looks good, don't present the user with "Confirm/Deny" choices, just install it. Otherwise users become jaded and used to clicking on "Confirm" even for popups that require more thorough inspection.

Personally, the main thing I dislike about Windows is the lack of proper window management. There's no real Focus Follows Mouse, you have to use third-party applications to get windows to Stay on Top, or to have a second taskbar on your second monitor, etc. It's unfortunate that your OS is called Windows, but compared to your competition you are severely lacking in your ability to usefully manage windows!

If folks want to mail SteveB, just mail steveb@microsoft.com. He has given out his email address on multiple occasions (like <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06TechEd.mspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steve/2005/06-06Tech...</a>).<p>I can attest that he reads all his emails and often responds (I am low in the MSFT food chain but have always gotten responses from him).

In regards to IE9: please please please make this easier to install. Currently this is what I need to do to upgrade to IE8:<p>Log in as Administrator -&#62; Install an update to the machine (Why?)<p><i>Reboot</i> the machine (Why?)<p>Log back in as Administrator again -&#62; Install IE<p><i>Reboot</i> the machine <i>again</i> (Why?)<p>Log in as the user that users the machine. Launch IE: "Hello would you like to participate in BLAH BLAH BLAH?. (Why are you asking me this? I just want to go to youtube and watch a video!)<p>[Yes] <i></i>[No]<i></i><p>Compare this to Chrome, or Firefox or Opera.<p>Log in as Administrator -&#62; click on executable -&#62; Next Next Next -&#62; Launch Chrome -&#62; Go to youtube -&#62; Done.<p>There are things that would make my life a lot easier too, but this is very small picture stuff (but I think it reflects a bigger problem.). These tools may already exist, but I don't know about them...which is a failure on the part of microsoft:<p>I want a tool that will automatically audit my MS office license keys for me. Scan my network, tell me who has what keys.<p>An asset management tool in general would be nice. Scan my network, give me back a list of all of my machines, <i>What user is currently logged into that machine</i>, and what its IP address is. Yes, this is already possible using a few other tools, but it would be nice to have it all in one place (again, if this exists already, please tell me).<p>Other things that would be great:<p>Give me a centralized repository of windows ISOs and Office installs. You can get these things, yes, but it involves jumping through a bunch of hoops. Just give me microsoft.com/downloads and present me with copies of your OS, and office. I'm not saying give away product keys (obviously), just media.<p>Btw, what you guys did in Russia this week was really really cool. I actually had a lengthy conversation with a friend of mine about how awesome of you that was. In all honesty, you guys are doing a lot of really really amazing things right now. I am still in disbelief at how I could just email some very nice woman at Microsoft Research, ask her for a peppermill, and have one show up at my door a few days later. That kind of stuff warms my heart. So does making the N-GRAM data from bing available to students for free. That type of stuff is awesome, and that is the type of stuff that makes me want to support you guys. Keep <i>that</i> up.<p>Thanks, Ryan

So, I think I'm a pretty good programmer (Resume's in the profile, if you're curious) and I happen to be interviewing with Microsoft on the 11th, so here's my perspective.<p>From a recruiting point of view, the way you guys outsource travel arrangements is a total PITA. Source Sure (or whatever) really, really sucks, and it's bogus that interviewing for a job should be more time consuming and paperwork intensive than my taxes, and complete with an audit. You don't have to go full-out Fog Creek on your interview process or anything, but I think taking the arrangements back in-house would do wonders for you guys.<p>Other than that, it'd be cool if I could be convinced that I would work on something interesting and meaningful without having to watch out for Office Politics and mismanagement (what I was overwhelming warned about by former full-time employees as well as former interns). It is my sincere hope that such bubbles exist within Microsoft for at least a small portion of your developers.

Linkrot on MSDN is a serious problem, as is the MSDN search.<p>I've resorted to using Google to find documents on MSDN because its index seems to be more up to date and tends to give me the non-broken links (why doesn't Microsoft use Bing to power MSDN search!?!?).<p>Navigating MSDN for documentation is painful at best.<p>Also, it would be really nice to have all of the .net exceptions well documented in one place.

1. Please create a public/private App store so I can easily install a WPF app. In general, make it as easy to install a desktop app as it is right now to install an iPhone/iPad app. Not just the mechanics of the installation, but also the friendly discovery process with descriptions, screen shots, reviews, etc.<p>2. Windows 8 needs to run well on tablets and touch needs to work <i>just</i> like it does on the iPad--don't show me the cursor. I don't care if they cost 3x what the iPad costs, but I need a good tablet experience for our business clientele. And I definitely mean full Windows 8, with MS Office. If the early releases of Windows 8 don't run well on tablets, we'll be writing iPad versions of our apps.<p>3. Keep up the good work with WP7, C#, Visual Studio, WPF/XAML, Dynamics and Sharepoint 2010. Please make SharePoint interoperability a priority across your entire business product line. Good call on killing the Kin.

Suggestion to Microsoft - Do less, but better. My faith in their products has slowly grown over the last 10 years, however they still suffer from trying to have too many fingers in too many pies. And in my opinion their products suffer for it. Maybe they should put more focus into fewer products?

I am not happy with Microsoft's splintering of Windows into so many versions. It is a waste of time. I say just offer one client version of Windows and sell it for a flat price.<p>I would also like to suggest giving me more options on what I install during the install. I'm not suggesting this option be something that normal users see, it can be hidden away somewhere, but to make me install a web browser I won't use is silly. (And no, the current "hide access" way of doing this, after the bits are infecting my hard drive, is not satisfactory.)<p>Bitlocker should accept pass phrases and be easier to enable if one doesn't have a TPM.<p>Finally, I think it is high time that Windows allows people to have their home directory anywhere they want to; especially during account creation. This is something that should be an option in the Users control panel.

MS, please stop trying to sell 8 different SKUs for each new version of your OS. Just sell one. Thank you.

A properly standards-compliant browser. I know IE9 has <i>partial</i> support for CSS2, but I want them to go the whole hog (css3, acid3, svg, etc).

Spend the same money on startups that Microsoft spent to destroy startups in the 80s &#38; 90s.

Please stop it with installers that download other installers. If I want to download Live Messenger, I don't want to download a program that'll download Live Messenger.<p>"Alright! Download finished! Wait, downloading messenger? What did I just spend 5 minutes downloading?"

Don't let dynamic languages in the CLR die!!! (IronPython, IronRuby)

1. Don't buy Nokia; waste of money and no help in sorting out a mobile strategy 2. Port CE to ARM as soon as possible before the entire tablet/phone market is lost 3. Focus on the enterprise market where you potentially contribute value added and move out of consumer software apps which will all be free, web-based in five years 4. Focus all software development on smaller code that assumes no hard drive and 4GB or less of flash memory in the device; really understand products like Dropbox as a means to see a software strategy going forward 5. Abandon the strategy where all the software (Office, IE, etc) only runs on Windows

I want to say, "Thank you." Lately, I've been working to print Office documents and Outlook emails to PDFs for a product in the legal industry, and Microsoft's documentation, their CodePlex projects and their interoperability teams have made this process surprisingly painless.<p>It's a pity that IronRuby was largely cancelled, however—I would love to have more high-quality dynamic languages under .NET. Microsoft has a variety of excellent static languages, but dynamic languages like Python, Ruby and JavaScript are all very popular, and Microsoft hasn't had a popular tool in this space since Visual Basic became a static language.

At this point probably the smartest thing which Microsoft could do would be to adopt some Linux distro (perhaps OpenSuSE, which they already have some relationship with) and base all of their future development on top of it. At a stroke this would eliminate many of their security and malware problems, dramatically improving the user experience.<p>Windows remains prevalent, but at present as a software developer I'm not seeing much of a future for it, other than as a legacy system that I may need to support, and am recommending home and business users to move to other platforms (either Linux or Mac) whenever that's possible.

Two things really stand out for me.<p>1. Please, please, PLEASE take the App Store model that Apple has used and apply it to Xbox Live. There is already a process by which developers have to get their wares certified to run on the Xbox so the review process is pretty much already in place. The barrier to entry on the 360 needs to be significantly lowered (there have been half-baked efforts, but nothing terribly inspiring). One of the most exciting rumors (that didn't happen) about the Apple TV was that it would be running iOS and allow for apps on a television. The Xbox 360 is in a great position to make this a reality. Let me write tiny games/apps for the 360, and let it be easier to get them on Live than it is to get on Apple's App Store.<p>2. The way the entire company thinks about User Interface / User Experience design is, if I may be impolite, <i>fucked</i>. What little I've been able to read regarding how MS goes about designing the parts of their software that people see and use comes down to this; We follow whatever Office does and middle management sanitizes everything. It's no wonder that something great like Courier died inside of Microsoft. Designing applications for <i>humans</i> is very, very hard. Designing applications for humans inside of a huge bureaucracy is next to impossible. There are probably people working at MS with titles like "User Advocate" and other nonsense, but the end product reflects that those people are incompetent, impotent, or both. A team of powerful, capable people need the ability to "stop the line" and say no to the bullshit. The company has coasted for far too long on UI/UX familiarity due to the pervasiveness of its products. People <i>hate</i> using MS software. My family <i>hate</i> their Windows PCs. The gloss and fresh paint of Vista/7 haven't addressed the common person's frustration. In a business environment people have an incentive to adapt to bad software and work around it. At home my mother just wants her computer to print a photo at the click of a button, at the proper resolution, with the right orientation, and exactly how she sees it on the screen. Experienced business and technical users have mentally blocked out the usability cruft of the last 20 years, but the consumer market is and will continue to be unforgiving. This is why Apple is eating your lunch.

I am not the usual Anti-Microsoftie you see around these parts. I love many of their products. Many of my gripes over the years have slowly been fixed, but there are still some:<p>- Windows does not have a strong history of (non-half-assed) interoperability. This is a hinderance to using Microsoft products in many projects. Use the same technologies as everyone else and do it right! Screw XPS, Screw WinRM (or tunnel it over SSH like normal people). We're too busy to learn The New Way To Do $foo This Year.<p>- Stop reimplementing the wheels everyone else uses. A good example is the XPS vs PDF war. Everyone else uses PDF, it's a reasonably open standard, just USE IT. Do go create your own "value-added" garbage.<p>- Your enterprise products are not only not free, they're costly. I can use a free open source web application stack that is at least as good as ASP.NET/ASP.NET MVC. I love Visual Studio though. BizSpark is a start, but what about those of us doing large scale community/"hobby"/not-for-profit projects?<p>- Ballmer's leadership sucks. Every time I read one of his stupid quotes about his stance on $foo, I cringe.<p>- blogs.msdn.com is gold. Keep this program and the openness from the engineers going!<p>- Stop the inter/intra product group fighting that ends up hurting the end users. Get some stronger leadership.<p>- Stop trying to make Windows more simple for grandma. You're making it harder to navigate for the rest of us (see the Windows 7 control panel as a perfect example).

As someone that is completely out of touch with the Microsoft ecosystem that is a very hard question. The main reason for that is I'm simply not the target audience for their flag ship products, but I also want to avoid getting locked into a platform that depends on the whim of a company with vastly different interests from my own. For the same reason I'm increasingly moving away from Apple products. So it would be a bad business decision for Microsoft to change the way their software works for the small minority of users like me.<p>That being said, some of Microsofts products are very solid on a technical level and much better documented than their open source counterparts. My impression of .NET, for example, is very positive, although limited to Mono. It seems like they are moving in the right direction with IE as well and I've heard good things about MSSQL (or whatever it is called these days). They got a lot of credibility for IronPython and IronRuby, too. What happened to IronRuby ruins that good will, though.<p>The problem is that I'm afraid to touch "the good parts" that come out of Microsoft for anything beyond playful experimentation. In my opinion, that is a wasted opportunity. With Oracle ruining everything Sun built Microsoft has a great opportunity to eat market share away from Java. Why aren't they donating the IP related to .NET to the Apache Foundation, for example? That would make .NET a viable platform for me (practically, not necessarily technically). Developers used to be forced to work with Microsoft because that was were the market was, but with modern browser technology we don't need them anymore. So the next best thing they can do is make us willing to work with technologies like .NET.<p>One more thing. Ten years ago, when I permanently left their platform, my opinion of Microsoft was bordering on hate. These days I see them, and Google, as one of the more reliable big tech companies, miles ahead of Apple and Oracle. Maybe that has something to do with not being directly exposed to Windows anymore, but I do get the impression that their reputation is improving.<p>P.S. Theoretically, there are a lot of things I would love to see from Microsoft, like donating technologies like DirectX to the Apache Foundation so it would be easier to run games on GNU/Linux or making Windows a thin layer on top of BSD, but I don't realistically expect them to do anything like that.

Dear Steve and friends:<p>1) .NET and F# are the best things you've done lately. Make folks truly able to develop and program it under any O/S and you will gain fans for life. Stop holding .NET hostage to Windows. (I know about Mono. MS should dive into this in a big way. It's truly mission-critical)<p>2) Big mistake buying Groove and then killing it/sucking it into the we-must-conquer-the-world office server system. It was better stand-alone. This shows that Microsoft has a tendency to buy and kill. Sure, you're running a giant integration machine, but integration is not always the best strategy<p>3)IE must die. Simple as that. You lost the anti-compete, the code is old and bloated, and you're sucking wind behind Google. Sure, it's been a great hold-off-Google-as-long-as-you can deal, but at some point the stalling tactic doesn't work. You reach the tipping point and customers will leave you in droves. You are fast approaching this point. Act quickly before you get there. Best bet? A re-branded browser released monthly, fully standards-compliant, and hand-optimized in assembler. No Active-X. Painful, yes.<p>4) Take a lot of your architects out back and shoot them. I joke, of course, but you guys have a tendency to make everything into a 747-cockpit. It's crazy. Somebody needs to get a handle on design over there; you are failing miserably.<p>5) Decentralize and spin-off. Lots of business books on where you are, and most of them say to make small companies with freedom to innovate. You've owned the market. Now it's time to define sub-segments of it and compete there as separate companies. The leverage and strategy you used to get here are not going to work to stay here.<p>6) The O/S is a browser. Get used to it. Make it a mantra. Everybody in that place should be thinking of the O/S as just a fancy browser. You were headed in the right direction with IE, but the Netscape fight killed that idea. Well the court battle might be over but the general principle you were chasing is still around. Go with that<p>7) Your server-based solutions are the cash cow. But the cow needs to get out and exercise some. Love the Office Integration, now make them use "real" xml and make the server products more standards-friendly. You can't beat the entire internet -- they want the data. What you can provide is custom walled-gardens with lots of features. Allow users to drift in and out of the office server solution system seamlessly and without paying. Make money on the upsell. Difficult change to make, I know, but time is running out on the current model.<p>8) For a while you've been in the IBM-how-can-I-hang-on-to-each-little-penny routine. Folks see that. They understand you are fighting a rear-guard action. I'm sure that in the echo-chamber that is Microsoft things are all fine and hunkey-dorey, but you'd better get your ass in gear and make new breakthrough useful products and I mean right now. Too much research just sits on a shelf doing nothing. Take Google for a model -- don't build shit unless you're willing to play around with it publicly to see if there is a market. No market, no product. Better to have a quick beta released that lasts 5 years than waiting 5 years for something that middle-management manages to kill before it ever sees the light of day.<p>ADD: And I never want to run another update program again. I don't mean I'm annoyed at having to reboot a thousand times. I am annoyed with the entire update process in its entirety. Kill any user interactivity and just make it update. If you want us to have dozens of programs on our box, they're going to have to shut the hell up. No pop-ups, no updates, no nothing unless I ask for it. Just make it work.

Stop being bi-polar.<p>Make a decision on who you are making products for. Either create products that fully cater to MegaCorp Executives or for Consumer/Developers. You will almost always have competing needs and risk serving neither if you build a product that tries to cater to both.<p>If the choice is the later, tell Balmer he should personally make an effort to listen to the demographics. I bet the benefits of doing so outweigh those of commissioning a research company to post on HN and create a report.

There are few technologies that I think could be invested in to get much more support from the HN crowd (whether they are well known to the HN crowd yet or not)<p>* Singularity -- should be the basis of a new OS, maybe not to replace windows... but be the next windows. You're going to have to break backwards compatibility sometime, might as well start with a parallel OS<p>* Intellipad -- <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd861709%28VS.85%29.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd861709%28VS.85%29....</a> I heard it would be something like emacs for .NET<p>* opening .NET -- mono is really close but isn't yet as polished as to attract the thousands of .NET developers. Buying into the whole MS stack is too expensive for founders and small businesses but if development could be done on or in conjunction with open source environments, I imagine lots of Ruby (IronRuby), Python (IronPython), Java/Clojure (ClojureCLR) folks would be more willing to consider the market.<p>* SharePoint is beloved by all enterprise companies but ALL developers laugh at it. Offer some kind of DLR API and I bet you could get lots of programmers more willing to support it.<p>* Command line -- go ahead and support unix commands and a more unix-like shell. How could it hurt?<p>* MSDN licenses are ridiculous and clearly only for big companies. Even startups that could start with BizSpark and ActionPack would rather use open source tools than be stuck in MSDN licensing hell.<p>* drop the price of Windows Server 08 Core to better compete with Linux servers<p>* start advertising better to non-enterprisey IT guys.

Get WPS7 to feature parity with iOS as soon as possible. I think there are actually a number of reasonably disaffected iPhone users who want to switch, but don't want to give up e.g. copy/paste or multitasking. Also, make it clear to people that using WPS7 means using the Zune client, and that the Zune client is better than iTunes - I think you already have the better software here, but zero brand awareness.<p>Get your secret hacker teams to make stuff that feels futuristic. Surface is cool, a mouse with a touch surface would have been okay if Apple didn't beat you to it, but why don't you make some freaking HUD goggles with eye tracking or something? You have the financial and intellectual resources to do it. I guess you get points for Kinect here, but right now Kinect is the exception rather than the rule, at least in the public's perception. Releasing something as cool for non-gamers as Kinect is for gamers, and I think the mindshare gains will be huge. You won't out-Apple Apple (and I don't think you should want to) as the shapers of tech fashion, and I doubt it's possible to out-Google Google as the shapers of the web, so be the shapers of the future instead.

- Be more open to learning from, working with and using OSS software that was not written inside Redmond campus. I'm sure most of these projects would love to treat Windows as a first-class target platform. It's just not possible that Microsoft will be able to write best-in-class of every type of software. And I don't buy the argument that it opens you to a legal minefield. Apple is arguably a bigger company than you are now, by all the metrics that count, and manages to do this just fine. I have written software under the MIT license that is part of every shipping OS X installation now. It rocks.<p>- Licensing. Goddamn, fix it. DreamSpark/BizSpark is not the answer, it's a stalling tactic. I wouldn't use Microsoft technology for my own startup if it came to that, as I know licensing will kill me if I'm successful, and will also kill me if I'm not, once the timer runs out.<p>Background: Used to be a Linux/Unix dev, moved to .NET in 2004, but I still get offered jobs doing iPhone or Rails based web development on a regular basis due to my OSS profile. It's getting harder to turn them down, as I'm not convinced Microsoft's roadmap is not a dead end any more.

Why continue to develop proprietary software for problems that have been solved over and over in open source (code editing, code compilers, browsers, email clients, word processing, the list is endless)? People--and businesses--are not going to continue being okay with shelling out hundreds/thousands of dollars for something they can get for free. It may be profitable now, but it won't be in the future.

Howdy, 10 years ago, I was a happy user of Microsoft products and could not see any reason to use anything else. I never minded paying for software. I still don't mind, although now, all of the software I use is free(legally free). I don't even allow Microsoft software on my network, because I don't trust it. What drove me away from Microsoft was a steady history of the company lying to me and treating it's customers with contempt. Sometimes I hear that Microsoft has gotten better, but many things, including recently the behavior concerning Microsoft Office XML shows me otherwise. I disliked Linux when I started with it, but I did not appreciate paying money to be treated like dirt and I forced myself to convert. I think I understand the economic forces that drove Microsoft, but I think you were too short sighted. You looked on consumers as people who had little choice but to knuckle under to you. No consumer wants the DRM you crippled Windows Vista and 7 with. No sensible company wants an unreliable OS, which is all you offer now. I have discussed the unreliable nature of Windows with several senior MS engineers and they almost all agree about my points. One senior designer did not, although he could never find and deliver to me the evidence he though he had to the contrary. I am more productive now with Linux than I ever was with Microsoft products, and I feel much better about it, too. It seems to me that Microsoft is on it's way to irrelevance and I think there is very little chance you will reform. You think the actions you take are defensible. Most of them are, but that is not the only standard that matters. I feel dirty when I have to use Microsoft products now and that is 100 percent driven by your choices. I convert people to Linux every month. I still have an open mind, but I would need to see a real difference at Microsoft to change my mind. Thank you for asking.

1. I've used Ubuntu on my desktop for the last 1.5 years. We switched most of our Windows servers to Linux over the last year as well. It would be great to have a free base Windows OS release, with zero bells and whistles, but a fully functional networking stack, and no connection limits. Provide the rest as a paid monthly service. The corporations that are going to pay for it, will pay for bells and whistles. Most of them are currently migrating to Linux, btw; the only thing that stops them if anything is the lack of paid support for the middleware.<p>2. Price your software according to purchasing power parity. If a book in a B&#38;N store in SFO costs $US49, the same book costs about $USD10 in book stores in Bangalore. Do the same for Windows and MS Office. (Require that its paid for by a country specific credit card if you must).<p>3. Open an office somewhere more exciting than Seattle. Remember that most of the crew pulling all nighters and doing the death march are &#60; 30 y/o, think about what they want from life.<p>4. Send me money, and I'll tell explain in detail how to turn around the online business.

#1st and foremost, Microsoft has been a leader in the tech industry, and has created great patterns and code for the rest of us to compete with.<p>#2nd MS you need to take more risks. maybe the MS brand name is not the place to do it, but you have amazing research going on and no place to see how it plays out in the marketplace. find an avenue to test markets like startups do. try things and be willing to fail. in racing if you don't spin out at least once you aren't trying hard enough. Apple jokes about AppleTV as a hobby, but it's a good example of an Apple product that has yet to succeed, even though so many of them have worked. at least Apple is both focused, and taking risks.<p>#3rd MS your largest competitor is yourself, you have nothing to fear but your own products. you will be a better company if you invite competition into your marketplace. heck if a good competitor comes along, you can do what other large companies do and buy them. and you'll create a reward system for innovators to flock to your set of platforms. on this note, i challenge you to open source or share source on legacy code. why keep the code closed on win 3.11, dos, win95, win98, win2000, winxp? let the market place take that code and do something with it. then buy the interesting companies.<p>#4 get out there and have some fun. to much of what MS does is profit motivated. do something inspirational, just for the fun of it, just for the geekery of it. it will effect your brand in a positive way.<p>#5 sell software for linux. great software will win on any platform, you don't need lockin. you just need great products. maybe sell directx for linux. embrace choice.<p>#6 give away an operating system, that has an app store and make it easy for developers to sell and update their code on those machines. think Steam + iTunes + Windows.

Create <i>one</i> edition of Windows at each release - at least keep it simple (stupid). Peope rarely figure out exactly what the differences are, what with abstruse spreadsheet explanations. When they finally get their hands on a version that isn't Ultimate, they are left with the feeling that they don't get the full experience, which detracts greatly from the joy of getting a new version of Windows.<p>In other words, it's detrimental to the brand and marketing of Windows - and Office, which seems to suffer from the same. There is no "Windows", "Windows 7" or "Office 2007" there is Basic, Somewhat Basic, Student, Enterprise, Ultimate, Blue, Purple, Turqoise, Cyan edition. I don't want Microsoft to <i>be</i> Apple, but just consider how easy iWorks and Mac OS X is to market by comparison. And fit into just one page.<p>I like that you'll call the next version of Windows "Windows 8", which, to me, is a step in the right direction. But the aforementioned is one of the many things that ensures that "corporate" will always be a part of a sentence about Microsoft.<p>I'm open to something along the lines of a "Private" and "Enterprise"/"Business" version, but I find it hard to believe that private super users won't want the features in the E/B edition. If you have to create separate versions, maybe you could make a "Basic" and "Advanced", which separates the users who don't need - or understand - the exclusive features from the companies and super users who do, and allows them to get a cheaper version without all the complex dingus.<p>(FWIW, I use Windows 7 and intend to do so for a while, but I'd love for Microsoft to be more of a start-up than a corporation. It feels complacent in some respects or just out of touch, which I assume is because it has to appeal to many platforms and customer types at the same time - but does it really have to show so much?)

Phwoa. What an opportunity. I'm a developer/admin. I use windows on desktop, mac on laptop, and do most of my work ssh'd into unix hosts. While I was at uni I worked as a NT administrator in a datacentre but always found the platform like a straight-jacket compared to unix.<p>1) Windows would be a lot better if there was less of it. A good combination would be a Windows UI, Microsoft developer tools, Microsoft productivity tools on top of a true unix.<p>2) Why don't you create a 'Developer' version of Windows that costs some more, and includes simple-install of developer tools and productivity suite in one hit? That way when you reinstall your system you can get it all without stuffing around. Any unix you name comes has an install that gives you a super-powerful development stack out of the box: these days they have a compiler, libraries, perl, python, powerful text editors, hex editors, network tools. Windows is near-useless out of the box.<p>3) The world needs a new type of word processor, where editing is done by structure. Users should then be able to render that data in different ways - styled for printing, or for the web. At the moment data is very brittle.<p>4) The combination of styles and fonts in Word creates untold damage. Users generally don't know what they're doing, and it's nasty to be the poor bugger who gets stuck cleaning up after a naive user has been at a word document.<p>5) Some Windows apps cause lots of trouble by the way Windows widgets automatically transform dash and apostrophe characters to special sigils that break in other systems.<p>6) Windows would be more useful if it had rapid and effective workspace switching ala X-Windows.<p>7) The alt+tab functionality in excel has always been broken, and this is very annoying. Your OS division broke alt+tab functionality in Windows Vista+7 and this is super annoying too. (I've discovered alt+esc is some compensation - it fails to minimize but does reliably moves things to the back of the switching stack, unlike alt+tab which is now completely unpredictable). I've been using Windows 7 on desktop for six months. I can't think of a UI change I've encontered which I consider to be an improvement. The Windows UI has become less usable with each release since Windows 2000. I think you're driving it with focus groups, and there's no coherent plan. If there is a coherent plan, you could change what's driving it.<p>9) The desktop can still be cool. Desktop can have multiple monitors, comfortable keyboards, nice sitting positions, good audio-visual arrangements. You could play this up more. It would be great to have something like a phone that you could dock and which became your desktop system.<p>10) Disk sharing over SMB is a poor experience. I can't believe that it needs to be slower to interact with than a web browser when it's on my local network.<p>11) Windows file locking is annoying.<p>12) Telnet is an extremely useful tool to have for helping diagnose problems over the phone when dealing with naive customers. Your team removed it from the standard Windows install. Put it back in, and improve its support for complex TTYs. You should ship a ssh client while you're at it, putty is perfect.<p>13) For the love of god, please get somebody to take fifteen minutes and update notepad so that it respects unix line-endings.<p>14) I doubt you'll be able to create a successful new platform until you change the way you relate to your audience. People have been burnt by the experience of Windows lockin. But if you took a stand against copyright, and started focussing on creating flexibility for your users, people could change their minds. Imagine if MS started trying to make Windows support all the formats, and started pushing back attempts by media companies to build lockin situations.

Make Windows fully POSIX compatible out-of-box.

Xbox gui should be instantly responsive (at least as an option). It's so tediously slow, it even misses button presses - you have to wait for it. It's frustrating and unnecessary in a graphics machine. No offense, but even the grossly underpowered iPhone manages to be instant. Xbox Zune is even slower: the switch to movies takes many seconds. Perhaps this is setting up encryption modules - but it's absurd. Because of this, I avoid anything movie related (Of course, games are the key, but an unnecessarily shoddy experience actually makes me use the Xbox much less often.)<p>"Indie Games" aren't available on Australian Xbox - this would add a lot of value.<p>Gold Xbox: the inline link to "switch off auto-renewals" doesn't work. You have to ring up, and cancel instantly, losing the rest of the month. This comes across as underhanded and dishonest. Unless Xbox LIVE is a major profit center, this needlessly loses goodwill.

Microsoft is dumping its rock solid Windows Mobile platform. This is a huge concern for me.<p>It was developed with years of efforts and in 6.5 Microsoft got it much right.<p>However just because Apple's marketing strategy worked really well, it didn't mean you needed to scrap your well built-in well tested platform in favour of a copy of iPhone called Windows Phone. It has so far not been able to create any excitement in the market yet but on the other hand Windows Mobile has a lot of fans.<p>Windows Mobile has thousands of useful applications which help so many people around the world. On the other hand, Windows Phone is just a new platform: do you really think scrapping away will convince those hundreds of thousands of Windows Mobile users to upgrade to something on which their favourite apps are no more available?<p>You need to encash the already built hype and following rather than pretending that you don't have anything at all and starting all over.

Despite not being an employee, I have close personal Microsoft ties, so I regularly hear about what goes on in Redmond. Anytime I'm involved in a discussion about Microsoft's future, the first and foremost point I bring up is how Microsoft needs to divest its investments in order to succeed in the future, or have any impact on shareholder value with respect to its stock price. Microsoft is more of a giant company with several distinct product silos. The Windows and Office product silos are cash cows, while the other ones often struggle to catch up. It's like a giant, lumbering robot trying to move through molasses. Microsoft needs to divest and spin off some of its various smaller divisions and allow for more autonomy. Let them operate as they please and allow for the market forces to take effect.

Don't copy the bad aspects of OS X, only the good ones. In turn, don't throw out the good aspects of Windows (XP), only the bad ones. Not everything Apple does is good - make up your own mind.<p>(I hate how Windows 7 removed the likeable things about Windows XP and introduced the annoying things about OS X).

For all these years I kept on installing windows on my laptops and desktops not because I'm a MS fan, but all the cool games run on windows and I'm a frequent gamer. MS probably will have a good advantage if they released a handheld gaming platform.<p><a href="http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/210279/rumor-microsoft-developing-zune-xbox-handheld-gaming-device/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/210279/rumor-microsoft-d...</a><p>MS will probably have a good comeback with that, I hope it wouldn't be a closed environment like XBOX or Sony PSP. I would love to play flash/html canvas games using a handheld gaming platform. If they could add touchscreen functionality along with web browsing and installable games from MS Games/Steam etc. then it will be game over for other handheld platforms.

I'd say try to compile the document with things that are actually realistic. Many of the suggestions here are akin to having a meeting with Obama and telling him 'Shut down the military and divert the money to solve world hunger!' and similar statements that may sound good but in reality aren't going to be taken seriously.<p>If you send through a document to Ballmer saying he should drop .NET, throw away Windows Phone 7 and base Windows on Unix, he isn't going to be likely to take any of your suggestions seriously (even if you did throw in ones that were realistic and made sense).<p>I'm sure you already realise this, given you're smart enough to have been asked to produce such a document, but focus on slightly smaller things that could actually make a difference.

On a corporation-wide strategic note, I have two thoughts: Embrace maturity. Expand only in limited, strategic ways.<p>With apologies to Mitch Hedberg, if you follow the tech industry long enough, you start to get mad at Microsoft. There's Microsoft's iPhone (Windows Phone), Microsoft's Google (Bing), Microsoft's iPod (Zune). Someone needs to tell Microsoft, "man, just be yourself."<p>Microsoft seems obsessed with coming up for a "killer" for every hot new trend. If some other company's product gets buzz and "relevance", you can expect Microsoft to come along 1-2 years later and try and compete with that product. By the time Microsoft's product is any good, the buzz moves on to something else. I'm waiting for Windows Live to try and remake itself in Facebook's image.<p>Microsoft is a mature company. They pay dividends. They're not going to compete in terms of buzz, "relevance", or potential for future growth. They're not in the same league as Apple or Google--but in the league they <i>are</i> in, with companies like maybe Oracle and IBM, they're at the top of the league. So stay in the league that you're winning. Remember, the point of growth and relevance and hotness is to get into the league you've been winning for over a decade.<p>Yes, Apple is even older than Microsoft and is growing fantastically. That's because Apple had nothing to lose. If you want growth, you have to roll the dice and reinvent the company from the ground up. That's easy if you're Apple and you're at the bottom of the league, struggling to break even. Microsoft is a different story.<p>Microsoft knows which of its products are worthwhile, which isn't necessarily synonymous with profit. (Visual Studio isn't a big revenue source, but you have to have developer tools for your platform to get developers.) Focus exclusively on those.<p>Handle extensions in two ways. First, instead of chasing every trend, chase maybe one or two opportunities at a time (company-wide) and focus your best efforts on them. Opportunities aren't trends. Once something is a trend, the opportunity is lost. That's not your league anyway.<p>Second, don't always chase an opportunity by building something. Like any population, you need fresh infusions of DNA every so often or you will suffer from the effects of inbreeding and die out. If a startup demonstrates a profitable business model that can benefit from Microsoft's scale and stability, buy it. Become the best "pooled-risk company management company" (<a href="http://paulgraham.com/prcmc.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/prcmc.html</a>). Once you buy the startup, don't destroy or assimilate it. Don't require them to build on your technology stack. Don't move them to Redmond. Carefully control the mixture and interaction to protect the startup's culture and DNA. Over time you can integrate more if it will provide a benefit, but some businesses will have to essentially remain separate companies. Embrace that.

Probably too late to comment, but I can't get past why Microsoft still charges an exorbitant fee for Visual Studio. Eclipse and other development environments are free of charge. It encourages development by reducing barrier to entry.<p>More developers = better apps = more customers.

I would like to tell Microsoft to stop being so risk averse. Stop relying so heavily on market research. Stop acquiring talent with proven track records and stifling them with your rubric.<p>If you want to survive the next 20 years, you're going to have to innovate. But innovation comes with significant risks, and at the earliest sign of failure or possible failure, you pull out instead of pivot, adapt or wait.<p>Stop worrying about marketshare. Start worrying that your products are not considered thought leaders; your flagship products are (until several innovations recently, like IE9 and 7) considered buggy, not secure and it's your fault. You've let the competition paint you into that corner.<p>Stop playing catch up. Start innovating.

Requiring approval of apps for Windows Phone 7 is awful. I was excited about the platform until that announcement, and have since jumped ship to Android.<p>Microsoft, in my mind, has always been a champion of developers. Above all, I would protect that legacy.

Microsoft should prepare itself for a world in which the consumer computing experience will no longer be dominated by a single player. Apple, Google, Palm/HP, Blackberry, Nintendo, Sony and probably many others will grab a share of the time and money that in the past would've gone to newer Wintel PCs.<p>Ms should target Windows as a strong business-only brand, and this focus would probably make for a better product. It's probably wise to still play in the consumer market, with XBox and Windows Mobile and whatnot, but expecting lower margins and increased competition.<p>Also, please hire someone to come up with better names for your products. It's getting ridiculous.

Fully support server-side automation of Office.<p><a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757/en-us" rel="nofollow">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757/en-us</a><p>There are a lot of use cases for automatically generating Office documents. There are so many developers who want to use your products that way. Why not embrace them and use them to drive additional sales? We are actually doing server-side automation of Word right now in an internal work flow application — even though it's unsupported — because there's no good alternative for what we need to accomplish. But it involves some ugly kluges and when things break we can't call up Microsoft support.

Get rid of Ballmer and put a techie in charge

If you're going to force OOXML on us, at least make your products support it correctly.<p>Last I checked, running a somewhat normal business document saved out of Word 2007/2010 wouldn't even pass the validation schemas written for it.

Microsoft enabled competition in the PC market when introducing DOS. It's something like Google is doing today with Android in the smartphone market. I would like Microsoft to do that again. Today's Microsoft products are designed to vendor-lock-in the users, instead of liberating them.<p>Microsoft limits user freedom not only regarding its own products, but also adding DRM to its OS, for example DVD zones.<p>Vendor lock-in and DRM are the main reasons why I won't use Windows unless it's in a virtual machine. I don't want the OS I use to limit my freedom.

As much as you've got going for Xbox and Live, you're getting known as the people who always, gosh darn it, have to monetize <i>everything</i> in the Marketplace. No such thing as free downloads and updates, be it new maps, avatars or other content packs. Valve and other altruistic developers have often mentioned this problem.<p>This makes me, either as a consumer or a developer, to like PlayStation 3 all the more, even though your online store and service seems to beat theirs handily by other measures.

Now that it's clear that OpenGL isn't going away, fix WGL. It takes twice the amount of effort to use compared to other such APIs, and fixing it shows you care about standards.

Microsoft needs to spin off sub-brands like Toyota has done with Scion. There's a lot of cool stuff that Microsoft would have better luck selling under a more hip brand name.

Clean up your products' APIs - make them more consistent. I had to work with Dynamics GP's .NET API a few years ago, and it was quite cryptic.<p>I recently had to work with SQL SMO, and in this case, numerous references to small DLLs that, by themselves did very little.<p>These may be minor nitpicks in the grand scheme of things, but they contribute to a perception that Microsoft is fragmented and lacks consistency across products, and make developers' lives needlessly difficult.

I would buy Office for Linux. Hands down. Full price. Don't lock me into a crappy OS to get your products I <i>do</i> like.<p>Also, take serious advantage of Apple v Google and do some real innovation in the OS area. Make me love Windows 8 more than Linux. You have an opportunity.<p>Finally, make a next generation platform for mobile that's more than a lame copy of your crappy OS for the desktop. Inject some real competition into the handset market.

1. Make sure that new versions of IE are standards-compliant.<p>2. Implement a more aggressive IE update policy to quickly remove older versions of IE from the browser market.

In outlook, if my boss clicks send and the email has the word "attachment or attached" in it, ask him if he wants to add the file he forgot to attach.

I want to say "Thanks for making it affordable and easy to people from all parts of the world and all levels of income to have a personal computer."

1) More competitions for develops like 10kapartevent.<p>2) Robotics - Try to create a cheap programmable android. I know not core competence but partner with someone.

The fundamental problem I see is that Microsoft's internal company bureaucracy (which is probably fairly typical of many large corporations) gets in the way of innovation.<p>My suggestion is to break up the company into its various constituent parts (Windows, Office, Xbox, Explorer/.NET, etc.) and spin them off as independent corporations.<p>I'd buy stock in MSFT if that were announced. Pretty sure it wouldn't happen though.

Thanks for DOS and WinNT. But, since then you haven't been relevant to anything I do or want to do. Oh, and you made the best mouse ever.

1. Put your best people on IE9.<p>2. Put these into IE9:<p>2.1. File API: Directories and System: <a href="http://dev.w3.org/2009/dap/file-system/file-dir-sys.html" rel="nofollow">http://dev.w3.org/2009/dap/file-system/file-dir-sys.html</a><p>2.2. IndexedDB<p>2.3. WebSockets<p>3. Adopt WebKit for the next IE.<p>4. Accelerate the IE release cycle to every 6 weeks.<p>5. Code the next major Microsoft product range in Javascript, HTML, CSS.<p>6. Put a copy of Proverbs on every Microsoft desk.<p>7. Put a copy of Ecclesiastes on every Microsoft desk.

Please use webkit for IE9+?

Don't let Windows Live Mail lose out to GMail. Google is constantly adding and playing with new features for GMail and Microsoft should be doing the same. Eventually Google is going to come up with a real killer idea for mail and you'll be scrambling to keep your users and paying customers unless you stay nimble in this category.

Two things:<p>1) In Outlook, please stop turning email addresses into annoying underlined names that can't be edited.<p>2) If history is any guide the trend will swing back towards client-side apps at some point. If you want to make the OS relevant again you need to show us some awesomeness that simply can't be reproduced in a browser.

Bill Gates had vision. He wanted to change the fucking world, and he did. He put a PC in every house. He also had vision for how to run a business, and he (rightly) gets a lot of flak for that vision (i.e. forced integration), but it was effective in making and securing Microsoft's dominance.<p>Ballmer has not demonstrated vision in anywhere the same level. He seems more like a manager than the leader that Bill was. He has continued to execute the same vision that Bill had, or sometimes just goes through the motions. Bring products into new emerging markets (cloud, mobile, etc) and a huge reliance on enforced integration (lock-in). Throughout this, the original strategy that drove these methods has remained unquestioned, and often forgotten altogether.<p>Microsoft needs to question its original strategies and decide if they're still working, and either what is needed to make them work or what can replace them. For example: Forced integration. The idea is that if someone wants part of the MS Stack, you upsell them the rest of the MS Stack to get the full potential of the part they want. The problem is that if someone wants part of the stack but not the whole thing, will they go all-MS, or will they forgo that one part that they might have gotten in isolation? Back in the day, MS was dominate enough in some spaces that they could force their way into other spaces with integration. Is this still the case? I suspect it is far less so. Other companies and FOSS has made an entirely-non-MS stack viable for a variety of uses. Playing nicely with, say, Unix may be a more worthwhile strategy than it used to.<p>Similarly, Microsoft used to get into a whole bunch of emerging markets in order to dominate them, not for that market as such, but in order to prevent competitors from emerging. Does this still work? Not as much as they would like. Google and Apple are pretty well established in mobile, and Google is pretty well established in search (on the other hand, the XBox won). Take a look at whether chasing your competitor's products is still worthwhile, from a strategic view (the answer is likely to be neither yes or no, but a question of picking your fights better).<p>Now, I don't know enough about the various markets to be able to say for sure that MS should embrace Unix or ditch WinMo 7 or whatever (I like Bing, personally, and hope it succeeds). But I do have the strong suspicion that that question has not been seriously asked in the first place. As an outside, Microsoft's strategy &#38; vision looks like it has become cargo-cult-ish in the last decade or two, following in the footsteps of Bill because he knew what he was doing. That could even have been a good idea a decade ago. But the world has changed. Old practices need not be discarded, but they must at least be examined. If you create a new vision for Microsoft in the 21st, and stick to it, many of the other decisions are much easier.<p>EDIT: The other thing I would add is that products need to better focus on the question of "Why would I use this?" Xbox succeeded because it answered that: Xbox Live. Zune, despite being (according to some critics) better than the ipod, did not succeed because it either didn't have or didn't communicate any compelling reason why I should get a Zune. Bing is facing the same problem. Office 2007 was really cool because rather than focusing on what it could do from a features perspective, it focused on what the user needed to get done and resulted in a more productivity-focused tool. I am pessimistic for WinMo 7 because I haven't heard why I should prefer it over other smartphones.

I'd say do your best to beat your competition, but within the spirit of law.<p>And no NIH syndrome to control everything in your stack.<p>Means you could have used android, linux or webkit etc instead of writing everything yourself.<p>But choice is good too, so give it a rip and happy days to you and us consumers :)

Two words: browser compatibility. I really don't care what else they do as that won't affect my life in any way, but this is something I have to deal with daily, and is ultimately extremely frustrating, time consuming, and costs my employer a lot of money.

Add stuff into vs2010 to make small, portable executables for Windows with minimal dependancies. Get rid of b.s. like silverlight and wpf and adopt html 5 big time. Rip off cocoa &#38; iphone sdk and make a windows-alike version.

Dear Microsoft,<p>Can you please, please, please, create an emulation mode where file name paths use forward slashes instead of back slashes? Bonus points awarded if you also consider getting rid of the c:\ "disk name" file system conventions.

You hardware is excellent (Xbox 360 death-rate excepted). Love the natural keyboard, love the mice. They are all essential to me.<p>OTOH, you software is terrible. Completely FUBAR.<p>My suggestion: keep the hardware division, abandon the software.<p>(burn, karma, burn)

Why charge for your SDK? If I am going to develop for your platform you should be paying me, not the other way around.<p>Does anyone at MS even use Hotmail? Its absolutely a joke, I know gmail is the leader, but at least try.

Stop making operating systems. Make IE cross platform, and make Visual Studio dump exe's out for every platform, become the de facto way to develop apps on every platform. Become awesome.

a) Zero cost deployment. Create some minimal shell version of windows which will allow me to basically compile a few applications into an OS image that I can deploy on actual hardware machines / virtual servers. b) Have open source software available via a package manager which takes care of dependency resolution. One click install of apache , python etc. c) Embrace popular languages like python/ruby. d) Learn to obsolete old stuff strategically.

While I'm sure that the changes to the partner program make sense from the MS side, they were a case of too much too fast for our company.

Bring back the courier. I'm not usually an early adopter of hardware but if you made it work like the demo vids, I'd buy it on day 1.

Also, get rid of Ballmer and put someone technical in charge. A hard hitter like Gates or Jobs. MS is embarassing at the minute.

An html5 based extension system similar to chrome or safari so that extensions are easily portable between the browsers.

Asking that here is sort of like going to a KKK rally and asking if anyone has any questions for Jesse Jackson.

Dear Microsoft,<p>I'd like to see a commitment to web standards, manifested by support for IE9 all the way back to Windows 2000.

Build everything around Xbox Live. Identify what makes it work exceptionally, apply it to everything else.

If you included an ad blocker in Internet Explorer you could shut down google overnight!

I'm pretty frank about not being a fan of microsoft. I actually tell people that if you absolutely must use windows, the only acceptable way to do it is on a virtual machine on a mac. I was just at the bitly hackathon night earlier this week and virtually to a person everyone was sporting some flavor of macbook, not to mention that the office is kitted out in imacs. I routinely stop by my local coffee shop hangout just to do a laptop head count, which you should already know consistently hovers in the 70-80% range in favor of apple.<p>It is not just that apple is better on virtually every measurable metric that consumers care about but it is that microsoft's offering is so piss poor. Virtually the only reason people still buy windows machines is price nowadays. I have personally 'converted' dozens of long time windows users to apple after converting myself back in 2003. Those that have not followed my advice only do so based on price and price alone. Even still, those are just a small percentage of most who seek my opinion.<p>In the interest of being useful and not simply telling microsoft to pack it in because they have already lost (because they have) I will try to contribute something...<p>Dear Microsoft,<p>Speaking from a developers point of view you should really take a look at where the action is nowadays. Now I don't know what you consider to be the current 'hotness' in general computer development today but I think it is fair to say that this very forum, HN, is where it is at. The slashdot of it's day, as it were. If you were to crunch the articles that have made the front page on any given day through your bing search tool over the lifespan of this site I would certainly wager a morning coffee and even a donut that you would be hard pressed to come up with a measly handfull of relevant microsoft related technology articles. If you were to run a sentiment analysis on all the articles and all the posts contained herein you would not have to have a phd level implementation to ascertain that the general sentiment towards microsoft is low in the extreme. Beyond sentiment there is simply asymptotically zero mindshare amongst todays developers in microsoft technology.<p>But bashing aside, lets just look at what people are playing with. Nodejs, NoSql, various jvm languages, cloud infrastructure and the like. Virtually none of those things are even remotely connected to microsoft and its technology stack in any way. Some of them (if not most) are not even available on windows. Bottom line is that the new breed of developers do not use and do not care about microsoft technologies, except for one small piece: IE. Every developer developing for the web concerns him or herself with the performance of their bit of code on IE. Thankfully this is becoming less and less of a concern through the use of cross-browser libraries like jQuery and it's brethren.<p>Having just watched the Pope give sermon upon lecture in the UK live on the BBC I feel compeled to say to you: Repent. For the current crop of developers worldwide do not heed your vision of the computing future. I would echo a lot of JunkDNA's comment[1] in the sense that if you are even concerned with getting a second look from developers you need to make your tools available to them where they live, namely unix based os's. You need to have all in one prepackaged virtual machines that will run under parallels and vmware on the mac. Pure and simple. Developers who are not already windows adherents use the mac to develop their wares or some flavor of unix, in which case my recommendation of a virtual stack still holds true in regards to vmware.<p>As a consumer I would not even consider buying any offering from microsoft as it stands. Neither the zune or a winmobile device. The former being an utter failure and the later being an utter failure in its previous incarnations and if not changed drastically will continue to be in its most recent incarnation. Again, look to apple. What are they doing? Do some of that and then add in your "added-value" flavoring. To second JunkDNA[1] yet again, two versions of windows please. One server, one desktop. I'm a computer professional for over a dozen years and I have no idea why there are so many versions of windows. Honestly, I don't know what to tell people when they ask other than you are out of your mind and there is no one running the ship over there in Redmond.<p>In closing, I would like to wish you the best and honestly hope that you get it together. I strongly believe that the apple phoenix rose from the ashes due to their epic defeat at your hands. If you can mount a comeback the competition will fuel the space to the benefit of consumers everywhere. Good luck.<p>[1] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1701083" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1701083</a>

Re-work your entire UI strategy in Windows. Seriously, do so now. And do so in all of your desktop app groups (except Office, they seem to be doing okay).<p>Why? Because they're too risk-averse, and willing to let <i>really horrific</i> UI slide - and as your customer demographic has demonstrated in recent years, they will buy into good UI and positive experiences in <i>droves</i>. They will line up for a week before release to get their hands on a UI that works... and MS doesn't have UI that works.<p>Look at things like the system tray - a terrible idea that everyone realized was a terrible idea back in 1998. 12 years later, it's still there and as bad as ever - this is a textbook case of MS being too afraid to pull the plug on a feature that frustrates its users every moment of every day. I'm not sure what kind of horrific fury had to be leveraged to get the Office team to do their (IMHO, very awesome) redesign, but the same thing needs to happen to Windows, and it needs to happen <i>right the hell now</i>.<p>If you need a good example of someone at MS who knows good UI, consult the Xbox team. These are the same guys who took a perfectly good UI (the original blade interface), threw it out, and implemented something <i>much</i> better, and were not afraid of stepping on some toes to do it. MS needs this spirit back in its UI development, across the board. Substandard UI should not be accepted at all, and there needs to be some centralized oversight into the user experience. The quality of UI, or hell, even the basic layout of UI, across the entirety of Windows is so marvelously inconsistent it's a wonder people can navigate your OS at all. Compare with MacOS X, where Apple has gone to great pains in the last 2 years to bring all the disjointed bits all back under the same banner, and unify the experience to something much more consistent and usable. MS needs the same.<p>Further, your entire approach to the touch market is <i>broken</i>. The multitouch functionality in Win7 is <i>laughable</i>. Your company has correctly surmised recently that the touch market is going to be a crucial one in your battle for the consumer OS market - but you're not going to win it (you're not even going to be an also-ran) if you keep concentrating on inconsequential, completely useless bits like multitouch scrolling. You need a version of Windows that is <i>completely</i> overhauled, UI-wise, for the touch device. It is completely insufficient to touch-enable your existing tiny buttons, make no significant changes to the main Windows UI, and call it a day. The way people interact with a touch device is completely different from how they use a desktop computer - Apple has realized this, and MS needs to realize this as well. There should not be "Win7, now with multitouch", there ought to be "Windows Touch" - a completely different user experience, leveraging the same technologies.<p>I'm not terribly qualified to speak on the enterprise market MS is dominating, but you guys are losing <i>badly</i> in the consumer space in every segment except video gaming. The Xbox team moves <i>quickly</i>, and they execute <i>really well</i> to critical and user acclaim - MS would be well served to study what has made that part of the company so successful, and the rest of their consumer products such utter failures.

First let me say that I'm a big user of MS technology, I actually one of the few that calls myself an MS fanboy. Xbox owner since 2001, Xbox Live subscriber since 2002, coding in .NET with VS since 2005, Windows machines, etc etc. However I own an iPhone and an iPad. They are the best in class for what they offer.<p>Here's a very very practical idea that MS can implement very soon: Xbox Live App Store. MS already has 40+ million 360's connected to people's televisions. You have the Indie Game section, and there are some non-games there, but the quality is pretty poor. First off, broaden the scope officially to "Apps" and make them a first class citizen in the dashboard. Market the area, support the area. Just look at what Apple is doing with the iTunes app store and iteratively improve upon that. Also, give indy developers access to Kinect libraries ASAP. Essentially with Kinect, you can do to the TV what Apple did to the Phone - made the advanced "smart" capabilities accessible to everyone. And open it up to developers in a big way because you don't have the resources to make everything yourself. I really can't stress how cool this would be, and how game changing it would be for the "set top box" experience.<p>Here are a few "big" ideas that I'd like from MS that are more out there: 1) an all you can eat digital media subscription. I would pay up to $100/month to be able to watch any movie (in HD), play any game (PC or 360), read any book I want to, or listen to any music anytime that I want on any device I want. I don't care to own anything or build up any collections. I just want to be able to consume the media that I want to in a ridiculously convenient way that is actually reasonably affordable.<p>2) Where my physical person is my representation in meatspace, my facebook profile is my representation in cyberspace, my phone should be my representation in digital space. When I walk into a room with my phone every device around me should be aware of my phone and extend my phone's functionality. Let me put it this way: my phone contains a display, speakers, camera, etc. If there is a better display in the room then let me use that display instead of my phone's. If there are better speakers in the space then let me use those speakers instead of the phone's. etc. Essentially "explode" the phone's physical device into the surrounding better devices so you effectively have a "super phone" wherever you are. And subsequently you "collapse" the phone when no such compatible devices are around.<p>3) somehow get rid of bandwidth caps. Fast ubiquitous wireless with no bandwidth caps would be amazing 3b) somehow make the above reasonably priced no matter if you're "roaming" in another country or whatever<p>Now for minor complaints: 1) Windows sucks for battery life. OSX is awesome for battery life. This is one of the major reasons why Apple can make decently powerful laptops in a nice form factor. 2) WHY do I have to reboot my computer for every damn little update? It severely impacts my enjoyment of my Windows computers.

Support the .NET ecosystem on Linux. Do a proper shell on windows.

Don't keep on building what you think is a better OS every few years, and EOL-ing the previous ones. Why do you think people prefer WinXP over any of the others?

Can I have a WP7 dev phone? Pleeeeaase!

Be most sensible to others.

webGL or equivalent, I guess it's gotta be webD3D

Fuck off.<p>That is about all.

Mobile: MS screwed up by getting too late to buy core Danger staff and thus missed the OS team..<p>Buy RIM..all-of-it especially the OS staff. That OS-Services-hardware combo plus staff is enough to pivot if MS lets the incoming new ideas float to top pas the Political Fiefdoms that are so much an obstacle at MS..<p>Or the cheaper solution Wall-off-a-building at MS Campus..raise a pirate flag and put 100 software developers there..some MS Mobile hardware some OS dev tools and leave them be for 10 months with no Management interference..<p>And SB you have had things in the Research Labs that should have seen a product release..it was that good of ideas..<p>The whole MS Management structure is not working..<p>Might be a time to give out $150,000 startup scholarships to developers to start new companies..<p>Do not get me wrong I think you are smart enough to know, SB, that its not working..you have smart people bu the management infrastructure and political fiefdom culture at MS is in the way..

I suggest you do the following:<p>- Make sure that you at least quadruple the amount of incompetent middle managers at Microsoft.<p>- Ensure that all important decisions are made by douchey sales guys.<p>- Maintain bass-ackwards-compatibility as long as you possibly can.<p>- Make IE 9 not conform to any standards, especially now that you've said it would. This will allow you to force everyone to make web-apps on your terms, and help you maintain your death grip on the entire industry, and there will be much rejoicing.<p>- Start more projects that don't go anywhere. I really liked the Kin. Kin One. Kin Two. "vahn-tah-iihm, tooh tah-iihm". It was possibly the most magnificent product you've ever had.<p>- This reminds me, I think the world is just <i>itching</i> to get their hands on another Zune. Name it something like "Zune For Portable Music PlayersForSure". If you build it, they will come!<p>- Spend even more exorbitant amounts of money on inane ads. The butt-wiggle was a nice touch, but not enough. Something even <i>more</i> eccentric will help you connect with today's youth. Imagine Lady Gaga in her flesh-attire, licking a Kin 3 prototype while staring intently at the camera. No words, no background music. It will be perfect, and vast quantities of units will be shifted once Kin 3 comes out five years later.<p>- Whatever you do, please don't write a new OS from scratch. Just keep on keepin' on.<p>There. That should work. Do it for, you know, the greater good.<p>Actually I wanted to write something somewhat different, but that would have been downvoted into oblivion.

- Drop the shiny, translucent Aqua-wanna-be thing. Windows should look serious, a la NT 3.51/Win2K. It's been downhill since then. If you want to copy someone, take some style hints from NeXTStep, or these guys: <a href="http://www.ableton.com/live-session-view" rel="nofollow">http://www.ableton.com/live-session-view</a>.<p>- Hard deprecate the backslash. Forward slashes have been OK in code since forever. The GUI should display &#38; accept slashes.<p>- Incorporate bundles into Explorer &#38; the Windows loader (again, like NeXT). This would eliminate thousands of brittle file references in the reg db.

Keep on doing what you're doing: Microsoft has been a good corporate partner in the technology space over the past few years, perhaps humbled a little, and it has served the company well.<p>On the product front there isn't much to say - Windows 2008 R2 is excellent. SQL Server 2008 R2 is excellent. Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 is excellent. These are top of the game products, so....maybe lower the price? The only thing keeping these products from absolutely dominating is the price of entry, especially given that the competitors largely cost $0.

Next desktop shell needs to have an open interface to programmers such that modification of widgets and replacement is now open to the community. Programmers will find this especially useful. No more stupid dialog boxes with scroll items showing 4 at a time but containing 5000 items. And get that stupid advertisement out of MSN messenger.

Don't let hackers to cajole you into turning Windows to an open-source unix-clone, world already has way too many of those.

Make your software more intuitive, I hate digging through sub-menu after sub-menu to find something, then it's not there and having to back track, repeat. Make software for the end user.

I'd just like to point out that Apple is bigger than Microsoft now. Suck it Bill!<p>Also: Windows 7 is a good product, thank you.

I'll tell you. How much will you pay?

Please do away with the registry! It was a failed attempt and is now just a mess.

Thank you for BizSpark and the Express editions of everything.<p>Also please buy Adobe, un-fuck Flash, and make Express editions of their expensive-assed tools too.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Hello, I was going to post independently, but HN don't allow me to do it (you are submitting very fast, slow down).<p>Here is what I would like:<p><pre><code> Find a precise title for a post, that is a program that receives a url, a document or any text input and outputs a precise title for that information.</code></pre>

Kill piracy, stop giving free software to universities and most importantly let the enterprises breath. Trust me, follow this. This is the only way you can have a nice ending.

If I could make strategy decisions for Microsoft, here is what I would do:<p>1. Invest in integration. The dream Bill Gates achieved was a computer on every desk. The next dream should be: everything computerized. And connected and manageable with one device. Create a wearable app which would allow me to turn on / off any electrical device in my home. Which shows me statistics of how much electricity I used. Connect all the electrical devices - don't just focus on the home theater / multimedia part. Let me set the temperature of the room with that one device. Let me set music with that device. Let me run the kitchen equipment with that device.<p>2. Buy <a href="http://www.emotiv.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.emotiv.com/</a> - that or something similar to that is going to be the future. Where folks don't have to type on a keyboard. Or even use hand motions to work the computer. Just thought will do. So buy the company, put massive resources behind it - and bring the technology to the market a couple of years earlier than it otherwise would take.<p>3. Invest in a network of satellites. So you can connect all the devices all over the world together.

I would tell Microsoft to go back to their 90s mindset. Less focussed on big corporations, and more on getting (Windows) Microsoft software everywhere. Back then Microsoft was maybe an evil empire, but at least they did some exciting things from a developers viewpoint.<p>@Balmer: Get rid of .NET. There are people who use it, and some of them actually like it, but it will never become the huge success you thought it would become. This also means Silverlight has to go. The JIT compiler, with an open sourced assembly language, could get a 2nd life in the browser.<p>For a next OS, have a good long look at Windows 2000. Start from there, and instead of adding millions lines of code, start rewriting to make it smaller and faster. That way you end up with a valid OS to use on mobile devices.<p>Put more effort into your webbrowser. Make it so that it can be used for any type of application. Don't wait for W3C, if it's up to them we will have to wait till 2019 for a complete HTML5 specification. The other browser developers will either follow, and if not, developers will decide if they make a windows only application. Make the browser the default UI layer of Windows. This time to prevent nasty lawsuits, make it easy for others to add their own navigational toolbar.<p>So in short, instead of trying to protect business with windows locked in technology, be more open, and out develop the other companies. Become the company again, where it pays off to develop on your platform.