Read all of it. Go beyond just the title, and it should tell you that Paul Graham was more right than wrong with this one.
- Google was, for a while, the "gorilla in the room" - their decline is recent. But Paul Graham got it right, that Google was more scary than MS.
- Microsoft was "dead" in 2007, same as Apple was before Steve Jobs came back. The revival started with Satya Nadella, 7 years later. It is still a shadow of its former self, MS dominated the industry like no other player ever did (or is likely to do, again).
- The 4 forces that lead to MS' demise are likely spot-on. And again "demise" in the same sense of IBM, "still exists, still makes money, nobody really cares".
Did the "all ycombinator founders use Macs" rub me the wrong way, when used as an argument as he did? Yes. But I also kinda' understand it(*), even though I still think he should've steered away from that argument.
(*) you can interpret it in the sense of "the future is already here - it is just very unevenly distributed"; that's probably what he meant. He knew full well the market share.
The problem with "all use Macs" is that Apple has always been a great hardware company with an underfunded software side.
MacOS has so many problems or unsupported features it isn't funny, while Windows was fine.
>> I never used Microsoft software, so it only affected me indirectly
Hmm. The lesson here is probably don't assume you understand a competitor's strengths and weaknesses via secondhand experience.
And the things MacOS historically did better, having a shell and integrating with unix-like software, have been evened with PowerShell/.NET, WSL2, and HyperV.
Furthermore, a few companies started making Windows laptops that weren't bricks. While Apple's software budget is now mostly iOS/device-focused.
This was not meant to transform into "windows vs mac, which is better". But I happen to have used both, recently, and can tell: no, Windows got closer but is not quite there on the "having a shell" chapter. It still has too many, and too different. Powershell.NET is powerful, but is also "alien" to many people - you have to know .NET! Scripting is meant to be quick & hacky, not "real software that needs a release cycle", and in that sense Powershell.NET, while miles better than whatever MS previously had, still misses the mark. You know how you can tell? Because it works perfectly fine on Mac, but has 0 adoption there.
WSL2 is... ugh, ok, much better that WSL. And actually decent. But, as the name implies, is a linux environment. Not a native Windows terminal.
> a few companies started making Windows laptops that weren't bricks
I am honestly, genuinely interested in a windows-based laptop that is as good as a Macbook Pro (or at least very close). Would like the flexibility to move away from Apple. Am interested in battery life, compute power (i.e. internal processor speed, ssd speed, memory size, decent gpu), screen, keyboard & touchpad, and overall build quality (the last one is almost guaranteed if it is close in quality on all the other dimensions).
Any of the "ultrabooks" with decent IPS screens, keyboards, metal bodies, and battery life.
Dell XPSs were a decent option for the last decade+ (especially the refurbs), but Dell seems to be going through a rebranding exercise [0], so those will now be Dell Pro/Premium models? Maybe?
I've struggled for years with windows notebooks waking up from sleep/hibernate randomly, particularly the Dell models. Happens all the time, cooking itself inside my bag. Doesn't matter what sleep, power, etc settings I've messed with. Can explicitly put it to sleep and then stand there for 60 seconds and watch it wake itself back up.
The built in power diagnostics features of windows are unable to explain why this happens, or in anyway prevent it.
This experience has kept me from spending money on any portable windows machine.
While I consider myself of being part of a Linux-y bubble, I can definitely see people around me, who are, or where, in the same bubble, using PowerShell more and more and more. And, this is the interesting part, every single one of them has been saying that PowerShell is way better than e.g. Bash, or whatever you wanna compare it to. This is also because of the much more modern architectural design of Windows NT, which is and has been miles ahead of Linux, because it could learn from it's failures when it was developed. Same for PowerShell. It could learn from the mistakes that Bash made, and still has to live with.
Still, obviously, this is anecdotal evidence at best.
I'm a fair hand with the Linux shell and utilities, and I can say that PowerShell provides a lot of useful analogous capability in the Windows environment. I don't totally understand the model for PowerShell but the times I've had to dip into it it's been pretty good.
> - The 4 forces that lead to MS' demise are likely spot-on. And again "demise" in the same sense of IBM, "still exists, still makes money, nobody really cares".
IBM shareholders and employees can only dream their demise was in the same sense as Microsoft’s.
It tells us that he’s only human. That’s what fans of him will say and they’re right.
The problem is his fans subconsciously treat Paul graham as if he’s more right and more wise than a normal human. Makes sense given where we are. This incubator is founded by him so there’s a bit of that irrational hero worship there.
>
The problem is his fans subconsciously treat Paul graham as if he’s more right and more wise than a normal human.
In quite some essays, Paul Graham portraits himself this way. You will either be annoyed by this, or you will like his essays. In the latter case, you will likely self-select yourself for this unwitting bias.
However, there are people that have the intellect and the information to do it better than others.
Btw, it contains stuff like this "The third cause of Microsoft's death was broadband Internet. Anyone who cares can have fast Internet access now. And the bigger the pipe to the server, the less you need the desktop.". Microsoft (or Satya did) also predicted the future, or read this post, and refocused (to online service such as MS365). There still correct, insightful stuff in this post.
There is also "They still think they can write software in house. Maybe they can, by the standards of the desktop world. But that world ended a few years ago." also radically different now they have GitHub and WSL, etc
He was wrong about Microsoft's death but correct about how AJAX making web apps feel more desktop-like would remove Microsoft's dominance in many categories and niches.
As a bit of trivia (because web apps have clearly outpaced native/desktop for a long while now), who was it that invented the XMLHttpRequest that formed the basis for AJAX?
The Outlook Web team @ Microsoft; it shipped with IE5.
I have a very complicated history with Microsoft products, but they have introduced a lot of technologies over the years that we all use, even die-hard MS haters.
I think a key aspect of calling a thing "dead" is that it implies permanency. In other words, it can't have been more accurate in 2007 if it isn't accurate now, which it appears to not be. Maybe if pg had said "irrelevant" instead.
(Others have pointed out that 2007 wasn't even a particularly bad year for MSFT.)
That 18 years are a long time, and companies can pivot and stay relevant. He was right about everything he said. The people at Microsoft agreed and here we are now.
Todays Microsoft is not the same as 2007, back then it was windows, excel, exchange etc.
Nowdays its Azure and cloud services.
The only thing they tried and failed, that would make them a real dangerous company was mobile.
That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them experts in all things. We should not idolize celebrities and not accept their hot takes wholesale. Be wary of ultracrepidarians.
> That just because someone is a plutocrat doesn't make them experts in all things.
Of course. This is why you go to a university to learn to analyze the evidence for a claimed statement as scientifically as possible instead of practicing hero worship.
