[LINK] surface

[Glen Turner]

On Wed, Brendan Scott wrote:
> The real question to ask is when has MS tried to create a new market and succeeded?
> Bob? Blackbird? MSN (in its original form)?

Excel was just astonishing when it came out. We'd had
spreadsheets before then, but being able to directly
manipulate the formatting was something new and very
desirable.

Microsoft have been very good at being second in a
category and going from there to dominate.
  Harvard Graphics, PowerPoint
  Lotus 1-2-3, Excel
  Word Perfect, Word
  Mouse Systems, Microsoft Mouse
  Borland Turbo ..., Visual ...
  Groupware, Exchange
  RealPlayer, WMP

In fact, it's only in more recent memory that this hasn't
been working for Microsoft.  Rather the category itself
has seemed to have changed under Microsoft's feet just
as they must have thought they were winning:

 Windows NT can close to removing UNIX servers; but then
  they morphed into the Linux thing.

 SQLserver gains against Oracle, then the whole segment
  becomes something else (ERP) and no one cares about
  databases anymore, let alone wants to drop large sums
  of money for *just* a database.

 XBox came close to beating a error-prone Sony; then
  the Wii redefines what a console should be.

 MSN looks like creating a walled garden on the Internet;
  then Google, YouTube and MySpace arrive. MSN tries
  to compete against all of these simultaneously and
  it all ends up looking very uncool and underdone,
  and thus being abandoned by fickle teenagers.

And it has had some complete dogs: Windows Mobile, Zune.

Microsoft have also pushed some innovations really hard:
slate PCs, filesystems as databases. And maybe it will
see one of these become popular one day.