Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft

CWmike writes with this excerpt from Computerworld: "Steven Sinofsky, the executive in charge of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and the driving force behind the new OS, is leaving the company effective immediately, Microsoft announced late Monday. Sinofsky was also the public face for Windows 8 and its new Metro interface, posting constant updates in a Windows 8 blog that charted its development. His last post, fittingly, was entitled 'Updating Windows 8 for General Availability.' The OS was officially launched at the end of last month. According to the All Things D blog, there was growing tension between Sinofsky and other members of the Microsoft executive team, who didn't see him as enough of a team player. But Microsoft's official position is that the decision was a mutual one. Sinofsky had only good things to say about his former employer." Also at SlashCloud.

Re:So..

[smittyoneeach]

Slashdot is a schadenfreude-driven site. We're gonna get our Two Minutes of Hate against Redmond Goldstein one way or another.

Re: So..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said sir! I agree it is a mess. From that cartoon / toy "metro" start to the insane insistence that apps be full screen (metro apps) on my 27" monitor - it is nothing but fail. Most users can't even figure out how to turn the thing off because they stuck the shutdown under "settings" | "power" where you would expect to find (but won't find) power settings like when to sleep / hibernate, etc. I've used it on my main machine all through the beta and RC and even the RTM version to try to be "fair" to it and give it a chance, but damn - it sucks.

Re: So..

[jader3rd]

Man, fire up start screen, start typing 'print'. Nothing found.

On my system when I type 'print' I get 2 Apps 17 Settings and 508 Files.

Re:Rats.

[hazydave]

That $16 billion is Microsoft's revenue, not their profits. Net income was $4.47 billion... still, not too shabby. Apple logged revenue of $46.33 billion and net profit of $13.06 billion. Google reported revenue of $10.65 billion, but only $2.91 billion profit. Red Hat? They did $314.7 million in revenue, $37.5 million in net profit.

This tells the story of why Microsoft keeps trying to reinvent themselves as Apple. If only they didn't do it so badly. But then again, Apple's showing signs of not doing it so well these days, too.

Re:Rats.

[tnk1]

I'm with you on the whole, "celebrations are a little premature", but Microsoft makes these profits because of their position in the market more than the fundamental quality of their apps or innovation, and as we have seen with other companies that have dominant positions, a lead of that sort can very suddenly evaporate if someone steps up. The fact that it hasn't happened to Microsoft yet has to do with the fundamentally excellent (for them) partnering and marketing strategies that they use, and a certain amount of fracturing (Desktop Linux) or different strategy (MacOS) on the part of their competitors.

Desktop Linux is finally starting to look like it is making some traction, especially with Valve working to make games for Linux, and I've always been of the opinion that an OS is only going to have mass appeal if you can play top tier games on it (without having to mess around with WINE). There are also some distros that finally have a feasibly useful desktop UI. In the event that more games companies, and other developers move to Linux, Windows could easily and rapidly find itself history since they're already beaten on the server side, in OS quality, and in price. No amount of money can save them from being out-competed if a reasonable alternative arises and they refuse to change.