Hasta La Vista, Baby!

Congrats to Microsoft for their release of Windows Vista. I haven't seen much of the new OS myself, but it seems to be Microsoft working at it's best. What I mean by that, is that Vista excels at stealing ideas from other companies and claiming it as it's own. Let's be honest here, it's no big secret that this has been one of the secrets of Microsoft's success.

The biggest concepts stem from Google and Apple. Microsoft has been liberally borrowing concepts from the Mac OS for years, so I see this as no big surprise. Microsoft has also recently rolled out their own version of iTunes. Rumor has it that the Mac OS is due for a few upgrades that will once again put Microsoft behind in terms of OS interface.

Borrowing ideas from Google seems to make sense, except that Google is very much web-focused while Microsoft is operating system and application focused. It's a tough fit and if you've seen Windows Live, you know that it's not working as well as Microsoft would like. Part of it is Google's philosophy of out-of-box thinking and minimalism... which is in stark contrast to Microsoft. More importantly, young and bright minds are migrating to Google for work now. They used to flock to Microsoft, but now Microsoft is only getting Google's reject pile of applicants.

What I'm getting at is that Microsoft is suffering from a creativity deficit. Without new ideas, Microsoft must steal ideas from others. Hardly the sort of behaviour that would qualify you as an industry leader, but Microsoft has been able to pull it off for this long. So congrats to Microsoft for Vista. Now get back to work on the bug fixes for the first security patch!