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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (102100)	4/25/2000 10:12:00 AM
From: Eric Wells	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Would you please give me a few examples of Microsoft's innovations? I honestly can't find any. Glenn - you must understand that technological innovations generally don't occur in giant leaps - but rather in baby steps. For example many claim that Apple's original Mac OS was a technological innovation - but in reality, it was based on research done at Xerox Park in the 1970's (Xerox developed a mouse-driven graphical user interface there) - and even the Xerox Park research scientists brought with them a broad level of knowledge and experience (they didn't come up with this stuff out of thin air). Was Netscape Navigator a truly innovative product? No, not necessarily. There were other browsers that had been developed - and Netscapes browser was essentially the same browser that Marc Andreeson had developed as a student project before he joined Netscape. I'm not saying that the Mac OS and Navigator were not innovative - both were - but they were not truly innovative (in the way that GST appears to define innovation) in that they arose out of some sort of divine inspiration. No, there were technological "baby steps" that led up to these products. What has Microsoft done that is innovative - I don't have much time to write this morning (I am running a business) - but I'll mention a few things: Innovations introduced in Office Applications (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook) 1. Customizable and movable toolbars (yes, Excel was the first to offer this) 2. PivotTables - this is a big one - but if you've never worked in a corporate finance department you may not even know what a pivottable is. A pivottable is a special table in Excel that allows a user to query multi-dimensional external database data. Excel was the first spreadsheet program to offer pivottable functionality - and I believe to this day, such functionality is not provided in other spreadsheet software. In Excel 2000, Microsoft enhanced the pivottable functionality by implementing support for OLAP cubes. This may appear as technical gibberish - but this is very cool stuff for anyone that has developed a finance or data analysis software application. 3. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) - this is another very big innovation, that not only applies to Excel, but to all Office products, as well as several other products developed by Microsoft and by other companies. VBA is a common programming language that is embedded in the applications. Another technology known as ActiveX (formerly also known as OLE) allows software developers to control the applications in which VBA is embedded - ActiveX makes the applications appear as libraries of programmable objects to the software developer. Why is all this important? The implementation of VBA has resulted in the creation of a tremendous amount of business for consulting firms and independent software vendors. My business exists today because of VBA - I develop applications using VBA. And I can name you hundreds - no make that thousands - of companies that exist today because of VBA. Implementation of VBA was a very innovative move by Microsoft. No other software company has attempted to implement a common programming language in an application set - it's not an easy undertaking. 4. I would classify Access an innovation in and of itself. Sure, there were a few other desktop databases that existed before Access (FoxPro, FileMaker Pro, Paradox) - but Access blew them all out of the water. Access introduced a new paradigm for development of database applications - it introduced innovative features such as: database container window, linked tables, relational database diagramming (a first in the desktop database world), referential integrity enforcement, VBA, bound forms, bound reports, etc. These features may be all greek to you, but to a database developer, it's important stuff. There are hundreds of thousands of Access database applications in existence in corporations throughout the world today - a few of which I have developed myself. Access resulted in a major decrease in the cost of development of database applications - I think that just about anyone who works in software development would agree with this. 5. Table drawing tool in Word - released in Word 97, allows you to create tables using the mouse as a pencil. This was hailed as very innovative. 6. Implementation of graphic objects on spreadsheets and documents - Excel and Word were the first to offer this. 7. Automatic error checking in Word - underlines incorrectly spelled words as you type. I believe Microsoft was even the first company to introduce spell checkers and thesaures into it's products - but I don't know this for certain. 8. AutoFormat (Word and Excel) - this is a highly used features, and was very popular when first released in Excel 5. The feature analyzes the structure of a table and applies formatting to that table based on the analysis. 9. Save As HTML - allows you to convert your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents to HTML files (yes Microsoft was the first to introduce this in a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation graphics program - you know how many millions of web pages have been created from this feature - you know how much time and money the feature has saved?) Innovations in some other Microsoft Products: 10. Visual Basic - VB is an innovation in and of itself. Today there are something like 3+ million VB software developers in the world - there are more software developers that use VB than any other programming language. Why? Because it is far easier to use than any other programming language. There are a lot of pogramming interface innovations that have been introduced in VB, including: code behind forms, graphical form design, event-based controls, numerous editing features (including break points, watch variables, block code commenting), etc. In the past, many purists have criticized VB as not being as powerful as C++ or Java - but today, such arguments for most applications don't hold water. Why? Because it costs a fraction of the amount for a developer to develop an application in VB than it does to develop an application in C++ or Java. That being said, there are many applications for which C++ and Java are better suited than VB. 11. Windows NT: NT introduced many administrative interface features that make it easy for an IT manager to set up and maintain a server. Again, many will claim that NT is not as stable as Unix or Linux - but I don't believe such claims can be made with regard to ease of use (I regularly perform administrative functions on NT servers - in fact, I've built several NT servers - but I have never read an NT manual nor taken a course on NT). 12. Intellimouse - you know the mouse with the wheel in the middle of it - yes, that was a Microsoft innovation. I have to run to a customer meeting at 7:30 - so I don't have time to write more now. However, I hope the list above provides a start in showing you that Microsoft has implemented many innovations in software products. Many accuse Microsoft of merely copying others - but such is a crazy argument that has no basis in fact. Every piece of technology is based on some combination of technological predecessors. Let me throw the question back to you Glenn - what software non-Microsoft software products do you find to be innovative and why? Thanks, -Eric

To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (102100)	4/25/2000 10:45:00 AM
From: Eric Wells	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Glenn - I'll add one additional product to my previous list of Microsoft innovations: Microsoft Windows is innovative. I realize that probably many are laughing themselves silly as they read this - they will claim that in creating Windows, Microsoft was doing nothing but copying the graphical user interface in the Mac (which was copied from the research at Xerox Park). But Windows was very innovative in one very distinct way - Windows was the first graphical operating system for Intel based PCs. You could say "so what?" But it was the Intel based PC that really resulted in the explosion of computer technology that the world has seen from the late 80s through today. But is adapting a paradigm for a graphical operating system, a form of which already existed on another platform (the Mac) to the Intel chip set a real innovation? In my view, yes. In the late 80's why didn't Apple port the Mac operating system to the PC? I think that had Apple known that PC sales were going to go stratospheric that they would most certainly have ported their operating system to the PC. But in the late 80's, Apple wanted to sell it's own computer - and because Apple wanted to sell both the computer and the operating system, they allowed themselves to miss just an incredible revenue stream (some claim it was Apple's arrogance that allowed them to miss this market). So was implementation of Windows on the Intel PC innovative? In my view yes. But even those who think that Microsoft's development of Windows for the PC was not innovative, I don't think anyone can deny that the move was very smart - because it led directly to billions of dollars of revenue for Microsoft, and indirectly to many billions of dollars of revenue for other companies - and it really helped to foster the explosion of personal computer use. Thanks, -Eric