This is the kind of reporting that gets me back interested in computers: the endless grey boxes and blue screens of death drove my head away into drama and fiction and I’m good with that. But it really is a fascinating world for how it’s an incredibly fast-paced summary of all business issues. Problems come and they topple firms. Today’s right decision is tomorrow’s end of the company.

Quick aside? I once went to some talk or other where the speaker held up Dell as as an example of how to do business brilliantly. That’s a presenter who hasn’t updated his slides in a very long while and who isn’t actually interested in his own topic. Dell was a superb success but it shot itself in the foot and unless his next slide had praised their aim, I knew he didn’t know his stuff.

Back to the point. Vanity Fair has run a rather good piece about Microsoft and specifically about the pretty tumultuous changes it has faced and as yet has failed to conquer. There’s a really nice line in it:

In the old world, corporations owned and ran Windows P.C.’s and Window servers in their own facilities, with the necessary software installed on them. Everyone used Windows, so everything was developed for Windows. It was a virtuous circle for Microsoft. Now the processing power is in the cloud, and very sophisticated applications, from e-mail to tools you need to run a business, can be run by logging onto a Web site, not from pre-installed software. In addition, the way we work (and play) has shifted from P.C.’s to mobile devices—where Android and Apple’s iOS each outsell Windows by more than 10 to 1. Why develop software to run on Windows if no one is using Windows? Why use Windows if nothing you want can run on it? The virtuous circle has turned vicious.

The Empire Reboots – Bethany McLean, Vanity Fair (November 2014)

Do read the full piece. It’s a three-biscuit article and terribly interesting.