Man’s mighty impressed! Remember Steven Sinofsky? The former Windows boss who oversaw the development and release of Windows 8, before leaving Microsoft after the OS shipped?
Well, he’s still around, keeping an eye on things.
Most recently, he saw what Apple did earlier this week at the WWDC, where they launched and unveiled a number of really excellent products. And in the process, also made the transition from Intel silicon to the company’s own.
And, let’s just say that Sinofsky loved what he saw, terming it as Apple doing the most remarkable product engineering over time in history.
In a series of tweets, he explained that Apple excels in three different regards. These are fearless multiyear strategy, clear unified planning and prioritization, and widely unprecedented execution. And he emphasizes that he knows all this, because he walked in similar shoes for many years.
Sinofsky also compares how things are different at Microsoft:
“While Office reliably shipped for decades planning with Windows was super difficult because Windows had a different view of planning and shipping. Plus enterprise versus OEM customers. It was a miracle when we got the summer of ’95 done. The transition to NT started in 95, was supposed to take a year. Windows XP was 2001(!) So we ended up shipping ever decreasing quality products we (eg Office) had to support for that time (9x). Still Win2000 was supposed to be “it”, then XP, then XP SP2, delaying all else.”
According to the former Windows chief, Redmond is more local, while Apple focuses more on strategy requirements, which allows the fruity firm to focus on the bigger picture. And while Microsoft’s approach is not wrong, its strategy solid, Apple just has an entirely different way of doing things.
It just seems to work better.
Check out the entire thread, for his analysis and insight into how the two technology titans compare with each other. It’s well worth a scan.
