Competing on Internet Time
This book is about the rise of Netscape including competing with Microsoft, contrasting Netscape's nimble pace to Microsoft's slow release cycles. I didn't finish the book. It talked plenty about the business side. Well, it didn't say that much about the business side, but it said it at length. Maybe if I'd kept reading there would have been something interesting about the software development process. But I couldn't stick with it. They kept saying "on Internet time" to mean "fast-paced". The Nth time I read it, I thought Oh, get over yourselves.
I tried looking in the index for bad attitude, it wasn't there.
I gave up and put the book down.
Breaking Windows
This book is about Microsoft's peak and downturn. It comes at the problem from the biz point of view, largely overlooking the technology. I guess. I didn't make it very far in the book. Maybe I would have made it past the discussion of how Microsoft needed to keep growing to sustain itself as a company. I guess it's very engineer-y of me to zone out during business discussions and only perk up when people talk about products and/or technology. I perked up when the book talked about Bill Gates' reason for getting into the software business when most companies were making software only as an excuse to get people to buy their hardware. Gates figured that Moore's law meant that hardware would become a commodity. So he didn't want to get into that business, just software. But in the first something something pages of this book, that was the only time I perked up. Eventually I realized this.
I gave up and put the book down.
Labels: books, business, unfinished