From his blog:

"After 11½ years at one of the greatest companies in the world, I've decided to leave Microsoft and rejuvenate my entrepreneurial spirit. My last day in the office is Friday, September 30, 2011.

Thank you for subscribing to, reading, commenting, and e-mailing me about what I've written over the past 8 years. I've thoroughly enjoyed "talking" to all of you, albeit in virtual form. It's kept me grounded and in-touch, and your feedback has helped shape a lot of decisions at the company, especially those related to our PDC and MIX conferences.

Over the past 8 years, I've written 392 posts. You've left 3,227 public comments (I didn't track the number of private e-mails, but it's a lot). And according to our blogging platform, you've contributed to 10,273,373 total views. Wow!

I've setup a new personal blog at http://blog.mikeswanson.com, if you'd like to follow along. Or, you can see what I'm up to as @Anyware on Twitter. Either way, I hope that you keep in touch.

Take care, remember to take big, bold bets, and whatever you do, improve the world!"

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mswanson/archive/2011/09/27/moving-along.aspx

Seems like all the good folks are finding better stomping grounds these days. http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2011/09/friday-friday-friday-microsoft-company.html

Sounds like MS moves too slowly to keep up with the market these days. While I don't agree with the super fast version changes a la Chrome and Firefox, MS does need to ramp it up a bit to stay relevant. The big thing I'm afraid of is that by the time MS gets W8 out the door next year, Apple and Google will have taken most of the good ideas and put them into their own products.

OSX gets an update every two years. iOS gets an update every year. Android gets an update about every six months. MS can't compete if Windows gets an update every three years and WP7 gets an update every year-and-a-half.

MS Research cranks out some really cool ideas. I'd rather they develop all of them into products and "see what sticks" rather than have a lengthy process that brings some of them to market years later.

Despite their many failings at times, Microsoft have always been the most reliable when it comes to producing a platform you can expect to stick around. It's not always quite as exciting as others, not always the big shiny but it's always a heck of a lot less of a gamble.

1 hour ago,spivonious wrote

*snip*

OSX gets an update every two years. iOS gets an update every year. Android gets an update about every six months. MS can't compete if Windows gets an update every three years and WP7 gets an update every year-and-a-half.

*snip*

What was so innovative about the last two major Android updates? Flash support? NFC support? BFD. Unless the device makers decide to start putting in some newfangled sensor or input device, about the only things to look forward to are performance improvements and better application integration. Even now Android STILL doesn't have a media player worth a plug nickel.

Cheers,
C

Best of luck with the new adventures!

13 minutes ago,Charles wrote

We will really miss Mike. His work ethic, brilliance, creativity and productivity represent a big loss for us. That said, he will be successful in whatever path he takes and I know he'll not completely abandon our platform - he'll push the envelope and build great apps.

*snip*

It doesn't sound like he's abandoning the Microsoft platform at all. It sounds more like he's going "all in" on Metro style applications because he perceives that that's the direction Microsoft is pushing its devs.

If Windows 8 is to be the future of Microsoft, * it, I dislike it initiallybut I'm in. If I have to design my way out of this crappy world of experience, so be it.I'm going to now spend majority of my energy in evangelizing metro principles and start teaching people more of what I know? As I seem to have a niche here and its worthwhile showing others the total amount of my knowledge and seeing what comes of that?

His blog post was a good read, but his writing would be far more coherent if he didn't litter his sentences with unnecessary question marks.

C

10 hours ago,Minh wrote

I recently read this article, "Why Silverlight was destined to fail and my time as one of its custodians". Fascinating read. While the author definitely does have a sour-grapes feel, it does shed some light into how MS evangelism works.

My only thought after the read: And the truth shall set you free!

19 hours ago,Minh wrote

I recently read this article, "Why Silverlight was destined to fail and my time as one of its custodians". Fascinating read. While the author definitely does have a sour-grapes feel, it does shed some light into how MS evangelism works.

wow, sounds a *LOT* like some things i have heard also....

Funny i spoke with John Papa just after a presentation and asked him about the silverlight / wpf collision i saw comming .....   I do get the feel that MSFT has been way to "reactive" to stuff and that's a bad way to run a large corp IMHO.   Sure you have to "react" to stuff but you also need a real game plan and find the way to be stable and somewhat "Proactive"  and not spend all day thrashing around wasting  resources.

Thanks for your understanding.

C

7 minutes ago,JuanZamudio wrote

@cbae:It does not work on my machine, it works in the classic desktop but it does nothing in Metro  (regular desktop with no touch devices).

The blogger complained about there being no keyboard shortcut and decided the best solution was to use the command line, which drops you into the classic desktop anyway. All he had to do was select the Desktop tile and press ALT+F4.

20 hours ago,AndyC wrote

@spivonious:To some extent that's what they did do with WPF -> Silverlight -> WinRT, but the problem is you just can't throw out platforms that others rely on and hope they stick. It's why Google Wave was such a failure, not because it technically didn't work, but simply because nobody had any faith they'd keep it around long enough to be worth investing in and the lack of interest soon saw it killed off, a self fulfilling prophecy.

Despite their many failings at times, Microsoft have always been the most reliable when it comes to producing a platform you can expect to stick around. It's not always quite as exciting as others, not always the big shiny but it's always a heck of a lot less of a gamble.

moved to the "wow" thread.

7 minutes ago,spivonious wrote

*snip*

I won't further hijack this thread, but I did want to respond to this. Charles, feel free to move this into a new thread.

I'm not suggesting they do it with platforms. If anything, the platforms have to be ultra-stable, with regular, predictable changes. Win32, COM, .NET, even WinRT, they've all been great. I meant more on a product basis.

The Courier project is a great example. If MS had brought that out two years ago, they would have sold millions of them and Apple would be hurting. The tour that was posted of the "Microsoft Home" showed off lots of super neat tech, but none of it was planned to be a real product. The charging tray, the Media Center/video integration stuff...why isn't MS bring these to market? If they sit in MS Research for years, competitors will beat them to it. Then when the product finally does come out, they're accused of reacting or copying the market.

Their "three screens and a cloud" vision is great. But they're not doing enough with it. Moving user data into the cloud is a good start, but get that software on iPhones, Androids, Blackberrys, Wii, TVs, blu-ray players, Xboxes, PS3s, Macs, PCs, cars, airplanes, etc. Don't just meet market expectations, surpass them! MS is a software company, yet they behave as though they're a closed-ecosystem hardware company. I don't want to have to get a windows phone to use Live features. I don't want to have to get an Xbox 360 in order to extend Media Center. Live Mesh was going in the right direction, and it gets cannabalized by Live Sync into a dumb folder syncing/remote access service. I remember early videos where one of the devs had put his phone and his car stereo into the mesh, and could then access his music in the cloud while driving. Why was this killed?

It's no wonder all of these higher-ups have been leaving. They're frustrated with the lack of motion shown by MS and move on to companies that actually listen to them. I don't even work for them, and I'm frustrated.

amen.

Nail meet Hammer... 1000+

Microsoft + Politics = Attrition (on many levels)