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“History shows us, again and again, that frontiers are lawless places, but that as they get richer and more settled, they join in the rule of law. American publishing, now the largest publishing industry in the world, began with piracy.”
A must read.
“At present, Microsoft has 14 retail stores and plans to open up to 75 more over the next three years, usually placing them as close as possible to Apple outlets. “Well, the traffic is going to be there, and we’ve got to beat them anyway,” Ballmer says with a shrug. “
Steve Ballmer Reboots – BusinessWeek
The Dark side.
“If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that’s great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s our fault. So I think that is a very important perspective. If we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude; we like their software. So, the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I’m concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry and to get healthy and prosper again.”
The wise side.
Verge’s Jacob Schulman has made a first review of the “new and improved” (( yes, we finally have an email application. No, really! )) Playbook OS 2.0 and it’s give a perfect view of RIMM lack of direction.
Below are some snippets from Schulman article:
” The new Messages app is a central hub for not only email, but LinkedIn and Twitter as well. Twitter direct messages can be sent and received from right within the app, though you still need to use a dedicated app to reply to or compose a tweet.”
“As of now there’s no Facebook integration,[…]”
“You can’t open actual emails in multiple tabs; it’s restricted to drafts for the time being.”
*”The other missing item is true BES support, though BlackBerry Mobile Fusion is an ActiveSync solution that delivers the same functionality with equivalent encryption.”
And i strongly suggest you see the Verge Video. In it, the first 3 minutes is the RIMM representative showing off how you can use your handheld Blackberry to remotely control, open links and browse in your handheld 7″ Playbook…
The only feature in that set that i can find even remotely useful is the presentation remote control. And this only in a very limited set of situations. But why would i really really need a feature to allow me to open a link in a email on the Playbook? Hello? I can just pick up the Playbook, open the email and click the link there, probably the same if not less time spent. If RIMM did it somehow as WebOS did it, with the “Touch to Share” feature then i would see the added benefit, but as of now? It’s near useless.
And RIMM “management” just spent money, engineer’s work time and other development resources going for this instead of trying to fix the absence of the fairly standard features above. I just know they would be right at home in this non-amateur competition.
“Dear Cable:
Before I say anything else: It’s not you. It’s me.
I’ve changed over the years. I’m hardly at home. And when I am, it’s not live television I’m watching. It’s stuff that’s been queued up on my DVR for weeks. But mostly, when I’m on my couch with a remote in my hand, I’ve been…streaming. I know how wrong that must sound. But everyone’s getting their shows and movies through the Internet these days. I’m sorry. It’s just the reality of things.”
“What GoDaddy did was support a bill that violates civil liberties and threatens the future of he Internet as we know it—the Internet that GoDaddy relies on for revenue. Supporting the bill demonstrates a major lack of understanding of how the Internet works, and a serious disregard for customers.
I’m sorry if I am not impressed that GoDaddy dropped its support for SOPA under duress. I’d rather do business with a domain registrar that didn’t have the audacity (stupidity) to support SOPA in the first place.”
“Users: Own the disposable income. They don’t know what they hate. All they know is they buy phone service from mobile carriers and/or buy a phone from a carrier. They love speeds & feeds and will generally buy anything they are told to by television ads and RSPs (Retail Sales Professionals).“
I’m sure this guy is really nice and i’ll try to say this as un-offensive as i can: Only a Microsoft trained engineer/manager could say something like this…
It’s this blindness to the consumer experience and perception and their relentless faith in the virtues and powers of marketing & advertising that got MSFT where it is now. I somehow imagine Steve Ballmer visualizing himself as Obi Wan Kenobi waving his hand and saying to the consumer: “Never mind these overpriced toys. This is the phone you want.” – while handing them a WP7 phone. Somehow, on his head, this makes perfect sense.
What MS, Steve B. and Charlie Kindel should realize: People talk. People communicate. People exchange histories. And above all, People aren’t mindless consuming drones. If you give them crap, they might buy them first. But they sure won’t be faithful customers, or recommend it, or even stick with it much longer than a single product.
Google is learning this the hard way. Android is everywhere and yet, no one, and i mean, no one is talking about it. I have had exactly zero, zero discussions with non-geek consumers about android. I’ve not even once overheard someone recommending it. All that i’ve heard is something like: “i’ve got one of those new touch only phones”. And that’s about it.
But you know what else i’ve heard? In the last 3 weekly family gatherings that i attended (with a ~50 person family), there was a significant part of the discussion time talking about Apple products, Apple vision of the product/consumer, Steve J. attention to details and Apple customer support. I didn’t start them or did anything else than occasionally agreeing in those discussions. And for the record, i’m the established family tech-geek/support, everyone else is an aggregated fair sampling of the non-geek consumer pool.
I think this speaks volumes… One brand, with exactly zero money in advertising in Portugal has more mindset and people talking about it than everyone else. Know why? Because their products aren’t crap and they don’t think the consumers “will buy anything they are told to by television ads and RSP”…
“This is post-Gates, 21st-century Microsoft at its very worst. Oh, sure, Windows 8 ought to be a great OS. The Metro interface looks fantastic, truly revolutionary and extremely attractive. And we’re sure that Windows 8 classic will build on the stability and success of Windows 7. This isn’t Vista. Vista was a disaster of a product that actually had some half-decent marketing and crystal-clear messaging.
No, this is the opposite of Vista. Windows 8 is a great set of products with lots of potential that Microsoft is likely to tank because it’s trying to cram way too many disparate pieces into one box. Why not have a tablet OS, a PC OS and a smart phone OS? Or one that runs them all but comes in distinctly different flavors? Why try to cram two PC OSes and a tablet OS — all of which to pretty notably different things and have pretty serious restrictions — into one “product?” Software is supposed to be easy to use, not frustrating and confusing. This is slick 2010s software with overcomplicated 1980s marketing. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
Decisions, decisions.. They’re so hard to make. Specially when the man in charge doesn’t really understands what he is supposed to sell.
“The other big realization he had was that he can’t always build the right thing. I think Larry Tesler might have struck some kind of chord in Bezos when he said his mom couldn’t use the goddamn website. It’s not even super clear whose mom he was talking about, and doesn’t really matter, because nobody’s mom can use the goddamn website. In fact I myself find the website disturbingly daunting, and I worked there for over half a decade. I’ve just learned to kinda defocus my eyes and concentrate on the million or so pixels near the center of the page above the fold.
I’m not really sure how Bezos came to this realization — the insight that he can’t build one product and have it be right for everyone. But it doesn’t matter, because he gets it. There’s actually a formal name for this phenomenon. It’s called Accessibility, and it’s the most important thing in the computing world.
The. Most. Important. Thing.”
Unfiltered Opinion From Silicon Valley
You should read the whole thing. There’s a lot of good insight there, not only about Google, but about Business as a whole.
“The problem isn’t individuals. We do hire some very smart and capable people, who I am sure all want to ‘do the right thing’.
The problem is the emergent behavior of all those individuals rushing around doing what they think they need to to get ahead. Somehow the whole is a lot less than the sum of its parts.”
Mini-Microsoft comments section is basically “Microsoft under a microscope”. There you can witness the rants, complaints and Dilbert similarities of what goes on at Redmond. Sometimes i just take an hour or so and go to read the latest. ((when they don’t jump from less than two hundred to over a thousand like the quoted post…)) Some comments aren’t from ‘Softies at all, but it’s fairly easy to figure out those. Some are just outsiders that would like to get an answer or give input. But you can find there a great picture of the human reality in Microsoft’s HQ.
I won’t say that i understand Microsoft HR evaluation scheme. I don’t. I find the whole thing a jigsaw puzzle of meaningless numbers where, between the time necessary for a new post, someone at the HR department decides to reinvent the wheel and introduces some “improvements”… And then I, the outsider, am lost again. ((And apparently many ‘Softies as well…))
What i do understand is this: When you turn the assessment of individuals on the same team into a zero-sum game, you’ve just activated the self-destruct mode. No one can win in that game.
Microsoft is dying on its inside. It appears there’s only two types of MS employees. The ones utterly disappointed with MSFT current situation and absolutely despairing with the lack of direction from above; and the ones completely blind and with a zest of “we will prevail” zealot-fanatic style where the reality and visible trends are something that we shouldn’t pay attention to. ((The complete lack of understanding and importance of trends reminds me of this guy but without the excessive verbosity…)) There may be a “silent majority” there but, as usual, that majority, the ones who usually do the really good work, will just grow disenchanted with all the dirty politics and treachery going on and decide to depart to greener pastures, to somewhere where they are truly appreciated and they can feel that they do a good work.
Steve Ballmer may one day get fired ((And let’s hope that that happens on the 15th of November, at the Board meeting)) but when that happens what will be left to rebuild MSFT with? One hundred thousand back-stabbing “politicians”? It barely seems a good fit for a technology company that produces the software the equips 90% of the world computers and basically 100% of the enterprise market.
I’m truly curious about the future.
“But it goes deeper than this. Many reviewers don’t even realize what the product is. They still believe the iPhone or iPad is mostly a hardware product defined by its specifications. Apple has invested 10 times more R&D resources to create the iOS software and supporting eco system than its hardware. Apple didn’t design the hardware to match some feature checklist, they designed it to make their software amaze and delight customers, to create an emotional connection that effects peoples lives. To compare the iPhone or iPad to other products primarily on their hardware specifications is not representative of the quality of experience users are likely to have with the product.
What happens if you lose your phone or tablet or wish to upgrade to a newer model? Will all your applications and data move seamlessly? What if you want to share data with others or between your tablet and phone? Can your tablet be upgraded to the latest OS? Will the software you want be available and work smoothly on your new tablet? What about malware? What if something goes wrong? Is there a store where you can take your tablet to get help? These are important considerations consumers see clearly, but the tech press largely ignores.”
This.