Well, well, the Web is abuzz today with rumors that Microsoft may finally be prepping a Windows “Family Pack.” Some people preordering Windows 7 might feel gipped. Perhaps they should.Overnight, Kristan Kenny set off quite the ruckus about a possible Windows 7 Home Premium Family Pack.
I would like to discuss how Apple innovates, which I understand very well. I posted about Apple’s incremental product strategy last September at Apple Watch: “Apple Demands a High Price to Be Cool.”
The pattern is consistent: Apple launches a “one more thing” product with modest hardware features but something else nevertheless killer—something people want. During the launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs performs his marketing magic, demonstrating how this “one more thing” product will make peoples’ lives better.
Two years ago today, Apple launched the original iPhone. In June 2007, I described using Apple’s smartphone as “life changing.” Despite my grumpiness about iPhone battery life and 3G call quality, I stand by the description.
There are many measures of success, and some are less desirable than others. Windows is the standard by which cybercriminals measure their wares—eh, malware. Their devotion to Windows is testament to Microsoft’s success. The company should just accept the feint praise for what it is.
Microsoft claims that Windows is more widely attacked by malware than, say, Mac OS X because of volume; many, many more people use Windows PCs than Macs. The claim is great PR, because it kind of makes sense and is unprovable without Macs gaining lots more marketshare. But on closer examination, the claim is pure BS. Microsoft security experts know so, or they’re delusional.
S-o-o-o-o, US TV broadcasters aren’t alone pulling the plug on their analog channels. Microsoft is closing down channels 8 and 10 and folding some of their content into Channel 9. Someone at Microsoft thinks this is good marketing? It’s a great idea if the goal is for existing and potential customers to start switching channels.
The most surprising thing about today’s Windows 7 pricing announcement isn’t the pricing, but how Microsoft directly delivered news about it. While Microsoft issued a press release, the most substantive information comes from the Windows Blog, which the release links to. For anyone still clinging to the fantasy that there is some magical separation between Microsoft public relations teams and its bloggers, wake up! There really is none.
Perhaps there shouldn’t be, and that should concern Microsoft’s outside public relations agencies and what their future role will be. People naturally are more interested in other people and what they have to say. Surely a blogger, an identifiable human being, with posted picture and personality, is more believable and memorable than a germane press release.
My reaction to Microsoft Hohm is mixed. The branding and marketing are quite clever, and that’s yet another welcome change. More fundamentally, Hohm is yet another example of Microsoft chasing Google’s tail. Maybe Microsoft should conserve some energy by taking a shorter path rather than tagging behind the weaving Google.
Flash should have a place on all mobile handsets, and Adobe is planning to make version 10 available for smartphones. But not iPhone. Now why is that? I’m going to tell you.
First this, ah, news flash. Today, Adobe showed off Flash running on Android-based smartphone HTC Hero. This is a dreamy handset. You want it. You know you do. Hell, I want it, and I recently bought a Nokia N97. While iPhone is all the rave, Android is where the big action is coming. Google gets the mobile-to-cloud applications stack better than any company, even Apple. Flash is part of the story.
Microsoft has abandoned the fundamental principles that made it the most successful software company of the last decade and ensured its software would be the most widely used everywhere. But in just three years, since 2006, startups and Apple have set a new course for technology and how societies use it.
For Microsoft, this change is scarier than movie “Quarantine.” Without a course correction, Microsoft in the 2010s will be very much like IBM was in the 1990s. That’s no place Microsoft should want to be.
Microsoft has reached a surprising, and quite unexpected, fork in the road to its future. Choices the company makes today and over the next 12 months will determine whether computing relevance shifts away from its products.
The company has abandoned the fundamental principles that made it the most successful software company of the last decade and ensured its software would be the most widely used everywhere. Understanding those principles, and how they shaped Microsoft’s past, are important for understanding what the future might be.
This week’s turmoil on the streets of Tehran is but a metaphor for another turmoil: How the Internet is tearing down monopolies of power and empowering individuals and smaller groups. The Internet is the new democracy, which can be seen from pictures and videos coming from protests in Iran.
The Iranian protests are capturing the world’s attention in part because of fairly new tools that make it easy for most anyone to be a broadcaster, a real-time journalist. These tools punctuate change sweeping through the news industry and destabilizing others.
Seriously, it’s kind of a “d`uh” question. Apple released iLife for Macintosh in January 2003. Every year or so, the suite gets better, with no Windows developer offering anything comparable. Isn’t it about time?
I fault Microsoft for not developing something equivalent, although, I concede, the company has the makings of a placeholder offering while working on something better (more on that in a few paragraphs). Microsoft should have stepped in when its partners didn’t.