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.
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.
For weeks, I’ve been meaning to post something about my minimalistic home office. Today, jkOnTheRun’s James Kendrick posted on his “clean minimalistic office,” which got me off my procrastinating butt.
I’ve worked out of a home office for more than a decade. People don’t ask as much about it as they did in 1999, when many fewer people worked remotely. But when there are questions, the first usually is: “How do you keep from getting distracted? You know, watching TV and stuff?”
Late Friday, I started using Nokia’s hot new smartphone, the highly-anticipated N97. My first impression is “WOW.” This is the cell phone—eh, smartphone—I always wanted.
Historically, early technology adopters have paid more to get their goodies. Pick a category: Big-screen TV, color TV, Blu-ray player or recorder, car phone, cell phone, digital camera, DVR, high-speed broadband, MP3 player, VHS player, VHS recorder, Walkman, etc., etc., etc. Early adopters paid a price premium. If they want the newest thing, they pay more.
But with iPhone 3GS, that “pay more” comes at a price hard for some people to accept. Many existing US iPhone 3G owners are whining about not being eligible for discounted iPhone 3GS pricing. I say: Tough luck. You want the newest thing, you’re going to have to pay for it.
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2009 keynote was the strangest ever—and not just for CEO Steve Jobs’ absence. Apple cut prices where unexpected, while keeping them high where Wall Street analysts expected cuts. The $29 Snow Leopard upgrade is simply stunning.
Everyone should ask: Why Apple is asking so little for seemingly so much? That from a company that normally charges more for products.
Too many people are wasting too much energy writing about the name for Microsoft’s new search engine—assuming there is going to be one, rather than made-over Windows Live Search. Kumo, Crapo, Frapo, Wacko—who cares? Microsoft could rebrand search Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Bozo the Clown or the Muffin Man. Right now, the name shouldn’t matter to anyone, nor will it make much difference against Google’s dominance. Microsoft must fundamentally change how search works.
The most successful companies share several attributes in common. Among the most important: They sell a lifestyle. Apple has effectively done this with multiple products, which is unusual. There are separate, yet related, iPod, iPhone and Mac lifestyles. But many buyers pay a premium price to join the Mac club.
There are plenty of other examples. The Harley Davidson lifestyle is the graying, middle-aged guy, dressed in leather and riding his hog or the stereotypical Hell’s Angels type. Pepsi sells a lifestyle, too. In my youth, it was the “Pepsi Generation.” Now it’s the active, youth sports lifestyle around Mtn. Dew, among other Pepsico products.
Simply put: Apple doesn’t play by the rules. It reinvents them.
The March 11, 2009, The New Yorker magazine features story, “How David Beats Goliath.” Writer Malcolm Gladwell could easily have written about Apple; his examples are 12-year-old girls basketball and T.E. Lawrence.