Tablet musings

What’s worse, a “closed” Apple tablet that lets you download native apps and games, or an “open” Google tablet that does nothing but run a web browser?

When Microsoft Windows is the most attractive option, you know something is wrong.

Godin is Wrong, Microsofties are Extremely Gung-Ho.

Reading Seth Godin’s post today I couldn’t help but be struck by how misinformed he is.  I don’t know where he got his information but he’s written:

Question: When was  the last time you met an Apple employee who was truly passionate about the products she made or sold? My guess is this happened the last time you went to an Apple store. When was the last time you had a similar experience with a Microsoft employee?

Umm…well I live near Redmond, and I know a lot of MS employee’s.  I’d say their truly passionate about their products to a fault.   And that’s the crux of Microsoft’s Problem.

Microsoft is an amazing company for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is their ability to rally their troops. The company rents out stadiums to hold meetings.  And these meetings are incredible moral boosting events.

Microsoft is awesome at fostering talent.  I believe most people in the company are driven to excel.

But a major problem facing the company is that their employees are so gun-ho about the company and their products that they have difficulty empathizing with the outside world. 

Employees spend so much time at work,  invested in the company, it’s products, etc. that they cannot often see things from the perspective of the outside world, or at the very least, beyond the world of tech.  I’d liken it to a “group think“ phenomenon.

If I’d had a say I’d mandate that employees spend more time away from work.  I’d make this especially true for the marketing department.

Say what you will, but you can’t accuse Microsoft Employees of not being passionate.  And you can’t point to passion as the issue.

Apple Responds to “I’m a PC”

 

About a year ago but hey it works.

Microsoft: ‘Meet PC.’

Microsoft’s latest ad campaign has received a lot of buzz thanks to a reported $300 million budget that included hiring Jerry Seinfeld for $10 million.

While the campaign itself has received a lot of buzz, the ads have been rather terrible. Positioning Gates and Seinfeld together was a really bad idea. Gates is best when he’s talking about his passions, or here.

Microsoft Thinks We’re Idiots
The second of the Gates Seinfeld ads was just ill conceived. The ad put Seinfeld and Gates together with ‘the people,’ Microsoft’s customers, in this case an idiot family.

Microsoft, if that’s how you see your customers then you’re clearly out of touch. The ad above is an insult.

Apple’s ad is turned against Apple.
The latest ad however is very good. They’ve co-opted Apple’s PC meme shifting Apple’s clunky and buggy PC image to a computer user.   This could effectively shut apple up. Co-opting the meme gave Microsoft a lot of options for presenting assumably real PC users as at least as cool and functional as the fictional ‘Mac’ character in Apple’s commercials.

Now, with this new advertisement the ‘PC’ caricature will no longer represent the clunky buggy computer metaphor, but it will now represent those ‘real’ people from the Apple ads.

With this change, the Apple ads are the ones that would come off as insulting. They can’t insult PC if PC is a user and no longer a box. This could effectively ‘shut Apple up in terms of it’s current ad campaign.

Apple could bring the meme back to being about a box, but that may be difficult if Microsoft is effective it’s going to be hard to put this cat back in the bag.

See Microsoft’s “I’m a PC” ad here:

 

Update:  I hadn’t seen this image before, but it shows clearly that Microsoft is trying to turn Apple’s PC the box, into PC, the computer user.

What’s Next For Microsoft?

While a there’s been a lot of discussion recently about the failures of Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 Beta, and the Yahoo, Google, MSN flurry, the attention has been taken away from something much more interesting coming out of Redmond.

If you’ll remember an earlier post Create experiences that combine the magic of…blah…blah…blah, you’ll know that Microsoft’s current Vision statement is one that moves the company away from the desktop and windows, toward a more “clouded” hybrid. What was the full vision statement?

“Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices.”

Yeah, see how clouded that is?

OK today it became a little more concrete for me. From hello://internet:

Recently Microsoft announced that it was developing an operating system (code named Midori) that “is centred on the internet and does away with the dependencies that tie Windows to a single PC”.

Check out this video highlighted by Ahassan:

Did you just see that?  Makes a lot of sense for the company doesn’t it?  Talk about a new platform.  It’s worth reading more of what Ahassan says about Midori’s potential.

Essentially what this means is potentially a complete conversion of the web.  Right now we have websites, and web “applications.”  We’ve seen many applications sprout up as products like Picnik, and Photoshop.com. Of course you can’t for get Zoho and Google Docs, or even Mobile Me? This Silverlight based applications approach however points towards something even more robust, with more implications.

By the looks of the video Microsoft has something very compelling here, and if they could get a foothold they have a potential to supplant, or at least be the gateway to great many web services/applications.

Like it or not this, I have to say, is much more exciting than anything like Windows 7.

Create experiences that combine the magic of…blah…blah…blah

“A computer on every desk.”

Wow, that’s quite a vision that Paul Allen and Bill Gates put forward over 30 years ago.  Today you can clearly see the results of that vision.  Computers pervade our lives to a point that was almost unimaginable to many when Microsoft was founded.

Fast forward to 2008:

“Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices.”

Huh?

What does that even mean?  What are they getting at?  This sounds more like a game of catchup than a vision statement. This much more convoluted and impossible to visualize statement is the current vision statement for Microsoft according to Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner.

I think it explains, or perhaps mirrors a lot of the companies current missteps.

Something like “sharing data instantly anywhere” get’s a little closer to the point, but still results in a game of catchup.  These types of things are already starting to be realized with things like the iPhone.

Computing appears to be heading toward filtering, and identifying the things we are looking for.  Like Google, but there’s a lot more to be done there.  Alternatively computing also seems headed in a direction that automates more of our lives in ways that really make a difference, like bill paying, or media consumption (Tivo?).

A vision statement that addresses one or both of those aspects of computing would seem to offer more for the company to work with and offer a more successful direction.

Other ideas?

Via [Microsoft Pri0]