I, Cringely » Prediction 7: A new Microsoft CEO - Cringely on technology
Fascinating predication. Ballmer’s way outta step, too 90’s of a guy IMHO. Schmidt is quite an interesting option.
Rumor: Nokia to sell phone division to Microsoft and oust Elop
Russian blogger, Eldar Murtazin strikes again. He has this tendancy of outing the most ridiculous scoops regarding Nokia which in turn, turn out to be true. But still needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.
No Flash Player in Metro IE
Silverlight dead too?
Apple's iOS unaffected by malware as Android exploits surge 76%
Android is to Windows, what OSX is to iOS.
★ Google: Patently Absurd, by John Gruber
Well said…
David Drummond, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer, “When Patents Attack Android”:
But Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.
They’re doing this by banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Mobile; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it.
So if Google had acquired the rights to these patents, that would have been OK. But when others acquired them, it’s a “hostile, organized campaign”. It’s OK for Google to undermine Microsoft’s for-pay OS licensing business by giving Android away for free, but it’s not OK for Microsoft to undermine Google’s attempts to give away for free an OS that violates patents belonging to Microsoft?
This anti-competitive strategy is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth. Microsoft and Apple’s winning $4.5 billion for Nortel’s patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1 billion. Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means — which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop.
First, the “estimate” of $1 billion was partially set by Google itself.
Then when the auction actually started, it’s OK for Google to bid over $3.14 billion, but when Apple and Microsoft bid $4.5 billion, that’s “way beyond what they’re really worth”. And if these patents are “bogus”, why was Google willing to pay anything for them, let alone pi billion dollars?
No one other than Nathan Myhrvold and his cronies sees the U.S. patent system as functioning properly, but Google’s hypocrisy here is absurd. Google isn’t arguing against a handful of never-should-have-been-issued software patents. They’re not arguing against patent trolls like Myhrvold and his shell companies like Lodsys — companies that have no products of their own, no actual inventions, just patents for ideas for products. They’re effectively arguing against the idea of the patent system itself, simply because Android violates a bunch of patents held by Google’s competitors. It’s not “patents” that are attacking Android. It’s competing companies whose patents Google has violated — and whose business Android undermines — who are attacking Android.
Google supporters claim that Google only wants to use patents defensively. But what exactly does Google need to defend against, if not actual patents Android actually violates?
How is Google’s argument here different than simply demanding that Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, et al should simply sit back and let Google do whatever it wants with Android, regardless of the patents they hold? And, let’s not forget, give Android away for free.
HP Gets It
Gruber: Austin Carr, writing about HP’s WebOS and TouchPad for Fast Company: Ironically, in order to compete with Apple, HP is taking a page from Apple’s playbook. Steve Jobs’s strategy has always been to control both the hardware and the software it runs on. While other PC makers, including HP, have relied on Windows, Apple’s Macs have always come with Mac OS, an operating system designed specifically for its hardware. Apple has followed the same approach when expanding to the iPhone and iPad with iOS. “Everyone is figuring out that if you want to survive, you really want to control the experience end to end,” McKinney says. “The ability to control both the hardware platform and OS is absolutely critical.” Music to my ears. Here’s what I wrote about HP back in October 2009: Operating systems aren’t mere components like RAM or CPUs; they’re the single most important part of the computing experience. Other than Apple, there’s not a single PC maker that controls the most important aspect of its computers. Imagine how much better the industry would be if there were more than one computer maker trying to move the state of the art forward. For the most part, I agree, but you have to give cred to Microsoft for trying to make the OS separate from the hardware, by making it run ‘ok’ on most hardware. That’s no easy feat. But imagine where Microsoft would be today (or maybe they would only be a fraction of their current size) if they played ball like Apple way back in the day.
A Consequence of Losing the PC Wars
Matt Richman: Apple makes more money from the sale of one Mac than HP does from selling seven PCs. No fuzzy math here.
Skype Said to Fire Executives, Avoiding Payouts After Microsoft Takeover
So very not cool….
Aaron Holesgrove, Clueless about the Tablet (iPad)
Gruber, two weeks ago, arguing that Windows 8 is fundamentally flawed as a competitor to the iPad: The iPad succeeds because it has eliminated complexity, not because it has covered up the complexity of the Mac with a touch-based “shell.” Aaron Holesgrove, arguing that I’m wrong: Actually, the iPad succeeds because it enables you to read websites whilst sitting on the toilet and play casual games in bed. It’s a toy. You can’t eliminate complexity when there was never any complexity in the first place – Apple went and threw a 10″ screen on the iPod Touch and iPhone and called them the iPad and iPad 3G, respectively.
Why Windows 8 Fails to Learn the iPad’s Lessons
Jason Snell: The iPad, like the iPhone, was a success because it did not attempt in any way to replicate the desktop PC experience in the way that Windows tablets (and Windows Mobile) did. Apple used the underpinnings of OS X to form the basis of iOS, but at no point in iOS do you see anything that could be remotely mistaken for a Mac. On Windows 8, in contrast, Sinofsky says that there’s no way to kill the Windows desktop: “It’s always there.”
★ Why Windows 8 Is Fundamentally Flawed as a Response to the iPad
Gruber:
But I think it’s a fundamentally flawed idea for Microsoft to build their next-generation OS and interface on top of the existing Windows. The idea is that you get the new stuff right alongside Windows as we know it. Microsoft is obviously trying to learn from Apple, but they clearly don’t understand why the iPad runs iOS, and not Mac OS X.
Gruber is spot on with the comment of building a platform atop of another platform, and this is precisely the mistake that Microsoft made with Windows Vista and their original tablet OS’s. This seems to be a common occurrence at Microsoft, and while leveraging existing technology is most definitely noble, it lacks expandable vision.
Gruber:
Microsoft’s demo video shows Excel — the full version of Excel for Windows — running alongside new touch-based apps. They can make buttons more “touch friendly” all they want, but they’ll never make Excel for Windows feel right on a touchscreen UI.
Spot on.
Microsoft and Skype, a perfect Union?
…if nothing less, great potential for Microsoft, VOIP, and integration with their mobile devices. Interesting to see what comes of this.
2 collaborating idiots
Granted that’s an old post, but it just goes to show that some people continue to drink the kool aid. You’re not paying $500 more for an Apple Logo, you’re paying for a quality product, designed with quality software in quality hardware - and stability. When Windows can do that, we’ll talk.
My name is Matt and I am a Product Manager specializing in Mobile at Thomson Reuters. I like my Family. I like Apple. I like Photography. I like Mobile Toys. I like Food. I like Golf. I'm big into all technology with major interests in mobile which fascinates the begeebees out of me. I like a lot of stuff so I thought I'd share along with the occasional light-bulb of insight too. All views expressed are mine alone.
