There was a time when some Luddite editor called the iPad an "iPhone on steroids" (and didn't mean that in a nice way) and ridiculed it, wondering aloud in pixels why anybody would want this device and a smartphone and a laptop.
There was a time. That time is no more. No, your editor hasn't bought an iPad. Everybody else has, though. Recently, we found out that Apple is now the world's No. 1 PC vendor and is starting to crush it not only with consumers but also in the enterprise.
Is there anything Apple won't eventually dominate? Should we expect the score of Sunday's Super Bowl to be Patriots 23, Giants 20, Apple 517? (Reverse the Pats and Giants if you'd like. You get the point.) Will Apple now storm to the Stanley Cup, the NBA title, multiple Oscars (actually, that somehow seems possible) and, in November, the presidency? (If corporations are people, your editor would probably rather vote for the "person" that is Apple than anybody else who will be running.)
The fantastic fruit simply sweeps all before it into humble submission. Of course, it doesn't hurt that Microsoft is years behind the rest of the industry in tablets and smartphones, that HP's leaders have recently been less effective than Herman Cain's campaign manager (seriously, those ads were creepy) and that Android seemingly violates every patent ever written and besides that comes in more flavors than ketchup. (Yes, ketchup, or catsup if you prefer. Have you walked down the ketchup aisle lately? The variety on display is practically obscene. It's also a beautiful reminder that, yeah, we can do that in America -- and we will.)
Still, all credit has to go to Apple, which not only created the iPad but actually persuaded people to buy a tablet. The idea of tablet computing has been around for a very long time, and tablets have existed for a while. But they were largely useless or just thoroughly rejected until the late Steve Jobs held one up on stage that just worked. Maybe it was Jobs; maybe it was Apple, coming off the success of the iPhone; or maybe it was just because the device was really cool. Whatever the reason, Apple quickly did what once seemed impossible: It got people not just to buy, but to buy into the idea of tablet computers.
And your editor, who so blithely ridiculed the iPad when it launched, gets it now -- the tablet computing thing, that is. The iPad was a bit out of an 1105 Media editor's price range (hint, hint), but with an Amazon gift certificate and a great deal on a used device, the late, great HP Touchpad was right in the financial comfort zone. And it's awesome. (By the way, I can go ahead and expense this, right?)
No, really! webOS is a gem, and the whole tablet experience is fantastic. It's much better than reading casually on a laptop (almost impossible to do), and it's more comfortable than reading on a smartphone (just a bit too small). Your editor has lifelong problems with books and eye strain, but a tablet doesn't require the wearing of the dreaded reading glasses. Videos and music are fantastic, practically unbelievable. And now there will be a screen too keep your editor's 16-month-old son occupied -- at least for a little while -- on those long flights from Boston to Dallas-Fort Worth and back.
Of course, WebOS has no apps to speak of, so your editor is soon to embark on hacking his device to also run Android. There might be another blog entry about that to come. It's not as easy (for this blogger, anyway) as it seems to be online. The real bottom line of all this rambling is this: The Touchpad is great, really great -- and it's the device nobody bought until it got marked down to $100. It was the failure, and it's brilliant. The iPad 2 must be beyond incredible (and is, from what your editor has seen of it). The iPad 3 might bring about the end of life as we know it. And that's why people are finally buying tablets, no matter how hard some cynics tried to stem the tablet tide.
What's your tablet experience? If you don't have or want one, why not? Send your thoughts to lpender@rcpmag.com or sound off in the comments below.
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 01, 2012 at 2:14 PM1 comments
There are certain pieces of trivia that get bandied around so much that they become punch lines. At some point, they're not trivial items anymore; they're quite well known, and talking about them as if they're little-known facts makes the often-pompous speaker sound really stupid to anybody with halfway savvy ears.
A personal favorite of your editor's is the tidbit from the Super Bowl a few years back about how Jerome Bettis of the Pittsburgh Steelers was actually from Detroit and got to play (and win) his last game in his hometown. This one got tossed around so much in the sports press at the time that it has become standard comedy fodder at just about every sports-related gathering your editor attends.
Other little things like this exist outside the sporting realm. Iceland is mostly green while Greenland is mostly ice. There is no word in the English language that rhymes with orange. London Bridge is actually in Arizona. Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, and Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln. (Is that one actually true? We have no idea, but that's not the point.) Google's motto is "don't be evil."
That last one is the reason why we're driveling on about this stuff. The press and the punditsphere love to mention Google's mantra as if we didn't already know what it was. Really, geniuses? Google's guiding philosophy is "don't be evil"? Wow, thanks for clueing us in on that one. Did you know that Iceland is mostly green?
Another reason why we hear the "evil" phrase a lot is because the whip-smart (not really) writers who bring it up want to make it sound ironic or, at least, ridiculous. "Hey, Google's motto is 'don't be evil,' but it turns out that Google is evil! How about that for a pithy observation! I'll bet nobody has put that one together before." But we digress a little bit.
We all know, then, what Google intends to be is, well, not "evil." But is Google evil as so many crafty wordsmiths suggest? Two recent events offer some insight into that question. First, there's Google's decision to consolidate user data across all of its services without the user being able to opt out, which is predictably driving people crazy and causing pundits to overreact and scream about privacy issues.
Let's deal with this one first. Here's our ruling: not evil. Somebody actually wrote this in the Washington Post about this story:
"But consumer advocates say the new policy might upset people who never expected their information would be shared across so many different Web sites.
"A user signing up for Gmail, for instance, might never have imagined that the content of his or her messages could affect the experience on seemingly unrelated Web sites such as YouTube."
Seriously? Does that sentence really exist in the wild? Does this mean that there's somebody out there who still doesn't understand how Google works? Google makes its money from advertising: targeted (annoying, but still targeted) advertising. That means that if you send e-mails about Lady Gaga (is she still big among the kids?), you might get an ad in your Gmail inbox touting Lady Gaga tickets or maybe a DVD, if people still buy those. Is anybody really shocked by this? Google has always worked this way.
So, now, Google's going to hook up its properties and share information among them in order to more accurately pinpoint something you might actually want to click on somewhere in a Google-run site. Your Blogger-hosted blog entry raging against Google's privacy policy might lead to an ad for tinfoil hats ending up on your YouTube site. Be vigilant.
Seriously, though, privacy is a myth. It is. There is almost nothing you can do online anymore (or anywhere, really) without somehow signing up first. And while it's true that it's your decision whether to sign up (usually, not always), the practical reality is that you can't use most services at all without at least supplying an e-mail address, usually more. So you're going to divulge something to Big Corporate Brother because that's what we have to do in order to actually use things these days. That's hardly unique to Google. That's life online. It's life, period.
As we've said here before, all kinds of organizations have tons of information about you, anyway, unless you really are hiding out Unabomber-style in a cabin in the woods somewhere, in which case you're not reading this, anyway. Cable companies and Internet providers, for instance, use Social Security numbers for identification. That's the key to the kingdom right there, and yet we give it away because that's what they make us do. Doing anything else is prohibitively difficult, if not impossible. Let's not even get into what credit reporting agencies and credit card providers know about us. Sometimes your editor has trouble answering those "security questions" about his own life. And we're really worried about Google combing our Gmail activity and our YouTube browsing habits? Really?
Here's another point we'll reiterate in this space: Google isn't out to get you (usually -- stay tuned). Google wants you to buy stuff from its advertisers. It is not circling your house with black helicopters or peeking in your windows (although it might peek in your Windows a bit, heh heh). It is not trying to rip you off or take away your liberties or destroy your reputation. It is not working for the government or Interpol or Occupy or the Tea Party. It's trying to make a buck out of your browsing habits. If you don't like that, don't use Google -- but good luck finding somebody else that doesn't do the same thing. It's not evil; it's just business.
This next bit, though, is evil, and it's pretty remarkable. We at RCPU had forgotten -- maybe we never even knew -- that Google paid a $500 million fine to the U.S. government last year in order to escape prosecution for playing a role in illegal online pharmaceutical sales. Anyway, that happened, and we're actually left to wonder a bit how a corporation can just pay its way out of prosecution when a person probably wouldn't legally be able to do that. Aren't corporations people, my friend? Again, we digress. (And your editor is a genuine political moderate who claims no party, in case you were wondering.)
What's remarkable here is the tale, told by the Wall Street Journal, of how a federal prisoner busted Google -- and of just how far Google went in order to work around the law and grab revenue from advertising that seemed dodgy at best and was, in fact, illegal. These were ads for narcotics, steroids and other such pharmaceutical items, and the ads were worded such that it was pretty obvious that they were illegal. But did that stop Google? No. Oh, no. In fact, quoth the WSJ:
"The government's case also contained potentially embarrassing allegations that top Google executives, including co-founder Larry Page, were told about legal problems with the drug ads.
"Mr. Page, now Google's chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting.
...
"Mr. Neronha declined to detail the evidence, which was presented in secret to a federal grand jury. Other people familiar with the case said internal emails showed Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Google executive who left in 2008 for Facebook Inc., had raised concerns about the ads.
"Prosecutors could have used that evidence to argue Google deliberately turned a blind eye to lawbreaking to protect a profit stream estimated by the government in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
"Ms. Sandberg declined to comment through a spokesman. Mr. Page also declined to comment."
Yeah, we bet he did decline! Our verdict on this is swift and sure: evil. This is just plain, old greed gone wild and wrong. Read the whole WSJ story; it's long, and we don't really have the inclination to recap it here. Suffice it to say, though, that this isn't just about some oversight or sloppiness on Google's part. No, it was about finding ways to blatantly break the law in order to keep the stream of money flowing.
There's nothing trivial -- and a lot that's evil -- about that. So, while we're not panicking about Google's privacy policy (although the company dealt its trustworthiness a major blow with the drug-ads scandal), we do believe, as always, in keeping an eye as best we can (as everybody should) on corporate activities. Don't be evil, Google. And don't be lazy, users. Just don't be paranoid, either.
What's your take on Google's privacy policy? Leave a comment below or send it to lpender@rcpmag.com.
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Posted by Lee Pender on January 26, 2012 at 1:03 PM4 comments
By his high standards -- maybe even by the average quarterback's mediocre standards -- Tom Brady had a bad game Sunday. But the Patriots are still going to the Super Bowl.
OK, so there was a missed field goal that half the Redmond Media Group staff could have made. There was a controversial non-touchdown non-catch. There were some things that broke New England's way. But let's put all that aside right now and consider this, briefly: The Patriots won with defense and the running game, essentially. Hall of Fame quarterback Brady was more or less just another cog in the machine.
For you folks who don't like sports (or the Pats), here comes the segue: Microsoft pulled a Patriots with its last earnings report, even before the Pats won with a mediocre Brady on Sunday. In last week's earnings roundup, the big news was that Windows revenue had slipped in Redmond. The superstar, the grizzled veteran, the money machine, was showing its weakness. Time to panic, right? Surely the decline of the PC and the rise of the iPad were conspiring to sink Microsoft. This was another nail in Microsoft's coffin. Wasn't it?
Actually, it wasn't. Microsoft beat Wall Street's expectations, and, initially anyway, its long-stagnant stock price experienced a nice little pick-me-up. Windows loses and Microsoft wins. How is it even possible? Who thought Microsoft could succeed financially without Windows carrying the load?
Well...we did, actually. Yes, here at RCPU, we've been saying for a long time that Microsoft should focus more on the enterprise and less on consumers. And sure enough, the business division (basically Office, which obviously appeals to businesses and consumers), and the server and tools division (operating systems for old iron -- think Windows Server) played the roles of Vince Wilfork and BenJarvus Green Ellis and stepped in to fill the void.
As usual, we couldn't be right about anything without a huge caveat. The overwhelmingly consumer-driven entertainment and devices division (Xbox, Kinect, Zune...just kidding about that last one) was also a huge moneymaker in Microsoft's last quarter. We've been kind of unenthusiastic about the whole Xbox thing, given how long it took to turn a profit -- but here it is raking in the green. So, there you go.
Now, let's make a couple of things clear (at the risk of sounding like Richard Nixon): The Pats will need Tom Brady to play much better than he did on Sunday in order to have any hope of winning the Super Bowl, and Windows 8 needs to be a winner for Microsoft on multiple levels. Both have a strong possibility of happening, although that Giants' front seven is terrifying. But we digress.
The greater point here is that the New England Patriots and Microsoft are both strong enough and resilient enough to overcome disappointing performances from their stars. So, for those who so giddily like to predict the decline of the Pats or the death of Microsoft (as neither organization tends to be all that popular from what we can tell), tap those metaphorical brakes a bit. In fact, slam them on. The Pats can win with a mediocre Ton Brady, and Microsoft is more than just Windows. If we've learned nothing else since last Thursday afternoon (and we probably haven't), we know that.
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Posted by Lee Pender on January 23, 2012 at 4:48 PM9 comments
We at RCPU have been trying not to notice election season, but given that it seems to have been upon us since approximately March 2008, we do see signs of it here and there. Now that we're actually in the pig trough of a presidential-election year, we like to think back on some of the great campaign pitches of the past, back when times were simpler and TV was awesome. Of them, one stands out above all others.
It's morning again in America. Good heavens. Ronald Reagan's 1984 TV advertisement took every sappy Maxwell House coffee, long-distance calling (remember that?) and Pepperidge Farm cookie commercial of the day and rolled them all into a big, sweet sticky bun of Americana. If he'd been alive, even Norman Rockwell would have blushed a little bit at this one. Maybe.
Watch this spot wrapped inside an episode of "Family Ties," and you'll want to not only call your mother, you'll want to go to wherever she is and hug her and maybe even bake her a ham or something:
More than anything, though, you'll want to vote for Ronald Reagan -- which a lot of people did in 1984. (As for Walter Mondale, seriously, did somebody make this ad for you as a prank? You really thought this was the best way to win hearts and minds from Ronnie? Good thing there wasn't a blogosphere back then. Ouch.)
Microsoft, to its dismay, is not in 2012 where Ronald Reagan was in 1984. It's kind of where the United States was, arguably, in 1980, though -- hardly powerless, still wealthy, but kind of down and out and in a phase of self-introspection and (yes, let's say it in a Southern accent) malaise. Apple -- nothing at all like the Soviet Union, but please allow us to stretch the metaphor here -- is in the ascendancy and has eclipsed Microsoft in terms of power and prestige. (OK, so that never really happened to the United States, either, but we've typed too much to go back on this metaphor now. Just bear with us.)
But Steve Ballmer, though he has looked more Jimmy Carter than Reagan in terms of popularity in recent years, has one trick left up his sleeve. It's Windows Phone. No, really, it is! The mobile OS that keeps losing market share despite being noticeably good-looking and obviously different from anything else on the market might actually be set to make a name for itself.
Finally -- and we're really not sure what took so long, given that we've been saying for a long time that Windows Phone looks fantastic -- critics and the press are starting to see the beauty (yes, beauty) of Microsoft's mobile operating system. Even Wall Street types are starting to take notice, something Microsoft desperately needs as it tries to jolt its years-stagnant stock price. (Thanks to Jeff Schwartz, RCPmag.com legend, for the links, by the way.)
The unemployment rate was 7.2 percent in November 1984, almost exactly what it had been in November 1980 (7.5 percent), when Reagan easily dusted Carter in the presidential election. In the years between '80 and '84, it had actually gotten much worse and then started to fall again (at least that's what this chart says, anyway). But gosh darn it, it was morning again in America, and people felt good about themselves. More often than not, perception is reality.
We're not trying to make any sort of political statement here at all, by the way. We're just saying that Microsoft needs a Reagan '84 moment, and the combination of Windows Phone and Windows 8 might just provide it. The company's customers and partners -- and investors -- need to see that things are looking up, that people are raising metaphorical flags and planting symbolic crops and whatnot in Redmond, and that the "good guys" (from Microsoft's perspective) haven't given up the fight with Apple and Google just yet.
We've been very skeptical here at RCPU of Microsoft's chances of succeeding with a mobile OS because of how late the company is to the market, relatively speaking, and how lame Microsoft's marketing tends to be. But if the ultimate cynics and Microsoft haters in the punditsphere are starting to see Windows Phone as something positive (even before Windows 8 comes out) -- and actually saying as much -- then Microsoft at least has a foothold of momentum, a fightin' chance in the mobile-OS game. Clearly, somebody in Redmond is finally softening up some of the pixel-stained wretches who love to slam the company (although to be clear, Microsoft never talks to RCPU about this stuff, seriously). That's a good sign for Microsoft. It needs to continue.
All Ronald Reagan needed in 1984 was a few numbers to hang his hat on and a series of commercials that could bring even the most withered skeptic to stand and salute the TV while on the brink of tears. He also had an opponent who was mostly incompetent in running a presidential campaign. (Surprisingly, "I'll raise your taxes" didn't resonate with anybody outside of Minnesota, but we digress.) Microsoft is not so blessed to have a goofy adversary. Apple and Google are terrifying. But if Microsoft can even establish a respectable third place in the mobile market in 2012, it'll be back in the game and back in users' minds as an innovative company with interesting products.
Is it morning again in Redmond? It's still pretty dark from where we're looking, but we might just see the fingers of dawn beginning to grasp the horizon.
Is Microsoft going to "come back" as a consumer force with Windows Phone and Windows 8? Sound off at the comments section below or at lpender@rcpmag.com.
Posted by Lee Pender on January 11, 2012 at 9:22 AM6 comments
Last spring, your editor did some fast talking and smooth persuading to break through his company's somewhat limited travel budget and get himself sent to Atlanta for Tech-Ed, Microsoft's annual conference for IT folks. And do you know what happened? Nothing.
Well, not much, anyway. There was a superb, as always, Redmond magazine party. There was some quality time spent chatting with a few third-party vendors, some more interesting than others. And there was a chance to meet fellow pixel-stained hacks and hang out with some far-flung colleagues.
But that was about it. And for the cost of a flight and hotel, food (and, uh, drink) and several days of being on an interrupted and unusual work schedule, that's not much. Granted, Microsoft didn't make a lot of big product announcements in 2011. But Tech-Ed, once kind of a big deal, didn't even feature a Steve Ballmer keynote. Microsoft made very few folks available for press interviews (and actually closed the press room early), and most of the "news" that came out of the show was a rehash of stuff we all already knew or a look at some of the more granular details of products everybody knew was coming (such as the Mango update to Windows Phone 7).
Sure, there were probably a few deals signed and some valuable networking opportunities taken. But, really, Tech-Ed felt like a dud of an event, a relic of what used to be a can't-miss spectacle. In other words, it felt like a trade show, one of the last of a dying breed that will likely see more attrition in 2012.
The funny thing is that, as lame as it was last year, Tech-Ed is the type of show that's actually likely to survive. It's put on by a single vendor and focused on a specific target audience. Its size is reasonable (somewhere in the high four figures in attendance in 2011, if memory serves), and it doesn't feature big-name entertainers or other such expensive and increasingly rare and ineffective draws. (Your editor remembers seeing Sheryl Crow and Lenny Kravitz perform at SAP's SAPphire show, circa 1999. Today, a Lenny Kravitz video playing on a tablet in the concourse of a convention hall might come off as a little ostentatious at an industry gathering. Not to mention dated.)
It's the big shows -- remember COMDEX, gone for nearly a decade now? -- that are whistling in the industry graveyard these days. Not many of them are left, of course, and the ones that are still big or trying to be big, like CES and Macworld, are losing clout and major vendor participation pretty rapidly. Apple hasn't been part of Macworld for a couple of years now. Think about that. That's like the Super Bowl without football. All that's left are a few parties and some low-level media buzz that barely cracks radio static these days.
What's in now -- and we say this not just because 1105 Media runs some of these things, although it doesn't hurt -- are smaller, localized events more focused on education and small-group networking than on in-attendees'-faces advertising and blockbuster product announcements. Learning about virtualization a few hundred miles from home (if that far) is of much greater value than traveling 2,500 miles to hear a really spirited keynote (if anybody even does those anymore). Of course, virtual events have reached critical mass in the last five or six years, too, now that the technology to support them actually works and is commonly available.
Here at RCPU, we're not exactly bemoaning the slow death of the old-school trade show. Sure, there were some fun nights out back in the '90s in San Diego, Chicago, New York and even wretched Orlando (that's where the expense report for booze came in handy), but traveling got to be a grind after a while. (There was, incidentally, never any fun in Philadelphia, ever. And it is not always sunny there, either.) We can't be the only ones who feel this way about the old fall and spring schedules. Plus, the general insanity of the huge trade show usually led more to a lot of rushing around for nothing than it did to meaningful conversations or, in our case, really important stories. We figure we're in the majority when we say that we're glad to see the COMDEX-type shows fading quickly.
But now, even the smaller, more focused Tech-Ed-type events, the ones that are supposed to be the future of business travel in the technology industry, feel superfluous and forced. Vendors don't make big announcements at them anymore because they can't always get their stuff together well enough to break out new products on promised timelines. Technical sessions too often focus on new stuff that nobody's actually using yet or that IT folks won't ever have in their infrastructures, anyway. (That's a real complaint from a real IT person. Sometimes vendors forget just how long companies hold on to technology that required a lot of investment to acquire and implement.) Outside of the Redmond shindig, attendance at parties and other outside events is dwindling all the time. Keynotes are lame, serving less of a purpose than press releases, fact sheets and simple phone conversations about new products.
We're not trying to talk ourselves out of going to Tech-Ed in 2012 (in Orlando -- so maybe we are trying to talk ourselves out of it), and we're not saying that you shouldn't read RCPmag.com's superb annual coverage of one of the events that does still matter, Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference. What we are saying is that in an era with very good Internet videoconferencing and product launches that increasingly happen when a vendor is good and ready rather than at scheduled events, we're happy to, say, drive to Boston for a local meeting with Microsoft or sit in on a webcast, but we're less inclined (and less able) to fly to Vegas or L.A. to go through the motions of attending a show that's a skeleton of what it used to be.
And that's fine with us. Let the vendors come to us, and not vice versa. It's about time we got to hear about new developments while sitting in comfy chairs and eating food that doesn't come pre-wrapped in a box. Lenny Kravitz wasn't all that great live, anyway.
What's your take on the future of the trade show? How often do you attend shows these days? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below or send them to lpender@rcpmag.com.
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Posted by Lee Pender on January 03, 2012 at 11:13 AM1 comments
Predictions are stupid. They're a waste of time for the predictor and for the, uh, predictees who pay attention to them. They're almost impossible to quantify, rarely very specific ("Virtualization will be important!") and generally forgotten a few weeks after some pundit sprays them all over the Internet.
Well, it just so happens that in what is not exactly the busiest week of the year, we at RCPU have some time to kill. And we feel compelled to kill your time, too. So, we're loading up a predictions entry that will undoubtedly be...stupid. Because all predictions are stupid. But here we go, anyway, based on nothing at all:
- Windows 8 will be Microsoft's best operating system yet -- and a huge bust. Windows 8 won't be Vista. It'll only feel like Vista when the revenue numbers don't start rolling in. Oh, it'll be a beauty of an OS, but it'll have a major problem: Windows 7. And another major problem: the iPad (and maybe the Kindle Fire, too).
On the PC, without its touch-screen capabilities and so forth (which we still maintain would be ridiculous to use on a PC), Windows 8 won't look different enough from Windows 7 for businesses or consumers who just moved from XP to 7 to get excited about it. And on tablets, where it will look fantastic and work really well, Microsoft is already so far behind that it won't be able to catch its rivals, even with a borderline revolutionary OS. See Windows Phone 7.
- There will be a huge cloud backlash among enterprises. We here at RCPU were once snorting bulls when it came to the cloud. While we're not exactly growling bears (although we prefer the term Bruins) yet, we're starting to think that 2012 will be a year in which hype about the cloud in the enterprise will fade a bit -- as will the number of enterprise cloud implementations. Keep in mind that we're talking about outsourcing e-mail and other critical business functions here, not people putting their pictures on Flickr, which will likely continue apace.
A few more high-profile cloud outages and a couple more stories of organizations having trouble getting their cloud implementations up and running securely will stop even some of the most resource-strapped businesses in their efforts to swoosh to the sky. A mini-devolution will make news as companies keep important applications on-premises, and cloud computing providers will have to reinvent their wares -- or just make them better -- yet again.
- Microsoft will kill Windows Phone. We're not saying that Microsoft won't have a mobile OS; we're saying that the whole Windows Phone brand -- and maybe some of the functionality -- will disappear after an unsuccessful run. Everything will get shoved under the Windows 8 umbrella somehow, making marketing for the new version of the flagship OS even more confusing. And the Windows 8 mobile edition, or whatever it will be called, will look great -- and fall flat. See stupid prediction No. 1.
- The Consumer Electronics Show will go the way of Comdex. Oh, wait, that's already happening!
- Microsoft's So.cl social network will be a massive success. It has a dumb name, very little hype and probably nobody interested in using it. It's coming out five years too late. It's hard to tell exactly what users are supposed to do with it. How could So.cl not succeed? It'll be the Zune of social networks!
This entry will run out of steam before we even get halfway through our 12 predictions, so the last paragraph of our list will just be a bunch of random, possibly nonsensical and yet duly numbered thoughts:
6) XP will still control at least 25 percent of PC market share by year's end. 7) Steve Ballmer will sweat profusely during a keynote. 8) Apple users will turn their smugness away from Microsoft users and toward other Apple users who haven't upgraded to the latest version of an iWhatever. 9) Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff will say nasty things about Microsoft, especially after Google buys his company. 10) Microsoft Lync will have a breakout year with Skype integrated into it, but your editor will start having to put a shirt on for meetings when he's working at home. 11) Pundits will say that Microsoft is slipping, but the company will keep crushing revenue records. 12) Somebody will write a predictions blog entry at the end of the year...and it'll be stupid.
Have a prediction for 2012? No prognostication is too ridiculous. Send yours to lpender@rcpmag.com or leave a comment below.
Posted by Lee Pender on December 21, 2011 at 12:29 PM4 comments
As you might have noticed this year (or maybe you didn't), Scott Bekker and Jeff Schwartz have taken over most of the writing for RCPU. There are many reasons for this. One of them is not that I don't love our readers -- I do. My job has shifted over the last year, though, and Jeff and Scott -- the channel guys -- are doing amazing things with RCPU. Our benevolent queen ("editor" or "producer" just doesn't begin to cut it), Gladys Rama, is running this show like Aaron Rodgers steamrolling NFL defenses (except Kansas City's, but I'm confident that the Packers would have won that game with Gladys at quarterback).
I do plan to keep contributing to this magnificent newsletter, and I'd like to, as I do every year, thank everybody who has read RCPU faithfully in 2011 and invite you all to come back in 2012. This is our last edition of the year, so let's get on with some more thanking.
To Scott, Jeff and Gladys, thanks for doing 99 percent of the work here but somehow letting me keep the title "editor." It looks flashy on my business cards. To Becky Nagel, Kurt Mackie, Chris Paoli and our whole Web team in sunny California, thanks as always for your continued support and hard work. To Doug Barney, editor in chief of Redmond magazine and my boss, thanks for letting me continue to write for RCPU and for all the support and advice you've given me for this newsletter over the years. And again, thanks to our readers, the brightest and most interesting people in the industry. Whatever you celebrate (or don't), have a great rest of December. We'll see you in 2012. --Lee
Posted by Lee Pender on December 20, 2011 at 12:33 PM0 comments
Did anybody really think this was going to work? Did Google really expect to impress Joe Friday with something called "the cloud"? Just listen to that tone, so flat and humorless. Soak in the foreboding nature of the "Dragnet" theme. This guy was going to send his e-mail -- strictly the facts, of course -- into something called "the cloud"? Think again, mister.
Google made a big splash when it won the deal to provide e-mail services in the cloud for (as Jack Webb flatly drones it) "the city, Los Angeles, California." But the tough, no-nonsense LAPD (yes, we're kind of conveniently forgetting at least the last 20 years or so here) has put the kibosh on that idea, saying that cloud e-mail didn't meet the city's security requirements for the cops.
There's so much to talk about here that we can almost feel the carpal tunnel syndrome setting in (although Joe Friday would have typed right through the pain), but we'll pick out a few things to observe. First, what a mess. Can anyone tell that public employees are at work here? Check out this revealing little passage from the Los Angeles Times story linked above:
"There was definitely a time when Google seemed positive they were going to meet the requirements," said Maggie Goodrich, the Los Angeles Police Department's chief information officer.
She noted, however, that the rules were written for law enforcement agencies that store their own data and did not consider the increasingly popular cloud computing model.
"It will be difficult for law enforcement to move to a cloud solution until the [security requirements] and cloud are more in line with each other," Goodrich said.
Uh, OK, Maggie Goodrich. So, you took everything into account in this deal except for that little bit about Google running e-mail in the cloud. Really? The cloud was the whole point of the deal -- it saves money, cuts down on need for staff and maintenance, and so forth. But now, the LAPD is saying, "Oh, wait, we don't want cloud-based e-mail after all." That's kind of like saying, "I bought a bicycle, but what I really wanted was a car. Oops!" It's a hard mistake to make.
Let's move on and go back to the L.A. Times story:
For its part, Google noted that the complicated security rules were not part of the original contract it signed with Los Angeles in 2009 and that the city raised the issue well after the deal had been completed.
"We're disappointed that the city introduced requirements for the LAPD after the contract was signed that are, in its own words, 'currently incompatible with cloud computing,'" Google spokesman Andrew Kovacs said in a statement. He also noted that 17,000 employees were successfully using the Google system and that it had already saved city taxpayers "more than two million dollars."
Hey, Google, did you think to ask about the cloud? OK, we've established that the city of Los Angeles was not at its Joe Friday finest in singing this deal. But Google, did you at any point just happen to bring up questions about the cloud and security requirements, or did you just figure you'd go ahead and implement everything and maybe nobody would notice? "Shh, ix-nay on the oud-clay...I think we've got them." Bizarre.
What's even better is that Google issued a nothing-to-see-here, everybody's-out-to-get-us defense when this issue first cropped up publicly back in October. Check this out from RCPmag.com's own Kurt Mackie:
In December 2009, Levin had explained that the city planned to move "all 30,000 city employees to Google Apps from our existing [Novell] GroupWise email system," according to a Google blog post. She noted then that "everyone will benefit from Google's security controls." The Consumer Watchdog letter to Villaraigosa, dated Oct. 18, 2011, claimed that "a mere 17,000 city employees use the Google system while 13,000 LAPD and other employees involved in law enforcement cannot make the move."
A Google spokesperson, without clarification, issued the following statements, asserting that its competitors were engaged in a publicity stunt, and that the city introduced new requirements to meet.
"This is just the latest in a long list of press stunts from a group that admits to working closely with our competitors," Google stated. "We are meeting our commitments to the City of Los Angeles. Indeed, the City recently renewed their Google Apps contract for 17,000 employees, and the project is expected to save Los Angeles taxpayers millions of dollars.
"The City has acknowledged Google Apps is more secure than its current system. Along the way they've also introduced new requirements which require work to implement in a cloud computing environment, and we've presented a plan to meet them at no additional cost."
But wait, it gets better. Are you ready for the plan? You're not ready for the plan. It doesn't exactly involve Google actually meeting any requirements. It's way funnier than that. Let's go back to the LA Times story:
In a unanimous vote, the City Council agreed to change the terms of its $7.2-million contract with Google so that LAPD employees and others will stay on an older on-site email system. Google will pay up to $350,000 per year for those employees to use that system, which is run by Novell, a competitor.
That's the plan: Google is going to pay the LAPD to stay on GroupWise. GroupWise! At this point, your editor needs to get a Subaru to pay his wife for driving her '98 Corolla. This is just brilliant work by Google -- punt, and then pay to keep the client on an e-mail system that actually used flint and stone. (Well, not really; we can't remember what GroupWise was like.)
Hey, we're fans of the cloud here at RCPU. But this scenario does make us wonder whether we should all tap the breaks on the cloud a little bit. Yeah, there's a lot of officious government interference at work here, namely the security requirements for e-mail, that might or might not really be necessary.
But if a major law enforcement agency simply rejects cloud e-mail (forget about it being from Google; we're talking about the cloud in general here) because it doesn't deem the system secure enough, is cloud-based messaging secure enough for your business? How much is your data worth, and to what lengths will you go to protect it? It's just something to think about amid the cloud hype. We're pretty sure we know what Joe Friday would say, though.
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Posted by Lee Pender on December 15, 2011 at 8:14 AM13 comments
What is Carrier IQ? Do you know yet? Media organizations are jumping all over each other to tell us, but it's basically a rootkit that tracks pretty much everything a user does on a smartphone, in some cases all the way down to individual keystrokes.
AT&T and Sprint have already owned up to using it, and it might even be present in some form on the iconic iPhone. Naturally, people are freaking out about this, fussing over privacy and even suggesting that Carrier IQ might violate federal wiretapping laws.
Here at RCPU, we're shrugging. Really, is this that big of a deal? OK, if it violates federal wiretapping laws, then yeah, it probably is. But what's the real impact on smartphone users? We're guessing that it's minimal. No, really. There are a few reasons why.
First of all, even if Sprint does have records of your text messages and is recording every keystroke you execute, do you really think executives in Kansas City are sitting around in some Bourne-movie-style room full of tracking screens, watching your every move and reading your every message?
If so, get over yourself. Big shots at AT&T, Sprint, Apple, Google or wherever don't have the time or the inclination to do that. They don't own black helicopters for spying purposes; if they own them, they're only for shuttling around their overpaid executives. These companies that use Carrier IQ are using the information they gather to work on demographics, figure out users' habits and do that sort of corporate-research thing. They are not trying to rat you out for being at the bar when you say you're working late.
Besides, what does your cell provider not know about you already? And it's not just cell carriers. Cable companies, Internet providers, banks, random Web sites you subscribe to -- they all ask for a load of information, much of it personal. Sometimes that even includes Social Security numbers, which still seems wrong for some reason. (Actually, isn't it technically illegal?)
The fact is, you're already everywhere. Marketers have your information. Google knows how to serve you ads in the least annoying way possible. You're registered in more databases than Starbucks had locations in 2003. (It's really too bad that joke doesn't work anymore.) Everything you surf is kept in some server record somewhere. Your life is public -- unless you're not reading this because you're off the grid -- and yet nobody from Great Big Corp. has ever tried to steal your identity or reveal where you really go on Friday afternoons when you take your "lunch break."
Do we here at RCPU really like this semi-invasive information gathering? Nah, not really, but we live with it. It's too big a battle to fight. Carrier IQ is just a symptom of a much, much greater condition with regard to privacy: We're choosing not to worry about it.
Besides, you know the old unwritten rule, which is unwritten for a reason: If you want to do something in secret, if you want to cover something up or keep it under wraps, never write it down. Don't type it or keystroke it or scribble it on a cocktail napkin. And don't talk about it on the phone or tape it, for heaven's sake. Keep the conversations personal and private...or just don't have stuff to hide in the first place.
How worried are you about your privacy? Sound off in the comments section below or at lpender@rcpmag.com.
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Posted by Lee Pender on December 01, 2011 at 4:43 PM9 comments
My favorite holiday has come and gone. Yes, for reasons neither religious nor political nor controversial in any way, I like Thanksgiving better than Christmas -- although I do celebrate Christmas. Really, what's better than a holiday that's all about gluttony and football? It's as though the day was created just for me.
With Thanksgiving in the books for 2011, though, the real holiday grind is setting in. The holidays -- whether you celebrate one, several or none of them -- are inescapable. Every time you turn on the TV, there they are. Going online doesn't provide much respite, either. Did you realize that today is Cyber Monday? Yes, you'd heard about that? And, really, we're still using the word "cyber"? Where's the next exit off this information superhighway? Where's Al Gore when we need him? Actually, never mind. We don't need him.
(On a related note, here is a real, verbatim line from an e-mail I got today about a new patient-doctor communication Web site I started using this week: "When you receive your password, use your Internet connection and a web browser to go to [the URL]." Oh, I'm supposed to use my Internet connection and a Web browser? Do you mean like Netscape or something? My 1991 self is baffled by this, but my 2011 self finds it pretty funny.)
Here in the Boston area, one sadistic radio station plays nothing but Christmas music for something like six weeks this time of year. And forget going out of the house at all to escape the holidays; every retail establishment is decked out in holiday "cheer" in a desperate attempt to get you to pull it out of the terrible economy by shopping there, and even cities and towns put holiday decorations up on lampposts and what not. If there really is a war on Christmas, then Christmas -- or, at least, the "holiday season" -- is winning. Big time.
So, what would a good blogger do in this situation? I don't know, actually, but I've decided to pile on with a holiday entry of my own. Granted, this is a stretch topic-wise even for this blog, but I've come up with a list of smartphone apps I wish existed (and might, for all I know) for the holidays. If you want to pretend that this entry is relevant to Microsoft or partners somehow, just imagine these apps exist for Windows Phone 7. See, I told you it was a stretch. Anyway, to the apps:
1. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Music Killer
It's too late for this year, but somebody needs to get to work on this for 2012. I tried to watch the Macy's parade on Thanksgiving with my 14-month-old son, who has an inordinate fascination with balloons. (Seriously, we just got his Boston Bruins balloon refilled. Yes, refilled. He wakes up in the morning pointing to the living room and saying, "Balloon, balloon!")
So, I turn on this parade for the first time in years, and what do I see? No parade, no balloons -- just mediocre Broadway numbers and sappy "holiday" songs being performed by people I'd never heard of (other than Bette Midler, and I kind of wish I'd never heard of her). What's the deal, Macy's? Haven't you ever seen a proper parade, like the Rose Parade or the Stock Show Parade in Fort Worth? Parades are supposed to move with bands and floats and balloons and such, not bore us with costume dance numbers performed by the spares of the "entertainment industry."
So, my app for Thanksgiving 2012 would allow the viewer to eliminate all musical performances from the Macy's parade TV coverage and watch only the fun stuff. Mainly, the balloons. This would make the parade about four minutes long (bringing it down from the current 19 hours or so), so it would be perfect for YouTube viewing year-round. Oh, and a Matt Lauer-elimination app would also be handy, especially since he called the Bruins the "Brewers" while hyping NBC's coverage of Thanksgiving Friday hockey. Mr. Lauer, Mr. Lucic would like a word. (Wait through the ad. It's worth it, if only for Jack Edwards' classic call.)
2. The Christmas Song Converter
OK, so there is some beautiful Christmas music, and even holiday music, out there. But the stuff we get subjected to in stores and restaurants this time of year -- you know, the easy-listening pop-star stuff and the 1950s stuff for kids -- that's just auditory murder. And let's not even get started on Bing Crosby or that lightweight Mel Torme.
This is why this holiday app would come in so handy. It would let a user's phone change every lame Christmas song to "Father Christmas" by the Kinks, the greatest Christmas song ever. What's that you say? "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is on the PA system at Chili's? I'm just getting "Father Christmas." Sting is singing some criminal version of a holiday song at JC Penney? All I can hear is the Kinks. "White Christmas" is getting its billionth public playing at the Natick Mall? Not for me. I've got "Father Christmas," again. And I'm happy about it. Very happy.
3. The Christmas Tree De-Sapper
Those of you who have artificial Christmas trees or no trees at all should consider yourselves lucky. As a lad, I was pretty violently allergic to most types of Christmas trees, so my dad and I had the pleasure of getting "Mr. Christmas" (our artificial tree -- that's really what it was called) out of the garage every year and "trimming" its shimmering plastic branches. Good times.
However, thanks to advances in allergy treatment and a wife with a bent for authenticity, I now have to endure having a real tree in my house for a month or so every year. It's not the smell that bothers me anymore. It's not even the needles, although I complain about them relentlessly. No, the worst part is the sap.
Have you ever tried to get sap out of your clothes, out of a rug, off your skin? Once sap is with you, it's with you forever, the glue that holds your very worst holiday memories together. My smartphone app, though, would de-sap live trees so that they would only be a hassle by stinking up the house and dropping needles everywhere, not by gluing themselves to everything they touch. Somebody must surely be at work on this one.
4. The Sincerity Translator
December is the one month of the year when people who hardly know or like each other suddenly decide to get all sappy and hug and wish each other "happy holidays" with tears welling in their eyes. Why? In my world, cynicism never takes a holiday. Larry David's mantra for Seinfeld -- "no hugging, no learning" -- is one I try to live by.
So, not unlike the Christmas Song Converter, the Sincerity Translator app would convert other people's half-heartfelt wishes toward me to sarcastic comments and would, in return, make my nasty responses into half-heartfelt wishes for them. It would be kind of like one of those apps that translates phrases into other languages, except way more useful.
5. The Office Christmas Party Endrunkenizer
The awkwardness of an office Christmas party is often better experienced after a few hits of eggnog spiked with so much brandy that the liquid actually burns through the glass that's trying to hold it. But getting hammered at the office Christmas party is generally a bad idea. For one, there's a strong chance that you'll end up saying something you'll regret. On top of that, office parties usually involve a drive to and from the venue, so heavy drinking is out of the question.
Or is it? The Office Christmas Party Endrunkenizer would let cubicle workers experience the office party as though they were three sheets to the wind even if they'd never taken a drink. All the ridiculousness of office frivolity would be viewable through lenses ranging from A Couple of Beers to A Bottle of Vodka, no actual alcohol required. At the end of the party, sobriety would return just in time for the drive home. An adapted Sincerity Translator would also change all your sarcastic remarks and inappropriate language to warm, lovely holiday sentiments, so you wouldn't have to wonder whether you had a job the next day. Oh, and every lame Christmas song would be "Father Christmas," in the deluxe package, of course.
Seriously, though, I really do wish you all a blessed and wonderful holiday season. Peace on earth. (Yup, it looks as though the beta of the Translator is working.)
Have some holiday hassle you'd like to see eliminated with an app? Leave your ideas in the comments section below, or send them to lpender@rcpmag.com.
Posted by Lee Pender on November 28, 2011 at 6:35 PM0 comments
Years ago, before the company I work for now even existed, I had the pleasure of knowing -- mostly by telephone, but still -- John Warnock, the co-founder and former CEO of Adobe.
He always struck me as a good man and a kind person. I remember when Adobe laid off a significant number of employees at one point in the late '90s (enough to make the news), Warnock spoke to me of his regret about putting people out of work. He was sincere. He meant what he said. He told me that the only positive he could take out of the experience was that cutting a few jobs would ultimately help protect many others. But it was small consolation for him -- that much was easy to tell.
Warnock -- who now chairs Adobe's board with fellow co-founder Charles Geschke, another good guy -- was an old-school tech CEO. He spoke openly and honestly. He avoided CEO-speak. He wasn't flanked by an army of PR people at all times. He took phone calls. He actually answered questions. He talked happily and nostalgically about his days at Xerox PARC; he was, after all, a computer nerd at heart, not a cold-hearted executive. Today's callous world of top-level business bots could use more people like John Warnock.
During Warnock's long tenure as Adobe CEO, which ended in 2001, the company established itself as the standard in the creation and management of digital content. PDF became a ubiquitous term and an ISO standard. Acrobat rivaled just about any product other than Windows in terms of name recognition, and Photoshop achieved the ultimate in brand status -- it became (and still is) a verb.
Adobe even made a pretty good run at Quark, which dominated (and might still dominate, depending on whom you ask) the market for desktop-publishing software. The competition between the two in that market continues. Adobe actually staved off a bizarre and entirely unwelcome takeover bid from Quark in the late '90s. (I covered that story for another trade magazine, and while I endeavor to be fair in all of my writing, I have to say that Quark was the strangest company I've ever dealt with. And I don't mean that in a good way.)
Adobe survived and mostly thrived for years by putting out focused, useful technology that met users' needs and was intuitive to use. And then things got a little weird. Likely sensing a need to be more than just a document-creation and picture-editing company, Adobe bought Macromedia in 2005, thereby acquiring a technology called Flash. Suddenly, Adobe was doing rich Internet content creation, or some such catch phrase, and was moving into the market for Web-development tools.
Somehow, Flash caught on, and millions of users started getting and complying with update messages on an annoyingly regular basis, lest they not be able to watch viral videos on YouTube because their versions of Flash were obsolete (or crashing, as Flash tends to do). As mobile devices became more popular for consumption of multimedia content, Flash moved onto them as well. For a while. But not anymore.
Famously, Steve Jobs and Apple rejected Flash for the iPad, preferring HTML5 instead. And what Apple wants, Apple gets. In this case, Apple made Flash disappear, sort of. Adobe this week revealed that it is effectively killing Flash for mobile devices, moving instead to contributing to the open source HTML5. Flash had become clunky for mobile developers, anyway, so it wasn't just Apple that saw mobile Flash off to an early grave.
Some experts, such as Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates (see, Jack, I finally used something from one of your mass e-mails), suspect that the death of Flash on mobile devices is the first sign of the faltering of Flash altogether. "Adobe may ultimately gain revenue from the popularity of HTML5 development, but we believe this move signals the slow decline of Flash from the overall market," Gold wrote in an e-mail many of you might also have already read. Gold basically said that Flash was getting too expensive for Adobe to continue to develop.
I believe that the death of Flash on mobile devices and its probable march to extinction is a sign of something more, though -- a sign that Adobe, in trying to be the leader in rich Internet content or whatever it's called, lost its focus on the products that made it a successful company. Financially, things aren't exactly great at Adobe, as evidenced by the company's plan to "restructure" and lay off 750 employees (the announcement of which was accompanied this week by a requisite plunge in Adobe's stock price).
But there's more to it than just money. I've used Adobe products for a long time, primarily for work. And I have to say in all honesty that they're getting worse. Acrobat has become slow, clunky and about as intuitive as a James Joyce novel written in Urdu. Reader isn't much better for editing PDFs -- it loads at mid-'90s speeds and responds about as well as a broken-down Yugo. I'm no developer, but it wouldn't surprise me if Flash had become a major pain to develop for. Everything Adobe seems to be headed in that direction. I've always liked Adobe, and I don't mean to be unfairly harsh here, but I think I'm reflecting reality pretty accurately.
Companies have to expand the breadth of their product offerings. Tech companies in particular can't usually stand pat on dominating one market or relying too much on one technology for revenue production. But moving into new fields shouldn't mean abandoning established ones or letting established products rot. (Just look at Microsoft and Vista. The company tried so hard to please everybody and chase all of its competitors -- catchable or not -- that it forgot to come up with a decent flagship product. Fortunately, Windows 7 has rectified that.)
I have no idea what type of leadership Adobe has these days. I don't know the current CEO. I don't know how directly involved John Warnock is as chairman of the board. But I will say that Warnock's Adobe -- at least in my view -- wouldn't have let the company's core products become afterthoughts as he was chasing some pie-in-the-sky new initiative. He was too much of a tech perfectionist to do something like that. He cared too much about users.
Warnock would have kept everything moving forward rather than getting hung up on one big new initiative at the expense of everything else. And it's that type of thinking that Adobe needs now -- because not only is Flash tanking, but so are the applications that made Adobe a powerhouse in the industry. And that can't be good for the short term or the long term. It can't be good for anybody but Adobe's competitors.
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Posted by Lee Pender on November 09, 2011 at 4:52 PM6 comments
Maybe we've been watching too much football -- if that's possible -- but we're in the piling-on mood here at RCPU. So, we're going to jump into the fray of pundits chirping about Jay Greene's excellent story for CNET, which chronicles the brief but intriguing saga of the would-have-been Microsoft Courier tablet.
The Courier, which will never be available, might have been pretty cool, and it might have actually given Microsoft a fighting chance against the iPad back when the iPad itself was brand-new. Greene lays out the tale: Two Microsoft executives, J Allard (of Xbox fame) and Steven Sinofsky (of making-people-forget-about-Vista fame), were each leading teams competing to come up with a design for the Courier.
Long story short, Allard envisioned an operating system that broke almost completely from Windows, including having an unfamiliar interface and poor or no tie-ins to the massive Office franchise. Sinofsky, who is, after all, head of the Windows division, wanted to base the tablet on the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system and make Office a key component of the user experience.
Sinofsky won. Allard left Microsoft. That's kind of the bottom line, but there are a couple of wrinkles here that are interesting. First, Allard didn't envision Outlook in his avant-garde tablet, prompting Bill Gates to ask how, exactly, users would get their e-mail. Oh, via the Web, Allard said (more or less, we suppose), at which time Gates apparently went somewhat apoplectic.
And let's face it -- Gates had a point. What's the use of a tablet that doesn't have an e-mail client? Maybe we at RCPU are in the minority here, but your editor hates Web-based e-mail interfaces; he runs his personal Gmail account through Outlook. It's just easier to use that way. A tablet is mostly about staying connected on the road, goofing around with apps and looking cool. That first part involves e-mail pretty heavily, and we're guessing that Gates was right (as he has been before) about most users wanting Outlook or something like it.
But take a look at those last couple of paragraphs. Notice anything? Who was there brokering disputes and making decisions. Bill Gates...and not Steve Ballmer. Yes, Gates, now one of the world's most charitable human beings and a very busy retiree, came in to clear the air when the two teams working on Courier couldn't see eye to eye. Where was Ballmer? Helping out, apparently, but we find it more than a little interesting that when the rubber was hitting the road (to put it nicely) it was Gates who was summoned to oversee the process.
Beyond that, the real mark against Ballmer's leadership is that the Courier effort just simply died. Hey, we weren't there, but a few quick, simple questions come to mind regarding this whole mess: Was it impossible for Allard's team to collaborate with Sinofsky's? Would it not have been possible to make an e-mail client part of Allard's creation? Was there no way to rethink Windows for a tablet and still protect the Office money-spinner? And ultimately, was it better to just kill Courier before it launched rather than try to reach some sort of compromise between the two visions for the tablet?
Having two teams come up with different visions for a product is common at Microsoft and in the industry in general. But usually, something actually comes out of at least one of the teams and becomes a product. In this case, Microsoft took two of its brightest minds, allocated some relatively important resources to a project, developed some sort of prototype and ended up creating...nothing. Nothing! How does a CEO let that happen with a product that could have been so successful and should have been so important?
Oh, sure, Microsoft will create a tablet one of these days (and is creating one, we suppose), and it might be great. But by failing to get Courier out at all and also failing to get a tablet into the market around the time the iPad launched, Microsoft has ceded market share (and certainly "mindshare," if anybody uses that word anymore) to Apple. Again.
People actually want Windows tablets. They would buy them. They would use them -- at work, where they're now trying to shoe-horn their iPads into corporate networks and infrastructures. Microsoft had a chance to give people a product they were practically begging for, at a time when it could have competed with Apple's offering. But instead, Steve Ballmer's company squabbled internally, threw up its hands and lost a couple of valuable executives. We're not saying that it's all Ballmer's fault, but somebody has to take responsibility for what ended up being a fiasco. Right? And who better to take it than the person at the top?
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Posted by Lee Pender on November 03, 2011 at 10:56 AM11 comments