We hope you're all wearing your yellow and blue for the arrival of Leap Day William today! If it weren't for the legendary character that emerges every four years from the Mariana Trench to trade candy for children's tears, Microsoft's release of a Windows 8 consumer preview would have been the biggest news in the world today.
Alas, Microsoft chose Feb. 29 to give average folks a look at its forthcoming, and fairly revolutionary, operating system. However, as Leap Day William teaches us, Leap Day is the day when we can do things we wouldn't normally do. It's kind of the day when things we do don't actually count. (Really, if you don't watch "30 Rock," you should have stopped reading a long time ago. But we'll get away from the TV references now.)
Perhaps that's why Microsoft chose such an unusual day for a fairly big unveiling. It's impossible, of course, to say after just a few hours how folks outside the technology industry are accepting Windows 8. Inside the industry, there's definitely skepticism about its prospects, but a lot of pundits (your editor included) like the looks of it and the concept behind it a lot. It's got potential, many of us say.
But what do the (presumably) technologically unwashed say about Windows 8? For now, we have only a tiny sample of reactions -- not even to the actual OS really, but mainly to pictures of it -- but they tend to be a little less than positive. For a first look at consumer reaction to Windows 8, we went to America's blandest and least controversial news source: USA Today. This is where, we imagine, regular folks hang out and talk about stuff in the comments sections of blog entries.
If that's true, then Microsoft has some convincing to do with Windows 8. The comments after this (actually very good) blog entry -- so far, anyway -- are a little less than promising. Let's see some of the early returns, not edited for content, grammar or anything else:
"I tried them all and I like my XP. Your computer will be a brick or very slow if forced to swap to 7 or 8. It's a nasty game they play with hardware and software. to force you to spend money, I'm sick of it. My next OS when XP support stops will be Android for PC, Linux or GOS. MS & MAc can kiss my behind."
"I'm not impressed by the screen. to me it looks like a user interface nightmare. I have to agree with a different poster that it looks like something Microsoft would invent. I like Microsoft, but apple does make better user interfaces."
"is it me or does that look awful? it just looks like something that microsoft would invent - and i am not a microsoft hater. why can't ANYONE get something right at microsoft??"
"windows 8 not for me always been a fan but what are the developers thinking this looks terrible maybe its time to go to MAC"
We had no idea Jack Kerouac had such influence on USA Today commenters, but we digress. That's a pretty darn representative sample of the earliest reactions to what people see of Windows 8. And it highlights something we've been saying here for a while: Microsoft and its partner base are going to have to convince people that it's OK to use an operating system that doesn't look anything like what they've seen from an OS before.
The heaping of praise on Android and iOS and Mac OS is interesting in that those environments basically look the same as each other and don't really look radically different from what OSes have looked like for a decade or more now. Windows 8 is a huge departure -- visually, functionally and even culturally -- for Microsoft. Partners need to know this. And they need to understand that as Microsoft's sales force, they're going to have to shoulder a lot of the responsibility for convincing users that Windows 8 in all its forms really is great, even if it's not familiar. Everybody's a consumer, after all, even CIOs and IT pros. And in a very real sense, Windows is still the face of Microsoft for many users. (We suppose it's the "window" into the company, but that just sounds stupid.)
Windows 8 isn't even out yet. It has a long way to go before it either pulls a Vista or a Windows 7. But if the very, very early returns from what could be a tiny subsection of a broad swath of consumers mean anything, Windows 8 is going to face a bumpy road to acceptance. Then again, today is Leap Day, so maybe none of this will actually matter tomorrow, anyway.
Have a take on Windows 8? Leave a comment below or send it to lpender@rcpmag.com.
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 29, 2012 at 10:50 AM15 comments
Short weeks are the worst for news. Short weeks in February are the worst of the worst. For some reason, schools in parts of the country such as the one your editor lives in (New England) give kids a week off of school in February, after Presidents Day. A week of school vacation means that there's even less going on than there normally would be in a short week, or in February, or both.
So far this week, we've read news about what might be Microsoft Office for iPad (not uninteresting, but we're holding out for the webOS version, thanks), and Microsoft extending consumer support for Windows 7 and Vista, as if anybody actually uses Vista and needs it to be supported.
Boring. So, with this week a little bereft of news thus far, we're inclined to travel back into last week, when Microsoft kind of unveiled its already infamous logo for Windows 8. (Why Microsoft does this stuff -- or lets it leak -- toward the end of the week, we're not sure. Why waste this kind of fodder on a Friday? This is Monday stuff. Just a thought.)
Heading back in time, we find that nobody likes the new logo (well, almost nobody), and some pundits downright hate it. Here at RCPU, though, we see in the new design much more than a logo. We see history.
Your editor is a massive flag nerd, if there even is such a thing, and has been since childhood. So the new Windows 8 image -- which, we figure, is supposed to look like an actual Window -- reminded us not of an opening in a wall but rather of the centuries-old crosses that adorn flags in Scandinavia and the British Isles (and in Finland, which is not part of Scandinavia, as you already know).
These crosses -- which generally represent the actual cross of Christianity, or at least did when someone first put them on fabric -- have various origins, shapes, colors and placements. Most represent some sort of saint, and if you want to know more about that, maybe your editor can get his wife, who has a Ph.D. in medieval theology (no, really) to answer some questions one of these days. In any case, though, these "logos" are all crosses, and most of them are really old, as in even older than Windows XP. The origins of Scotland's flag date back to about 1200, or approximately three years after Lotus 1-2-3 was released.
The first thing we thought of after viewing the Windows 8 logo was the flag of St. Piran, which flies over Cornwall, a Celtic bit of England that juts out to the west, just south of Wales, and happens to be your editor's ancestral homeland. (Tre, Pol or Pen, and ye shall know your Cornish men. The "Pen" in this case is for Pender.) The Cornish have opted for a more down-to-business black and a thicker cross, but they're not far off of the Windows 8 look. They surely must be thrilled about that.
Of course, the Scandinavians are well known for their cross flags. Sweden's banner adds a splash of yellow to what otherwise looks a lot like Windows 8 blue. The Danes stick with the white cross but bathe it in vivid red. And the Finns (not Scandinavians, as we mentioned) very nearly provide a photo-negative image of the new logo, with an offset cross in light blue.
And then there's England, which has solidly adopted St. George's cross. The Scots fly the cross of St. Andrew, which basically inverts the cross on the Windows 8 logo. Taken together, whether they want to be or not, the English and Scottish banners form the famous Union Jack, which some insist is not the Union Jack at all but actually the Union Flag. Hash it out for yourselves in the comments.
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| First row: Cornwall, Sweden, Denmark. Second row: Finland, England, Scotland. |
We've rounded all this up mainly because, again, your editor is a big flag nerd but also because it's RCPU's position that we very much like the new Windows 8 logo. Forget about whether it has continuity with the rest of what Microsoft is doing or looks like something from 1985. This is a logo steeped in lore, which borrows from the history and tradition of some of the world's great nations. Did Microsoft intend it to be that way? We'd like to think so.
But there's more to the logo than just a resemblance to a few national flags. There's the cross. Let's set aside the religious symbolism of the cross here -- we're pretty sure Microsoft didn't mean to include any of that -- and think more of the old phrase, "We all have our crosses to bear." In the Windows 8 logo, we see represented graphically the cross Microsoft bears with Windows. Windows is old and arguably in decline, not unlike some of the cross-flagged nations whose former empires have disappeared (we won't say which ones).
Microsoft is trying to reinvent its flagship product for a brave new world, just as much of old-school Europe and the U.K. are trying to figure out how to deal with the challenges of the 21st century in the face of competition from other parts of the world. (We should perhaps note here, in case you've bothered to watch the news or follow the stock market in recent months, that the Greek flag also features a cross.)
But the Windows 8 cross (St. Ballmer's? Maybe not) also represents Microsoft's stability in a changing world. After all, Sweden, Finland, England and friends (and some auld enemies) are still around despite being tossed pretty heavily on the waves of history. And so it is for Microsoft. The company moves into the Windows 8 era with a new, and risky, version of a tried-and-true product. And while success for Windows 8 isn't guaranteed, Microsoft's survival as a big and influential software company -- and as a money-hose for its partners -- probably is.
Just as There'll Always Be an England, there will (probably) always be a Microsoft.
Like the Windows 8 logo? Hate it? Sound off below or at lpender@rcpmag.com.
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Posted by Lee Pender on February 22, 2012 at 1:06 PM3 comments
Well, here's a shock. Apparently Microsoft's retail stores are somewhat less than compelling, at least according to one blogger who actually went to one (which, we're thinking, puts him in rare company indeed). Now would be a good time to note that your editor has never been to a Microsoft store. So, this entry isn't about any sort of first-hand experience. It's about what we at RCPU imagine the Microsoft store to be.
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: Microsoft partners don't need to worry about Microsoft stores. Most of you know that by now, so we won't dwell on it here. But unless Microsoft is somehow selling SharePoint or SQL implementations from a spot at the mall (or unless they're actually trying to peddle retail software), partners don't need to do anything but sit back and observe Microsoft's foray into direct retail -- or do what everybody else will probably do and ignore it.
You've all been to the Apple store by now, surely. It's sleek. It's cool. It's that silvery gray that used to be the color of sporting excellence back before Jerry Jones ruined the Dallas Cowboys and now just symbolizes impossibly cool and mind-blowing technology. There are geniuses there, supposedly. There are most assuredly hipsters there, people so cool that their mere glances make your editor feel junior-high-level self-conscious as soon as he walks in humming some tune by Thin Lizzy or Waylon Jennings. Of Montreal? Unless you're referring to the Club du Hockey Canadien (booo!), we have no idea what you're talking about. Your editor now finds out about new musical acts only by seeing them on the "Sesame Street" videos he watches online with his 16-month-old son.
The Microsoft store cannot, surely just cannot, look or feel anything like that. We're thinking, as the Forbes blogger mentioned, that Microsoft has to be trying way, way too hard in its retail establishments. To us, though -- and remember this is all based purely on our imagination -- that means not so much trying to look like an Apple store as trying to look way too Microsoft. We're envisioning a ridiculous blast of primary colors -- yellow, red, blue and green (not a primary color, we know) everywhere. Oversized Windows logos on every available space on every wall or counter. If all the fury and rambunctiousness of a Steve Ballmer keynote could be filtered and poured into an interior space, that's what we imagine the Microsoft store looking like. In very few companies are people as hung up on themselves and their organization as are folks at Microsoft. Probably only Apple compares, but Apple has a sense of decorum.
The only part of the Microsoft store we can imagine being cool is the Xbox part, which we're figuring is pretty big. But it couldn't attract many teenagers because of the inherent lameness of the rest of the space. For some reason, we imagine Microsoft's store looking like an old Babbage's from the '80s, with packaged productivity software on shelves all over the walls and therapeutic keyboards and mice targeted to the over-75 set. Oh, sure, the real Microsoft stores are probably full of HD screens and stunning Windows Phone devices, but it's just hard to imagine Microsoft looking up to date in a physical sense. What does that say about the company? Or does it just say something about us?
We're guessing that, aside from all the primary colors (and greens, of course), Microsoft will be stuck in the '90s ambiance-wise. After all, that's when the company and the entire Pacific Northwest other than Portland arguably peaked (although the dream of the '90s is alive in Portland). We're imagining a latte bar -- Starbucks, of course, just to be slightly unfashionable and overly corporate -- and the worst of those '90s bands like the Gin Blossoms and Counting Crows playing through the store's speakers. There might even be flannel and plaid involved, just because if any company is going to be that lacking in self-awareness, it'll be Microsoft.
As for the clientele, we're seeing folks in their 40s and 50s, mostly men, mostly with burgeoning guts and bald spots -- basically slightly older versions of your editor except with thinning hair. And they won't come in and buy Windows Phone devices or tablets, should those ever exist in a Microsoft store. No, they'll go to the Apple store for that stuff like everybody else. But they will buy something -- keyboards, maybe? -- because even though Microsoft stores will never be cool, they'll be profitable. For all of Microsoft's faults -- a lack of consumer innovation, terminal uncoolness, a tendency to awkwardly try to be like Apple and fail -- if there's one thing the company still knows how to do, it's make money.
Have you been to a Microsoft store? What do you think one would be like? Leave a comment below or send your thoughts to lpender@rcpmag.com
Posted by Lee Pender on February 13, 2012 at 1:51 PM3 comments
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 PM2 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.
See Also:
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.
Related:
Posted by Lee Pender on December 01, 2011 at 4:43 PM9 comments