I think the relative success of the Xbox is a big part of what's gone wrong at MS.
At heart they're a pretty button down operation, as befits their bread and butter operations as a provider of commodity solutions for business. Windows, Office and server products account for essentially all of the money:
ect...
What you stated above is what most people do not understand, MS does not get it.
For over 10 yrs they been living off a cash cow and all that money had funneled into the stuff at the bottom and none of it has created growth for the company. MS is basically a wealth destroyer. What also should be very evident is that MS has fail to capitalize on any of the newer growth industry in the last 10 yrs, maybe the x0box brand has made headway, but the death nail is about to driven into that as well. Sony and Nintendo plus Apple is going to kick MS but here.
They should probably just spin off the youth market stuff as its own deal-- call it "X Labs" or something-- to get it out from under the Windows Everywhere deathray.
"To keep service cheap, Microsoft limited email message updates to once every 15 minutes. "
How often does the latest iphone normally check email? Without mobileme it's still unfortunately not exactly push email if I understand it correctly.
Without a Push service enabled the settings are for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or manually, but you can of course poll the server and send mail at any time.
Microsoft seems to be under the impression that the consumer market is divided between wooden suburban white people and some ad agency's idea of gritty youth, with is exactly in line with their experience to date with Windows and the Xbox. The two poles are just too far apart, and it seems pretty clear that MS has a hard time, internally, telling the cool kids from Steve Ballmer in drag. Whatever good design work they do seems to always be in danger of being swamped out by grotesque pandering-- again, IMO, because when the only thing that's ever worked for you is a game console, you perhaps get some funny ideas about what that "living room" everybody's gunning for actually looks like.
They should probably just spin off the youth market stuff as its own deal-- call it "X Labs" or something-- to get it out from under the Windows Everywhere deathray. Then the folks at the mainstream, makes money Microsoft could think about making some consumer products pitched at average people, without the pounding techno coming from the E&D wing unduly clouding their minds. It's pretty clear MS can't figure out how to do independent pirate operations within the belly of the beast in a way that actually survives the digestive juices, and the results typically seem to be a really unfortunate conflation of of tone deaf hipster posturing and a fundamentally beige corporate culture. It makes them both look bad, maybe they should try going their separate ways.
Without a Push service enabled the settings are for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or manually, but you can of course poll the server and send mail at any time.
Thanks. With that in mind I wish there was a lot more push services around to help pick up emails that aren't directed through Outlook/MM.
Thanks. With that in mind I wish there was a lot more push services around to help pick up emails that aren't directed through Outlook/MM.
I've have MobileMe. I've had it since .Mac* and back to iTools*. I have never used it as my mail account despite many thinking that is the main reason to have it.
Since they added Push to MobileMe, i have been forwarding my Gmail to my MobileMe via the Gmail settings. Then MobileMe pushes to my phone. For my return mail I have Gmail synced to my iPhone via iTunes but Inactive, which allows me to easily choose Gmail for my SMTP server. This makes any sent emails look like they are coming from my Gmail account. I love this set up!
* Even Apple rebrands a product that has failed in the market.
1. to fill out its Zune concept into a complete consumer product in way that differentiated it from Apple's iPod lineup, which it could never beat as a PMP alone, via a strong social/connectivity set of features (MS has been convinced "social" is the future for quite a few years now) ...
2. two years ago MS bought a company, Danger, with a modestly successful product of that type, the Sidekick (for a reported $500 million!) ...
3. that it thought it could keep selling successfully as a viable product (which is incompetently failed to do with the disastrous data crash) while it morphed and expanded its product into the new thing ...
4. so it spent two years developing a Win CE OS version to totally replace its simple but working java OS (while the rest of the world leaped ahead with the iPhone and its imitators) ...
5. and bolted on some Zune stuff, plus probably late in the game with further delay, the new MS cloud data concept it plans to use far and wide someday ...
6. and also wanted to try its hand at snazzy gizmo hardware design, hoping to come up with some "new look" for MS products (producing instead a typical not-very-good piece of MS hardware) ...
7. and wasn't sure whether to go with a real or virtual keypad, so wound up with two models (a classic sign of CYA management) ...
8. and decided toward the end to target this product at the "youth market," hoping to leverage the modest success of the XBox and its Live social services (still however only running neck-and-neck with Sony's PS3 for second place in console sales, both far behind the Wii) ...
9. and then - and this is the part i can't explain - made a preposterous deal with Verizon, instead of the Sidekick's old T-Mobile, that set a smartphone service plan price that was hopelessly too high (the logical goal for this kind of product would have been the exact opposite, to charge the lowest service prices in the competition and compete with feature phones, and maybe the iPod Nano).
up to #8, despite all the dumb moves from #1 to #8, the Kin might have at least have been as "successful" as ... the Zune. lame and a big waste of money, but not an "epic fail."
but the Verizon deal - who did that? how could Ballmer sign off on it?
say what you want about iphone reception issues, ms still takes the cake when it comes to sheer ineptness and stupidity. This kids phone reminds me that Cohen bros films with the hulla hoop, where the moronic director had the slogan "you know for kids", too bad that in this fictionalized world the hoop was something actually inspiring, while in the real world ms issues one irrelevant product after the other.
I also feel for those people that actually bought one (although perhaps I shouldn't because they should have known better) only to see it discontinued after 48 days. I wouldn't blame them if when they came across some ms employee they started with some fast ones on them because these guys show no respect to the consumer, it's here we have a surprise event, come see are new creation (a la apple) and all the engadget morons expecting the courrier vapourware, then after a few weeks, hey everyone who was kind enough (and stupid enough) to invest on our product you can go take a hike because we are discontinuing it. You are stupid for buying it, we are stupid for selling it and promoting it as nothing short of a mobile revolution, and we can all go eff ourselves collectively in the mire.
MS is not even funny to watch anymore, they are simply painful in their embarrassing ways. What kind of morale the company must have I can't even begin to imagine...
I've have MobileMe. I've had it since .Mac* and back to iTools*. I have never used it as my mail account despite many thinking that is the main reason to have it.
Since they added Push to MobileMe, i have been forwarding my Gmail to my MobileMe via the Gmail settings. Then MobileMe pushes to my phone. For my return mail I have Gmail synced to my iPhone via iTunes but Inactive, which allows me to easily choose Gmail for my SMTP server. This makes any sent emails look like they are coming from my Gmail account. I love this set up!
* Even Apple rebrands a product that has failed in the market.
sounds cumbersome to me... since iOS 4.0 with its multiple Exchange Support, why not just setup your Gmail to Push to your iPhone
1) It's really just setting up forward once, and changing the SMTP server once. After that it's always saved and always setup perfect for each new iPhone. On my 3rd now with this setup.
2) I didn't think that was available to users who didn't have access to an Exchange Server and Google Apps. From your link...
If your business, school, or organization uses Google Apps, your administrator will first need to enable Google Sync before you can take advantage of this feature.
3) I already need to have some access to the MobileMe system for my bookmarks, calendars, contacts, notes and FindMyiPhone, which already require Push or Fetch enabled.
Calling this "mediocrity" is far too generous. This is the type of incompetence and arrogance for which the term "epic fail" was invented (even clichéd as it is.)
Don't overuse EPIC FAIL... you need something like Bush's Presidency or BP Oil Spill for that.
This is pretty par for the course in our over-consolidated corporatocracy. Company (Danger) mildly successful but not a big name? Gets bought out, gutted, products get destroyed, and purchasing company feels no pain. Not to the users who suffered data loss issues, and not now with the employees getting churned from one failed project to another.
This is another reason I liked Apple's approach (which may be changing): more organic growth, fueled by targeted purchases (PA Semi, Fingerworks, Casady & Greene, Quattro, etc). You look at those companies, they weren't ever big names, but obviously had talent that was merged quite well into the Apple machine.
Compare this to M&A activity at Microsoft, and it's day vs. night. Microsoft bullies companies, purchases them, and often buries their products without anything to show for it. Sad, but commonplace ...see Oracle purchasing Peoplesoft, HP purchasing Compaq, Daimler buying Chrysler (Auto-fail), Ebay buying Skype (MEGa-fail), Time Warner buying AOL (EPIC fail).
The only other company seemingly as good as Apple is Amazon, but they still haven't become the juggernaut of books or media that they want to be. Time will tell. I would also rate Google well, but they still don't have a 2nd major revenue stream, so are still vulnerable after numerous purchases.
1) It's really just setting up forward once, and changing the SMTP server once. After that it's always saved and always setup perfect for each new iPhone. On my 3rd now with this setup.
2) I didn't think that was available to users who didn't have access to an Exchange Server and Google Apps. From your link...
If your business, school, or organization uses Google Apps, your administrator will first need to enable Google Sync before you can take advantage of this feature.
Guess I'm more fortunate than others! not sure, I do have another Exchange account setup with my company but not aware of my company having Google Sync setup... who knows, I added it in there and it worked so I was stoked about it. Anyway, happy iPhone'ing
You are right, in as much as Windows 7 is not a bad product.
That sums up my views on Microsoft.
Windows 7 is their star product. Years of work after their last good product and Windows 7 was supposed to fix all the complaints about Vista. They have hundreds of millions of users and billions of dollars to spend on R&D to improve their product. Yet after all those billions of dollars and thousands of man-years of effort, the best you can say is that it's "not a bad product".
Apple, OTOH, strives for 'insanely great'. That's not to say that they always get there, but anything less is a disappointment. People line up begging to buy Apple products while the best they can say of Microsoft is "Windows 7 is not a bad product".
See the difference? See why I can't get excited about anything Microsoft does?
Guess I'm more fortunate than others! not sure, I do have another Exchange account setup with my company but not aware of my company having Google Sync setup... who knows, I added it in there and it worked so I was stoked about it. Anyway, happy iPhone'ing
More than one way to skin a cat, as the old adage grotesquely states.
...but the Verizon deal - who did that? how could Ballmer sign off on it?
I think that's a big part of it. Apple didn't originally work with Verizon because of their inflexibility so AT&T got the iPhone. You'd think Microsoft was a big enough company with enough clout to negotiate a more reasonable plan for the Kin given its capabilities but it seems they either couldn't get Verizon to play ball or they just didn't plan it all the way through. Either way, that's certainly part of the reason it failed.
Anyone wanna venture a guess what each KIN phone actually cost MS?
Design Cost +
Engineering Cost +
Manufacturing Cost +
Marketting Costs
Divide by 500
Ouch no matter how you slice it... That's gotta hurt!
Now this brings up an interesting issue... Microsoft demonstrating how quickly they'll axe a product, what reaction will 3rd party game developers take away from all of this? Will they fully embrues the new Kinnect system or will they see how things play out before wasting lots of development costs on a controller that MS could very well nuke at the first sign of bad news?
You have to imagine the game developers are discussing this very issue as I type this.
Comments
Half a trillion dollars?
Are you sure about that?
http://ycharts.com/companies/MSFT/market_cap
better yet
http://ycharts.com/search?q=AAPL%20v...T&c=market_cap
I think the relative success of the Xbox is a big part of what's gone wrong at MS.
At heart they're a pretty button down operation, as befits their bread and butter operations as a provider of commodity solutions for business. Windows, Office and server products account for essentially all of the money:
ect...
What you stated above is what most people do not understand, MS does not get it.
For over 10 yrs they been living off a cash cow and all that money had funneled into the stuff at the bottom and none of it has created growth for the company. MS is basically a wealth destroyer. What also should be very evident is that MS has fail to capitalize on any of the newer growth industry in the last 10 yrs, maybe the x0box brand has made headway, but the death nail is about to driven into that as well. Sony and Nintendo plus Apple is going to kick MS but here.
[...]
They should probably just spin off the youth market stuff as its own deal-- call it "X Labs" or something-- to get it out from under the Windows Everywhere deathray.
[...]
Sounds like a great idea.
How often does the latest iphone normally check email?
"To keep service cheap, Microsoft limited email message updates to once every 15 minutes. "
How often does the latest iphone normally check email? Without mobileme it's still unfortunately not exactly push email if I understand it correctly.
Without a Push service enabled the settings are for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or manually, but you can of course poll the server and send mail at any time.
Microsoft seems to be under the impression that the consumer market is divided between wooden suburban white people and some ad agency's idea of gritty youth, with is exactly in line with their experience to date with Windows and the Xbox. The two poles are just too far apart, and it seems pretty clear that MS has a hard time, internally, telling the cool kids from Steve Ballmer in drag. Whatever good design work they do seems to always be in danger of being swamped out by grotesque pandering-- again, IMO, because when the only thing that's ever worked for you is a game console, you perhaps get some funny ideas about what that "living room" everybody's gunning for actually looks like.
They should probably just spin off the youth market stuff as its own deal-- call it "X Labs" or something-- to get it out from under the Windows Everywhere deathray. Then the folks at the mainstream, makes money Microsoft could think about making some consumer products pitched at average people, without the pounding techno coming from the E&D wing unduly clouding their minds. It's pretty clear MS can't figure out how to do independent pirate operations within the belly of the beast in a way that actually survives the digestive juices, and the results typically seem to be a really unfortunate conflation of of tone deaf hipster posturing and a fundamentally beige corporate culture. It makes them both look bad, maybe they should try going their separate ways.
Good suggestion contained in wonderful writing.
Without a Push service enabled the settings are for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or manually, but you can of course poll the server and send mail at any time.
Thanks. With that in mind I wish there was a lot more push services around to help pick up emails that aren't directed through Outlook/MM.
Thanks. With that in mind I wish there was a lot more push services around to help pick up emails that aren't directed through Outlook/MM.
I've have MobileMe. I've had it since .Mac* and back to iTools*. I have never used it as my mail account despite many thinking that is the main reason to have it.
Since they added Push to MobileMe, i have been forwarding my Gmail to my MobileMe via the Gmail settings. Then MobileMe pushes to my phone. For my return mail I have Gmail synced to my iPhone via iTunes but Inactive, which allows me to easily choose Gmail for my SMTP server. This makes any sent emails look like they are coming from my Gmail account. I love this set up!
* Even Apple rebrands a product that has failed in the market.
What on Earth happened here?
it's mostly pretty obvious:
1. to fill out its Zune concept into a complete consumer product in way that differentiated it from Apple's iPod lineup, which it could never beat as a PMP alone, via a strong social/connectivity set of features (MS has been convinced "social" is the future for quite a few years now) ...
2. two years ago MS bought a company, Danger, with a modestly successful product of that type, the Sidekick (for a reported $500 million!) ...
3. that it thought it could keep selling successfully as a viable product (which is incompetently failed to do with the disastrous data crash) while it morphed and expanded its product into the new thing ...
4. so it spent two years developing a Win CE OS version to totally replace its simple but working java OS (while the rest of the world leaped ahead with the iPhone and its imitators) ...
5. and bolted on some Zune stuff, plus probably late in the game with further delay, the new MS cloud data concept it plans to use far and wide someday ...
6. and also wanted to try its hand at snazzy gizmo hardware design, hoping to come up with some "new look" for MS products (producing instead a typical not-very-good piece of MS hardware) ...
7. and wasn't sure whether to go with a real or virtual keypad, so wound up with two models (a classic sign of CYA management) ...
8. and decided toward the end to target this product at the "youth market," hoping to leverage the modest success of the XBox and its Live social services (still however only running neck-and-neck with Sony's PS3 for second place in console sales, both far behind the Wii) ...
9. and then - and this is the part i can't explain - made a preposterous deal with Verizon, instead of the Sidekick's old T-Mobile, that set a smartphone service plan price that was hopelessly too high (the logical goal for this kind of product would have been the exact opposite, to charge the lowest service prices in the competition and compete with feature phones, and maybe the iPod Nano).
up to #8, despite all the dumb moves from #1 to #8, the Kin might have at least have been as "successful" as ... the Zune. lame and a big waste of money, but not an "epic fail."
but the Verizon deal - who did that? how could Ballmer sign off on it?
I also feel for those people that actually bought one (although perhaps I shouldn't because they should have known better) only to see it discontinued after 48 days. I wouldn't blame them if when they came across some ms employee they started with some fast ones on them because these guys show no respect to the consumer, it's here we have a surprise event, come see are new creation (a la apple) and all the engadget morons expecting the courrier vapourware, then after a few weeks, hey everyone who was kind enough (and stupid enough) to invest on our product you can go take a hike because we are discontinuing it. You are stupid for buying it, we are stupid for selling it and promoting it as nothing short of a mobile revolution, and we can all go eff ourselves collectively in the mire.
MS is not even funny to watch anymore, they are simply painful in their embarrassing ways. What kind of morale the company must have I can't even begin to imagine...
I think something important needs to happen to MS, and by that, I mean they need to lose BIG on something and get hungry again.
I've have MobileMe. I've had it since .Mac* and back to iTools*. I have never used it as my mail account despite many thinking that is the main reason to have it.
Since they added Push to MobileMe, i have been forwarding my Gmail to my MobileMe via the Gmail settings. Then MobileMe pushes to my phone. For my return mail I have Gmail synced to my iPhone via iTunes but Inactive, which allows me to easily choose Gmail for my SMTP server. This makes any sent emails look like they are coming from my Gmail account. I love this set up!
* Even Apple rebrands a product that has failed in the market.
sounds cumbersome to me... since iOS 4.0 with its multiple Exchange Support, why not just setup your Gmail to Push to your iPhone
http://www.google.com/support/mobile...40&topic=14252
sounds cumbersome to me... since iOS 4.0 with its multiple Exchange Support, why not just setup your Gmail to Push to your iPhone
http://www.google.com/support/mobile...40&topic=14252
1) It's really just setting up forward once, and changing the SMTP server once. After that it's always saved and always setup perfect for each new iPhone. On my 3rd now with this setup.
2) I didn't think that was available to users who didn't have access to an Exchange Server and Google Apps. From your link...3) I already need to have some access to the MobileMe system for my bookmarks, calendars, contacts, notes and FindMyiPhone, which already require Push or Fetch enabled.
Calling this "mediocrity" is far too generous. This is the type of incompetence and arrogance for which the term "epic fail" was invented (even clichéd as it is.)
Don't overuse EPIC FAIL... you need something like Bush's Presidency or BP Oil Spill for that.
This is pretty par for the course in our over-consolidated corporatocracy. Company (Danger) mildly successful but not a big name? Gets bought out, gutted, products get destroyed, and purchasing company feels no pain. Not to the users who suffered data loss issues, and not now with the employees getting churned from one failed project to another.
This is another reason I liked Apple's approach (which may be changing): more organic growth, fueled by targeted purchases (PA Semi, Fingerworks, Casady & Greene, Quattro, etc). You look at those companies, they weren't ever big names, but obviously had talent that was merged quite well into the Apple machine.
Compare this to M&A activity at Microsoft, and it's day vs. night. Microsoft bullies companies, purchases them, and often buries their products without anything to show for it. Sad, but commonplace ...see Oracle purchasing Peoplesoft, HP purchasing Compaq, Daimler buying Chrysler (Auto-fail), Ebay buying Skype (MEGa-fail), Time Warner buying AOL (EPIC fail).
The only other company seemingly as good as Apple is Amazon, but they still haven't become the juggernaut of books or media that they want to be. Time will tell. I would also rate Google well, but they still don't have a 2nd major revenue stream, so are still vulnerable after numerous purchases.
1) It's really just setting up forward once, and changing the SMTP server once. After that it's always saved and always setup perfect for each new iPhone. On my 3rd now with this setup.
2) I didn't think that was available to users who didn't have access to an Exchange Server and Google Apps. From your link...
Guess I'm more fortunate than others! not sure, I do have another Exchange account setup with my company but not aware of my company having Google Sync setup... who knows, I added it in there and it worked so I was stoked about it. Anyway, happy iPhone'ing
You are right, in as much as Windows 7 is not a bad product.
That sums up my views on Microsoft.
Windows 7 is their star product. Years of work after their last good product and Windows 7 was supposed to fix all the complaints about Vista. They have hundreds of millions of users and billions of dollars to spend on R&D to improve their product. Yet after all those billions of dollars and thousands of man-years of effort, the best you can say is that it's "not a bad product".
Apple, OTOH, strives for 'insanely great'. That's not to say that they always get there, but anything less is a disappointment. People line up begging to buy Apple products while the best they can say of Microsoft is "Windows 7 is not a bad product".
See the difference? See why I can't get excited about anything Microsoft does?
Guess I'm more fortunate than others! not sure, I do have another Exchange account setup with my company but not aware of my company having Google Sync setup... who knows, I added it in there and it worked so I was stoked about it. Anyway, happy iPhone'ing
More than one way to skin a cat, as the old adage grotesquely states.
...but the Verizon deal - who did that? how could Ballmer sign off on it?
I think that's a big part of it. Apple didn't originally work with Verizon because of their inflexibility so AT&T got the iPhone. You'd think Microsoft was a big enough company with enough clout to negotiate a more reasonable plan for the Kin given its capabilities but it seems they either couldn't get Verizon to play ball or they just didn't plan it all the way through. Either way, that's certainly part of the reason it failed.
Anyone wanna venture a guess what each KIN phone actually cost MS?
Design Cost +
Engineering Cost +
Manufacturing Cost +
Marketting Costs
Divide by 500
Ouch no matter how you slice it... That's gotta hurt!
Now this brings up an interesting issue... Microsoft demonstrating how quickly they'll axe a product, what reaction will 3rd party game developers take away from all of this? Will they fully embrues the new Kinnect system or will they see how things play out before wasting lots of development costs on a controller that MS could very well nuke at the first sign of bad news?
You have to imagine the game developers are discussing this very issue as I type this.