Their goal after all is to remove money from your wallet any way they can. The difference is Microsoft took those ubiquitous practices and turned them up to eleven. And then abused their monopoly. And put a lot of companies out of business via those abuses. They suck.
I often wonder how much longer that stuff will be relevant. The antitrust case was filed in 1998, almost 13 years ago, for practices that occurred before then.
They turned a corner last decade, perhaps more out of self-preservation than any sense of altruism, however at the end of the day the result is the same.
They're now a tech industry leader in business ethics and accountability.
You should skim over Office 365 on Wikipedia and watch this vid on Azure.
This gives a bit of an idea on how things will work behind-the-scenes in the "post PC" era. (I mean generally of course, not that Microsoft will be running everything! There are a number of other companies offering similar solutions).
Everything else was grabbed from a bunch of difference sources with a little bit of speculation added for good measure.
Interesting stuff - wide-ranging, comprehensive in scope and aimed at a whole different world than Apple. Don't know about the pudding, but the box looks good.
I've never been a jeremiad about MS failing as a major and influential part of the computing infrastructure - but in fact becoming just that - that is, unless Win 8 hits all its marks and leads to compelling phones and tablets - by no means a sure thing - with most of its products slowly receding into the background of the consumer-facing part of the industry - back where IBM started and returned. And which is no less important in the broad scheme of things, just not a storyline that grips as broad a public as the Post PC/Mobile/ubiquitous and fun side.
Meaning, for one thing, Office for Mac has been ironically transformed from a charity product into as strategic an offering as the Win version as Apple continues to dominate the premium PC space as MS's most important point of contact with the public on PC's - since it bodes to remain the standard for people using the same devices for personal and professional purposes. And since it's the one product both PC and Mac users will have in common (along with Mac hooks into corporate functions).
And I've been looking at vids and screen shots from Lion and Win 8, and from a personally involving point of view, Lion looks fresher than Win 8. Win 8, in fact looks very much like... ...Windows. Some new eye candy. And it will hold the "Lion's share" of the biz and probably the home PC market well enough.
(WP8 and WT8 are simply question marks for now, though. But X-Box and Kinect and Sync [excuse me, "Microsoft Windows Embedded Automotive" - which already runs on a 400 MHz ARM 11] will keep MS in the home - and car - so really not game over with the public even if they lag in general mobile computing and smart phones).
PS: MWEA is based on Win CE - any insight as to whether its next iteration is also part of the Win 8 megilla?
But both Win and OS X are becoming fairly refined at last - and Windows really isn't a bad truck anymore, protestations on this forum notwithstanding - and in a sense I believe all OS's are more and more becoming - not unimportant, and not without well-differentiated key off-web functions - but in terms in how much time we spend in THEIR interfaces and functions, more and more start-up screens that allow them to serve as local app launchers and web clients to the BIG server, i.e., the cloud, which in turn is becoming more and more agnostic about what it's serving as long as the client can understand and make use of the downstream whether it's an enterprise gateway or a consumer iPhone. And I believe this is where MS feels it has its best chance of relevance and the area where Apple is not only behind, but aiming at fairly different segments in where it is apparently going.
Yeah, I know I'm talking to one person by now. But damn, following all this is where you can watch the evolution of things that are transforming our lives in almost real time. If I knew a little more and had a clue as how to attract eyeballs, I'd start a damn blog.
"SYNC can even receive text messages and read them aloud using a digitized female voice "Samantha". SYNC can interpret a hundred or so shorthand messages such as LOL for "laughing out loud" and will read swear words; it will not however, decipher obscene acronyms."
I agree about Windows Phone 7 - I had a look at a colleagues and was really impressed with it. It does some things really nicely.
Kinect is pretty cool too. There's lots of other applications you could see that technology be used for.
As a side note, I've thought of another dumbest thing Microsoft ever did. If you were to look at it from the point of view of a Microsoft shareholder, I would think giving Apple money to keep them going in 1997 was pretty stupid.
Congress was thinking about breaking up Microsoft under it's antitrust law so Microsoft boosted up Apple to show Congress they had competition. They had to give Apple money or risk being broken up.
Comments
Their goal after all is to remove money from your wallet any way they can. The difference is Microsoft took those ubiquitous practices and turned them up to eleven. And then abused their monopoly. And put a lot of companies out of business via those abuses. They suck.
I often wonder how much longer that stuff will be relevant. The antitrust case was filed in 1998, almost 13 years ago, for practices that occurred before then.
They turned a corner last decade, perhaps more out of self-preservation than any sense of altruism, however at the end of the day the result is the same.
They're now a tech industry leader in business ethics and accountability.
It's actually no wonder Ethisphere put them on the 2011 Most Ethical Companies list.
Both Google and Apple are notably absent.
Cheers.
You should skim over Office 365 on Wikipedia and watch this vid on Azure.
This gives a bit of an idea on how things will work behind-the-scenes in the "post PC" era. (I mean generally of course, not that Microsoft will be running everything! There are a number of other companies offering similar solutions).
Everything else was grabbed from a bunch of difference sources with a little bit of speculation added for good measure.
Interesting stuff - wide-ranging, comprehensive in scope and aimed at a whole different world than Apple. Don't know about the pudding, but the box looks good.
I've never been a jeremiad about MS failing as a major and influential part of the computing infrastructure - but in fact becoming just that - that is, unless Win 8 hits all its marks and leads to compelling phones and tablets - by no means a sure thing - with most of its products slowly receding into the background of the consumer-facing part of the industry - back where IBM started and returned. And which is no less important in the broad scheme of things, just not a storyline that grips as broad a public as the Post PC/Mobile/ubiquitous and fun side.
Meaning, for one thing, Office for Mac has been ironically transformed from a charity product into as strategic an offering as the Win version as Apple continues to dominate the premium PC space as MS's most important point of contact with the public on PC's - since it bodes to remain the standard for people using the same devices for personal and professional purposes. And since it's the one product both PC and Mac users will have in common (along with Mac hooks into corporate functions).
And I've been looking at vids and screen shots from Lion and Win 8, and from a personally involving point of view, Lion looks fresher than Win 8. Win 8, in fact looks very much like... ...Windows. Some new eye candy. And it will hold the "Lion's share" of the biz and probably the home PC market well enough. But both Win and OS X are becoming fairly refined at last - and Windows really isn't a bad truck anymore, protestations on this forum notwithstanding - and in a sense I believe all OS's are more and more becoming - not unimportant, and not without well-differentiated key off-web functions - but in terms in how much time we spend in THEIR interfaces and functions, more and more start-up screens that allow them to serve as local app launchers and web clients to the BIG server, i.e., the cloud, which in turn is becoming more and more agnostic about what it's serving as long as the client can understand and make use of the downstream whether it's an enterprise gateway or a consumer iPhone. And I believe this is where MS feels it has its best chance of relevance and the area where Apple is not only behind, but aiming at fairly different segments in where it is apparently going.
Yeah, I know I'm talking to one person by now. But damn, following all this is where you can watch the evolution of things that are transforming our lives in almost real time. If I knew a little more and had a clue as how to attract eyeballs, I'd start a damn blog.
PS: Quote I enjoyed:
"SYNC can even receive text messages and read them aloud using a digitized female voice "Samantha". SYNC can interpret a hundred or so shorthand messages such as LOL for "laughing out loud" and will read swear words; it will not however, decipher obscene acronyms."
I agree about Windows Phone 7 - I had a look at a colleagues and was really impressed with it. It does some things really nicely.
Kinect is pretty cool too. There's lots of other applications you could see that technology be used for.
As a side note, I've thought of another dumbest thing Microsoft ever did. If you were to look at it from the point of view of a Microsoft shareholder, I would think giving Apple money to keep them going in 1997 was pretty stupid.
Congress was thinking about breaking up Microsoft under it's antitrust law so Microsoft boosted up Apple to show Congress they had competition. They had to give Apple money or risk being broken up.