Faruk Ateş: The Conquest That Wasn't. How Microsoft dominated the PC world without conquering it. I think Faruk utterly nails this.
I need to start using Windows more
The reason? Simple. I'm using other operating systems so little that I'm only able to complain about Mac OS X. I'm starting to look like a Mac hater.
But lest anyone be confused, I'll be specific: Mac OS X is not perfect. It is, however, less not-perfect than Windows. And until an even less not-perfect OS comes out, Mac OS X is my OS of choice.
Microsoft doesn't get it
The new Microsoft commercial starts with a John Hodgman dressalike (You can't really call him a lookalike, but at the distance the camera is at it doesn't matter) saying "I'm a PC and I've been stereotyped." It then goes to various people asserting they're a PC. It's interesting at first, but after a few seconds you realize: This is all Microsoft's got for this commercial. After a minute of droning, the commercial blissfully comes to an end.
It makes slightly more sense than the Gates & Seinfeld commercials, but replaces the quirkiness of those ads with banality.
The commercial shows Microsoft doesn't get the concept behind Apple's "Get a Mac" ads. Hodgman is not the personification of Windows, and Justin Long is no the personification of Mac. Hodgman is a PC, like he says. Long is a Mac, like he says.
What does that mean? Well, it means that the difference between Long and Hodgman is the ability to run Mac OS X. Long can, and Hodgman can't. PC's secret motivation — an undercurrent running through all the commercials that Apple will never vocalize — is that he's jealous. He knows he can do all the things a PC can do. He wants to do all the things a Mac can do, too. His motives, then, are minimizing the value of Mac OS X: It isn't really that simple. It isn't really that easy. You don't really need that, you can do it without a Mac.
But PC doesn't really believe it. He knows he can do everything Mac can do. He just also knows he can't do it as easily. So the secret behind the motivation he won't state is this: He wants to run Mac OS X, too. And Apple will never vocalize this, because it inspires the question to the masses: Why can't PC run Mac OS X?1
So Microsoft runs this ad, showing all the things PC can do. Great. Each one of them is something Mac can do, too.
Microsoft needs to focus on promoting their product, not someone else's product. And Microsoft does not sell generic PCs. But what does Microsoft sell, really? What are they going to brag about on Windows? Why do they need to?
Every time Microsoft puts out a commercial, they blink. And they don't have to at this point.
- Sure, there's lots of good reasons. I'm not denying that. I'm also not denying they are probably all solvable. I'm just pointing out that Apple doesn't really want people choosing between a Mac and a PC to ask the question, but just to take it for granted. [↩]
The sad case of Palm
I first started developing an application for Palm in 2000 with the Palm IIIc. I was amazed at how well-thought out the API was. A few things were missing, such as POSIX-compatible routines.1 The API looked a lot like Carbon, which was a perfectly reasonable way to develop applications. CodeWarrior was a decent-enough tool, and growing in capabilities. New hardware, while not announced or even previewed yet, was on the horizon that could take away most of the nastiest problems with Palm OS, which were rooted in the 680x0 architecture.
I estimated at the time they were at least four years ahead of the competition in terms of an operating system.
But since then?
Buying and selling themselves to... themselves.
Absolutely nothing on the OS front.
Since then? Windows CE and successors have caught up in many areas, exceeded Palm in others. Blackberry, and iPhone exist, both of which make Palm look pathetic.
Loss of professional-level development tools.
Hardware quality control problems.
It's hard to believe that Palm has thrown away this much of a lead. But they have.
- Expecting full POSIX support on a Palm back then was maybe a little unrealistic, but expecting the available routines to match POSIX definitions is quite a bit more reasonable. [↩]
You say you want a revolution?
You say you want a revolution? Well, you know, I'd rather have a browser that worked.
"Revolutionary" is not how I'd describe this. I've seen installers crash before. No doubt I will see it again.
Search should be fast
Via The Macalope, Microsoft's leaked reaction to Mac OS X's new search capabilities:
Lenn Pryor:
You will have to take Vic's disk...I am not giving mine up.
Tonight I got on corpnet, hooked up Mail.app to my Exchange server and then downloaded all of my mail into the local file store. I did system wide queries against docs, contacts, apps, photos, music, and my Microsoft email on a Mac. It was f*cking amazing. It is like I just got a free pass to Longhorn land today.
Jim Allchin:
Yes. I know. It is hard to take. I don't believe we will have search this fast.
The funny part for me as I read this is that they're talking about Mac OS X 10.4 search. Mac OS X 10.4's search worked, but it was very slow. Yet apparently, even that blew away what they had.
Still, it isn't all bad for Microsoft: It looks like they at least realized the speed of search was important.
Could the MSN Music shut down have been calculated?
Macworld | A year after iTunes Plus, Apple faces stepped-up competition - Page 2
Music services shutting down may let DRM finally shows its teeth.
[...]
Microsoft is one company that’s recently had to deal with just this sort of problem. The company’s MSN Music venture stopped selling music in 2006, but only recently announced its intention to shut down the servers that let users continue to play purchased music at the end of this summer. Past that point, those users will only be able to play their music as long as they keep using the same computer and operating system. But if they upgrade either hardware or software, they’re out of luck.
Wait, wait. Back up just a bit. Is it possible that Microsoft shutting down MSN Music wasn't just stupid, but calculated? There's no question that MSN Music's shut down has raised the profile of DRM a bit. At this point, could the labels themselves want people soured from DRM so they're soured from the iTunes store?
Just a crazy conspiracy theory, right?
Why Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sales milestone isn’t so impressive
...So while Microsoft's claim that being first will help them win may sound good to corporate ears, the truth is that the Wii is on track to outsell the Xbox 360 rather handily.
Ars has a nice graph of January-March sales for different systems, too.
I've read articles on remapping keys on Windows, but here's a handy command line utility that makes the registry changes for you: Windows Scan code remapper. No idea if this works on Vista, but I'd imagine so. Especially useful for VMware Fusion.