

Microsoft vs the Karate Kid - destraynor
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/come-back-tomorrow/

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arohner
_The Zune is criticised for it’s poor market share and is regarded as a
failure. It’s important to remember that it took three years for the iPod to
get market dominance, and it’ll take a lot longer than that for anyone to make
inroads into it. To criticise the Zune for a poor market share misses the
point. It’s like criticising a child because its first steps weren’t of
olympic standards._

No. The Zune is criticized because before the iPod, there were no mp3 players
for grandma. Apple obviously created a winning product. Depending on how
charitable you want to be, Microsoft either 1) observed the same market
opportunity and took longer to create an inferior product or 2) shamelessly
ripped off the ipod, and did a poor job at it.

The author also compares a company with a market cap of $250 Billion to a
child. The big boys play for keeps. There's no excuse for "well, they did
their best" at companies of this scale. To quote another 80s movie: "Do or do
not, there is no try".

~~~
bediger
Isn't criticizing something (linux, Apache, Java, etc) for poor market share
the favorite argument of the Microsoft Fanboy? It sure is in my experience.
Those style of arguments show up in the "Windows has all the embarassing
security problems because Evil Hackers target the largest market share"
canard.

~~~
wtallis
Poor market share despite overwhelming resources is evidence of either poor
execution or a major external influence on public opinion. Apple fanboyism and
Microsoft hate don't quite explain the extent of the zune's failure.

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parbo
> grid of icons that iPhone pioneered

What? Every color screen phone I have ever owned has had a grid of icons.

~~~
nailer
It may be harsh but this alone made it worth flagging the article for me. It
is patently ridiculous to suggest the grid of icons is something new when
every Symbian Series 60 (including quite a few with a KHTML based browser and
3G connectivity) did this before the iPhone.

~~~
destraynor
Sorry guys, I really meant "grid of icons" in the iPhone touch screen sense.
Basically since the iPhone it has been the only way to display apps. I don't
think saying that is "patently ridiculous"

If you think of the grid design, what it basically says, visually is that all
apps are of equal importance. Which is weird, when you think about it. Surely
on a phone, ringing someone is a more important task than , say , Settings,
yet the grid style (whether Apples or indeed a Symbian KHTML based) says
they're of equal importance

~~~
sounddust
I'd say that Apple's grid style does place a higher importance on essential
apps: The phone, mail, Safari and iPod icons are not only in a special
highlighted region at the bottom, but never scroll away no matter what page of
apps you're navigating to.

~~~
warfangle
And you can edit which apps show up here - I, for example, almost never make
outgoing calls on my phone - at least, compared to previous phones. I don't
know if that says something about me.. or if it attests to the saneness of the
iPhone's SMS app.

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rajat
Good point. When eventually Microsoft has a hit sensation everyone will say,
"hey they've finally figured it out" and "this came out of nowhere", when,
actually, as this article points out, there is a long series of steps to get
there.

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Jim72
Microsoft learned? If so, then why is Copy and Paste going to be absent from
the Windows Phone 7 Series???

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/16/windows-phone-7-series-
wo...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/16/windows-phone-7-series-wont-have-
copy-and-paste/)

~~~
hazzen
I use an Android; it has copy-and-paste. I believe I have used it exactly once
in over a year of using the phone - I had started composing an SMS to the
wrong person and decided to copy/paste the text instead of simply typing it
again.

For most users, I am guessing the most common use case is copying a browser
link to an email/IM/SMS, and this can be supported without an actual
copy/paste implementation. The hard part of full-blown copy/paste isn't
implementing copy/paste storage, it is figuring out the UI for selecting text
on a touch screen.

~~~
izendejas
you couldn't just change the addressee? well, that sucks. my "horrible" winmo
6.1 device lets' me do that, and it auto-completes based on my contact list.

but yes, copy+paste isn't all that necessary, but i can imagine mobile
bloggers, among others, needing it from time to time.

btw, don't downvote me for using winmo. i'm not a fanboy, I just get tethering
(bluetooth/usb), opera mini (the latest version is great), skyfire (streams
flash/sivlerlight). It's a bit slow and the ui isn't great but I use a utily
that helps me start apps using keyboard shortcuts and can multi-task (go
figure) very easily.

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mlinsey
If the thesis of this article is correct, the most important stride Microsoft
has made has not been industrial design or touch-interfaces - it's that they
have learned to have their products leverage advances from elsewhere in the
company and have their divisions work together towards a coherent vision.

Unfortunately, this is at odds with much of what I know about Microsoft, and
this was the core complaint of Dick Brass' "Micrsoft's Creative Destruction",
which was one of the more widely-discussed (and in my opinion, spot-on)
Microsoft doom-and-gloom stories:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html>

It is clear that Windows Phone 7 has benefited a lot from Zune...but they are
in the same division, with some of the same leadership. If different Microsoft
divisions can actually work together to advance a clear and coherent vision
about the future of computing, Microsoft will rise to once again be a dominant
power in new and emerging areas of the industry. However, if Microsoft remains
a group of independent fiefdoms each looking to advance the careers of their
own management, Microsoft will continue to be a super-profitable enterprise
company that is mostly irrelevant in new markets.

Sadly, I think that the author is looking at the Zune->Windows Phone example
and inferring a broader trend where there is none.

------
rbanffy
Eventually Microsoft will be able to produce something as good as a current
iPod. Unfortunately for them, by that time, it's quite likely Apple will have
raised the bar once again with another gizmo.

It's also possible Microsoft will leave the copycat behaviour behind and start
creating original products instead of knock-offs of the market leaders. That,
however, seems unlikely.

I can't remember a Microsoft product that was genuinely pioneering something.

~~~
swernli
I'd call Xbox Live a successful, innovative product, especially given the way
they've continued to evolve it in a way that delivers more value to the user
and gradually gets them closer to the idea of having the Xbox as the center of
the entertainment system.

Personally, despite not owning one myself, I'd say that the Zune HD is already
on par with the iPod Touch in terms of what the product offers. They have
different strengths, overlapp in some areas, and both make excellent devices.
The iPod Touch wins only when you include the content of the App Store (note
that I'm making a distinction between the Store and the content there). If
Windows Phone lives up to what they've shown so far, I believe that landscape
may shift toward parity faster than you'd expect...

~~~
rbanffy
> I'd call Xbox Live a successful, innovative product

How, exactly? Evolving a product is neither revolutionary nor particularly
original. A multi-player hub? An app-store? I am pretty much sure everything
on this list was invented by someone else. XBL is a successful product, but
it's the execution, not being first.

Also, having the whole Xbox user population captive doesn't hurt market share.
It's not like they could go to the Playstation hub.

> Zune HD is already on par with the iPod Touch in terms of what the product
> offers

Also, it's not feature count, it's how well it works on the whole. The iPod
was never the feature-count leader - just about every competitor had more
features or could perform some tricks the iPods of that time couldn't. It's
how well rounded the product is. The iPod is a solid product and was the first
really usable music player. It works really well. Besides that, a Zune HD
won't work with a Mac, despite the fact iPods work very well with PCs (and,
with some fiddling, other Unixes).

I don't always like Apple (their DRM'ed cables are ridiculous and OSX is Unix
with a 70's feel when you drop into the terminal) but I have to admit they do
some really excellent products my family can use.

~~~
swernli
> Evolving a product is neither revolutionary nor particularly original.

Interesting, because the example you point to, the iPod, didn't really capture
it's outrageously huge market share until the iPod Mini, which was an
evolution on the original design. In fact, the entire iPod line until the
introduction of touch was a steady evolution from one to the next, and
continued onward winning over customers. It beat out other mp3 players despite
all of them having the same features, if not more, by doing it well. Or as you
put it:

>I am pretty much sure everything on this list was invented by someone else
... it's the execution, not being first ... Also, it's not feature count, it's
how well it works on the whole.

Thanks for making my point for me :)

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martythemaniak
One of the most reasonable articles on Microsoft that I've read lately. Their
recent products show a lot of potential and I'd be very glad to see them
execute well.

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nas
The typography on that site is terrible. I have flashbacks of doublespaced
reports (required by some idiotic style guide).

~~~
mustpax
To boot, the headers are being generated with Flash. I guess this is one of
those use your favorite typeface everywhere frameworks.

~~~
plesn
Don't people use png's for that, at least? With flashblock it's really
terrible...

