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Microsoft sues malware advertisers. Good!
Hulu’s readying a subscription service?
Hey, yet another Skype lawsuit!
Burglars: Don’t check out Facebook!
Wireless charging for Dell laptop?
Wimax users are apparently nonplussed.
Last October, Microsoft casually dropped a bombshell at its PDC event: It was working on a new version of Microsoft Office that would include browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. The Web version of Office is part of the suite later officially dubbed Office 2010, which won’t arrive until next year. But it tiptoed a little closer to reality today: Microsoft has released a “technical preview” of the Office Web Apps, a pre-beta, invite-only test version which it’s using to get early feedback from a limited number of users.
If you’re not one of the lucky few, don’t feel too deprived: Microsoft provided me with access to the technical preview this morning, and judging from my first couple of hours with it, it’s a very incomplete rough draft of the Web-based suite to come. Word only lets you view documents, not edit them; Excel and PowerPoint are missing wide swaths of basic functionality; OneNote is missing altogether. Two of the most useful-sounding features–the ability to open documents stored on the Web from within a local copy of Office as if they were stored on your hard drive, and to view documents in phone browsers–aren’t ready yet. And I encountered multiple technical glitches as I tried to use the features which are available.
Why have Microsoft’s Zune media players failed to make even the tiniest of dents in the iPod’s market dominance? There are multiple reasons, but one stands out: They’ve been stuck in a hopeless game of catch-up, and they’re always way, way behind.
The original Zune was a hard disk player that debuted in 2006–right when Apple’s flash-based iPod Nano was becoming the world’s best-selling MP3 player. In 2007, Microsoft announced Nano-like Zunes that used flash storage–a couple of months after Apple shipped the sexier touch-screen iPod Touch. And now Microsoft is releasing the Zune HD, a touch-screen model, but one without the awesome power of the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store. To riff on the famous Wayne Gretzky quote, Microsoft is like a hockey player who keeps skating to where the puck was…not to where it is right now, and certainly not to where it will be.
But wait. The Zune HD may be a mere media player, but it’s anything but a retread. It packs worthwhile technologies that no iPod does, such as an OLED screen and HD output. It’s very much its own device in terms of industrial design and user interface, both of which are nicely done. In short, the Zune HD is cool in ways that no previous Zune has been. And even though the HD has its share of imperfections and limitations, it’s easy to imagine some folks preferring it to any media player that hails from Cupertino.
Over at Wired News, Brian X. Chen has posted what’s probably not the only article we’ll see in the next few days that juxtaposes the words “Zune” and “failure.” Brian talked to a bunch of Microsoft-watchers, and the gist of their consensus is that the fact that the Zune isn’t a true software platform sets it up to bomb.
I don’t agree that it’s destined to tank–I’m guessing that Microsoft would be thrilled if it sold half as many Zune HDs as Apple sells iPod Nanos, and the Nano is even less of a software platform than the Zune. But yes, the iPod Touch is core to Apple’s future, and there’s no way that the Zune in its current form is core to Microsoft’s fate. Even in a best-case scenario, it’ll just be a neat media player that sells well.
(Speaking of the Nano, MKM Partners’ Tero Kuittinen has an interesting suggestion for Microsoft in Brian’s story: Lower the price of the Zune HD so it’s a cooler, more powerful alternative to the Nano rather than a more limited iPod Touch rival.)
Anyhow, I bring this up mostly because I’m interested in what you think…
It’s my instinct as a writer of stuff about technology to compare Microsoft’s new Zune HD against Apple’s iPod Touch. But the more I’ve played with the Zune, the less it feels like a direct competitor to the Touch: It has a number of features that the Touch doesn’t (HD output, HD radio, an OLED screen), a significantly different form factor (much smaller), and is missing the Touch’s single most interesting feature (support for tens of thousands of third-party apps). The Zune has no direct Apple counterpart–it feels a little like an iPod Nano in some respects, like the Touch in others, and is ultimately its own unique beast.
But like I say, my impulse is to compare the Zune HD to the Touch. So here’s a first pass at a T-Grid comparing the two devices’ specs and features. If all you care about is media playback, the Zune looks like a strong competitor–but stick around until the end of the grid.
The U.S. Department of Justice is placing the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership under greater scrutiny, according to reports. The DOJ is allegedly requesting more information about ad pricing, product plans, and search engine investments.
Microsoft was prosecuted in the 1990s for abusing its monopoly position in the desktop operating system market, so it comes as no surprise that the company is operating under the long shadow of government regulators. However, in the search engine area Microsoft is playing underdog to Google, which comScore reports held 64.7 percent share of the U.S search market in July.
In comparison, Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo have a combined 28.2 percent share. If the deal is approved, Microsoft will be in a position to claw its way up to compete with Google. The company is rumored to be preparing to launch an upgrade to Bing before the end of the month, and is spending profusely to promote Bing.
The only people who have any right to be upset about the deal are Yahoo’s shareholders. Shortly after the deal was announced, some shareholders began to cry bloody murder over Yahoo’s use of the Bing search engine for nothing in return.
Further, Yahoo did not receive an upfront payment to make the deal happen, as many Yahoo investors had hoped. The deal’s complexity also makes it unlikely that any company other than Microsoft will be able to acquire Yahoo over its 10-year duration. None of that concerns the DOJ.
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Microsoft meeting: no-iPhone Zone.
Skype kills developer plug-in platform.
Facebook Lite: Facebook, only liter.
Facebook punks TechCrunch big time.
Snow Leopard update fixes Flash.
Google helps you leave Google.
DOJ is eyeballing Microsoft-Yahoo.
Um, some of them will star grownups, right? Even so, it’s nice to see a Windows ad that’s actually about Windows…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU&feature=player_embedded]
(Via Joe Wilcox.)
Over at Ars Technica, there’s an interesting piece on training materials prepared by Microsoft for Best Buy staffers making the case that Windows 7 PCs are preferable to Macs. Most of the points in Windows’ favor that the materials raise are true; it’s just that anything that might tend to favor the Mac is left out. I guess that’s an improvement over earlier Microsoft PC/Mac comparisons that involved both truth-stretching and errors.
If I ran Best Buy, I’d do my darndest to keep anyone with an agenda other than serving the customer out of the selling process. Pretty much by definition, that would prohibit companies from doing these sorts of comparisons of their own products with those of competitors. I mean, if Macs are so crummy, why does Best Buy sell them?
It reminds me of an experience I had at CompUSA years ago: I was eyeing a Canon inkjet printer when a salesguy strolled up and gravely warned me that Canon printers’ ink cartridges had an alarming tendency to dry up–unlike those in HP printers. I couldn’t figure out why a CompUSA rep would care whether I bought a Canon or HP product–until I realized that he was actually an HP employee who CompUSA had allowed to troll for customers in its aisles…
Yesterday, Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel Horacio Gutierrez called for a world authority on patents, and a single judicial body for litigation. The world needs to cycle more resources toward processing backlogged patent applications and to allow corporations to protect their intellectual property, he said.
“By facing the challenges, realizing a vision, overcoming political barriers, and removing procedural obstacles we can build a global patent system that will promote innovation, enrich public knowledge, encourage competition and drive economic growth and employment,” he added. “The time is now–the solutions are in reach,” he wrote.
After reading Gutierrez’s blog, I began to consider how many interests are vying to influence patent reform in the U.S alone. The politics of patents become infinitely more complicated internationally. Stanford law professor Mark Lemley mused that a standard global patent system may be a good idea, but then so is world peace, obviously making light of Guiterrez’s lofty goal.
Don’t look for this to happen in the immediate future, however.
