Tag Archives | Microsoft

Will Anyone Ever Abandon Another Browser for IE 8?

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 6, 2009 at 1:18 am

Internet Explorer 8 LogoErick Schonfeld of TechCrunch has noticed that StatCounter’s browser market share data shows Internet Explorer usage in surprisingly sharp decline. According to StatCounter, IE has lost 11.4 percentage points to Firefox and other browsers in the U.S. since March, leaving it with 54.4 percent of the market. If IE loses another half a point of share, the combined forces of all other browsers–which I like to think of as a virtual Microsoft rival called Anything But Internet Explorer–will exceed IE’s market share. And it’ll be the first time in eons that Microsoft’s browser isn’t used by the majority of Web users.  It’s a remarkable reversal of fortune for a product that was once used by nine out of ten people on the Internet.

Like ZDNet’s Larry Dignan, I’m skeptical about the idea of IE’s usage swooning as strikingly as StatCounter is showing until we get more data from other sources. Still, there’s no question that IE faces fierce competition, and I haven’t seen any market share numbers that show it to be in anything but a period of decline. Every day, fewer people are using IE and more people are choosing something else.

For a very long time, the biggest competition for any new version of Internet Explorer has been…earlier versions of Internet Explorer. Much of Microsoft’s marketing for IE 8 seems to target IE 7 and IE 7 users, such as this list of the top eight reasons to download the browser. But it also addresses people who are at least thinking of using another browser in items such as this comparison of IE 8, Firefox 3.0, and Chrome 2.0. Which, incidentally, maintains that the three browsers are equally customizable–I’d be stunned if there’s anyone outside of Redmond who agrees with that.

If Microsoft merely prevents IE 6 and IE 7 users from jumping to another browser, the browser’s market share will stabilize. (At least among Windows users–if Apple continues to chip away at Windows’ dominance, IE’s overall share will continue to shrink.) But I assume that Microsoft would prefer to not only stop the bleeding but to get IE growing again. The only way that’ll happen is if users of other Windows browsers–Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari–switch to IE in measurable quantities.

What are the chances of that happening? Slim, I think. For Windows users, running anything other than IE represents a conscious decision to use a browser other than the default one their OS came with. Typical users of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari-for-Windows users all seem to be dedicated fans of their browser of choice. And once you’ve found a browser you’re comfortable with, the incentive to stick with it is high. For all these reasons, any version of IE is going to need to be strikingly different and better to lure expatriates back.

As a wholly unscientific experiment, I asked my Twitter followers if any of them had abandoned another browser to use IE 8. As I write, 26 people have responded. Only two of them had dropped something else to run IE 8.

Is anyone out there a “new” IE user? What do you think it would take for Microsoft to get its browser’s market share creeping upwards again?

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Microsoft Discovers, Belatedly, That Vomiting May Offend Customers

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 2, 2009 at 11:37 am

Oh My God I'm Going to PukeThe Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft has pulled the online ad for Internet Explorer that showed a woman puking after viewing her husband’s apparently-disgustingly-pornographic browser history. The Journal quotes a Microsoft spokeswoman as saying that “While much of the feedback to this particular piece of creative was positive, some of our customers found it offensive, so we have removed it.” People offended by a browser commercial involving onscreen vomiting? Imagine that!

Me, I nominated the ad as a strong candidate for the honor of being the worst tech commercial in history. Lots of folks agreed with me; many said they liked it. It would be a boring world if everybody agreed on this stuff.

I assume Microsoft had an inkling that some people might feel…well, queasy…at the sight of the ad before it gave the spot the OK, and decided to run it anyhow. It’s certainly possible to do effective advertising that evokes strong reactions and doesn’t appeal to everybody. But maybe one of the lessons here is that it’s not a great idea to do so for a product with a customer base as huge and diffuse as the world’s most widely-used Web browser. Some products have the luxury of offending people they weren’t trying to cater to in the first place, but IE, by definition, is trying to cater to most everybody. (There’s a reason why you don’t see people retching in ads for, say, gasoline. Or paper towels.)

Of course, conspiracy theorists may wonder whether Microsoft’s game plan all along was to release a revolting ad that appealed to some people, get (ahem) bloggers to write about it, catch flack for it, and then withdraw it…

One more thought on why I didn’t like the ad, and then I promise I’ll stop: I’m not instinctively opposed to gross humor. I might have even liked the basic idea if it had been a scene in a well-directed, funny movie. (Hey, I’m a Monty Python fan.) But as a consumer, I regard advertising as a company attempting to initiate a business transaction with me. And so I react better to ads with a certain level of decorum and respect than ones that try to gross me out. (The bar isn’t that high–some people seem more creeped out by the other, vomitless ads in the series than I was.)

That’s just me; multiple reasonable commenters feel otherwise. But it’s fascinating to see how Microsoft had to get real-world feedback before they figured all this out.

[UPDATE: Peter Kafka of All Things D reports that the IE 8 ads were directed by Bobcat “Shakes the Clown” Goldthwait. That explains a lot right there…]

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Windows 7 Family Pack? I Hope So!

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 2, 2009 at 12:33 am

The Brady BunchZDNet’s Ed Bott is reporting that the license for Windows 7 Home Premium appears to make provisions for a family-pack version that would permit three installations of the OS, presumably at a discounted price. (Apple sells a five-user Family Pack edition of OS X Leopard for $199.)

Folks have been asking for a Windows family license for a looooong time, so if it’s good news if such a deal is indeed in the works. It would also be consistent with Microsoft’s strategy of making Windows 7 a little eaiser on the pocketbook than Vista was.

At first, I wondered why Microsoft would hold back on announcing a family pack–especially since other versions of the OS are already available for pre-order. You’d think the company wouldn’t want anyone to order multiple copies of Windows 7, then discover that he or she qualified for a cheaper family license. But at the moment, Microsoft is offering copies of the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade for only $49.99, a discount of more than half off. If Ed’s right in his guess that a three-user Home Premium Family Pack would go for $189, the current discounted price of just under $150 for three licenses would be cheaper still, and nobody who ordered now would be out any money.

Maybe Microsoft’s holding off announcing the Family Pack until the big preorder discount ends on July 11th. Any guesses?

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Last.fm the First Taste of Ads on Xbox Live?

Posted by Jared Newman on July 1, 2009 at 3:17 pm

xboxlivecardMicrosoft left us mostly in the dark at E3 when announcing that Last.fm, the Internet radio station, is coming to Xbox Live. Now, Joystiq has filled in some of the blanks with Xbox Live general manager Christina DeRosa.

Silver-level subscribers — i.e. the ones who don’t pay — can listen for “a trial period” of three hours per month, with occasional video advertisements, DeRosa said. Gold users will get unlimited ad-supported access. A third, commercial-free tier will cost extra.

That’s all good to know, but what’s really interesting is that Microsoft is finally opening the door to ad-supported content. In its current state, Xbox Live is transaction-based. You’ll get a free map pack here and there — and some of them have been sponsored by a third party — but most of the content on Xbox Live requires money, regardless of whether your a paying member or not. Last.fm is either an outlier or a sign of what’s to come.

With Twitter and Facebook integration coming to the service, I wonder if Microsoft has a similar ad-supported plan in mind. It seems likely, considering a recent report by MediaPost that says Microsoft will bring Silverlight to Xbox Live within a year, making it easier for advertisers to get their message onto multiple platforms. If there’s any Xbox Live feature that seems ripe for ads, it’s social networking.

Looking further ahead, could all of this signify a completely ad-supported Xbox Live, as Official Xbox Magazine suggests? I doubt it. My instinct says Microsoft wouldn’t want a free service to cannibalize the paid one, but I can’t say for sure without knowing the ratio of Gold to Silver subscribers, and the company doesn’t disclose that information. I do know that Xbox Live is rich with features, and sticking ads into all its nooks and crannies would be a Godawful mess.

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Worst. Tech. Commercial. Ever?

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 30, 2009 at 12:05 pm

I’m still having trouble keeping solid food down after having been exposed to the Internet Explorer 8 ad that involves a woman projectile-vomiting after accidentally seeing a site her husband had been viewing. But I’m moving on from being appalled to trying to answer an important question: Is it the single worst commercial for a technology product ever?

Until now, this 1980s spot from Commodore Australia would have been my nominee for that honor:

But looking at it again–hey, it’s not bad. Yes, it’s cheesy–it feels like a Mentos commercial from a time before there were Mentos commercials. Yes, the combination of the notion of “Keeping up with the Commodore” and people smiling vacantly and making cryptic signs makes me wonder if some forgotten cult is involved. But at least it’s all cheery, and the song is so infectious that it’s now stuck in my head, which helps to block out the IE 8 ad.

Another plus: Nobody in it projectile-vomits.

Speaking of vomiting, it’s worth noting that the Microsoft ad isn’t the first one for a Web-related enterprise that involves spitting up. The E*TRADE baby tosses his cookies in this commercial, though in a more dignified, less forceful manner–and hey, he’s a baby:

That’s a bad ad, but not bad enough to rival the IE one.

Anyhow, the Internet Explorer 8 is revolting on multiple levels; it demeans both Internet Explorer and its users; it doesn’t even provide a terribly compelling argument for choosing IE, since private browsing is a standard feature in most modern browsers. It’s the first ad from Microsoft or any other major tech company I can think of that can accurately be described by the word fetid.

In short, it’s my new candidate for worst tech product ad of all time. Any other nominees?

[UPDATE: Microsoft has pulled the ad. Sorry, vomit-lovers…]

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Windows 7 on a Thumb Drive?

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 26, 2009 at 10:33 am

Windows 7 Thumb DriveNetbooks, pretty much by definition, don’t have optical drives. Microsoft is talking up Windows 7 as a great OS for netbooks. Retail versions of Windows, like almost all software, come on optical discs. Problem!

Over at Cnet, Ina Fried is reporting that Microsoft is contemplating the possibility of shipping a version of Windows 7 on a thumb drive. It makes perfect sense if the company hopes to sell upgrades for a meaningful percentage of all those netbooks out there running Windows XP. (Windows 7 will presumably be available as a download–that’s the primary means of distribution for the Release Candidate–but not everyone is going to want to download an entire operating system. And if you spend $100 or more on a piece of software, it’s comforting to have it in physical form.)

USB drives may have gotten remarkably cheap, but they’re still costlier than a DVD disc–even bought in the volume that Microsoft would need them. But Corel sells its new Home Office–a $70 office suite aimed at netbook users–on a thumb drive, so it appears to be economically feasible. (Years ago, Corel was also one of the first companies to distribute software on CD-ROM rather than ludicrously tall stacks of floppy disks–maybe it’s once again figured out the future of software distribution before most of the rest of the world.)

I’m convinced that within two or three years, optical drives of any sort will be the exception, not the rule–even on the nicest notebooks. We’ll do our watching of movies and backing up of data using wireless connectivity and the Internet. We’ll also get our software the same way. (Prediction: At some point stores like Best Buy and Staples will simply do away with their software sections, and it’ll probably happen sooner than you might think.)

For now, though, people still buy plenty of software in stores. I’m betting that there will indeed be a version of Windows 7 delivered on a thumb drive, and that there’s a good chance most software that’s available in physical form at all will be sold on flash devices before too long.

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When Tech Products Go Pro, It’s…Utterly Meaningless!

Posted by Ross Rubin on June 25, 2009 at 10:45 am

Crest ProYou may think you’re a pretty adept user of technology, but are you ready for the next level? Do you have the guts, the determination, and the penchant for arbitrary naming conventions to go pro?

At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference this month, keynote presenter Phil Schiller explained that what had formerly been the 13″ aluminum MacBook now had what it took–FireWire 800, higher RAM capacities, and longer battery life–to be considered a MacBook Pro alongside larger-screened siblings. (The 13″ MacBook Pro also has a slot for Secure Digital cards which, unlike their Memory Stick rivals, never turned “Pro”) That leaves the entry-level white Macbook and the svelte MacBook Air as Apple’s “non-Pro” notebooks, although the MacBook Air is clearly targeted toward that user group often called “mobile professionals.” The lines are more clearly drawn between the pros and the no’s in Apple’s desktop line, where the pricey Mac Pro maintains high configurability and a high price, and the consumer line includes the LCD-based iMac and the hanger-on Mac mini.

But long before Apple renamed the PowerMacs and PowerBooks with the Pro label, the company used it on the software side. Back in 1993, Apple followed up its System 7 operating system with System 7 Pro. Quaintly touted in its press release as “the on ramp to the information superhighway,” it marked the debut of the PowerTalk messaging system, one of the company’s failed system software initiatives of the era along with OpenDoc and QuickDraw GX. On the other hand, System 7 Pro also featured two smash software hits that thrive in Mac OS toda, AppleScript and QuickTime.

Some of the Mac’s earliest applications also eventually went pro, as Apple’s Claris subsidiary churned out products such as MacDraw Pro and MacWrite Pro. But Claris was never spun out as had once been the plan, leaving its pro developers back at Apple. Even today, Apple continues to own FileMaker, Inc., the eponymous product of which is still called FileMaker Pro. (FileMaker Pro is the most basic version of the product–the more advanced one is known as FileMaker Pro Advanced.)

Microsoft has also associated databases with pros, making Access one of the applications included in Office Professional 2007, but its best-known pro product has been Windows XP Professional. XP Pro had a number of security and management enhancements beyond Windows XP Home, as well as multprocessor support, dynamic disk support, a personal Web server, and fax capabilities.

At its debut, Windows XP Professional boldly advertised its presence as a PC was starting up, but Service Pack 2 did away with that bit of vanity and all XP startup screens simply said “Windows XP”. With Windows Vista, Microsoft stopped focusing on “professional”-ism and instead gave users the business, Windows Vista Business, that is. And Windows 7 Business will arrive in the fall, where it will compete with a Mac OS X Leopard update that has added not “pro” but “snow”.

Microsoft has also developed a pro version of Windows Mobile optimized for touch-screen devices as opposed to the Windows Mobile Standard offering aimed at products such as the Motorola Q and Samsung BlackJack. But in what could be interpreted as a part of the image problem of Windows Mobile, AT&T has latched on to the “Pro” suffix to designate handsets that run Windows Mobile, period. The first example of this was with the Pantech Matrix Pro. a dual slider differentiated from the vanilla Pantech Matrix dual slider feature phone by running Windows Mobile. But the Matrix itself came after the Pantech Duo, which also ran Windows Mobile but lacked the “Pro” designation. More recently, AT&T followed up its successful Samsung Propel QWERTY vertical slider with the Propel Pro, the most “pro” phone on the market by dint of it having “pro” twice in its name. And yet, like the Matrix Pro, it doesn’t use the “pro” version of Windows Mobile.

Over at Sprint, HTC followed up on its launch with the HTC Touch, Sprint’s first touchscreen smartphone answering the iPhone, with the Touch Pro, which included a horizontal QWERTY keyboard; both phones ran Windows Mobile Professional. But how do you do the Touch Pro better? HTC added a larger screen and some spiffy call management and user interface features. The result is the Touch Pro2. Pro-“Pro” AT&T also carried the Touch Pro, but it called it the Fuze (which may be short for “con-Fuze-ing”). Now, of course, Sprint is answering the iPhone with the Pre, which we can only hope will never be followed by a Pre Pro.

In the end, “Pro” has become a tech product modifier  so dependent on context that it has become meaningless. The flames aimed at it can be fueled by only one thing: “pro”-pain.

Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research firm The NPD Group. He maintains his own blog at Out of the Box and you can follow him on Twitter at @rossrubin. Views expressed in Technoloizer are his own.


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Microsoft Chops Some Windows 7 Prices

Posted by Harry McCracken on June 25, 2009 at 8:48 am

Windows 7 LogoMicrosoft has dropped one of the lat  remaining veils relating to Windows 7 by announcing the OS upgrade’s pricing.  It’s not exactly stunning that the company chose not to follow Gizmodo’s advice that Win 7 should be free for all Vista owners. But there are a number of price breaks associated with the rollout.

The largest and most interesting price cut is for folks who preorder Windows 7 right away: In the U.S,  you’ll be able to reserve a copy from Best Buy, Amazon, or the Microsoft Store at a discount of more than 50 percent. This preorder price for the upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium, for instance, will be $49.99, versus a list price of $119.99.

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Microsoft: Outlook is Not “Broken”

Posted by Ed Oswald on June 24, 2009 at 10:38 pm

Microsoft Office LogoMicrosoft has officially put the kibosh on any effort to get the company to ditch the Word rendering engine for HTML based e-mails in Outlook 2010. Over 20,000 twitterers have taken up a call by fixoutlook.org to call on the Redmond company to switch — but the company isn’t having any of it.

“We’ve made the decision to continue to use Word for creating e-mail messages because we believe it’s the best e-mail authoring experience around, with rich tools that our Word customers have enjoyed for over 25 years. Our customers enjoy using a familiar and powerful tool for creating e-mail, just as they do for creating documents. Word enables Outlook customers to write professional-looking and visually stunning e-mail messages,” said the Outlook team in a blog post Wednesday.

The company also goes on to say there is no standard for HTML in e-mail. It does not address however the evidence that Word rendering is faulty, as shown by Fix Outlook’s comparison of an email in Outlook 2000 and 2010. The rendering in 2010 is frankly horrid.

I’m not sure this is a battle that Microsoft can truly win here. With HTML e-mail now all but a de facto standard in an age of advanced e-mail clients, using a word processor to render it seems almost backwards in thinking.

Microsoft’s refusal to budge also opens the doors to competitors, notably Mozilla, to capitalize on. Remember the last time the company failed to listen to users that one of its products wasn’t up to snuff? An upstart browser captured a quarter of the market.

What do you think? Who’s right here?

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