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Posts tagged ‘Microsoft’

Jun 8

OS X Lion: At $29.99 Apple Applies Pressure to Microsoft

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Yesterday’s trio of announcements by Apple were like manna even for ardent Apple critics.    With new versions of OS X and iOS on the way, Apple also announced iCloud, a set of cloud based services meant to replace aging MobileMe.  There was a lot to like.  While comparisons between OS X Lion and upcoming Windows 8, and iOS5, Android and Windows Phone 7 are inevitable, I continue to be impressed with Apple’s focus on making life easier for its users.  All three initiatives (Lion, iOS 5, iCloud) are major steps forward.  Which bring me to an interesting point.  Pricing.

OS X Lion will be released via the Mac App Store for $29.99.  Yes, $29.99.  OS X users will remember that the current version of OS X, Snow Leopard (10.6) was also $29, but Snow Leopard was positioned as a minor update to Leopard (10.5).  Lion will be different in several ways.  First, Lion will only be available with the Mac App Store.  No disk based distribution.  Second, Lion can be installed on all home computers for $29.99–one, two, three, or ten, it doesn’t matter.  They all get Lion for a one-time charge of $29.99.  Third, Lion will ship as unified client and server versions.

If one is to believe the Apple marketing machine, the Mac continues to gain market share in the personal computing market–a market that shrunk by ~1% for maybe the first time ever.

This led me to think about the pricing pressure on Microsoft as they contemplate the next version of Windows, Windows 8.  The Apple model is different in two very important ways. One, every copy of Lion will be installed on a device built by Apple and on which Apple has earned margin.  Two, the Mac App store gives Apple a share of the revenue on many of the apps & applications which run on its OS.  Apple is moving the personal computing business model toward the wildly successful iOS/iPhone/iPad model.  Lion is the next step.

At $29.99, Lion should bolster Apple’s OS market position while applying a significant pressure on Microsoft to sell the next version of Windows for much less than it has historically.  This cannot come at a worse time for Microsoft.  Already facing pressure from Google in its core productivity application Microsoft Office, Microsoft now faces an OS challenge from Apple that like the threat from Google, applies downward price pressure, but more importantly changes the underlying business model.

Take the new app business model of Lion and bolster it with iCloud services and the way we think of operating systems fundamentally changes.  Apple is truly moving us into a post PC era and they aren’t afraid to cannibalize current products, profits and business models to get there.  Apple’s willingness to innovate on behalf of its customers is reflected in its current share price (AAPL) and market capitalization.

Mar 26

Leopard Puts Vista To Shame In Corporate Satisfaction Survey

Corporate users of Apple Inc.’s Leopard operating system are more than five times more likely to say that they are “very satisfied” with the OS than business users of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista, a research firm said Wednesday.

In a February survey of 2,200 U.S. corporate computer users, 53% of those using Mac OS X 10.5 reported that they were very satisfied with their operating system. Of those using Windows XP or Windows Vista, however, 40% of the former and only 8% of the latter said they were very satisfied.

But while Apple shows some sales strength even as the general pace of U.S. corporate computer sales looks to slow in the next quarter, it remains a minor player in the market, reported ChangeWave. More than half — 53% — of the computers companies plan to buy in the second quarter will be equipped with Windows XP, the survey said, compared to 20% with a version of Windows Vista and just 8% with Mac OS X.

“Apple continues to set the standard for corporate customer satisfaction,” said Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave Research. That, and the fact that corporate buying plans for Macs remain at historically high levels, indicate that users like what Apple’s doing, continued Carton.

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Mar 26

2015 Laptop

Hello, gorgeous! Meet the laptop you’ll use in 2015

2015 LaptopCheckout this March 2008 Computerworld article (online) describing the laptops we’ll all be using in 2015.  I love these futurism articles. Does anyone go back and see how close to reality they were?  I’ll set my alarm clock and watch and come back to this article to see just how much they got right!  Only 7 more years to go!

A lot has changed in the 20 years since the first laptop computers appeared, including gigahertz processors, color screens, optical drives and wireless data. However, one thing that has stubbornly stayed the same is the conventional clamshell format with its hinged display lid that opens to reveal a mechanical keyboard.

That’s about to change. The rules of notebook design and the components that go inside are being rewritten to make the road a better place to work and play.

The CPU’s front-side bus will likely disappear by 2015. The bus acts like a traffic cop, sending data to the different parts of the system at a slower speed than the computational core. In its place will be an integrated controller that makes this distribution of data much more efficient by operating faster.

Currently, adding 64GB of solid state capacity to a notebook’s hard drive runs an extra $1,000. By 2015, the typical mainstream notebook could be outfitted with a 2TB hard disk drive, which should be plenty of room for even the biggest data hog, the experts speculated. For smaller and lighter machines, look to having something like 250GB of flash memory at your disposal, but it will likely come at a small premium.

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Feb 11

Microsoft succumbs to Apple envy, buys Danger

SidekickMicrosoft was too busy to read its rejection letter from Yahoo this morning, as it announced its intention to buy Danger, the maker of the popular Sidekick smart phone. The move suggests that the Redmond Giant plans to compete with its partners in the handset business.

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Nov 27

Ship crashes in Antarctica, check out the name and the irony…

I cant possibly spoil this by telling you any more……

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Oct 12

10 Cutting Edge Projects, 8 Inovators, 8 Bold Ideas

Make AnythingAt the Popular Mechanics website, they have compiled a list of 8 inventors and 10 great new projects.  My favorites are the “make anything” machine (pictured on right), the “hands on computer” which forms the basis for Apple’s multi-touch technology in the iPhone and iTouch iPod and Microsoft’s Surface Computing initiative mocked earlier here on Xlog.

More on the 10 cutting-edge projects and 8 bold ideas @ Popular Mechanics.

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Sep 28

XP Reprieve: Microsoft Gives OEMs Five More Months

Microsoft allow OEMs and retail outlets to sell PCs with Windows XP as customers continue to balk on upgrading to Windows Vista.

Microsoft had high expectations for customer adoption of Vista, and claimed the launch would be one of the most successful in Windows history. Unfortunately for the company, those predictions so far haven’t panned out, and in July, Microsoft lowered its projections for customer adoption of Vista. The company had said the split between XP and Vista sales in its fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, would be 15 percent to 85 percent; now the company is saying the split will be 22 percent XP and 78 percent Vista.

According to some, that may even be optimistic. Paul Ghysels, a custom system builder who owns the Neighborhood Computer Store in Moraga, California, said that Microsoft has “really blown Vista.” He said he’s not surprised Microsoft extended the availability of XP for OEMs. “I figured Microsoft would have to come up with something because Vista is so unprepared for the market right now,” Ghysels said.

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Sep 26

Arithmetic Is Hard–To Get Right

Yesterday, a nasty little bug was identified in Excel 2007. Try multiplying 850 * 77.1 and Excel returns 100,000. Well the answer should be 65,535! Any calculator should get this right, so why not Excel.

AppScout had the following explanation:

It all boils down to the fact that you can’t represent an infinite group of non-integer numbers using a finite number of bits. In fact, Excel can store “only” about 9 quintillion distinct values. The numbers going into your calculations may be infinitesimally different from the number displayed, and for two calculations that nominally have the same answer the result may be infinitesimally different. Excel generally manages just fine in dealing with these tiny differences, but in exactly 12 instances out of the 9 quintillion possibilities it goes completely bonkers.

Wolfram research has an interesting blog entry explaining the potential causes for arithmetic errors and he discusses the impacts.

These days reliability is an increasingly important component of numerical computation. Machines have become so fast that people are doing huge numbers of numerical computations all the time. And now what’s critical is to get them right all the time–because if there’s a fringe case that’s wrong, it’s now going to be noticed.

Enjoy and double check those Excel sheets!

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Sep 7

Cringely: The Puppet Master – Behind Steve Jobs’ iPhone Pricing Moves

…that 1999 quote from Bill Gates about Jobs: “He has to know that he can never win.” I don’t think Steve knows that at all.

This week’s iPhone pricing story, in which Apple punished its most loyal users by dropping the price of an 8-gig iPhone from $599 to $399 less than three months after the product’s introduction, is classic Steve Jobs. It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a thoughtless mistake. It was a calculated and tightly scripted exercise in marketing and ego gratification. In the mind of Steve Jobs the entire incident had no downside, none at all, which is yet another reason why he is not like you or me.

Let’s deconstruct the incident. Apple announced a variety of new and kinda-new iPods dominated by the iPod Touch (iPhone minus the phone) and an iPod Nano with video (great for watching miniseries). At the very end of the presentation, Jobs announced the iPhone price cut. Why did he wait until the very end? Because he knew the news would be disruptive and might have obscured his presentation of the new products. He KNEW there was going to be controversy. So much for the “Steve is simply out of touch with the world” theory.

So why did he do it? Why did he cut the price? I have no inside information here, but it seems pretty obvious to me: Apple introduced the iPhone at $599 to milk the early adopters and somewhat limit demand then dropped the price to $399 (the REAL price) to stimulate demand now that the product is a critical success and relatively bug-free. At least 500,000 iPhones went out at the old price, which means Apple made $100 million in extra profit.

Had nobody complained, Apple would have left it at that. But Jobs expected complaints and had an answer waiting — the $100 Apple store credit. This was no knee-jerk reaction, either. It was already there just waiting if needed. Apple keeps an undeserved $50 million and customers get $50 million back. Or do they? Some customers will never use their store credit. Those who do use it will nearly all buy something that costs more than $100. And, most importantly, those who bought their iPhones at an AT&T store will have to make what might be their first of many visits to an Apple Store. That is alone worth the $50 per customer this escapade will eventually cost Apple, taking into account unused credits and Apple Store wholesale costs.

So Steve does things like this because he can. It reaffirms his iron grip over both Apple and Apple’s customers. It’s a lot about ego and a little about business, though with Steve Jobs they are hard to differentiate.

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Aug 24

Cruel and unusual punishment

A man convicted of illegally downloading an episode of Star Wars has been told that he can no longer use his computer with an Ubuntu Linux operating system.

Scott McCausland pleaded guilty last year to ‘conspiracy to commit copyright infringement’ and ‘criminal copyright infringement’ by downloading Star Wars: Episode III illegally.

He served five months in prison and is now on probation, but has been told that he cannot use his Linux computer.

“So, I am getting shafted by the Justice Department again Here goes: I had a meeting with my probation officer today, and he told me that he has to install monitoring software onto my PC. No big deal to me, that is part of my sentence. However, their software doesn’t support GNU/Linux (Which is what I use). So, he told me that if I want to use a computer, I would have to use an OS that the software can be installed on. Which basically means: MICROSOFT AND MONITORING SOFTWARE or NO COMPUTER. I use Ubuntu 7.04 now, and they are trying to force me to switch.

First they give me 2 felonys, then they throw me in prison, and now this.

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