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| Authored by: dio gratia on Friday, July 19 2013 @ 06:44 PM EDT |
It makes you wonder if a large part of the write down is in advertising
costs which generally dominate every other cost of product development. In this
case they've failed to make a market for the things by product placement in
various TV shows, notably failing to demonstrate actual on screen usage in close
ups, perhaps afraid of showing dog slow performance as not matching dramatic
pace.
It points out that Microsoft simply isn't very good at anything
resembling state of the art. Try the Windows 8: Surface RT vs.
iPad commercial released after the write down where the points of
differentiation are the fold out stand and a lack of a USB port. Apple will
tell you (and the guys at Microsoft Research agreed before their work
disappeared) that vertical screens cause fatigue. There's also a paradigm shift
to rely on cloud storage or registered iDevices connected with iTunes (as in iTunes for Windows) or you can
email and use the Mail app for capture, both of which can use wireless
networking. When all else fails you can watch a video of someone loading from a
USB thumbdrive using a docking adaptor ( Connecting USB Flash Drive to
IPAD ).
And I'm so reminded of Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes
pronouncing 'innovative' in the British fashion while espousing Victorian ideals
to which his character does not strictly adhere. Microsoft can talk the talk
but stumbles walking the walk, the crime the iPad is accused of is not being
'British' ('Microsoft') or in fact simply precluding Microsoft from making 20
percent through their walled garden market. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, July 20 2013 @ 09:47 AM EDT |
All right, so iPad and iOS weren't first...
But, because of Apple FanBois they had a pool of fanatic iFollowers that
genuflect towards Apple's HQ on a regular schedule during the day (the iPad as
an astrolabe?) the iPad was assured success despite-- or, perhaps, because of--
its elitist pricing.
HP didn't really try very hard to get PenguinHeads to flock around their WebOS,
perhaps by pricing it like the iPad, which, basically, helped it flop. M$
didn't learn from this.
Like the XBox, M$ needs to give a LOT more time for their data-consumer-centric
appliances to get some momentum... though, really, despite the cool ads for the
Surface, M$ has nothing equivalent to Apples FanBois, merely having people--
usually lazy CIOs who now feel the "No one got fired for buying from
Microsoft" mantra is true, despite the dangers-- tolerant of M$ products.
Android-- and Linux-- do NOT have Apple's fanbase but has more people who care
about them than M$ will ever have.
(chuckles)
I would suspect that, like Harley-Davidson, there are people with an Apple logo
tattooed on their bodies... though, I suspect, Apple might discourage allowing
anyone to duplicate their trade-mark, so tattoo artists might not be able to
offer it.
If you have an overly loyal fanbase above, say, 100,000 people, you have
guaranteed penetration to put your products where people will see them. Look at
House Hunters on HGTV (even though we know it is faked) because you see Apple
products in use even though the nice lit-up Apple mark on the back of the lid is
covered. iPads are pretty obvious. (It is amazing how often iMacs show up in
other renovation shows when there's a home office built.)
I have to admit that the "Artist/Creative" fanbois give the products
they like most a big push wherever they work.
One can respect Apple, of course, if only for their willingness to make bold
commitments, but, then, given their fanbase, they can't easily fail, now, can
they?
M$ can't compete given their less-enthusiastic fanbase.
Android tablets only survive given their wallet-friendly prices... and the folks
who want to write apps can do so without spending vast tracts of cash to build a
development environment.
Linux, for instance, benefits from being its own development kit with no
additional costs. You had to pay to develop for MS-DOS and Windows... and the
original Macs weren't cheap either (though there will be those who say
"high costs keep the riff-raff out") and the latest MacOS X t'ain't
cheap to get a compiler and libraries. (There was a time when the compiler
didn't cost you, back in the PowerPC days, but those days are GONE.)
I realize that the hardware for the Surface, while cool, isn't the whole
picture, since it was just the "surface" of a new ecosystem, kind of
like the tip of an iceberg.
Apple has leverage from their fanbase. Linux has its own fanbase even if
they're not swaggering like Apple's.
Microsoft? A fanbase for Microsoft? That will accept-- and pay big bucks for--
anything the corporation offers?
(laughs maniacally)[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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