She gets it, she really gets it

re: She gets it, she really gets it

$ B@biiGrl $ — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:33:34 GMT

The blog was funny but sad a the sam tim. It had a morel to the blog and interesting to read.

» Hey some sense on a windoze fanboi blog i drank the kool-aid: clutching my dixie cup of apple goodness

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 21:41:03 GMT

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re: She gets it, she really gets it

brostbeef — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 03:52:54 GMT

Totally agree with you John.

I always take studies like the one you linked to with a grain of salt, but I think that the trend it presents is what needs to be fixed.

Microsoft has started to be less open about things now where they should be (example: Windows 7). However, they have also been too quiet in other areas like IE8.0 and the Home Server data corruption issue.

I hope that what I'm seeing is a sign of hope for the future, but Microsoft still has a long way to go.

On an exciting note, has anyone else seen some the demonstrations for Silverlight 2.0? If you haven't, checkout the Mix '08 keynote. (Links to videos here: www.jcxp.net/news.php)

I think this is exciting and could (stressing) COULD lead to something great, like a common language across platforms. Native apps served over the web.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

johnpapola — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:06:27 GMT

Link to a study showing Microsoft's brand is in sharp decline:

www.itworld.com/.../index.html

Just in support of the discussion. Not flame bait.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

johnpapola — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:53:41 GMT

I appreciate a real discussion, brost, so thank you.

My feeling is sort of like this. I was a die-hard custom-box-building, apple's business-model-sucks, Windows partisan from my computing beginnings until 2001. What broke that for me first and foremost was the move from having ample free time as a student, to having no free time as a young man struggling to start my career. That time deficit eliminated my tolerance for tinkering with computer problems and trouble shooting (which up to that point was fun for me). I wanted to first and foremost USE the machine to accomplish tasks. And, being in TV, I was exposed to the Mac (OS9 at the time).

At first, I thought it sucked (and OS 9 was an unstable mess, compared to Win 2000). But after a number of missed job opportunities due to my home computer failing me with application and system crashes requiring day-long system re-installations, I began to notice that I was simply more productive on the Mac. Final Cut put it over the edge for me. For consumers now, I think iLife offers that draw.

All this combined with the Wired magazine expose on the Microsoft anti-trust case (which up to that point I considered a government witch-hunt) dramatically changed my perspective on Microsoft and the value of the PC.

7 years later, having pushed my Macs amazingly hard in very demanding situations, I'm (obviously) more happy with my platform choice now than ever and I see nothing Microsoft can do to get me back on Windows.

Seeing the broad brand move that's clearly taken place and is evident in everything from PC Magazine consumer surveys, to Changewave future purchasing surveys, to College marketshare (where Apple is gaining HUGE)... the future seems to be very bright for Apple and the brand perception has turned against Microsoft.

So, to answer your first question:

I think Microsoft's #1 objective for change should be: FOCUS! Stop chasing every single market on earth. They are so reactionary, so quick to jump on whatever people are excited about with a "me-too" effort (even if that effort is pretty good). It just creates a cascading level of complexity that they're clearly unable to synchronize and manage effectively. This purchase of Yahoo could possibly be the end of the company for this very reason. It'll be a long slow change, but I can't see how it will work well.

So, make Windows being amazing job #1. Draw a line in the sand and put every previous OS in a virtual machine ala Classic. Then, make the dream OS. Keep what works, and forget what doesn't. Make it modular from the ground up. Make decoupled design the new ethos and ditch this monolithic integration garbage that has rendered Windows impossible to maintain. Think Windows Explorer vs. Mac OSX's finder.

Job #2 need to be to clean up their communication. Simplify the message and stay to it. Stop the god-awful marketing speak and buzzword babble that permeates every executive interview from this place. Steve Jobs isn't a wizard or a liar. He simply calls things as he sees them. He doesn't talk about "synergy" or "connected experiences". That talk is WORTHLESS. Jobs talks PRODUCTS. If you watch how he works with an unbiased eye, and ignore his hype of things being "the best in the world", Jobs is all about the product in very tangible ways.

Job #3: stop providing solutions for problems that don't exist. This is a big one and it's linked to #2. Take note of the social networking fatigue. People don't have the time to do the things they already want to do, let alone buy products that introduce new things to do on top of that. If Microsoft approached their products with an eye on real people and their limited time, it'd be a huge step forward. Every CES, Gates has given a ridiculous "in the future" presentation that pitches countless multi-screened computers everywhere delivering a life that could only be described as wall-to-wall non-stop secretarial work. The general "in the future" stuff has just got to stop.

which leads me to the last main point:

Job #4: Only announce and demonstrate working technology. Talk to the community, bring in feedback. Be open about broad goals and ask a ton of questions. But stop with the vaporware demos and paper releases. Just never do it again. Steve Jobs never would have mentioned Win FS if he wasn't sure it would work. Nobody even knew that Apple was working on anything like Spotlight until it was demonstrated, even though it was more than two years in the making.

For those that argue that developers and enterprises need advance warning... I say this. How did knowing about WinFS help, given that it never came out? Has knowing about WPF for years resulted in a broad move to it by the Windows community? Nope. All their approach does is setup disappointment and confuse the market for years. Maybe that's been the goal, to chill the market for competitors (I'm sure it was) but it's not working anymore. Now it's just the boy who cried wolf.

If all this sounds like Apple... that's because I truly believe that all of these things are the reasons for Apple's new success.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

Dipsh t Admin — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:47:49 GMT

"They made holes for Google AND they punched holes into the kernel (in 64-bit Vista) for the Anti-Virus makers to have access. "

They didn't do that because they were altruistic at their core. This shows yet another variable that MS has to fight against that Apple does not (at least not yet and to the same extent). Of course I'm talking about the EU and DOJ. While some would say that they caved too easily, with the constant pressure from these organizations, they *have* to do things like this, or they will get in to huge trouble. The amount of scrutiny that MS is in just doesn't exist for any other company in the computing space. At this point, MS just wants to put on a happy face and hope they go away.

"Why should a software company make changes to keep another software company in business?"

Along the same lines of what I'm talking about, I'm sure that Real and Netscape (RIP) can answer that question. And SCO. And Novell. And, well you get the point.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

brostbeef — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:04:53 GMT

Thank you for your compliment.

I agree with you that we need competition in the market and Microsoft definitely needs to ask itself how it is going to build brand trust back in.

I'm a PC user, but I also know you are 100% right about the iPod and the iPhone. I also agree that unless Microsoft does something, they will slowly start conceding the market to Apple.

Anyway, here's my question: How can Microsoft build back customer trust AND engage the community?

WPF probably hasn't caught on because the developers do not trust Microsoft AND why adopt new standards when they are constantly changing? Also, does Microsoft still wield the power to tighten the standards and drag the OEMs into compliance?

If they currently have that power, I think it is fair to say that their grip is slowly loosening.

I think it's time for Microsoft to go back to what I'm positive it can do: build high quality software. They need to quit punching holes into it too. Just think about Vista SP1. They made holes for Google AND they punched holes into the kernel (in 64-bit Vista) for the Anti-Virus makers to have access. Kernel Patch Protection was a revolutionary idea.

Why should a software company make changes to keep another software company in business?

Would Apple do that?.....I say NO! What do you think?

re: She gets it, she really gets it

johnpapola — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:42:09 GMT

Good post Brostbeef. See, Waethorn, that's how fair conversation works. A give and a take. it's called dialog vs. screaming across the divide.

I think Microsoft would do the longterm objectives a big favor by tightening the standards and dragging the OEMs into compliance. Sure, in some ways this could be considered monopoly abuse, but not really. Because of all this legacy complexity, Microsoft is literally conceding the consumer-electronics software market to Apple. The "I just want it to work and be simple" crowd is the bulk of the consumer market, and if people's perceptions of PC reliability don't improve, it's a long-term detriment to Microsoft.

Witness Plays-for-sure. They went with the platform complexity approach and the market rejected it as soon as there was a general sense that things didn't work seamlessly. Even the name "playsforsure" itself was an implicit admission of failure as it suggested that consumers need to be promised that things would work.

As a result, the iPod is into it's 7th year with 70% of the market and no sign of that share shrinking.

Get ready to see the same thing happen with the iPhone, though to a much lesser extent. The Appstore sacrifices some flexibility for the reliability people expect from a phone. Reliability builds trust. Trust leads to sales.

The xbox in some ways is a great example of how well Microsoft can do with tight control. Xbox live is the best online gaming experience ever developed. Sony's got nothing on it. In this case, their rush to market has caused hardware reliability problems that have a left a permanent mark on the brand.

Again. Reliability build brand trust. Brand trust drives future sales.

When you look at the trend lines and the youth marketshare numbers, Apple's turned their brand around and the Mac will likely continue growing for the next decade. They nearly died because people had come to assume that "Apple computers aren't gonna be around much longer" and "Apple computers are only for graphics". Brand impressions have a major impact on the market. Now, the mac brand is associated with "cool, well made, better security, just works". Argue those points all you like, but that's where Job's has brought the brand to in the mainstream. That's why Apple stores are always packed.

I want MS to improve. I want competition in the market. Forum tit-for-tat sniping isn't what's interesting to me, as much as engaging the community.

I wish PC users like Waethorn, who clearly know their platform well, were more open-minded. If they took their earplugs out, they may learn a few things worth taking back to Microsoft in the form of positive criticism.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

johnpapola — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:17:50 GMT

Waethorn,

Again, not sure why you're arguing against a desire for Microsoft to do a clean break and move compatibility into virtualization. I am ignorant of how Dell or HP customizes their hardware. I'm pretty accustomed, though, to what you do, since that is how I always got my PCs straight up to 2001 when I switched. I always built my own systems from the best reviewed components and used the reference drivers.

And since, I believe, nearly 50% of all PC sales are "white box" local builders like yourself, that makes for a pretty massive chunk of the market working with a pretty small set of drivers from Nvida, ATI/AMD and Intel.

Then consider how just a few major brands dominate the rest of the market, I think it's fair to argue that Microsoft could quite manageably move to a clean codebase. They are making billions a quarter in pure profit after all.

Not sure why you'd have a problem with any of this. I'm not saying "Microsoft is evil and sucks". I'm merely suggesting a path that many have suggested for Windows to follow into the future.

And yes, there are a few over-the-top FX in OSX (time machine starfield, widget ripple effect), but most of them are minimalist, tasteful and purposeful for directing the eye (like the genie effect).

You simply can't argue that the both Apple and Microsoft can learn from each other. If you do, you've got blinders on.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

brostbeef — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 16:38:21 GMT

I think I can see where you both are coming from on this:

"Waethorn " -> There's a LOT of complexity with hardware, especially when you through in OEM crap *cough*...err...stuff. Now I know you didn't say this, but wouldn't it be fair to assume that your life would be easier if the OEM complexity was gone?

"johnpapola" -> You don't disagree that there is a lot of complexity, even if you & and can't see the true extent of it. However, you argue that backwards compatibility is adding complexity to this again. Also, you wonder why it is the developers are not staying current with new techniques.

So.....common ground. Can we agree on this? :

- Microsoft Silverlight and WPF have been engineered to eliminate some of the complexity. Silverlight is cross platform AND can has hardware acceleration built in.

- We want to remove backwards compatibility, but Microsoft has been shackled by the manufactures. Let's not forget how Intel made Microsoft change its "Vista Capable" definition so they could sell an outdated chipset.

Apple doesn't have to worry about that. Apple is in a position to hand pick the hardware they will support. They are their own manufacturer.

Intel was trying to sell a chipset to companies like Dell, and how could they if the chipset didn't meet the standards. So, they change changed the standards.

How can we get ahead when the standards are constantly changing. Maybe that's why people haven't embraced WPF. Hopefully they will through Silverlight. One can only hope.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

Waethorn — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:52:56 GMT

"I assume, then, that you must be writing the drivers for the machines you sell, right?"

your ignorance is telling again.

as I said before, i am NOT a major OEM, so I don't have that "luxury" (if you can call it that) of buying directly from ODM's. I wouldn't want to put my customers through that anyway - I build and sell systems using off-the-shelf non-customized "OEM" (actually ODM) and (sometimes) retail hardware that is built using the component manufacturers reference designs, meaning people can go to Creative, NVIDIA, Intel, or whoever to get reference drivers for their system, if necessary. the reference drivers are often much more stable and reliable than any of that customized OEM crap - the reference drivers are what get WHQL approval first, and work on the largest set of hardware.

"Some of these look a bit like goofy Flash sites brought to life as desktop applications."

ditto for the OS X UI.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

johnpapola — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 03:04:44 GMT

"anyone that's had a Dell-branded Sound Blaster sound card will tell you the trials and tribulations of software compatibility with Dell's drivers. also, anybody that's tried to play a game on a notebook computer where the notebook manufacturer doesn't update their video drivers will tell you the pains of it all. those are only some easy examples that I can pull off the top of my head, but I could go on and on....

Apple designs the OS, and they have their hardware customized to their plans, so they can control the software and driver interconnections with the hardware much more easily than Microsoft can, what with their fairly hands-off experience with the hardware, not having control over the manufacturing process and all."

Well, Waethorn, that sounds like a the best advertisement for a Mac I've read in a while. I assume, then, that you must be writing the drivers for the machines you sell, right? I don't know why you'd want to argue with me on this. I'm simply hoping that Microsoft improves Windows 7 by ditching the legacy cruft, sacrificing some backward compatibility that's always been a painful sham to begin with and leaving older apps to run in virtualization. This would be good for you on all counts. A better system. Another change to sell more hardware. Win Win.

It's a shame that you can't actually point to one application written for Vista using WPF, though which highlights the point "brostbeef" and I were discussing. Win devs seem overall less willing to embrace new tech and new UI standards.

Here's a few links I've found to some WPF stuff. I'm curious if any of this is good:

en.wikipedia.org/.../List_of_WPF_applications

channel9.msdn.com/.../WPF.ApplicationPortfolio

Some of these look a bit like goofy Flash sites brought to life as desktop applications.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

Waethorn — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:56:16 GMT

"Is a Dell Santa Rosa laptop THAT much different from an HP or Gateway or Apple? I can't imagine so."

....and you would be wrong. every hardware OEM customizes hardware from other ODM's. many of those customizations have to do with firmwares and device BIOS's being modified, customized with features, or just have the PnPID's changed. every little change requires a different driver version too. Microsoft doen't write those drivers - the OEM's do. anyone that's had a Dell-branded Sound Blaster sound card will tell you the trials and tribulations of software compatibility with Dell's drivers. also, anybody that's tried to play a game on a notebook computer where the notebook manufacturer doesn't update their video drivers will tell you the pains of it all. those are only some easy examples that I can pull off the top of my head, but I could go on and on....

"ditching parallel ports"

very few new motherboards ship with parallel ports, serial ports, and most don't even come with PS/2 kb/mouse ports anymore. the systems i sell sure as hell don't anyway.

what i find funny though, is that Intel-made motherboards (which I use in many systems I sell), don't ship with a floppy drive controller (nor the internal ribbon-cable connector, obviously), and yet they still include the "F6 floppy disk" in the box for installing XP on a RAID or AHCI SATA controller. i asked them why, and they say it's a mistake in manufacturing that they never bothered to rectify. silly really. what's even funnier is that the Intel BIOS doesn't allow you to even emulate an internal floppy with a USB drive, so the floppy disk is garbage, and you can't use RAID or AHCI SATA on XP because of it. doesn't matter to my system manufacturing either - the floppy goes in the garbage, and new systems all get Vista, which includes the drivers anyway.

"Can anyone point out Vista-only applications that make use of WPF to deliver modern UIs?"

any web application utilizing Silverlight essentially uses the same features as WPF, but is back/side-ported to multiple operating systems and browsers. it's not a complete implementation of WPF though.

oh and btw: .NET Framework 3.0 is available for XP also, just so you know.

if you're going to counter with "then what's the point to move to Vista?", then I'm going to counter you with this statement: "why would a Windows iTunes user want to switch to a Mac?"

re: She gets it, she really gets it

johnpapola — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:20:45 GMT

It's a very strange situation. Very paradoxical. On one hand, Microsoft wield enormous power, develops the #1 application suite on it's own platform as well as an ever-expanding set of consumer apps bundled with Windows. I hear that they are very interactive with developers from commenters like Paul.

And yet, third party windows software in general doesn't seem to take much design lead from Microsoft, despite their dominance. Applications seem to lag generations behind the UI conventions of their latest OS releases, if they ever change. Drivers and extensions often feel horribly tacked-on instead of seamlessly integrated. And these devs just seem to scream bloody murder about adopting new tech.

My old neighbor in hoboken was a GUI dev for crazy high end financial apps and was saying that he expected most devs to ignore Avalon (this was before Vista shipped and renamed it to WPF).

All this reinforces a general desire to use the Microsoft solution when one is available "and good enough". When I was a windows user, I always preferred the MS app if it worked, because they always felt better. Especially in consumer software where the shoddy efforts of many devs to "brand" their interfaces resulted in nightmarish trash UIs.

The most accute example I remember from the early days was Easy CD Creator for Windows vs. Toast for Mac in OS9 (and still true in OSX). The former was a multi-windowed, windows-explorer-on-crack nightmare. Toast was this simple, single window UI that was beautiful and easy. Still is. Why was the same Dev doing such different work?

Today, you the same applies to a host of useful apps. Compare Roboform to 1Password. Does iSale or Delicious Library have any remote equals on windows? I realize these aren't huge apps, but they are the apps that fill user holes left by the bundled stuff.

Sometimes the mac gets shafted on ports (intuit). But native mac devs really seem more open, nimble and ready to adopt new things. They're more willing to take Apple's lead and it benefits them greatly.

I'm not sure why this doesn't seem to happen on Windows, but the end result in my experience is that there are more applications I enjoy using on the Mac than on Windows and they solve more real user problems in more elegant and enjoyable ways. I'd love to hear more about this. It's weird to me, though maybe I'm just missing a ton of new apps on windows since my switch.

re: She gets it, she really gets it

brostbeef — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:21:01 GMT

The only "Vista-only" application that makes use of WPF that I can think of is the Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista which is in beta right now.

It is a good point you make, I have no idea the complexity of leveraging Core Animation, but I know WPF is not what I'd call "easy". Windows XP is still where all the users are and where the development time is going. I don't know how much time would be required to develop a WPF UI within the same application and determine the UI based on the OS, if it is possible. Also, how does that compare to leveraging Core Animation? I'd like to know.

I just wish that Microsoft would put in some time and make a WPF Live apps like messenger to show what can be done. Why is Yahoo doing it and not Microsoft? Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are Apple employee devs making Widgets, why aren't there more Microsoft development hours going into Gadgets?