iPod Most Popular Music Player on Microsoft Campus

bblazer writes "Wired is running an article about how despite the displeasure of management, the iPod is the most popular music player on the Microsoft campus. The article states that 80% of those who have digital music players have an iPod. Employees have even started using different headphones to be a bit more stealthy about it."

Comments

Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[Gob Blesh It]

The Microsoft employee's open letter to Bill Gates almost made me choke. In case you haven't read it, let me paraphrase: "How do we make an iPod killer?" he asks rhetorically. "First we must harness the blogosphere!" he answers. "Then we'll design the interface by committee. Synergize, baby."

Anyway, I found it interesting how clearly the note reveals (what seems to be) Microsoft's general thought process. Never lead, always follow. I mean, how pathetic is this sort of blatant, shameless me-tooism? While innovators like Apple are trying to build the future, Microsoft employees like this guy are trying desperately to catch up... and they still can't figure out how.

Just my two cents from an Apple fanboy. Flame on...

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[eln]

Well, while your characterization of Apple as a ceaseless innovator may be a little over the top, you do have a point about Microsoft, one that demonstrates the dangers inherent in a monopoly or oligopoly controlled industry.

Microsoft doesn't innovate because they don't NEED to innovate. They know that they can be late to the party on a particular feature or product, and they will still be able to capture the majority of the market, because they can offer two things that no one else can possibly provide:
1.) the strength of the Microsoft name, and
2.) Seamless integration with Windows, a family of operating systems that over 90% of the public uses, and which only one company has full access to the internals of: Microsoft.

If the innovation does not fit into a category that can be exploited in this way, Microsoft can either purchase and rebrand the technology, or develop their own clones and bury the competition in predatory pricing and overwhelming marketing.

Why bother to innovate when it's so much easier not to?

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[Geekenstein]

Being a copycat has always been a strategic business move. Let some other company develop a product, spend countless revisions figuring out what doesn't work, have lots of expensive bombs and R&D costs. Then you simply make a cheaper version of the sucessful product without comitting your own resources to forging the path.

That, my friend, is known as smart business.

Need an example? Here's a quick one. Tivo and the satellite/cable PVRs. The content providers can do it cheaper, because they don't have those large R&D bills. Tivo, on the other hand, has to produce the product, pay the expenses incurred, and still somehow make a profit.

The innovator is usually the one who ends up going out of business. Apple is (currently) the exception.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why bother to innovate when it's so much easier not to?

Open source software in a nutshell.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[Leo McGarry]

So apple invented the hard drive based mp3 player?

Basically, yeah.

You know who invented the automobile? Depending on how you define the term, there are as many as half a dozen possible answers, none of them later than 1893.

But do you know who really invented the automobile, for all practical purposes? That's right. Henry Ford, in 1908.

Apple is to the iPod as Henry Ford is to the car.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[martian265]

No, Apple invented a chic looking hard drive mp3 player that everybody assumed that you must be cool if you own one. And then they marketed with a series of bizarre and silly commercials that 90% of the people hated, but figured that the commercial must be so cool that they couldn't understand it and therefore they must buy an iPod to regain some of their coolness.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[bwcarty]

Your iPod/car analogy is a bit off, but overall, you're right.

The Wright Brothers are given credit for inventing the first heavier than air aircraft, but how often do you see their names attached to a brand?

Mocking Apple because they didn't invent the mp3 based music player (or the online music store) is like discrediting Burt Rutan's work because he didn't invent the airplane.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[Dynedain]

You're an idiot. Henry Ford invented the production line and applied the idea to automobile construction.

And there were many MP3 players (both harddrive and otherwise) out before the iPod. Creative had at least half a dozen different models alone.

But by your logic, Al Gore really invented the Internet.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[berchca]

I think you're being a little hard on Microsoft (whom I am not a big fan of and generally don't use their products.) While MS always seems to be holding the gun as the one coming up with the knock-off, it is a fact of life that in every industry a new product is either covered in patents (which have their own evils) or quickly reproduced.

In fashion, it goes like this:
1) Armani/Gucci/whomever releases new jeans that are actually worn to the point of looking stained.
2) Next year, Levi's adds this to their lineup as their most expensive sort of jeans.
3) A year after that, you buy them at Wal-Mart from brands you've never heard of in sizes Gucci wouldn't be caught dead making.

In food it goes like this:
A few months ago I was turned onto a food called the Portugeuse Muffin. No idea how it relates to Portugal, but it's become very popular. Made by a company out of Boston and hard to find. Not a few weeks ago I noticed Trader Joes was carrying their own version. And if it sells, I have not doubt that the Thomas Corperation, long established monopoly of the muffin business, will release their own, squashing the small Boston bakery under their unkind heel.

Innovation only lasts so long. MS wants an iPod killer? Maybe. What about Creative? They want one pretty bad themselves.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[VoiceOfRaisin]

huh? henry ford is not thought of by anyone as the inventor of the car. he is the pioneer of assembly line manufacturing. thats why he is famous. not a very good analogy at all.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[gstoddart]

So apple invented the hard drive based mp3 player?

Basically, yeah.

Apple had the first widespread success with one, but I seem to remember things like the Creative Nomad predating it by a matter of years, so completely untrue.

You know who invented the automobile? Depending on how you define the term, there are as many as half a dozen possible answers, none of them later than 1893.

But do you know who really invented the automobile, for all practical purposes? That's right. Henry Ford, in 1908.

nobody. Ford was the first to mass produce 'em. There's a huge difference.

Apple is to the iPod as Henry Ford is to the car.

Well, "Apple is to the portable MP3 player what Henry Ford was to the car" might be closer to accurate. You've rather overmixed your metaphors and created a bit of a mish-mash.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[jsebrech]

Apple invented the hard drive based consumer mp3 player. Before that the only people with HD-based mp3 players were geeks or early adopters, with players that catered to that crowd (advanced recording features, large physical dimensions to afford large disk sizes, extra geek stuff like ethernet interfaces, ...). The ipod made it possible to give your mom an mp3 player and have her make use of it with minimal guidance. This is because the entire "ipod experience" (and I know that's a laden term) fits together smoothly, from the first time you turn it on, over how you use itunes to put music on there, to actually putting on an album during daily use. There are no "tricks" you need to figure out. It all just works. This is incidentally why the windows ipod market didn't really take off until itunes became available on windows. The software before that was so horrible my mind has blanked out its name. Ah, yes, now I remember, musicmatch, which was anything but. *shivers*

I have yet to see another HD-based mp3 player that has the entire package: a good player UI, good PC music management software, and an easy way to get almost any sort of music legally from the internet.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[Leo McGarry]

All Ford did was introduce mass production methods to the automaking process

All Ford did was turn the car from an experiment into a product that was soon owned by millions and that changed literally every aspect of life in the developed world. That's all. Nothing important there. Right?

Apple really didn't invent the hard drive based MP3 player.

For practical purposes, they did. They invented the music player that people actually bought.

Your blah-blah about the "Hango PJB-100" is just about the funniest thing I've read all day. Because, you know, when you say "portable music player," the first thing to pop into everybody's mind is "Hango PJB-100."

How different is this new-for-2005 device in concept than the original portable MP3 players of 1998?

It's incredibly easy to use, and it's $99.

Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision"

[orichter]

And for the record, claiming that Henry Ford "practically invented the automobile" is still a false assertion. It would be no more true to assert Bill Gates invented computers and Al Gore invented the internet.


Your statement is utter nonsense. What you say might be true if he claimed that Ford invented the automobile. What he said, however is that Ford practically invented the automobile after he explicitly stated that Ford did not actually technically invent the automobile. Read literally, his statement could be interpreted as, "Ford invented the practical form of the automobile," which is precisely true, though a little less wieldy. In the same way you could say correctly that Bill Gates practically invented the personal computer (i.e. he invented the form in which most people experience personal computers). Saying that Al Gore practically invented the internet, however, is not a proper comparison, and is simply untrue. Saying Tim Burners-Lee practically invented the internet, however, would make a reasonable comparison even though Burners-Lee didn't actually invent it. To deny this is to imply that the phrase "practically invented" has no meaning in the same way as the phrase "practically got pregnant" has no meaning. If that is what you are arguing, then we'll just have to disagree, but otherwise, you're being overly pedantic about a statement which clearly and consisely expressed what he was trying to express, which is after all the purpose of language. Are you honestly telling me that you couldn't figure out what the great-grandparent post was trying to say. If so, you really must have flunked that reading comprehension test.

Huh?

[JamesD_UK]

Why is this particularly interesting? Should they should be using a digital portable music player made by Microsoft instead of Apple?

The iPod is the most popular digital music player. It's fairly like that if you take any subset of the population that the iPod will also be their most popular player.

Re:Huh?

[colanut]

It is interesting because (from the goddamn article):

So popular is the iPod, executives are increasingly sending out memos frowning on its use.

Microsoft doesn't currently make hardware, but the sure as hell make a competing media format. Balmer and co have made a lot of noise about the iPod as well. But the point is, how can you make an Apple killer if your own employees are using the competition.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...how can you make an Apple killer if your own employees are using the competition."

Actually, the best way to make a competition killer is to let your employees use that competition's product.

Seriously. Microsoft's executives are idiots for trying to clamp down on use of iPods. They should be embracing it. After all, who could possibly be more knowledgable about how to improve on a product than the very people who use that product.

They're getting free market research here. Wanna find out why the iPod is so popular? Ask your own employees who use it. Wanna know when you've succeeded in making a competing product that's better? Take a look at your own campus and see if your own employees are making the switch. If not, keep trying.

The problem is, the culture among Microsoft executives is not one of trying to create the best product, but one of trying to suppress the best product in favour of the Microsoft version.

RTFA

[GillBates0]

Most of the competitors to the iPod use Microsoft software:

Of course, Microsoft's software is used by dozens of competing music players from manufacturers like Creative Technology, Rio and Sony. Its Windows Media Audio, or WMA, format is supported by several online music stores, including Napster, Musicmatch and Wal-Mart.

Wow, that certainly is surprising...

[Rakthar]

So, if we look at the numbers:

The Ipod owns 80% of the digital media player market.

Of the MS employees who own a digital media player, 80% of them own Ipods.

So this means that MS employees are just regular people who happen to work at Microsoft?

This story is analogous to a breaking headline such as "Pizza hut driver seen eating Dominos!" "Adidas executive wears Nike for his morning run!" "Pepsi bottler drinks Coca-Cola at hot dog stand!"

and who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

who cares, good lord it is a stupid little music player, not teh end all of everything.

last time i checked MS doesnt make a portable music player either.

Insight into the campus here...

[kneecarrot]

I actually work for Microsoft (gasp! and I also read Slashdot!). My cube-mate owns an iPod. I remember the week after MSN Music was launched, he took his iPod with him into the cafeteria. He was waiting in line to grab his lunch and noticed that people kept cutting in front of him in line. He couldn't figure out what the heck was going on until he realized the people cutting in front were all from the music division. They had seen the white earphones and were "punishing" him for going with the competitor.
Sometimes people can be very petty here.

Re:Insight into the campus here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really work at MS? You don't see cube farms at MS, folks get thier own office with a door.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell would they use Macs? That's just plain stupid.

Re:No

[geoffspear]

And I suppose the Mac version of Office is developed on Windows machines and never tested?

Re:Why iPod anyway?

[dknight]

while PDAs have decent general-purpose use battery life these days, mp3s kill them pretty quick. besides that, they're still generally bigger than an ipod... pdas also tend to be more expensive and you still wind up with less space than an ipod.

Amazing that corp security allows them

[winkydink]

A 40Gb writable device that easily attaches to one's computer.

Re:Why iPod anyway?

[astebbin]

Well.... considering the fact that my iPod has 40gb, and my Palm only has two, I'll go with the iPod. Plus, the iPod mini is smaller and fits easier in the pocket than a Microsoft PocketPC.

Re:Why iPod anyway?

[pdbogen]

Interestingly enough: The lack of a good player, no worthwhile eyes-off interface, and battery life. My iPod lasts a lot longer than my PDA would, if my PDA were playing music (empirical evidence)

That, and a 1GB SD card comes up on Froogle for $54. This is a third the price of the 1GB iPod shuffle, but does not include the cost of the playing device, which is almost certainly at least $100.

So, you've got a comparably priced solution, with a worse interface, and shorter battery life. Of course, a PDA is still a PDA, in the end.. So it really depends on what feature set you are most interested in.

Anyway, I have a 40GB iPod, which would be about $2,200 in SD cards, and it cost me less than $200 (thanks, freeipods.com)

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[Alan Partridge]

It's not a bit like Coke employees drinking Pepsi (which they'd be pretty dumb to do as they'd probably have access to all the free Coke they wanted). iPod is a neo-Walkman, the only way it threatens MS is in the fact that it totally ignores their pointless, me-too, proprietary .wma crapmat.

reasons why this is an issue for MS

[musikit]

1. if their own employees don't buy into DRM and WMA how can expect the general public to.
example. you work for MS. are you going to tell your parents to buy a Rio with WMA technology or an IPOD.

2. the "eat your own dog food approach" we'll how can you tell if your cooking sucks if your not "taste testing"

3. 7 degrees of seperation.
I.E. MS employees X number of people (i donno exactly how many but we will say 20k for exmaple) the average family is 2.3 people. so 46k people. each of those people has say 10 friends 460k people. and 2 extended families ( round to 5) or...2.3 mil people...

Re:I wonder...

[SpottedKuh]

[F]ast food workers never want to eat where they have worked.

I have never worked in fast food, but I have worked in the food-preparation industry. And I can say that I am leery about eating anything from my former employer; and, it has nothing to do with hatred toward my employer. While it was only a summer job to get me through my first year of university, I had an excellent employer and the pay was good. Unfortunately, I saw the kind of sanitation practices that took place during the preparation of food (including, for example, people touching food with licked fingers).

[P]eople who work at many factories refuse to buy products from that factory.

This time I speak not from my own experience, but from that of a good friend of mine who worked at a pipe-fitting factory. While the factory and its management had strict safety protocols (regarding both its employees and its finished products), most employees blatently disregarded those protocols. Many close calls (including falling pipes barely missing people and chemical spills being sealed just in time) resulted from the lax attitude of most employees toward those protocols. More important for the consumer, though, many employees tried to slack off as much as possible, resulting in many pipes that were cracked or otherwise unusable, but were only discovered during the final phase of product quality checks. Arguably, with such an attitude prevalent, some faulty products must make it out of the factory. Hence, I would understand anyone's unease at buying from such a factory after seeing first hand (or, in my case, hearing second-hand) about the safety violations.

Of course, one could argue that such issues would exist at almost any factory or any fast food restaurant (or, almost anywhere, quite frankly), but I suppose something about our perception of a particular location changes after having experienced the issues up close.

why its an issue

[micromuncher]

Anyone who's been on the campus knows what I'm talking about...

On campus, you gotta eat the dog food. Its the only dog food in town. No one else makes dog food. If they did, its five years old.

In the data visualization group, Java was a currio. One member has Java books on his shelf dating back to 1997. That's the last time it was interesting, because its not the company dog food.

So... why is it an issue? Because the blinders are comming off. All that propaganda that the boys and girls are told about the company being the only company, and the only one that does cool things, is starting to look like its passed through a reality distortion filter.

Is there a reason why the bungie guys play golf facing towards the main parking lot?

I remember when Wang had the ad "Wang: the chink in IBM's armor."

How about "Apple: in the ear on Microsoft's eve."

Re:I wonder...

[Quasar1999]

No... Fast food workers refuse to eat where they work for 2 reasons, first they know what goes in the food (scary stuff), and second they are sick of the taste and smell of it.

Factory workers on the other hand... well, let's break that up, those who work in factories that produce foods, they once again see what goes into it... (that's very scary stuff, I've seen what goes into most cookies and crackers... most of the ingredients are also found in windex...) Now as for the other group, they simply know the flaws in the products their factory produces...

In the case of Microsoft, their employees tried their product, found it inferior, and moved on. Don't forget, MS is a huge company, and you'll note the article specifically mentions that the media group is all using MS based players... that's probably due to fear of losing your job, rather than thinking your product is superior... but anyways...

What I'm trying to get at, is that the don't feel hatred to their employeers as the parent tried to imply, they simply know a little too much about the product produced...

Re:Corporate culture "trickles down" that way

[garcia]

At another "campus," seeing that would have provoked a positive ton of good-natured ribbing. The person with the iPod would have given some back, and in the end maybe the music division would have gotten a(nother) quick sense of why even an MS employee could have made that choice. Might have resulted in an actual competitive advantage for the eventual MS product.

Oh barf. Who fucking cares? If the original scenario actually happened you know what I would have done? Walked away. You know why? Because I just don't get involved in the petty little bullshit that goes on with workplace drama.

If Suzy is banging Mark after work who the fuck cares? If Amy is wearing the same clothes as Jenny but only less expensive versions I just don't care.

Stupid, petty, childish, work-place drama exists everywhere. There's no need to whine about it online and there's certainly no need to bring it up on Slashdot just because it has MSFT, Apple, and iPod contained in the story.

Use whatever fucking MP3 player you like. Drive whatever car you want. Fuck whoever you want to fuck. Keep your mouths shut about what other people do unless it has some direct impact on your fucking job.

Motorola CEO gave away free phones

[mrm677]

Back when I used to work at Motorola in Schaumburg, the CEO sent out a company-wide email saying how he was displeased at the number of employees seen with Nokia and other non-Motorola phones. So he offered free Motorola phones to the first 1,000 employees that responded and urged the rest to buy a Motorola.

He was especially pissed at the salesmen, trying to sign the big carriers to promote Motorola phones, who had Nokia's hanging from their belt! Makes sense for the visible people I guess.

Re:Changing headphones isn't so bad....

[Txiasaeia]

Competing product? Since when did Microsoft sell a portable MP3 player?

Shocking!

[Anita Coney]

The most popular portable music player in the world is the most popular portable music player on Microsoft's campus?! How is that possible?!

Re:I wonder...

[Rudeboy777]

His sig is decrying the spelling/grammar naziism of Slashdot. He's basically excusing his own potential spelling mistakes and saying you should concentrate on the meat of a comment. No hypocrisy here.

apple doesn't "innovate"

[Mr. Underbridge]

The innovator is usually the one who ends up going out of business. Apple is (currently) the exception.

I don't think Apple does much innovation of that kind anymore. They seem to have taken another track to the typical "lead, follow, or..." paradigm: taking something that exists, and making it cool. Did they invent the portable music player? No, they made it cool and really usable.

Also, just to nitpick: TiVo supplies DirecTV's PVRs. I think TiVo is here to stay. But I realize you could have picked 1000 other examples that supported your thesis.

Re:apple doesn't "innovate"

[Scudsucker]

As I just said to an AC, you seemed to have confused innovation with invention, because hell yes they innovate.

Did they invent the portable music player?

See what I mean? No, they weren't the first to make one, they just made a player that had a capacity hundereds of times greater than the flash players of the time, at a fraction of the size of the desktop-hardrive based players such as the Arcos. That's innovation.

bottom up versus top down

[jhwang]

shows the power of demand-driven bottom-up interest in digital music players versus the top-down directives from a supplier (i.e., marketing initiatives from the corporate office). the most successful marketing campaigns mix top-down from the supplier and the bottom-up from the consumer of course. in this case, microsoft is out of that product loop with their own employees.

And the posters above who claim that microsoft is not competing with Apple, you're wrong. In a narrow sense, it's true that Microsoft does not sell a portable music device. In a larger sense, Microsoft IS competing with Apple when it comes to digital consumer entertainment platforms.

That is why Microsfot has spent more than a year denigrating the iPod and promoting its "open" audio format and associated MP3 players. This is why microsoft has been pushing "http://www.digitaljoy.com/" at CES.

Just because Microsoft does not manufacture Intel hardware, are you going to say Microsoft doesn't compete with Apple b/c Apple sells computers? Sheesh!

Consider your source

[nick_davison]

Robert Scoble--one of the people mentioned in the article--has already written about it. "Personally there's no way that 80% of our employees own an MP3 player. I don't know what world that source is living in, but it's not the one I live in...

He went on to state, "Personally there's no way that 80% of our employees use more than 640k of ram. I don't know what world that source is living in, but it's not the one I live in..."

Because, after all, if someone at Microsoft doesn't recognise people's usage patterns and habits, it can't be true.

Remember, this is the same guy who stated, "3) Pay whatever big money it'll take to get ... Elton John ...[and] Shania Twain to work on designing an entirely new player from the ground up." link

I don't know what world he lives in. I don't think I want to. I do know they'd have fabulous, sequined and ruffled, faux 17th century french MP3 players with a disneyfied country theme. Kind of like Euro Disney, when you think about it. That's enough to tell me I don't want to live there.

Just because a source contradicts the original, it doesn't make it a good one.

Shhhhh... don't say it...!

[PCM2]

Could it be ... could it be you've come up with a worthwhile reason why we have patents?

Re:This makes no sense...

[nine-times]

It's not that unusual, really. Many companies have a policy on the books, at least, that says something along the lines of "employees have no right to use company assets for personal use". This means that you have no right to use your computer to play music, and no right to use the internet connection or e-mail service for anything not-work-related.

There are some good reasons for this. First of all, it's the rationale that justifies things like web and e-mail filtering, restricting employees from installing spyware, etc. Basically, it's not your computer. It's the business's computer, and they can do with it as they please.

Now, how severely enforced this policy is is a different matter. I've uninstalled spyware and deleted pirated software/music from computers. I've even deleted large portions of legal mp3 collections when a user complained that their computer was "broken", and it turned out their 40 GB hard drive was filled with 35 GB of music. I've filtered out inappropriate web sites and viewed user e-mail without explicit permission from that user. I would usually warn the user, but if it's not feasible, I don't feel that I've wronged them by doing these things.

Why? Bottom line: it's not your computer. If you don't want your mp3 collection deleted, don't put it on the company's computer. If you don't want me to be able to read your e-mail, don't use the company's e-mail. If you don't want me to know what you look at online, don't use the company's internet connection. I tell everyone this upfront, too.

Re:outside their firewall...

[Queer Boy]

when launching iTunes on this unsecured network (from within the MS campus) you can see dozens, if not hundreds of shared iTunes libraries--all being shared by Rendezvous.

Microserfs have stated quite a few times that the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) is one of their most profitable divisions. They do little to no advertising for Microsoft Office on Macintosh and most of the innovations for the Windows version of Office are created by the MacBU, being implemented in the Mac version of Office first. Does the Windows version of Word have Notebook view yet?

I'm not at all suprised that you would find a horde of iTunes shared libraries when they have a pretty healthy team working on a profitable product.

Re:as usual, take wired with a grain of salt

[amichalo]

I know a lot of Apple employees who play Halo 2 too. Is that a story?

No, Apple employees playing Halo 2 is not a story, since Apple doesn't make anything to remotely compete with Halo 2, a video game only available on Microsoft's Xbox platform.

If however, Apple employees were buying Windows PCs in order to play Halo (the original) which has been ported to OS X then that _would_ be a story.

Re:What's the big deal?

[martian265]

Interesting how Apple fan-boys always come up with tid-bits like this. When MS bought those shares, they stated it was because they were helping out a "friend" and investing in their future. I seem to remember that everyone, except you apparently, saw it as an attempt by MS to prove to the DoJ that they weren't a monopoly.

Actually, Microsoft 'bought' the nonvoting stock to prevent Steve Jobs from suing their ass over blatent rips of Quicktime that was brought to his attention while Owner / CEO of NeXT.

That's odd that Apple doesn't own the patents to Quicktime. Most companies don't allow employees (even CEOs etc) to own such business critical patents, so that they can't leave the company and start taking their royalties etc. Of course this is the probably the case here as well, considering that only the inventor or the company the inventor works for can own an patent (Steve Jobs didn't write Quicktime).

You also mention that Apple had several billion in the bank. Excuse me while I laugh uncontrollably for several minutes. If they had that kind of money in the bank at the time, then they wouldn't have been pursuing bankruptcy on grounds of lack of funds to pay their debtors (which they were set to file bankruptcy right before they got the cash infusion).

One last thing, if Jobs had cancelled the alleged patent suit against MS because of the stock purchase, that would have been extortion.

Interesting version of history the Apple fan-boys come up with.

Re:Changing headphones isn't so bad....

[michrech]

It's a competing product becuase MS licenses the .wma stuff to third parties to put into their MP3 players.

It's also a competing product becuase MS has the MSN Music Store -- and guess what. It doesn't work with Apple's iPod.

Re:MSN Music employee here...

[mbbac]

So, why are you an Anonymous Coward if there is no stigma attached to using an Ipod at Microsoft?

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[malfunct]

Yes but maybe Microsoft understands that one of the tools to competion is understanding why your opponents are ahead. I mean I've heard that MS employees use linux from time to time as well and it makes good sense to me. How do you understand what is really good about a product if you don't experience the good and bad things for yourself?

Re:PC competition for I-Mini dotMAC?

[Theaetetus]

I understand misspelling the name...but, what does the capitalization have to do with how you spell mac, Mac, or MAC? All the same to me? I just take it in context as to what they're talking about...

Because, Cayenne- actually, can I just call you CAY? Because, CAY, a nickname for something, such as "Mac" for "Macintosh" is just a nickname, not an acronym, and with all capitals, readers think it actually is one; when people see me call you CAY, they'll thing it's something like "Computer-Adept Youth", rather than your name.

Clarity really is important, particularly in text communications.

-T

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[the unbeliever]

My iPod mounts as a removable disk in Windows XP, no proprietary drivers required.

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[SilentChris]

"it totally ignores their pointless, me-too, proprietary .wma crapmat"

Unlike, say, Apple's pointless, me-too, proprietary FairPlay crapmat?

Re:Its called Group Policies

[lost_n_confused]

A very secure feature unless one has a live CD that can mount the NTFS file system read only and run a USB driver to copy files to an external device. How does MS Group Policies effect that? People can create an ssh connection to a Linux or Mac OS X box and scp files away to their hearts content.

Brand loyalty by employees, or else...

[jasenj1]

That your desire for a tasty burrito is stronger than your concern over being Coke's bitch every moment of your life.

- Jasen.

The difference between a smart co and a dumb co...

[otis wildflower]

... Is that the smart co will see this and say 'how do we make our own dogfood better than this?', then go out and do it.

The dumb co will see this and put out a memo telling folks it's a CLM.

Gosh, I wonder which way this will go?

(And yes, I know M$ doesn't build the player hardware, but they _could_.. I mean, they build good HW (xbox, kynds, mice, joysticks)...)

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[jsebrech]

WMA is entirely ms-owned and not standardized, fairplay is a layer over MPEG4/AAC, which is standardized and not under apple's control.

Hold it right there, pre-iPod HD players?

[Paradox]

And there were many MP3 players (both harddrive and otherwise) out before the iPod. Creative had at least half a dozen different models alone.

Stop right there. If memory serves me correctly, the only notable entry in the world of large-capacity HD-based was the Nomad Jukebox. Rememebr that thing? Dumb as a brick and twice as heavy? The old, "Pray you get 3 hours of battery life" Nomad Jukebox?

Haha. Very funny. Sorry, not a fair comparison.

What Apple came up with was a high-capacity affordable music player with an interface that no one has betterted, to date, along with a weight/form/design factor that sits in an optimal tradeoff zone. They also championed a tight integration into a general music suite (as opposed to a separate tool that works on files).

Oh yeah, and then Apple built the music store into the same client that plays the music, organizes the music, and syncs your iPod. So far only iTMS and MusicMatch even try to do this as more than a token gesture, and it's hard to argue for MusicMatch over iTMS.

If that's not enough to make it an "innovation" then I don't know what is. Did carriage builders complain that the automobiel was really their invention, just without the engine and obedient steering?

Re:Shenanigans

[BasilBrush]

For me the significance of the article wasn't the "carrer limiting move" part. It was the point that even in a "technology saavy group", who have a built in bias to prefer Microsoft related products, all else being equal. Even there, 80% of users choose iPods of all the WMA playing devices that Bill's so keen on.

It rather proves the point of which technology is best, and which is doomed to fail.

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[AJWM]

...Windows XP, no proprietary drivers required.

Uh, what is Windows XP but one big proprietary driver?

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[ThousandStars]

There is also the other factor of exposure to Apple products. The more consumers that buy Apple iPods, the more that may just buy a Mac Mini, eMac, iMac, iBook or PowerBook. That means less revenue to MS for their OS cash-cow.

I seriously doubt MS is even remotely worried about this, since Apple would have to have five or ten times its present sales to even make a small dent. More importantly, I doubt any corporate clients are going to go Apple just because of the iPod and mini. Besides, they probably make as much if not more money from Apple users than they do from Windows users because of the price of MSO:Mac and VPC -- both of which I bought.

Most importantly, however, MS can pull the plug on Apple anytime they want by eliminating MSO:Mac. Fact is, a whole lot of people, myself included, exist in a world dominated by MSO and need to interact with it; if Office:Mac didn't exist, I wouldn't own a PowerBook. Hell, if VPC didn't exist I probably wouldn't, because I also need Access.

Any time MS wants to, they can effectively kill, or at least really marginalize, Apple with their MSO weapon.

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[rjung2k]

I don't think there's a difference in Bill Gates' mind.

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[gstoddart]

No questions asked, no fighting for your job. You get fired. This includes if your boss sees you at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell or KFC, since those entities are owned by TriCon, who also owns Pepsi.

I'm not disputing you, because it sounds like something that could happen ....

But how legal is this?? Surely to god eating at a Pizza Hut can't be considered valid grounds for termination.

Can a company actually try to have sway on the stuff that you do outside of work to this extent? I know they try all the time, but this one just sounds obscene.

Re:Bill buys Apple?

[BasilBrush]

Lose face.
Lose the game.
Lose the money invested in R&D.
Lose the money invested in Marketing.
Lose the money investing in MSN music store.
Lose market share in the desktop PC market because of the iPod halo effect.
Lose still more of that reputation that they used to have that they never lose.
Microsoft can certainly lose.

Re:Its called Group Policies

[pmhudepo]

Resorting to imperfect physical security [...]

As opposed to, say, perfect technological security?