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"

[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"

[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"

[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.

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.

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: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?

[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.

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.

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...

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?!

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.

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!

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: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: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.

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?

[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.