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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."
I wonder if Microsoft employees use a disproportionately large number of MACs, or are more likely to be Firefox users. I mean, fast food workers never want to eat where they have worked, and people who work at many factories refuse to buy products from that factory. Maybe they feel hatred towards their employer.
With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for music? A mystery or just an impending trend?
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
I think it'd be a total coup for Bill to be seen with one and just say offhandedly, "Oh, they're pretty good" and then go back to whatever he was doing. It boggles the mind that management at Microsoft has nothing better to do than chase down iPod users. That employees think they have to hide them is frightening. I can only imagine that meeting with the boss: "Uhh, yeah. We've seen you using an MP3 player made by someone other than us. We're going to have to let you go."
MS has an unsecured network for test projects - a little bird told me that 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.
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... the story is a non-starter. I know a lot of Apple employees who play Halo 2 too. Is that a story?"
Ed Bott has some good comments too: "Now read the story. Read it carefully.... Note that the entire thingis based on an interview with one "high-level [Microsoft] manager who asked to remain anonymous." From this one source, we are able to calculate with confidence that 16,000 employees at Microsoft's Redmond campus own iPods... taking an offhand remark from an unknown source (who may or may not have a hidden agenda and who may or may not know what he's talking about) and extrapolating it to the entire campus is just silly...
One thing they teach you in Journalism 101 is that when you have a single anonymous source, you don't have a story. That's still true."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
"Microsoft bought a small amount of non-voting stock in Apple some time ago as part of a deal that kept IE and Office on the Mac platform.
Microsoft has long since sold those shares, at a fair profit I might add."
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. It meant nothing to him at the time because he was a scorned man, having been fired by the company he started several years earlier. Once NeXT was bought up and he was brought on as a 'consultant', he was once again in a position to care about Apple's goings-on and layed it on the line with Bill that Microsoft was going to be sued and even at their weakest, Apple had several billion in the bank (and to this day, in a much more liquid form than Microsoft).
As such, it was deemed that Microsoft would save face by 'investing' almost a billion in nonvoting stock that should have by all means been worthless after a few years with Apple's then track record, but at the same time, no one expected SJ to make a return as he had (most expected at the time, he'd transition NeXT to Apple and go to the next little 'big thing' he had planned). This also helped in the rublings of the Antitrust suit in Microsoft's advantage.
Microsoft was never supposed to make any money, but it nearly doubled their investment by the time they cashed out.
I got this info from one of the higher ups at Apple at a conference about the time of the investment...but as I'm posting as an AC, you should take this with a grain of salt.
Because all my music is on my portable. I am not permitted to have my music collection on my work system. A DVD would work, but I would still need 4 of them, and I'm too lazy to switch. I have my iPod on me anyway, I just get here and drop it into the dock. Plus, I don't lose my music when I reboot with a newly-built kernel. :-)
I work for a small group in Sony. At least half the group has iPods. I'm the only non-iPod user that I know of. I have an iRiver.
This is pretty sad as unlike Microsoft, we actually MAKE a player and get a substantial employee discount.
(Posted anonymously for obvious reasons.)
And this may come as a surprise to you, but some people there even like to play sports and stay in shape! Not everyone there is a stereotypical
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
Tell the guys as sony to open-source ATRAC & ATRAC3. Then maybe they'll get somebody else to use it.
Or do people over there view the ATRAC* stuff as the holy grail?
You know what's really funny about that idea? I mean, apart from the fact that it presumes a bunch of people in a room are somehow smarter than any of them individually.
...the iPod.
What's really funny about that idea is that if it were to be carried out perfectly, if it were to work perfectly, the end result would be
Is it possible that somebody, someday, might come up with a better music player? Sure, anything's possible. But the iPod is so good, so far ahead of anything else, that for most of us it kind of defines what a good music player should be. It sets the bar, and everything else is just copying.
So, uh, speaking as a Microsoft employee who does own an iPod and does use different headphones... when I got my iPod Mini (back when they were downright impossible to acquire), coworkers were always stopping by saying "Oh, you got one of those, they're so cool" and asking to try it out and stuff. I started using different headphones because the ones they came with, while nice, didn't do a very good job blocking out external sound. I've never gotten crap for using one.
I don't know where you people get the idea that everyone here drinks the Kool-Aid. We make Office for Mac, remember? People talk about their Macs at home all the time, make fun of MSN Search for sucking, listen to music on their iPods, run FireFox, and play Nintendo / Sony video games. It's not a cult
As for the guy that was using his iPod in the cafeteria, what the hell? It's lunch. Go with some friends. Talk. Socialize. Maybe people were cutting in front of him because he looks like a freakin' dork listening to music while buying food.
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.
Hah! Windows doesn't even seamlessly integrate with itself, much less external products. Microsoft wouldn't know seamless integration if it hit them over the head while crying out, "Hello! I am seamless integration!"
Of course, they can pretend, which convinces most people.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Coke employees who drink Pepsi get fired.
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.
Coke's employee base is very nearly fanatical in their loyalty to their product, and use of "the blue" is not accepted. I worked in a building *owned* by Coke, and we were not even allowed to have a Pepsi machine on our floor.
Rudeboy, you are my hero. I put that sig on a few days ago when the grammer nazis were driving me nuts. I thought it was simple, yet nobody grasps it. Do I need to reword it? I am sick of people worrying more about spelling than content. I do not have perfect spelling, and I make mistakes. I post here searching for someone to discuss/debate with, yet all I run into is idiots. Should I mention that I have a teaching degree (that always draws out the grammar psychos)?
Unlike you, Microsoft knows the full power of Group Policies, and how the entire network can be configured to deny installation of external devices. Resorting to imperfect physical security would only annoy employees while failing to protect against cursory concealment techniques.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
If they won't do that, then shut up and let the employees use what they want. And maybe try to actually innovate and create a product with an experience that will draw them back.
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
They don't invent the product, but they do a lot of innovation when it comes to how to apply said product.
As a Coke employee, if I brought a pepsi product to work (say as part of my brown bag lunch), it's looked down on pretty harshly. It's almost to the point of being grounds for termination. It's not just a can of pepsi soda, but any of Pepsi's brands (chips, snacks, fruit juices etc...).
MSFT doesn't fire people for wearing iPODs...
How many iPods do you figure Apple gives to it's administrative assistants?
I would be shocked if the answer is smaller than the number of administrative assistants with satisfactory performance. It's cheaper than giving a cash bonus for the price of iPod and you get free viral marketing both to visitors and to general population of Bay Area.
I didn't have a huge amount of experience working for large soft drinks manufacturers, but I have worked for Mars, and they offer their staff give-away discounts on a great many of their confectionary, food an pet-food products. I would imagine that Coca-Cola would - at the very least - offer their staff a substantial discount. We all know that MS offer their staff a pretty hefty discount on their software, it's not exactly unusual.
That was classic intercourse!
I think I'm obligated by fate to respond to your post. See I work at Coke and my last job was at Microsoft :D
It is definately a career limiting move to use a Pepsi product at Coke as it should be. Everyone knows better so it's not an issue. It's a very cutthroat rivalry and just like you won't find an Eagles player wearing a Patriots jersey, you won't find a Coke employee holding a can of Pepsi.
As for iPods at Microsoft.. I call bullshit on the whole article. MS doesn't give a crap if people use iPods. The guys there are the most technology saavy group you'll find anywhere. The iPod has a natural appeal to them. Employee happiness is a huge priority for MS and it helps them retain great talent. They won't jeopardize it over something silly like that.
So Shenanigans on that article!
Henry Ford didn't invent the production line. He had toured meatpacking plants in Chicago where the processes were already nascent and applied the techniques to automobile manufacturing.
Same way, I might add, Apple saw the nascent flash/hard drive MP3 player market and improved on it to make something truly worth calling "innovation."
> in their haste to hype a "Microsoft buys Apple" story, the press
> often ignores three important facts
No kidding. That was some of the worst tech reporting I had seen at the time.
They also ignored that as part of the deal, Apple dropped their lawsuit against Microsoft for stealing QuickTime software code, Microsoft agreed to develop Office for the Mac for five years, and Apple agreed to not develop any new text-to-speech capabilities for the Mac (this one wasn't allowed to leak for a while).
I don't know how this information was kept secret -- both companies are publically owned (and I own shares of both, so I get their annual reports), so they should have had to disclose it.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Yes but maybe Microsoft understands that one of the tools to competion is understanding why your opponents are ahead.
This is a joke, right? In Microsoft's entire history, their responses to a competitive threat are:
1. Buy 'em out.
2. Stomp 'em out.
There's nothing in there about "understanding"; all problems are nails, and they've got a sledgehammer.
What's really pissing off MS right now is that none of these tactics will work w/r/t Apple and the iPod.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
A microsoft recruiter came by my school a couple days ago showing off some new digital media player toy that that microsoft came up with. When students started comparing it to the iPod, he admitted that we should probably just get Ipods if we didnt' care about pictures or music.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
Any moron can invent an MP3 player. Just look at all the cheapjack no-name players from Asia.
It takes an Apple to invent a better MP3 player -- one that's so easy to use, all you have to do is plug it into your computer and it essentially does everything else.
That is why the iPod is a raging success.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
FWIW, if your Archos ever bites the dust (God forbid - it is a nice player), consider checking out the Xclef 500 - I'm getting one instead of an iPod because it's just a portable hard drive that doesn't use any drivers, and has a really good battery life without being $100 to replace like an iPod.
http://www.digmind.com/store/index_500.html
Don't mean to sound like a marketing droid, but it looks nice.
GM encourages their employees to ask for non-GM cars when renting so as to check out the competition. You steal ideas where you can find them.
One part of the article mentions Bellingham, WA:
"iPod shipments to Apple's nearby store in Bellingham."
But another part mentions the Bell Square mall:
"the gal at the Bellevue Square Apple Store"
If you know your Washington geography, you know that the Bell Square mall is in Bellvue, right next to Redmond. However, Bellingham is 2 hours to the north, near the Canadian border.
At first I could not figure out why all the Softies were driving all the way up to Bellingham to get their iPods, but this looks like a mistake in the article itself. This does not mean that the whole article is wrong, but just this part.
My roommate interned with Pfizer and they sold (and likely still sell) their products to their employees for a very small fraction of retail. Granted, it was all gums, mints and off the shelf medications (no prescriptions, sorry). I remember one day he came home witha shopping back full of packs of gum, cough drops, allergy and pain meds, mints, candies and the like and the whole bag cost him about $5.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Coke and Pepsi compete. Microsoft and Apple don't really compete. Microsoft makes software, Apple makes hardware. True, the PC is viewed as MS domain, but MS doesn't actually manufacture the hardware. On this specific topic, MS doesn't have a product to compete with the Ipod. Sure, .wma is the format that MS would like to see adopted as the standard format for media content, but they aren't actually selling content in that format.
MS even makes software for Apple computers. This would be akin to Coke making drink holders for Pepsi products if the analogy held true.
When I worked at MS, I used to get a kick out of wearing an imac shirt I got from an apple vendor a couple of years ago. Most people wouldn't give it second notice, but every now and then, a clueless drone would make a comment. Now if I showed up with wearing a 'Linux Roxorz MS Boxorz!' shirt, I'm sure that would raise a few eyebrows....
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
How many iPods do you figure Apple gives to it's administrative assistants?
Actually, Apple supposedly is going to give an iPod Shuffle to every single employee. Apple Store employees get them first -- good advertising.
But the linux community is used to writing it's own software. Write your own iPod client for Linux. If all you are wanting to do is transfer MP3s, it's not that hard.
Or use your old Archaos Jukebox or buy another. No one really cares what you do.
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.
This is really the most brilliant thing Apple did, and it's obviously a strategy they had been working on for years as iTunes predated the iPod by quite a long time. The one-two combination of the leading playback hardware and the leading music store have raised a tremendous barrier to entry across the entire digital music market. No other music store stands a chance when their songs can't play on the most popular hardware, and other hardware is at a huge disadvantage when they can't play existing collections of ITMS music and can't be used to buy from the ITMS in the future (don't forget that you don't need to have an iPod to start buying from the music store). It's going to take simultaneous revolutions on the order of the original iPod and iTunes combined to break this kind of lock, and it's unlikely that will happen anytime soon.
- Coke's employee base is very nearly fanatical in their loyalty to their product
It's not just Coke/Pepsi. The husband of a lady I work with is employed by DPSUBG (Dr. Pepper, Seven-up Bottling group). One of their key products is Royal Crown cola (RC).When RC big-wigs are in town for a visit, the local account reps get a detailed agenda built, including all dining stops while said big-wig is in town.
The local reps then work with the restaruants to make sure that RC and only RC is served in the presence of said Royal Crown big-wig.
There is just about no place I know of in town that serves RC products. So this is a highly choreographed ritual they go through about twice a year. They even coach the hostesses and wait staff to offer an "RC" cola, not just a "soda" or even worse a "Coke".
> Hmm. I'd wondered why OS X still includes the same speech
> synthesis engine as Mac OS 8. Do you know if there was a
> time limitation on this agreement? It sounds really bad, and
> Apple would do well to either drop it or replace it with
> something a bit less dated (you can barely understand what
> it's saying).
I think you nailed this on the head; apparently that's why the speech capabilities haven't been improved since 8.
I read the time limit was five years, which is why Apple is introducing the new spoken word interface for Tiger (due later this year).
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
At the end of the day Apple would act just like MS if it was in their position (and I'm not saying you would necessarily prefer Apple to be giving the 'DRM crap'). But all companies will be evil. Just the way of things.
One documentary went so far as to compare corporations to psychopaths.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
" Microsoft needs pretend competition. Rather than let the "alternative types" go off the the uncontrollable Linux, Bill Gates can contain them in the Apple world."
It's true. It's like when I used to play Civilisation a lot, I used to play it with the goal of making the highest population (number of citizens) I could possibly make, which basically meant wiping out all the other nations and planting cities on every possible square of land.
But here's the thing, if you wiped out all your competitors completely then it was game over, much like it would be for Microsoft and their tenuous anti-trust situation. So what I would do would be to leave one enemy city alive (usually on a tiny single square sized island and stick a few battleships next to it to keep it totally isolated. That way you can keep playing the game and build up your massive mono-culture and the competition doesn't bother you much but is just enough to stop the game from continuing.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Home machines:
XP home OEM: $65 (average Internet price, and you know HP/Dell/GW2k get a serious break on it)
MS Works, or similar, software for each home machine: $10 (assuming the OEM even buys the MS offering rather than a cheaper one.)
Total revenue per Windows user: $75
"Pro" machines:
XP pro OEM: $100 (same disclaimer applies for real OEM pricing).
Office OEM: $218
(this is the SBE, the cheapest that has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and the extraneous Publisher. Basic, which excludes PowerPoint and Pub, can be had for $100 less.)
Total revenue per Windows user: $318
Mac users that buy MSO, or MSO+VPC:
Office for Mac OS X: $399
Virtual PC with Win2k: $249
(2k is more usable on emulation than $30-cheaper XP Home)
Total revenue per Mac user: $400 with MSO; $650 with VPC
Well, you be the judge. It depends on piracy and on MSO's popularity on Mac OS X.