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iPod Most Popular Music Player on Microsoft Campus

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the along-with-everywhere-else dept.

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."

42 of 1,017 comments (clear)

  1. Representative of Microsoft's "vision" by Gob+Blesh+It · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision" by eln · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

    2. Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision" by Geekenstein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision" by Leo+McGarry · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision" by HeghmoH · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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!
    5. Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision" by shut_up_man · · Score: 4, Funny

      This reminds me of an analogy that I read somewhere, perhaps from Robert X Cringely... it said there are three types of tech companies:

      1) The Commandos
      These guys are doing crazy new stuff in wacky situations, inventing and improvising and breaking new ground. They are happiest going where no-one has gone before, creating new products and whole new markets. If they aren't doing wild new stuff, they get bored and go somewhere else. In many ways, this is Apple.

      2) The Soldiers
      Soldiers go in once markets and products have been established by the commandos. They take these original ideas and solidify them, securing the area with polish and marketing glitz. In many ways, this is Microsoft.

      3) The Police
      Once the war is won, the Police maintain the status quo. They aren't interested in creating markets or inventing new products, they just want things to say the same and keep making cash for their organization. In many ways, this is Dell.

      Now I can see holes in these descriptions already, but I do get the feeling that Microsoft isn't in the insanely great new product business. It's risky, requires rare and volatile skills, and it doesn't end up making that much money in the long run. And that last point is the key, because Microsoft really isn't a tech company. They are a money company. They make tonnes and tonnes of money, and they don't care about the other stuff.

    6. Re:Representative of Microsoft's "vision" by eclectic4 · · Score: 4, Funny

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

      Yes, that beleaguered company should be going out of business any decade now, I can feel it...

      --

      "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
  2. Could it be by CDOS_CDOS+run · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can you imagine people using the most popular product of it's kind?? I bet many of them drive HONDAS too!!!! What will Bill do?? Micorsoft doesn't compete with Apples Ipod, why would anyone at Microsoft care?

  3. Best comment ever, from a M$ manager by dmuth · · Score: 4, Funny
    Straight from the article:
    But at the Windows Digital Media Group, which is charged with software for portable players and the WMA format, using an iPod is not a good career move.

    "In the media group they all smoke the company dope on that one," the manager said.


    So a Microsoft manager is comparing their own products to mind-altering substances? I won't dispute that!

  4. Re:What's the big deal? by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Informative

    Good god, this old chestnut again.

    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.

    Microsoft doesn't own any part of Apple at present.

  5. First Sign of Intelligent Life at Microsoft! by Zemplar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here you have it folks. Not everyone at Microsoft is hatching ill-conceived ideas; apparently it's only the Management.

  6. outside their firewall... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  7. Insight into the campus here... by kneecarrot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --

    I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.

    1. Re:Insight into the campus here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Microsoft is staffed entirely by cocks from what I can tell.

      No wonder their software is so full of holes.

    2. Re:Insight into the campus here... by Pendersempai · · Score: 4, Funny

      Holy cow. What an incisive summary of Microsoft's attitude, from the grandest corporate strategy all the way down to the microcosmic world of the individual employee.

    3. Re:Insight into the campus here... by mapmaker · · Score: 4, Funny
      My cube-mate owns an iPod.

      Are you saying that Microsoft employees have to share cubicles? You don't even get your own grey box to sit in?

  8. Re:Why iPod anyway? by dknight · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Amazing that corp security allows them by winkydink · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

  10. Re:headphones by gotgenes · · Score: 4, Funny

    Could be, or maybe they just don't want to get mugged. White iPod headphone do a great job of saying "I've got an expensive, easy to steal piece of electronics on me."

    Exactly! 'Cause I know I certainly keep hearing about these muggings that happen to all these people wearing iPods in upper-middle class neighborhoods, schools, universities, and especially large, patrolled software giant campuses.

    ...

    --
    It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.
  11. Re:This makes no sense... by slimak · · Score: 5, Funny

    At my work, we are not allowed to use company resources for personal use. This includes playing audio CDs on our computers, playing digital audio on our workstations, etc. So a portable player is a good solution. I should probably not be posting to slashdot either...hmmm.

  12. Re:Why iPod anyway? by pdbogen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)

  13. Re:Bill buys Apple? by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    That was classic intercourse!
  14. Re:Huh? by colanut · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
  15. as usual, take wired with a grain of salt by sootman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  16. Re:What's the big deal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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.

  17. MSN Music employee here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    And I highly doubt anyone on this team would cut in line at the cafe because someone had an iPod. Many of us have iPods and other players. We don't discriminate.

  18. Re:No by SunFan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why the hell would they use Macs?

    Everyone needs a role model.

    --
    -- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
  19. Re:I wonder... by SpottedKuh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    [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.

  20. Re:Bill buys Apple? by Golias · · Score: 5, Informative

    They did. They also paid an "undisclosed" ammount of money under the table to settle any remaining possibility of litigation over stolen technologies, and agreed on a plan which would allow MS to make future purchases of Apple's OS breakthroughs.

    However, in their haste to hype a "Microsoft buys Apple" story, the press often ignores three important facts about the purchase:

    1. They were non-voting shares.

    2. $150 Million is a very tiny percentage of Apple's publicly-traded shares.

    3. Microsoft has already sold them off, and made a huge profit doing so.

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  21. Re:I wonder... by Quasar1999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...

    --

    ---
    Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
  22. Re:I wonder... by soft_guy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I wonder if Microsoft employees use a disproportionately large number of MACs, or are more likely to be Firefox users.

    No, they are not disproportionately Macintosh users compared to the rest of the software industry (unless they work for MacBU). No, they do not hate their employer. No, they are not more likely to use Firefox compared to other software professionals at other companies.

    I base this on having worked there in the past.

    --
    Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
  23. Shhhhh... don't say it...! by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  24. Re:Bill buys Apple? by the+unbeliever · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  25. Its called Group Policies by lysium · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  26. Re:Bill buys Apple? by AstroDrabb · · Score: 5, Informative
    the only way it threatens MS is in the fact that it totally ignores their pointless, me-too, proprietary .wma crapmat.
    Huh? How is that not significant? Do you have any idea how much money MS spent on their WMA format and DRM? Tons of development cash and marketing cash went into their media format/platform? MS is hoping to get a bunch of royalties off of their media/DRM platform. If their platform is not widely adopted or replaced by AAC/FairPlay, it puts a big dent in potential revenues for MS from multimedia.

    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 personally hope Apple kicks their butt with the iPod and become the defacto digital music format. The latest home DVD player I bought can play MP3's and WMA files. Maybe the next-gen of DVD players will drop WMA and pick up AAC w/FairPlay.

    MS has a lot to lose if they don't control the major digital music format.

    --
    If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
    it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
  27. Not like Coke employees drinking pepsi. by HockeyPuck · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    1. Re:Not like Coke employees drinking pepsi. by richieb · · Score: 5, Funny
      As a Coke employee, if I brought a pepsi product to work ....

      It's much worse when a Pepsi employee tests positive for coke....

      --
      ...richie - It is a good day to code.
  28. Bill using iPod in Teen Beat by Sophrosyne · · Score: 5, Funny

    A little image I fixed up in photoshop :)
    Here

  29. Re:I wonder... by NaruVonWilkins · · Score: 5, Informative

    Excuse me - I'm in the media group, and the only people I know of on my team who have a portable media player have an iPod. In fact, some of the people who work on portable devices have an iPod. I can't speculate as to the reason, but I will point out that Apple is still ahead of the curve in releases. Sure, you can find a little Samsung device that has the same features as the Mini, but it's hard to find. Apple has their own store, and they're a much more recognized brand.

  30. Re:Bill buys Apple? by jsebrech · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  31. Re:Bill buys Apple? by ThousandStars · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

  32. Paul "I Love Microsoft FOR LIFE" Thurrott's reply by very · · Score: 4, Informative

    Paul "The Microsoft's Whipping Boy" Thurrott sez:
    "Hide The Truth, Here Comes Leander Kahney
    Leander Kahney is a reporter for Wired News. I've been doing a little research into him lately, after being hugely disappointed with his book "Cult of Mac," which is a collection of his Mac-oriented Wired articles. The problem? Kahney's not into facts. Instead, he likes to sprinkle his articles with anecdotal evidence and quotes from a single source, which he then sells as facts. No big deal, right? I mean, that's what most bloggers, tech new aggregator sites, and Mac news sites do too. Sure. But the problem is that Kahney writes for Wired. And thus, he is representing a respected source. That is, people believe this crap."

    Read more @: http://www.internet-nexus.com/

    Honestly, who in the right mind would want to believe Paul Thurrott?

    Has Paul Thurrott even realized that he is the Rush Limbaugh of Microsoft?