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Microsoft Employees Love Their iPhones
portscan writes "There is an entertaining and telling article in the Wall Street Journal about iPhone use by Microsoft employees. Apparently, despite it being frowned upon by senior management, iPhone use is rampant among the Redmond rank and file. The head of Microsoft's mobile division tried to explain it away as employees wanting 'to better understand the competition,' although few believe this. Nowhere does the article mention attempts by the company to understand why the iPhone is more attractive to much of Microsoft's tech-savvy workforce than the company's own products."
I wonder how many Apple employees use Microsoft Office. Or Microsoft employees search with Google. Why are people so intent on declaring one product the winner that everybody should use? Did it benefit Microsoft to switch Hotmail to MS IIS before IIS was ready to handle a site of that scale? This isn't a failure for Microsoft's phone efforts as much as it is a victory against Microsoft's mono-culture mindset.
The Apple culture is about obsession. This goes from creation to use. Despite any flaws the iPhone it has, it feels likes someone actually thought how non-engineers would use it. This is an important factor IMHO, because even with the 'wow' factor, a device will only work if people can find it usable. Too many gadgets, IMHO, are designed by engineers and almost feel like the primary user was an engineer. To many people the "it just works" element is as important as any of the features that the device it may include.
There are other companies who have understood the people factor, but all to often it doesn't feel like it is running through the veins of the companies.
Looking at Microsoft, I feel that they are confused about what it means be user friendly. There are elements of the company who seem to get it, while there are other parts that thinks bells and whistles are what user friendly is about. For me being user friendly is something a little complex, it is that right balance of simplicity and richness of functionality. Hiding features or dumbing down an application is not going to magically solve the problem, if the humans factor is forgotten in the process.
The irony in all this is that Apple spends less on R&D than Microsoft, yet whether it is through focused R&D or some other factor I feel they seem to capture the magic combination better. Maybe there is something to be said of having a company run by a guy who is so obsessive that his passion captivates people, rather than alienating them - yes, I am insinuating that Balmer's passion at developer conferences is more an after thought than something that drives the company in a cohesive way.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Actually, you're the product they're selling to AT&T. Or didn't you get the memo?
It's one thing for them to provide a store/repository of known-good software. It's another to prevent you from going outside of that store if you choose to.
I have no problem with them offering the iTunes App store, and in fact think that the cut they take doesn't seem too high.
But what if I want a native app for Google Voice? What if I want Google Voice to essentially replace my Voicemail and SMS buttons with a Google version that lets me use SMS for free? What if I want to use Opera on my iPhone? They're developing an application, but it will most likely be rejected. What if I want to alter my home screen? (e.g. Winterboard) Apple won't let me run those applications, even though they've been developed.
And what of all the developers who won't bother to even write an application because they're dreading the possibility of being rejected and having all their work being useless?
I like the iPhone and I like the iTunes store. I just think we'd see even more apps and better apps if Apple didn't keep such an iron fist over distribution.
Maybe I don't follow this well enough to know, but I don't think Apple is doing an audit, much less line-by-line. Seems to me they just react after the fact. From what I understand they recently pulled some apps related to wifi for using undocumented APIs. If they pulled it after they fact they didn't audit the source in the first place, not even using some automated tool on the binary.
I don't have an iphone, just an ipod touch. But I don't get the impression they strictly control the app-store. They certainly impose their own restrictions, but I don't feel like it's for my benefit so I only get quality apps.
Completely agree. Nice and easy. Unless you:
* don't have an extra $100/yr to spend on a membership fee
* don't have a Mac
* want to write apps that do a better job than Apple's built-in apps
* want your apps to be able to run tasks in the background
* want your apps to be able to download, save and play back locally-stored media
* want to write apps that contain a plugin system or language interpreter
* want to write free (as in speech) software
But other than that, yeah, a hobby programmer's dream.
I contend that for your average ACPI non-expert (99.999% of the population), it seems to be the other way around. I don't care who's wrong, I just want to my laptop to fucking wake up when I open the lid, like it does in Mac OS X and Windows.
Yes, because they should have gone with the good US cell carrier. Man, that carrier does a great job. They haven't ever tried to hobble the phones that they offer, haven't tried to impede VoIP use on their data network, and haven't tried to keep users from tethering their laptop to their phones. You know, the US carrier that provides great coverage, fast data speeds, and good service at cheap prices without any restrictions on how you use their service...?
Which carrier is that, again?