Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's Sneak Attack On Apple: SkyDrive, Not Surface
New submitter curtwoodward writes "Microsoft won't become a hardware company — unless you count mice and keyboards, former Microsoftie Charlie Kindel argues — because that would mean competing with Apple on its terms. But Kindel says Microsoft may be embarking on a totally new business model by seeding its connected software services across all platforms. You saw more evidence this week with the release of SkyDrive for Android. 'For that to work, it can't just be Windows,' he says. 'As a matter of fact, to beat Apple, it has to work really well on Apple devices.'"
Frosty piss, good sirs. Frosty piss. Thanks! :)
They really don't think of the Xbox as hardware?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So what happens when it starts doing "too well" and gets banned from the AppStore for violating it's guidelines?
not sure I need that
Yes, please. Try fixing MS Office and Outlook for Mac before embarking on a SkyDrive project.
sudo make me a sandwich
That means finally shifting away from its legacy business of licensing operating systems, and instead sprinkling consumer and productivity apps across the new computing ecosystems
It's important to remember that Microsoft didn't start out as an OS vendor. But would you buy a MS app for your iDevice?
Finally, a constructive focus. Well done!
xbox is not hardware, its biologic product.
AKA shit
Microsoft sues for anti-trust.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Apple's new internal motto: Mac OS X isn't done until SkyDrive won't run.
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
They need to embrace non-windows platforms cause that's where the action is right now.
Once they've destroyed all semblance of competition, THEN they can tighten the noose and force everyone onto Windows.
So I take this as a threat by Microsoft to make something that "works really well"? How about getting the "works really well" part first, then maybe the "all devices" part.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Google beat them to the punch with Google Drive. Likewise with reports that after the Samsung spat Google and Apple are talking about sharing their IPs with each other, I dont think Apple has anything to fear with Redmond anymore.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
http://pecworld.zxq.net/Persian/Webpage/Training/MATLAB/List.html
Seeding their services on all platforms.. .. Diluting the market, driving competitors out of business, and finally closing said services on all non-microsoft platforms once the competition is gone. (Probably closing some of those platforms too)
Microsoft enters markets to dilute and destroy, not to compete.
http://pecworld.zxq.net/Persian/Webpage/Training/MATLAB/List.html
Microsoft sues for anti-trust.
After all, they have irony clad arguments to do that!
So, when Apple decides that the M$ distribution toy is no longer welcome on its devices, what then?
> by seeding its connected software services across all platforms
Cloud needs mist.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The fundamental problem is that if Microsoft "[moves] away from its licensed operating system business model", it is throwing away its primary competitive edge – the whole multi-billion-dollar Windows ecosystem – in favor of other markets where competition is fiercer, profit margins are lower, and (most importantly) Microsoft doesn't have a massive legacy advantage. Businesses pay billions of dollars collectively for licenses to Windows and Office because: (1) they need them to run legacy programs and read legacy documents; (2) all their employees already know how to use them; and (3) everyone *else* is using them, so they need to do the same thing for interoperability. Steve Ballmer doesn't seem to understand these basic facts, so he is undercutting the core business of Microsoft to chase after newer, sexier markets.
Of course, if you flip it around and look at how amazingly bad iTunes is on the PC, you'll notice how that statement is complete BS. In fact, anyone anywhere knows that Apple became popular by creating the fake image that if you buy an Apple device, you can show off and tell your friends you're better than them. Now that too many people have Apple products, that fell apart so they've resorted to lying about being better at graphics and video editing and suing their competition.
Back to the original article's point, all that they need to beat Apple's iphone and ipad is the keyboard. EVERYONE who types over 30WPM on a standard keyboard hates typing on ipads and iphones. They could put up a giant banner at Best Buy with the Microsoft Surface tablet on it and just put "It has a physical keyboard" and that's all that's necessary. Or they could really drive up the score by adding another banner under it that says: "Screw skydrive, Screw iCloud, this has a USB port." People do know how to use flash drives these days and my flash drive worked just fine last February 29th, unlike some clouds.
Windows couldn't make Windows Live Mesh run on their own platform. What makes you think they can make Windows SkyDrive work on someone else's?
I've been hearing for years that Microsoft is moving to a subscription model for all its software products. I'm still not buying that this is the heart of any strategy.
Perhaps I can see a complete subscription model working in the Enterprise segment, but the consumer segment? I don't see it. I don't doubt that MS plans on building out services that they hope to attract subscription revenue. They have XBox Live and it's working pretty well. After that, what else is there? They have Office 365 which is competitive but I'm sure it doesn't make up for the revenue lost on traditional Office licenses. Windows? Forget it. I don't see the average consumer getting on board with a subscription tied to the computer unless the computer is subsidized to a free price point. SkyDrive? That's another crowded market with Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc. Azure? Amazon, Google, Rackspace...I don't think there's any web service that MS can offer that would be a "sneak attack."
Nope, MS is a behemoth company. As such, it's doing many different things at the same time just like Google & Apple. It has web services like Google. It has hardware like Apple. And all of them are vying to be the center of everyone's computing ecosystem to the point that the barrier of exiting is nearly insurmountable. It's that simple.
MS wants to be on the Desktop, in the cloud, on your mobile device, in your living room, and on your tablet. The question is if they can pull all their disparate teams together to provide something that excels in what Apple & Google has already done.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
files on my iDisk if it had pictures like this on the drive.
http://www.comon.dk/galleri/Skydrive
Shanghai Shunky Machinery Co.,ltd is a famous manufacturer of crushing and screening equipments in China. We provide our customers complete crushing plant, including cone crusher, jaw crusher, impact crusher, VSI sand making machine, mobile crusher and vibrating screen. What we provide is not just the high value-added products, but also the first class service team and problems solution suggestions. Our crushers are widely used in the fundamental construction projects. The complete crushing plants are exported to Russia, Mongolia, middle Asia, Africa and other regions around the world.
http://www.sandmaker.biz
http://www.shunkycrusher.com
http://www.jaw-breaker.org
http://www.jawcrusher.hk
http://www.c-crusher.net
http://www.sandmakingplant.net
http://www.vibrating-screen.biz
http://www.mcrushingstation.com
http://www.cnstonecrusher.com
http://www.cnimpactcrusher.com
http://www.Vibrating-screen.cn
http://www.stoneproductionline.com
http://www.hydraulicconecrusher.net
Perhaps TFA has overlooked the other elephant in the room - Google
Microsoft's SkyDrive attack is not only aimed at Apple, but also Google as well
I have to agree that the move is sneaky, but then, business is business
Google better sits up and takes notice, and do something about this
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
'As a matter of fact, to beat Apple, it has to work really well on Apple devices.'" ?
Seems to me it has to be killer apps the do NOT work on apple at all.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
M$ gets enough patent royalties from Android.
So, why not increase it's popularity and get more monies without much effort.
That pennies can be used to fund WinMobile r&d and platform...
What is Apple's contribution to M$ ? Some snark comments on copying their designs ? After Win8 M$ wants to forget it all.
Ultimately cloud storage itself is a commodity. In fact, it's a commodity that loses a LOT of value if its a walled garden. Microsoft will have to compete on the value that sits on top of that storage. Just like Google and Apple have to compete on that plain. There are a bunch of aggregators coming on the scene that are proving this out. I work for one. It's called Otixo.com and it pulls together 21 different services including Skydrive, GoogleDrive, DropBox, etc and WebDAV and FTP into one big online harddrive and WebDAV share.
We are really careful not to step on the toes of these providers so we try to identify what their value is beyond storage and enhance it or at least stay out of the way. Ultimately, SkyDrive makes it easy to collaborate with the Office Suite and to eventually store XBox stuff. Microsoft's value prop is still Office, Sharepoint, MSSQL & it's Analysis Services, .NET and XBox. I think it's hard for them to break out of that even when there are contenders beating up on it daily. SkyDrive is a path to greater presence in the cloud which they sorely need but it's not a strategy in and of itself and it won't save them.
What Microsoft has needed for at least the last 10 years is to build bridges to Linux and Apple. They needed to make it as easy as possible for all boats to float. It's probably too late for that now....
Every rule has more than one consequence.
Fsck AAPL