Who in their right mind would use this for any presentation that included anything remotely important? I think concerns about confidentiality will make this a hard sell to most corporations - those are the majority of the people who use PowerPoint.
Sorry, PHBs? Pin-headed...
Adobe is not going to "nip this ting in the bud" no matter what they do. MSFT rarely gives up. They'll keep trying and trying and trying.Ignoring them now will slow their growth. Talking about them doesn't.
Ummmm....how about Mac Office...the single most successful Mac application ever? In many ways it is better than Office for Windows.
But really that's beside the point. Adobe is smart enough to know that for WPF/e/Silverlight to be successful that it MUST be good on platforms other than Windows or nobody will use it. I mean, the whole poing of what they're trying to do is provide an alternative to Flash video (short-term) and Flash "apps" (medium-term). The only way they can do that is to be cross-platform.
Re:5 were purchased by my household
on
100 Million iPods
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· Score: 1
No kidding! Next year: sexy underwear!
Note that they're still using Windows Mobile too
on
Palm to go Linux
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· Score: 1
Their Windows Mobile devices are selling well and they'll continue to offer them.
Re:5 were purchased by my household
on
100 Million iPods
·
· Score: 1
There was a typo in my heading. We've bought four, not five. You're right. It's not particularly rational to buy four iPod's and not use them. Nor is it rational for humanity to buy 100 million iPod's. My situation is not quite as dumb as it sounds:
1. I bought the original big iPod when they first came out. I used it here and there and then it died on me.
2. Meanwhile, my wife said she wanted one so I bought her one for Christmas. Then she didn't end up using it.
3. Then we I got one to replace my 40GB model that died because I wanted to use it to store bird songs (check out www.birdjam.com). It turned out to be sort of cool but not something I used.
4. Then I forgot about the iPod I bought for my wife which was buried away in a drawer and got her a nono for Christmas last year. It is still sitting in a drawer.
I'd disagree with your point that my situation is atypical. I talk to a lot of people who bought iPod's because they look cool, work nicely and they're gadget geeks. But, like Walkamn, people tire of fads like this and many end up gathering dust somewhere.
5 were purchased by my household
on
100 Million iPods
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
1, an original 40 GB model, died an early death. Then I bought a mini which I use once every three months in my car. I bought my wife a mini for Christmas two years ago and she never used it - not once. Then I bought her a Nano and she used it 2-3 times. Neither of us have ever bought any music through iTunes. All of my music was ripped from my CD collection or purchased from more reasonably priced online stores (with better music selections). iPod's are cool...for about give minutes. Then I want to go back to listening to NPR or actually talking to other people.
Interesting perspective. Hadn't thought of it that way. While I suppose there is some truth to what you say, I'm guessing that the ad revenue that the free mail sites generate at least offsets the costs and maybe generates some profit.
He cites GMAIL as the moment when Google became more scary than Microsoft. If anything GMAIL is yet more evidence that Google's efforts outside of Search have largely failed...at least in comparsion to the standard they set with Search. I tried to find latest marketshare numbers for GMAIL using Google but couldn't find anything more recent than May 2006:). But I don't think they've changed much. In May 2006 GMAIL had less than 3% marketshare...way way way below Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Google's only real success outside of Search is mapping and there they trail MSFT in terms of innnovation. If you don't belive me, try local.live.com and see their 45 degree photo shots and navigation. It's better.
The ultimate irony? Google is following in Microsoft's footsteps in the most fundamental way: they're mostly innovating in business model. Microsoft was smart/lucky enough to realize that software was where the money was, not hardware. They realized that there were huge economies in having an operating system that ran across lots of different hardware platforms. Google's biggest innovation is that they realized they could build a business model around advertising.
Those Europeans really have it down! If you can't compete in a modern economy then REGULATE! It's brilliant. Why pay for something when you can make it free! Nest up, iTunes! After that? Who knows.
For those of you who might think I'm some sort of right-wing idiot, anti-government, anti-regulation of any type...I'm not. I just donated $500 each to Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. I'm a member of Common Cause. But that doesn't mean that I think the EU has the slightest fucking clue about how the software industry works. They should keep the fuck out.
These polls are always worth a laugh or two. Let's do some math. Last month Microsoft announced that they had sold about 20 million licenses of Windows Vista in the last month. Here's one press report: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130395/article.h tml. I'm sure somebody will say they're lying...well, if they are they'll get sued by shareholders and Microsoft is many things but they have never been accused of funging their financials.
Now clearly that 20 million includes businesses and home users and is worldwide, not US only. So let's break down the US numbers a bit. According to IDC the US PC installed base of home PC's is about 90 million. So of 12% of those people upgraded to Windows Vista then that's about 10 million copies in a year. What's the average cost/copy of Windows Vista? I don't really know but I'd guess it's at least $50 (in the US). If that's the case then Microsoft will generate about $500 million in revenue for Windows Vista in the US this year. Not bad. Let's see...what other software companies generate that much revenue in total in a year? I can think of a few...Adobe, Intuit, a few others.
There's another way to look at this. Windows Vista sales pretty much follow PC sales. In this article Gartner notes that there will be "No Vista Pop" (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co mmand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9013801&intsrc=ar ticle_more_bot). But they also say that there will be about 225 million PC's sold worldwide this year. Assume that only 75% of those include Windows Vista. That's probably a very low-ball estimate. That means Microsoft will sell about 168 million copies of Windows Vista this year. Poor Microsoft. That'll probably only generate about $15 billion in revenue for the year.
Google is the varacious acquisition machine that Microsoft never was. It's going to be very interesting to see how they cope with this growth. My prediction: in a year or so Google is floundering in terms of managemenet because they're trying to absorb so many different entities with different cultures and losing their focus on Search.
I read 3-4 of the great wisdom of the unwashed masses on/. and it's quite clear that Microsoft is doomed. Doomed, I say! A piddling 20 million copies of an operating system in a month! Give me a break! Why, I bet Firfox alone had that many downloads. Well, maybe last year but still!. Ok, maybe Firefox is free...but still! It's only 20 million!
30 million using Linux? Perhaps if you include servers... End users? Not even close. Even more ironic? Only two of them look like that woman. The rest look like this: http://www.lapierrefamily.org/images/geek.jpg/.
Yes but that doesn't mean MacOS is well documented. So you can look at sourcecode? Wow. That's not the issue. The issue is providing documentation that explains how to build applications that interop with Windows.
I'm beginning to think the leaders of the EU are a bunch of boobs too. They are obviously clueless about software and what they're asking Microsoft to do. Microsoft has done a better job of documenting Windows interop than any other operating system - and probably software in general - in the world. They have a couple of hundred people working full time on the documentation that the regulators want. Imagine if they made the same requset of MacOS? Apple would takee 10 years to document all the interop details of MacOS.
Folks, the whole intent of "InfoCards" is to provide an easy way for users to authenticate regardless of platform/OS. There is nothing proprietary about InfoCards."CardSpace" is a feature of Windows that will help Windows users manage their "InfoCards." MSFT hopes and expects that a variety of organizations (commercial, govt, non-profits etc.) will issue and accept InfoCards and that software developers will build tools/UI's/apps for managing InfoCards on a variety of platforms. The whole premise of InfoCards is to make it easier for users to manage their credentials in a secure way so they don't end up using low-security passwords (mymomsbirthday). It's fairly cool the way it works. The user doesn't actually send any personally identifiable information across teh wire. Here's an example of how it might work:
1. User goes to www.amazon.com.
2. User creates an Amazon account, creating a user name and a password.
3. Amazon asks user if they'd like to get an "InfoCard" which would make it easy and more securely log-on to Amazon next time.
4. User says yes.
5. Amazon sends (via Web standards, nothing proprietary to MSFT or Windows) the user an encrypted token. The token might come with an Amazon-branded digital "card" that visually represents the Amazon account and token.
6. The next time the user goes to Amazon he/she can log-on to Amazon using the InfoCard instead of user name and password. When this happens they send the token issued to them by Amazon where Amazon checks to see if it matches their records.If it does they can access their Amazon account.
The advantage of this appraoch are several. Users no longer have to create/remember numerous passwords which is a big convenience. The Amazon's of the world like it because with encrypted tokens it is much harder to password guess to access accounts. No more simple/easy to guess passwords. Ultimately this reduces online fraud and saves us all money.
No system is 100% secure but this would help. My understanding is that OpenID and others might create systems that interoperate with/support "InfoCards" which would be a great thing.
Are you for real? Microsoft, like many companies,is a global company. They operate in dozens if not hundreds of coutnries. In some case they are incorporated in those countries as well as in the US. While they may be a company founded in the US, more than 1/2 of their business/revenue/profit comes from outside of the US. Sure, they're obligated to be good corporate citizens in every country they operate in. Suggesting that a country be "disbanded" because they're trying to ensure that they have the highest quality workers is rather bizarre. By the way, "disbanding" a company sounds downright un-American. Land of the free and all?
I love it! Funny story. I was in London two weeks ago for business and was walking down the street with a couple of Brits an American and an Indian (east). We were talking about funny "English" English words and for some reason "wanker" came up. I was familiar with the term:) as was the other American but my Indian friend, a very prim woman, didn't. We had to find the most polite way to explain the meaning of the word.
I'm sorry but you can criticize Microsoft for a lot of things but compatibility isn't one of them. If anything their obsessiveness with backwards compat is what has caused them so many problems. It's one of the downsides of being the dominant provider of operating systems - everyone has software and hardware for your platform. Now they have a new OS which has a significantly improved driver model - but still supports huge numbers of "legacy" devices - and this guy is abusing them because his silly porn-cam doesn't work?
The commentator on the Inquirer Web site is obviously a total boob (trying to use a British-sounding insult). He's cheering theft which in its own right is sleazy. Worse, he seems to be happy that the legitimate and paying Windows Vista customers are going to be at best confused and worst case screwed because some idiot stole their key. I totally don't understand the bizarre perception that software thievs are somehow Robin-hood-like characters. They're the 21st century equivalent of pick-pockets.
Newsflash: Windows client OS's now account for about 30 pct of Microsoft's revenue. Office a bit more. Their server business (SQL, Exchange, BizTalk etc.) alone would be one of the largest software companies in the world. You're right that MSFT's success is still very much linked to Windows client but that has been changing for a long time and will continut to be less important.
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Who in their right mind would use this for any presentation that included anything remotely important? I think concerns about confidentiality will make this a hard sell to most corporations - those are the majority of the people who use PowerPoint.
Sorry, PHBs? Pin-headed... Adobe is not going to "nip this ting in the bud" no matter what they do. MSFT rarely gives up. They'll keep trying and trying and trying.Ignoring them now will slow their growth. Talking about them doesn't.
Ummmm....how about Mac Office...the single most successful Mac application ever? In many ways it is better than Office for Windows. But really that's beside the point. Adobe is smart enough to know that for WPF/e/Silverlight to be successful that it MUST be good on platforms other than Windows or nobody will use it. I mean, the whole poing of what they're trying to do is provide an alternative to Flash video (short-term) and Flash "apps" (medium-term). The only way they can do that is to be cross-platform.
I think it's odd that Adobe is responding they way they are to Microsoft's announcements. Wouldn't the leader in the category be better off keeping quiet, ignoring the guy who is barely in the game if at all? I blogged on this more at http://notaprguy.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/my-flash -is-bigger-than-your-silverlight-or-my-acronym-is- better-than-your-acronym/
No kidding! Next year: sexy underwear!
Their Windows Mobile devices are selling well and they'll continue to offer them.
There was a typo in my heading. We've bought four, not five. You're right. It's not particularly rational to buy four iPod's and not use them. Nor is it rational for humanity to buy 100 million iPod's. My situation is not quite as dumb as it sounds: 1. I bought the original big iPod when they first came out. I used it here and there and then it died on me. 2. Meanwhile, my wife said she wanted one so I bought her one for Christmas. Then she didn't end up using it. 3. Then we I got one to replace my 40GB model that died because I wanted to use it to store bird songs (check out www.birdjam.com). It turned out to be sort of cool but not something I used. 4. Then I forgot about the iPod I bought for my wife which was buried away in a drawer and got her a nono for Christmas last year. It is still sitting in a drawer. I'd disagree with your point that my situation is atypical. I talk to a lot of people who bought iPod's because they look cool, work nicely and they're gadget geeks. But, like Walkamn, people tire of fads like this and many end up gathering dust somewhere.
1, an original 40 GB model, died an early death. Then I bought a mini which I use once every three months in my car. I bought my wife a mini for Christmas two years ago and she never used it - not once. Then I bought her a Nano and she used it 2-3 times. Neither of us have ever bought any music through iTunes. All of my music was ripped from my CD collection or purchased from more reasonably priced online stores (with better music selections). iPod's are cool...for about give minutes. Then I want to go back to listening to NPR or actually talking to other people.
Interesting perspective. Hadn't thought of it that way. While I suppose there is some truth to what you say, I'm guessing that the ad revenue that the free mail sites generate at least offsets the costs and maybe generates some profit.
He cites GMAIL as the moment when Google became more scary than Microsoft. If anything GMAIL is yet more evidence that Google's efforts outside of Search have largely failed...at least in comparsion to the standard they set with Search. I tried to find latest marketshare numbers for GMAIL using Google but couldn't find anything more recent than May 2006 :). But I don't think they've changed much. In May 2006 GMAIL had less than 3% marketshare...way way way below Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Google's only real success outside of Search is mapping and there they trail MSFT in terms of innnovation. If you don't belive me, try local.live.com and see their 45 degree photo shots and navigation. It's better.
The ultimate irony? Google is following in Microsoft's footsteps in the most fundamental way: they're mostly innovating in business model. Microsoft was smart/lucky enough to realize that software was where the money was, not hardware. They realized that there were huge economies in having an operating system that ran across lots of different hardware platforms. Google's biggest innovation is that they realized they could build a business model around advertising.
Those Europeans really have it down! If you can't compete in a modern economy then REGULATE! It's brilliant. Why pay for something when you can make it free! Nest up, iTunes! After that? Who knows. For those of you who might think I'm some sort of right-wing idiot, anti-government, anti-regulation of any type...I'm not. I just donated $500 each to Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. I'm a member of Common Cause. But that doesn't mean that I think the EU has the slightest fucking clue about how the software industry works. They should keep the fuck out.
These polls are always worth a laugh or two. Let's do some math. Last month Microsoft announced that they had sold about 20 million licenses of Windows Vista in the last month. Here's one press report: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130395/article.h tml. I'm sure somebody will say they're lying...well, if they are they'll get sued by shareholders and Microsoft is many things but they have never been accused of funging their financials.
Now clearly that 20 million includes businesses and home users and is worldwide, not US only. So let's break down the US numbers a bit. According to IDC the US PC installed base of home PC's is about 90 million. So of 12% of those people upgraded to Windows Vista then that's about 10 million copies in a year. What's the average cost/copy of Windows Vista? I don't really know but I'd guess it's at least $50 (in the US). If that's the case then Microsoft will generate about $500 million in revenue for Windows Vista in the US this year. Not bad. Let's see...what other software companies generate that much revenue in total in a year? I can think of a few...Adobe, Intuit, a few others.
There's another way to look at this. Windows Vista sales pretty much follow PC sales. In this article Gartner notes that there will be "No Vista Pop" (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?co mmand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9013801&intsrc=ar ticle_more_bot). But they also say that there will be about 225 million PC's sold worldwide this year. Assume that only 75% of those include Windows Vista. That's probably a very low-ball estimate. That means Microsoft will sell about 168 million copies of Windows Vista this year. Poor Microsoft. That'll probably only generate about $15 billion in revenue for the year.
Google is the varacious acquisition machine that Microsoft never was. It's going to be very interesting to see how they cope with this growth. My prediction: in a year or so Google is floundering in terms of managemenet because they're trying to absorb so many different entities with different cultures and losing their focus on Search.
I read 3-4 of the great wisdom of the unwashed masses on /. and it's quite clear that Microsoft is doomed. Doomed, I say! A piddling 20 million copies of an operating system in a month! Give me a break! Why, I bet Firfox alone had that many downloads. Well, maybe last year but still!. Ok, maybe Firefox is free...but still! It's only 20 million!
30 million using Linux? Perhaps if you include servers... End users? Not even close. Even more ironic? Only two of them look like that woman. The rest look like this: http://www.lapierrefamily.org/images/geek.jpg/.
Yes but that doesn't mean MacOS is well documented. So you can look at sourcecode? Wow. That's not the issue. The issue is providing documentation that explains how to build applications that interop with Windows.
I'm beginning to think the leaders of the EU are a bunch of boobs too. They are obviously clueless about software and what they're asking Microsoft to do. Microsoft has done a better job of documenting Windows interop than any other operating system - and probably software in general - in the world. They have a couple of hundred people working full time on the documentation that the regulators want. Imagine if they made the same requset of MacOS? Apple would takee 10 years to document all the interop details of MacOS.
Silly comment alert - first one ever...really!
Thanks for the clarification.
Folks, the whole intent of "InfoCards" is to provide an easy way for users to authenticate regardless of platform/OS. There is nothing proprietary about InfoCards."CardSpace" is a feature of Windows that will help Windows users manage their "InfoCards." MSFT hopes and expects that a variety of organizations (commercial, govt, non-profits etc.) will issue and accept InfoCards and that software developers will build tools/UI's/apps for managing InfoCards on a variety of platforms. The whole premise of InfoCards is to make it easier for users to manage their credentials in a secure way so they don't end up using low-security passwords (mymomsbirthday). It's fairly cool the way it works. The user doesn't actually send any personally identifiable information across teh wire. Here's an example of how it might work: 1. User goes to www.amazon.com. 2. User creates an Amazon account, creating a user name and a password. 3. Amazon asks user if they'd like to get an "InfoCard" which would make it easy and more securely log-on to Amazon next time. 4. User says yes. 5. Amazon sends (via Web standards, nothing proprietary to MSFT or Windows) the user an encrypted token. The token might come with an Amazon-branded digital "card" that visually represents the Amazon account and token. 6. The next time the user goes to Amazon he/she can log-on to Amazon using the InfoCard instead of user name and password. When this happens they send the token issued to them by Amazon where Amazon checks to see if it matches their records.If it does they can access their Amazon account. The advantage of this appraoch are several. Users no longer have to create/remember numerous passwords which is a big convenience. The Amazon's of the world like it because with encrypted tokens it is much harder to password guess to access accounts. No more simple/easy to guess passwords. Ultimately this reduces online fraud and saves us all money. No system is 100% secure but this would help. My understanding is that OpenID and others might create systems that interoperate with/support "InfoCards" which would be a great thing.
Are you for real? Microsoft, like many companies,is a global company. They operate in dozens if not hundreds of coutnries. In some case they are incorporated in those countries as well as in the US. While they may be a company founded in the US, more than 1/2 of their business/revenue/profit comes from outside of the US. Sure, they're obligated to be good corporate citizens in every country they operate in. Suggesting that a country be "disbanded" because they're trying to ensure that they have the highest quality workers is rather bizarre. By the way, "disbanding" a company sounds downright un-American. Land of the free and all?
I love it! Funny story. I was in London two weeks ago for business and was walking down the street with a couple of Brits an American and an Indian (east). We were talking about funny "English" English words and for some reason "wanker" came up. I was familiar with the term :) as was the other American but my Indian friend, a very prim woman, didn't. We had to find the most polite way to explain the meaning of the word.
I'm sorry but you can criticize Microsoft for a lot of things but compatibility isn't one of them. If anything their obsessiveness with backwards compat is what has caused them so many problems. It's one of the downsides of being the dominant provider of operating systems - everyone has software and hardware for your platform. Now they have a new OS which has a significantly improved driver model - but still supports huge numbers of "legacy" devices - and this guy is abusing them because his silly porn-cam doesn't work?
The commentator on the Inquirer Web site is obviously a total boob (trying to use a British-sounding insult). He's cheering theft which in its own right is sleazy. Worse, he seems to be happy that the legitimate and paying Windows Vista customers are going to be at best confused and worst case screwed because some idiot stole their key. I totally don't understand the bizarre perception that software thievs are somehow Robin-hood-like characters. They're the 21st century equivalent of pick-pockets.
Newsflash: Windows client OS's now account for about 30 pct of Microsoft's revenue. Office a bit more. Their server business (SQL, Exchange, BizTalk etc.) alone would be one of the largest software companies in the world. You're right that MSFT's success is still very much linked to Windows client but that has been changing for a long time and will continut to be less important.