Results tagged “microsoft”
I wish I could remember where I read it, but a few years ago, during the peak of the HD DVD/Blu-ray kerfuffle, someone made the point that it was likely Microsoft was supporting the less popular HD DVD because ultimately it was betting on digital video delivery and a format war that left consumers wary of physical media would buy some more time until that sort of thing was a reality. Anyway, it's stuck with me and I was reminded of it today reading John Gruber's response to what apple should do with Apple TV, which includes a suggestion to add Blu-ray. Gruber replies:
That would be nice. (I bought a PS3 just for use as a Blu-ray player; I would have bought a new Blu-ray equipped Apple TV instead if there were one.) But: Apple seems to have made a decision to ignore Blu-ray across the board, at least for now. Apple's answer for HD movies is the iTunes Store.
Which is funny, because when I read the specs for the new widescreen iMac I was very surprised it didn't include one, but this makes sense. Not that it's a nice thing, mind you. This is likely one of those examples of Apple being evil and getting away with it, which is fine, I get how business works, but let's at least call a spade, a spade.
Tags: apple, microsoft, technology
I'm not entirely sure I believe this story, but apparently at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference this year COO Kevin Turner told a story of someone from Apple asking Microsoft to stop running their laptop hunter ads:
And you know why I know they're working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey -- this is a true story -- saying, "Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices." They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I've ever taken in business. (Applause.)
While I do generally really like Apple products, I take some joy in watching them wriggle a bit (especially because they're the darling of the marketing industry). Those laptop hunter ads hit Apple where it hurts, which is a whole lot better than the "I'm a PC" ones, which I'm guessing just helped raise awareness on Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads.
Tags: advertising, apple, marketing, microsoft
Over the last week I've heard of not one, but two atrocities that are a direct result of a piece of software called Microsoft Bob (named one of the 25 worst tech products by PC World).
First off, there's Clippy, the awful Microsoft Office assistant. As James Fallows pointed out in his blog, "Clippy suffered the dreaded 'optimization for first time use' problem. That is, the very first time you were composing a letter with Word, you might possibly be grateful for advice about how to use various letter-formatting features. The next billion times you typed 'Dear ...' and saw Clippy pop up, you wanted to scream."
Next, there's Comic Sans, easily the most misused font in the universe (I'm assuming if other planets have invented fonts they haven't had one spiral out of control as badly as this one). It turns out that the face was designed for Microsoft Bob after Vincent Connare, the typographer responsible, saw an animated dog speaking in Times New Roman and thought it was all wrong (he spoke at ROFLthing yesterday).
On top of all this, guess who was a project manager for a short time on Microsoft Bob? None other than Melinda French, who now goes by the last name Gates and helps run a multi-billion dollar charitable fund. Fun facts abound!
Tags: microsoft, technology
Marc Andreessen asked some of his friends who do this type of stuff to explain exactly how a Microsoft/Yahoo! hostile takeover attempt might play out. It's a great and detailed explanation of how things might play out over the next few months.
Tags: business, finance, microsoft, yahoo
This is madness. "360 users have spent over $250 million on DLC since the console's launch," "There's been just over three million Rock Band downloads on Xbox Live alone since the game launched" and "Microsoft reckon over 100,000 Halo 3 films are uploaded every day, which they say is 30% more than are uploaded onto YouTube." That's crazy.
Tags: business, microsoft, videogames
Yesterday as I was staring at the $44.6 billion Microsoft has offered for Yahoo! I got to thinking, "what else could you buy for that?" Instead of doing a whole bunch of math on the spot, I decided to tell Joe (of Holy Crap! Facts) and we built a site to answer the question. How Much Does it Buy? is a currency converter for the rest of us, telling you how much that giant sum will buy you in A380s (146 instead of Yahoo!), boob jobs (6,371,428 of the silicone variety), cows (47,130,930 1,000 pounders), elephants (2,260,975 without food), gold, iPhones, kidneys on the black market, pork bellies, stars (from the Internation Star Registry), ThighMasters and unleaded gas.
It was really just for fun, but I thought it was worth sharing. I actually am pulling commodity prices dynamically as well, which was kind of a fun problem to figure out.
Tags: fun, microsoft, projects, yahoo
For those of you following at home, Microsoft offers up $44 billion for Yahoo!, Google asks "Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?" Microsoft responds, "The combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! will create a more competitive marketplace by establishing a compelling number two competitor for Internet search and online advertising. The alternative scenarios only lead to less competition on the Internet." And Eric Schmidt calls Jerry Yang to see if he can help. All the while no one can talk about anything else on the web, the stock is at $29.37 (versus the $31-per-share bid) and the $44.6 billion bid would place Yahoo! at number 91 on world GDP, directly ahead of Tanzania, Lebanon and Latvia, as well as 136 other countries.
Tags: business, google, microsoft, yahoo
"The Borg-Yahoo merger won't work. Here's why. It's like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they'll run faster." From a very smart piece on the Microsoft-Yahoo merger by Fake Steve Jobs.
Tags: business, microsoft, yahoo
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