Someone Notify Next of Kin: the Social is Dead

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Jun 302010
 

Microsoft sure is getting good at killing products. Last month it was the non-product Courier, which got some significant starring roles in animations that were leaked to the tech press around the time of the iPad’s launch.

This month Redmond is putting its recently-released Kin phones out to pasture – less than 2 months after a marketing blitz of a release that featured impeccably-dressed angsty tweens and continued a Microsoft tradition of top-notch advertising. The company says it will integrate the Kin group, led by Sidekick data-killer Roz Ho, with the Windows Phone Series 7 Series Phone Thingy team.

It’s refreshing to see Microsoft being able to pull the plug not just on products they had no intention of releasing anyway, but on things that actually ship. This level of discipline and self-awareness bodes well for them, even if the 48 day flameout of a major product line is – how can one put this gently – a fucking abomination? If realizing no one wants your consumer electronics offerings is the prerequisite for getting axed, one wonders if Microsoft will even have a Entertainment and Devices division in the near term.

It’s Cherry Picking Season in Redmond

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Jun 282010
 

Are you one of those people who pick apart the glaring inconsistencies in political ads and hour-long network dramas? No? Then you’re probably stupid. Pop the blue pill, click ‘back’ on your browser and go back to your daytime TV.

I would say that Microsoft is the master of cherry-picked factual support for advertising, but “mastery” would imply that they do it well. I guess “most egregiously bad abuser” is more the term I’m looking for.

Last week, Microsoft got a little testy about constantly getting kicked around by everyone in the tech media for being the visionless re-hasher of decade-old technology they are. So did they make some earth-shattering announcement that would change the face of computing as we know it? Of course not. They sent out a reminder about how much money they make. In classic Redmond form, this handpicked collection of numbers by Frank X. Shaw, Corporate VP of Corporate Communications (Redundancy Division) is missing a little bit of context. Let’s see if we can add some, shall we?

150,000,000
Number of Windows 7 licenses sold, making Windows 7 by far the fastest growing operating system in history.

Fastest growing? By growth, you’re saying that every new license sold represents a new user. That’s not the case.

Actually interesting questions that won’t be answered: How many of these are actually new users and not people who took Vista off because it sucked so hard? And how many of these licenses are not pre-installed on computers. You know – licenses with an actual margin. I’d bet money it’s less than 10% of those 150 million.

7.1 million - Projected iPad sales for 2010.

58 million - Projected netbook sales in 2010

355 million – Projected PC sales in 2010

So you’re going to sell almost three times as many Windows 7 licenses in 2010 as you did in 2009? Fascinating optimism. Or absolute horseshit – one of the two.

Actually interesting questions that won’t be answered: How many PCs and netbooks end up getting sold in 2010? How much coin does 413 million Windows 7 licenses translate into versus the 7.1 million (LOL@that estimate, by the way) iPads being sold in 2010? Betcha it’s pretty close.

<10 - Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2008.

96 - Percentage of US netbooks running Windows in 2009.

This year represents the time between when Microsoft thought netbooks would go nowhere (classic prescience on Redmond’s part) and the time it took for them to muscle PC makers into letting them give away XP for nothing. Another shovel-full of cash into the fire in the race to the bottom. Well played, Frank.

Actually interesting questions that won’t be answered: How much revenue was generated from netbooks Windows licensing?

0 - Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in November 2009.

10,000 - Number of paying customers running on Windows Azure in June 2010.

700,000 – Number of students, teachers and staff using Microsoft’s cloud productivity tools in Kentucky public schools, the largest cloud deployment in the US.

I have no clue what Azure is, so I had to look it up: “Windows Azure™ is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform.” OK – that clears nothing up. Here’s what I do know: 0 -10,000 customers in 7 months? Killer launch, guys.

And the 700,000 Kentucky public school users of Microsoft’s cloud productivity tools? You mean the state that has an adult illiteracy rate of 40% and ranks 47th in the nation for percentage of residents with a bachelor’s degree? Congratulations on that accomplishment. I can see the wall plaque in Redmond now.

Actually interesting questions that won’t be answered: What the fuck is Azure?

16 million - Total subscribers to largest 25 US daily newspapers.

14 Million - Total number of Netflix subscribers.

23 million - Total number of Xbox Live subscribers.

Let’s start with the first number. I’ve played “which of these things is not like the others?” on Sesame Street for years and my record is flawless. What this number has to do with the other two is beyond my skill set. Is this supposed to be total number of people who…subscribe? to? stuff? Or something?

The real comparison, I assume, is between the second and third numbers, which is indeed interesting. It’s interesting that they compare the number of subscriptions for a U.S.-only video streaming service with the global subscriptions for Microsoft’s 6 year-old online gaming platform – that also recently added Netflix as one of its services.

Actually interesting question that won’t be answered: How many times has the fighter-jet-loud XBox 360 been used to access Netflix streaming content vs. the number of times someone has just fired up a browser – or even the Netflix iPad app – to do the same thing?

21.4 million - Number of new Bing search users in one year.

You mean people who used Bing to search once? This is a year?

Actually interesting question that won’t be answered: How hilariously insignificant that number is compared to Google’s. I’d also like to know Microsoft’s “new user” to “dollars invested” ratio.

24% - Linux Server market share in 2005.

33% - Predicted Linux Server market share for 2007 (made in 2005).

21.2% - Actual Linux Server market share, Q4 2009.

Let me see if I can get this straight: you like this number because in 2005 Linux extrapolated growth to go from 24 to 33% and they’re market share has actually fallen 3%. Golf clap? And your sources for the 2009 data are IDC, as reported by Preston Gralla at Computerworld. If there are any 2 entities in the Windows Shillaverse who have fellated Microsoft any harder, I have yet to find them. And I look.

8.8 million - Global iPhone sales in Q1 2010.

21.5 million - Nokia smartphone sales in Q1 2010.

55 million - Total smartphone sales globally in Q1 2010.

439 million - Projected global smartphone sales in 2014.

So this is the extent to which you’ve pissed away any market share you had in smartphones? No? Oh, I get it: this is the market you’re going to totally own once the Windows Phone 7 Series 7 Phone OSey Thing comes out. We’re all holding our breaths – honest.

Actually interesting question that won’t be answered: The number of Windows Mobile device sales in 2010.

$5.7 Billion – Apple Net income for fiscal year ending Sep 2009.

$6.5 Billion – Google Net income for fiscal year ending Dec 2009.

$14.5 Billion – Microsoft Net Income for fiscal year ending June 2009.

The Apple number is linked to Hoover’s. I don’t see $5.7 billion anywhere for Apple. I do see $8.235 billion listed for net income. How can this be?

Anyone who wanted to thoroughly report a comparison of net income – as opposed to a lazy, half-assed comparison designed to make their company look better – would know that on January 25, 2010, Apple filed a Form 10-K/A to amend its Form 10-K for the year ended September 26, 2009 to reflect the retrospective adoption of the new accounting principles. The $5.7 billion number, I assume, was the originally-reported number. I say “assume” because the number was actually corrected in the Hoover’s link given by Shaw, but somehow misreported by him. Amazing how that happened.

$23.0 billion – Total Microsoft revenue, FY2000.

$58.4 billion – Total Microsoft revenue, FY2009.

$7.98 billion – Total Apple revenue, FY2000

$42.9 billion – Total Apple revenue, FY2009

I like the slope of my graph better.

And then there’s the whole market cap thingy. I heard that means something. Apple’s now worth more than you and Dell combined. Some advice for Frank X. Shaw: 1. putting the X in your name makes you look like a pretentious tool. Get fucked with that middle initial shit. 2. Instead of selecting numbers that still get it up for you and don’t fool anyone but the most naive investor, maybe try looking at some numbers that are actually relevant to your “competitive” position?

APPL > MSFT

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May 262010
 

It took some time, but the inevitable has happened: as of 2:15 pm today, Apple is worth more than Microsoft.

The pwnage of Microsoft represents another milestone in the enhancement of users’ relationships with the stuff of their lives and work ever since Jobs took back the helm in 1997. We expect more insane greatness in the years to come.

The Apple enthusiast community would also like to take a moment to thank Microsoft for consistently dismissing, deriding and failing to emulate Cupertino’s success. Your fat heads and bloated carcass helped make this moment possible.

Sláinte!

Overheard Recently in Redmond: “Squeak, squeak, splash!”

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May 262010
 

M$ doesn’t have much of a presence in markets that aren’t inherited. As opposed to the Windows, Office and Server dinosaurs, Microsoft’s attempts at making things people actually want to use have been somewhat less successful. The entity known as the “Entertainment and Device” division of Microsoft has been a balance sheet singularity  responsible for the RROD, the Zune and billions of dollars of red ink since the division’s first appearance in the books. A series of mostly underwhelming and universally capital-hemorrhaging products and vapor paved the way for the latest slap against Ballmer’s flabby jowls. When SB appeared onstage at CES, he was groping an HP tablet called the Slate, a device meant to compete with the soon-to-be-shipped iPad. When HP bought Palm, they pulled the plug on the device a mere 5 months after SB fondled a demo in front of hundreds of frothing keynoters. The term I’m looking for here is “suck it”.

Making shitastic products is one thing; losing a major hardware host partner is quite another. Ballmer has put his foot down. After 22 years, Robbie Bach is hitting the bricks.

I want to spend a second on the HP-Palm thing. In the salad years, when Microsoft said “jump”, its hardware partners grabbed their ankles. Without question. Back then, making an acquisition that could be perceived as competing with a M$ offering would have gotten you kicked off the Windows tit in a heartbeat. Now, in 2010, one of the largest PC builders thinks nothing of acquiring a company that competes directly with Redmond in the mobile space, risking their status as a Windows carrier to do it. And they pulled a product out of the pipeline – practically out of Ballmer’s hands – in the process. No wonder you can still see the skidmarks in Redmond where Robbie’s ass bounded to the curb.

A week prior, M$’s Chief Experience Officer and CTO for E&D J Allard decided not to return from a sabbatical, possibly due to the dirt nap taken by the Courier project, something J (just J, got it?) was personally championing. Apparently Allard was disappointed that the Courier never graduated from “design student animation thesis” to, you know, something with specs and stuff that could actually be built. Maybe he missed the Microsoft orientation video on vaporware.

Looks like some senior vermin are taking the plunge from the SS Borg. Maybe they see the future for Microsoft that everyone else in tech sees.

So who will take on responsibility for the latest sucking void within the sucking void that is E&D?

Effective July 1, Don Mattrick, who leads our interactive entertainment business, and Andy Lees, who leads our mobile communications business, will report directly to me.

The “me”? Steve Ballmer. If you’re a Microsoft competitor, this is liquid awesome.

Here’s Why You Should Use a Mac

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May 172010
 

There’s a million reasons, really: enhancements to your computing experience and bullshit you don’t have to put up with. One of the biggest checks in the latter column is Conflicker.

From theatlantic.com, an awesome article on the most prolific and tenacious Windows worm ever created. Despite the efforts of some of the world’s smartest coders, botnet experts and cryptographers:

As of this writing, 17 months after it appeared and about a year after the April 1 (2009) update, Conficker has created a stable botnet. It consists of anywhere from hundreds of thousands of computers to 12 million. No one knows for sure anymore, because with peer-to-peer communications, the worm no longer needs to check in with an outside command center, which is how the good guys kept count. Joffe estimates that with the four distinct strains (yet another one appeared on April 8, 2009), 6.5 million computers are probably infected.

The investigators see no immediate chance or even any effective way to kill it.

Basically, no one knows how many computers are infected, they have no idea how to kill or even quarantine it and have no clue what the worm’s creator(s) ultimate intent is.

Obviously, Macs are unaffected. Sleep tight, Wintards.

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Operation Vaporwatch’s First Victim Announced

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Apr 292010
 

When I started Vaporwatch, I half-believed that Microsoft would actually release one of the breakthrough products it was “developing”. After all, the trick of announcing a product whose sole purpose was to deflate enthusiasm for competitors’ real products was just becoming too obvious and well-worn – even for Microsoft.

Well, now that Apple’s iPad has sold more than a million units in less than a month in only one country, M$ has decided to make me look like a genius by “leaking” to Gizmodo that it was time for Courier to give up the ghost.

"I wanna show you something - it's my shocked face."

I have to give them credit: Classic Redmond would have dragged the charade on for another year before burying it. Guess they figured spending another half a million on a “concept video” that had zero impact on Apple’s real product in the same space was wasteful. It’s not like Microsoft is any stranger to setting money on fire.  Aside from losing billions every quarter trying to push consumer electronics that no one wants, they periodically burn haybales of capital on some of the worst advertising in the business. Using that criteria, axing Courier qualifies as one of the most sensible marketing decisions Microsoft has made in the last decade.

So while the comment sections of Gizmodo are aghast with shock and mourn the premature death of a device that no doubt would have changed the face of mobile computing – even though it never had a corresponding presence in the physical universe – the sane among us knew there was a better chance of being mauled by a polar bear and a regular bear in the same day than of the Courier seeing the light of day.

Operation Vaporwatch: Courier

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Apr 132010
 

The Courier

As buzz was building to a crescendo about the Apple tablet that will eventually become the iPad, other me-too tablet announcements begin to trickle in. Not willing to let a superior product out of the gates before performing the trick they made famous, Microsoft begins “leaking” concept videos of a stylus-driven, dual-screen touchscreen tablet. You see, M$ has more than one vaporware tactic. Sometimes they’ll make a big announcement at a consumer electronics show a year and a half before their real product is slated to ship. Sometimes their corporate security periodically disintegrates, “revealing” products to eager tech sites like Engadget and Gizmodo, who unwittingly post their “scoops” while Microsoft laughs at the continued gullibility of tech media.

At companies that make real products, a leak like Courier would set off a nuclear device in the boardroom. Letting competition know the form factor, features or technology present in your forthcoming devices is a recipe for disaster. Fortunately for Microsoft, when these “leaks” hit the tech landscape, they usually don’t represent a design worth copying, don’t reveal any technical details about the product, and are immediately recognized by potential competitors for what they are. Much like the Wizard of Oz, the awesomeness of the apparition belies the nothingness of the reality.  So here’s what we “know” about the Courier:

September, 2009: Microsoft “leaks” an animated concept video of a tablet device known as Courier to Engadget. Despite the “concept” not having specs, price, OS, or release date (wouldn’t want to kill the enthusiasm with all that), the incredibly detailed animation, spanning 1:55, inspires commenter cries of “Microsoft is back!”, which I took as an incomplete blurt that ends something like “…to creating representations for which no actual product is intended”, since that is clearly their strength.

November 2009: A video detailing the Courier’s user interface is “leaked” to Gizmodo (hey, the wealth must be shared), because the more detailed the non-product, the more effective the “stopping power”. Engadget uses the curious term “advanced proof of concept”, which is usually reserved for products that “can be built” as opposed to those that “can be drawn”. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t seem to realize that no one buys their particular shovelful of bullshit anymore – except commenters on tech websites. A “Highest Ranked” comment on Engadget reads: “This isn’t a laptop without a keyboard, it’s a new device designed from the ground up to be controlled with a pen and multitouch gestures.” That one cost TMA a mouthful of coffee and almost a wireless keyboard. Engadget follows up with Steve Ballmer and pointedly asks about the device. His response, according to Engadget, is that “he swears he hasn’t actually seen it, but that it sounds like it’s something someone should make”.  Readers are left to decide for themselves whether the CEO of the company can really be so out of touch with its groundbreaking products or if the comment was just a really retarded attempt at coyness.

March 2010: Another Courier video is “leaked” to Engadget, showing how the device’s…animation…has evolved. Amazingly, even though 6 months have passed since the previous animation (which one might assume would go into the development of an actual product), the same absolute lack of details remain.

April 2010: Apple releases the iPad to extremely positive reviews. Despite being released on a Saturday, sales figures for the weekend top those of the original iPhone, indicating once again that in a market where people exchange money for actual products, Apple reigns supreme.

Operation Vaporwatch: Project Natal

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Apr 082010
 

Like a bloated lion, Microsoft waits for other, more innovative companies to launch products before waddling to market, bellowing the entire saunter from their shaded tree about how awesome their product is going to be. The idea being that competition would be discouraged from mobilizing and people who still hadn’t made a purchase decision would be frozen, waiting for M$’s entry. Sometimes they’d make it to market; most of the time they didn’t. Back in the days of Longhorn, an OS that was slated to succeed XP and was heavily promoted with fanciful technologies yet somehow never made it to market, this trick worked pretty well. It essentially killed innovation in the computer and consumer electronics spaces, but what the fuck, it made Microsoft money – or it least prevented it from flowing to its competition.

Nowadays, everyone in tech is wise to Microsoft’s vaporware bait-and-ditch tactics. Yet incredibly, the company continues to juice markets with nothing backing up their claims to enter them besides a “concept animation”. If there’s anything in the market that smells a little like innovation, you can bet Redmond will announce their better, more powerful version coming soon, soon, soon! Commenters in Gizmodo and Engadget spring their collective wood, actually expecting a product to be released in their lifetime. Think Charlie Brown, Lucy and a football.

As a public service to the community, TMA has decided to keep track of some of Microsoft’s “coming soon” technologies that, although are still very early in development, hasn’t stopped the company from showing off celebrity demos and producing very detailed animations of how their “products” will work. I call this service “Operation Vaporwatch”. Let’s start with Microsoft’s latest gaming vapor…

Project Natal

Jun 1, 2009: In a move no doubt intended to staunch the arterial bleeding inflicted by Nintendo’s Wii on the XBox 360, Microsoft unveils a super-advanced motion-sensing set top device with the code name Project Natal (as in Nepal, not dreidel). The device is announced with no ship date and no price, but plenty of fanfare. Its demo videos and celebrity endorsements are the talk of the 2009 E3. In a follow-up confirmation from Ballmer himself, Natal is to be released before the end of 2010. You read that right: 18 months from the product’s announcement. Try to think of a product in the tech space – any tech product – that gets announced a year and a half before its scheduled release. TMA immediately calls horse

Jun 3, 2009: In what TMA will later refer to as part of “the Wonka Factory Tour”, during which Gizmodo editors are walked through Microsoft’s product development centers in exchange for fair and balanced reporting, Mark Wilson and Matt Buchanan are treated to exclusive access to Natal’s 3D Breakout and Burnout Revenge demos. A “small PC and camera that simulates the final Natal rig” are used. One would assume the PC will not come with Natal when it does ship. No specs of said PC are divulged. Also missing is any photo or video of the actual gameplay experience – something that might actually mark the performance of the PC-enhanced units or – you know – build an actual buzz. Regardless, both editors rave about “immersiveness”. The resulting unbiased review is titled “Testing Project Natal: We Touched the Intangible”.

June 2009 – Jan 2010: Redmond is overrun by crickets. Payload delivered.

Jan 7, 2010: According to a statement from Alex Kipman, Natal’s chief developer, Natal still exists and the add-on will consume a meager 15% of the XBox 360′s processing power, or in laymen’s terms 40 dB.

Feb 23, 2010: MTV clocks the lag between body movements and the corresponding on-screen output at 1/10 second. FPS games from 1995 point and laugh.

The iPad: Losers and Winners

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Feb 042010
 

After over a year of analyst frothing, Apple announced the next step in its transformation of consumer electronics devices. The 2 predictable results of Apple’s announcement – the immediate sell-off of Apple stock and the collective feigned disinterest of Windoz apologists across the country – belies the truth. This is a device that will change the way people will interact with content. So you can click through to dumbasses like Thurrott or Dvorak as they lather themselves up over missing non-features like no buttons for games or no stylus, or you can take the word of someone who claims to know 1% as much, but is much more frequently right. Future’s here people.

So as many denial-riddled pundits yawn at SJ’s claim that “this is the most important thing I’ve ever worked on” (which would include the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone, to name a few), several other businesses are making messes in their shorts – and not the euphoric kind of mess. So now that the iPad’s here, who wins and who loses? Here’s Part 1 of a quick round-up, starting with the losers.

Adobe

When Apple made it clear that they had no interest porting Flash to the iPhone, many analysts shrugged it off as an anomaly. I mean: Flash is ubiquitous on the web and Apple always did weird shit like this. Besides, Adobe was working its plow improving a stripped down version of Flash that would sip battery power like a hummingbird and play super nice with mobile browsers. Just wait for the next version…or the next one. Anyway, even if Apple never adopted Flash and grabbed 50% of the smartphone market, it was only a small percentage of the entire mobile device market. There were still plenty of people to maintain Adobe’s Flash as the de facto runtime on the web, right?

Well the iPhone and now the iPad won’t support it. And Google doesn’t care much for it either. And now Firefox is switching off plug-ins by default for its RC3 Maemo mobile browser, in essence because Flash is a hog. HTML5 support is picking up. And up. Technorati everywhere are going on record as plainly stating that Flash is a dog and HTML5 is the wave of the future. Adobe’s response to the threat: Flash is everywhere. Sound familiar? Keep throwing up your Bang Bros. references to the ubiquity of Flash, guys. Jig’s up. Might not happen this year, but it’s happening: you’re fucked.

Amazon

Poor Jeff Bezos. After all that work getting the eInk technology to perfectly mirror a dead form of media interaction, Apple has to come out with a device that does 20 times as much and a ridiculously competitive price point. That whimpering you hear is no longer the effect Kindle is having on the eBook market; it’s now coming from the CEO’s office. First he’s going to get to see sales of his devices freeze (not that we ever knew how many they sold) and then he’ll get to see his margins – if there ever were any – crash through the floor.

But there’s hope! Amazon just acquired Touchco, a maker of multitouch panels, so a touch version of the Kindle is surely on its way. Because didn’t Apple get multitouch by acquiring Fingerworks? You just plug that shit right into your business model and – BAM! iPad competitor! Right? Right?

Guys, seriously: kick the clown shoes under the bed. A minor feature of one of Apple’s products just buried you.

The Windoz Ecosystem

Granted, no one expects Redmond to respond to the iPad with anything that anyone would rather use (except maybe Paul Thurrortt). But in typical Microsoft fashion, they’ll make a lot of noise about it and respond with something underwhelming. It won’t be the Courier, because the Courier is a bullshit cloud of vapor that smells exactly like Cairo, Longhorn, etc. The only people who’ve made money off the Courier are the people working for the design firm who did the rendering for this non-device. HP, who had the distinguished honor of having their tablet device fondled my Steve Ballmer’s sweaty mitts onstage at CES, is one known entry. Lenovo is another. M$ will respond not with some innovative take on slate computing, but with some bastardization of Windows 7. It will be a customized assemblage of some commodity PC giblets made to look like an iPad to a drunk 6 year old. Because M$ has been playing the me-too game with Apple for at least the last 15 years, and because the cash they spew into this space will have little – if any – return, M$ is clearly in the loser’s column, which should shock no one. Their unfortunate hardware partners, who really don’t have much of a choice, will be dragged right down with them.

Google

Google’s a loser on 2 fronts. First, as the always-brilliant Daniel Eran Dilger points out, the Google model of advertising is much more compelling on desktop and laptop devices (if you can use the word “compelling” to describe the experience of getting targeted ads dumped on your browsing experience). On devices like the iPhone, the probability of people clicking on an ad is much lower. People don’t want to rabbit-trail ads on mobile devices; they want access to the content they’re looking for. Apple’s iPad, while allowing for a greater surface to browse the web like a laptop, still sticks with the iPhone’s touch model, which one would think would continue to discourage ad clicks. More people using iPads to browse the web means fewer people using laptops and desktops. The value of Google to advertisers drops. Some content providers may even prefer to go to a subscription model instead of trying (and almost always failing – or producing content like 99% of the toiletries that dominate tech websites) to get advertising to support their online presences. Apple does subscription models pretty well. Less business for Google

The second front is Google’s suggestion that they’re going to compete with the iPad with a port of Chrome to a tablet device. Maybe Google will shop their tablet-ready versions of the OS to some device-makers before branding their own device, something I’m sure mobile device makers and carriers loved when they did it with Android and the Nexus One. Funny thing is: this business keeps falling for the “Lucy/Charlie Brown field goal” trick perfected by Microsoft. Google’s insistence on continuing to invest money in making inferior OS ports that compete with Apple products lands them smack in the middle of Failsberg.

Next up: the Winners

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