Microsoft’s recently-announced partnership with Nokia will significantly increase the chances of both Apple and Nokia settling their bitter patent infringement lawsuits against each other, says a long-time intellectual property activist who keeps a close eye on the patent strategies of the tech world’s largest firms.
With these words, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop declared his intentions for the future as part of his company’s strategic partnership with Microsoft. Both companies are trailing in Apple’s wake and urgently need to catch up.
The first part of Elop and Steve Ballmer’s open letter is somewhat dull, but the final paragraphs contain the real meat.
“Today, the battle is moving from one of mobile devices to one of mobile ecosystems,” they declare. “Ecosystems thrive when they reach scale, when they are fueled by energy and innovation and when they provide benefits and value to each person or company who participates. This is what we are creating; this is our vision; this is the work we are driving from this day forward.”
And then this declaration of war: “There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.”
I, for one, welcome our new Nokisoft overlords; and I’ll happily raise a glass to disruption. Let’s see what actual shipping products they come up with, shall we?
Writing about mobile for a living, it can be hard to keep the names of all of the competing App Stores straight. Apple has the App Store, Google has the Android Marketplace, HP has the Palm App Catalog and Microsoft has the most unwieldy name yet in the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Microsoft seems to be as embarrassed by their app market’s name as we are, because they’re now trying to take Apple to court over Cupertino’s 2008 trademark on the the “App Store,” arguing that the term is too generic to be exclusively used by Apple.
We’re pretty up on the iPhone’s Bing app; its ability to combine the useful functions of several different stand-alone apps earned it a spot on our 23 Essential Apps list for the iPhone earlier this year.
But Microsoft is apparently even more ambitious: they’ve just updated Bing with some new abilities — including location-based reminders, a Google Maps Street View-like feature and more — to the point where it seems as if Microsoft is trying to turn Bing into some kind of uber-app. The whole thing’s also been given a facelift, and the results pages are less cluttered (even though the front page still needs work). It’s worth a download, even if, at the very least, just to gawk at its application of technology. Here’s a list of all the new stuff:
Microsoft’s attempts out replicate Apple’s successes in the retail space have always seemed… well… rather bereft of imagination and mindlessly emulative. Microsoft Stores almost always are opened in the same malls as Apple Stores, sometimes directly across the way. Instead of a Genius Bar, there’s a Guru Bar. And so on.
Microsoft’s “Me Too”ism in the retail has simply been painful to watch… so painful that it prompted us to write a post entitled “Why Microsoft’s Mall of America Store Will Fail” just last month.
Looks like we were right. According to the LA Times, Microsoft’s retail stores are a complete bust, despite having been designed by George Blankenship, who helped build Apple’s own retail stores.
Microsoft’s official Office for the Mac blog has announced a list of places where you can buy Office for Mac 2011 at discounted prices during Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. The prices are pretty good during the US Thanksgiving holiday weekend at various retailers, but Amazon has the best price of all.
Office for Mac 2011 has gotten favorable reviews and performs better than previous versions. If you are interested in upgrading from an older version Thanksgiving weekend will probably be your best opportunity to get a good deal.
Steve Jobs has been on the record for months that he thinks Blu-Ray is a format that is in the process of being murdered by streaming video, so Microsoft’s latest ad taking a jab at the Mac for its lack of Blu-Ray support feels a little limp… but to give credit where its due, the pseudo stop motion animation (which is really CGI) that they are using to make that point is pretty cute.
We already know that if a couple of overly restrictive NDAs hadn’t gotten in the way, Apple could have ended up owning the technology behind Microsoft’s new motion-control accessory for the Xbox 360 game console, but if you’ve already bought a Kinect and would like to see what a Mac with Kinect-like abilities could have been like, the hacker community’s already starting to put the software together, starting with hacker Theo Watson getting the Kinect’s cameras to output under OS X.
Ever played Lazer Tag? If Apple has its druthers, next time you play it, it won’t be with big ray guns and fluorescent sensors, but with your iPhone.
Apple’s gaming plans are described in a newly discovered patent dated April 2009 for “Interactive Gaming with Co-Located, Networked Direction and Location Aware Devices.”
The nitty gritty’s a lot cooler than that dry legalese description, though: what Apple is describing here is away to take advantage of an iPhone’s gyroscope, accelerometer and GPS to turn your handset into an aimable device that can talk to other iPhones that it is pointed at.
During his time as head of Microsoft, Bill Gates was famously anti-Apple, going so far as to issue an emphatic decree banning all Apple gadgets on the software giant’s mega-campus. Since then, however, Gates has been replaced by Steve Ballmer and the prohibition against iPods and iPhones has gradually loosened up… but there’s one place where Gates’ fierce rivalry with the House that Jobs built continues unabated: the palatial mansion of Bill and Melinda Gates.
Last week, Microsoft released the anticipated Office 2011 for Mac update, the first OS X version of their popular Office suite for several years. It’s getting good reviews, but you know who hates it? David Pogue, who describes it as utterly broken in a lengthy review.
The whole thing’s worth reading, but here’s the takeaway:
[I]t’s sad to see such unpolished work from Microsoft’s Mac team. Looks like they had their eye on the big-ticket items—and simply left the smaller cookies to crumble.
I have no thoughts to share yet on the matter, except to say that I wanted to dump sewage all over Steve Ballmer’s head when I installed the application suite and it immediately dumped seven or eight hideous icons into my dock without once consulting me.
One thing that you tend to notice when you watch as much television as I do is that almost ever character on TV uses a Mac … usually with a big sticker conspicuously placed over the glowing emblem on the lid, because while writers and set designers want to show that their characters are cool enough to use a Mac or an iPhone, Apple doesn’t go in for product placement on shows it doesn’t like.
When they do sponsor, it always smacks of love: Consider critic’s darling 30 Rock and their proudly prominent “Sponsored by Apple” product placement … all despite the fact that the shows ratings have been in the toilet for seasons now. Steve Jobs grooves on some Liz Lemon.
CBS’ hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother is one of those shows in which every character has a MacBook Pro with a sticker over the Apple logo, despite the fact it’s pretty much the biggest sitcom out there. Apple clearly thinks the show’s a bit artless … which is funny, because that’s the only way to describe the product placement bukkake party for Microsoft products that was last night’s episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3pHac6Otqk
Here are a selection of videos from Microsoft introducing the Windows 7 phone software and some of the different handsets. Above: New Windows Phone 7 devices available from Dell, HTC, LG and Samsung.
It’s worth watching a couple of these videos to get an idea of how the competition for mobile is heating up. If the videos present a true picture of the Windows Phone 7 experience, it looks like a credible competitor to the iPhone.
The easy customization of the Windows Phone 7 home screen — “pinning,” in Microsoft’s parlance — looks like a compelling feature. Home screen customization isn’t something you about from iPhone users — but it is a feature you hear Android users talk about a lot.
It’s taken them over three years to respond to the revolutionary shift in the mobile operating system landscape posed by iOS, but Microsoft has finally done it and released a properly modern, properly app-laden and properly multi-touchable successor to the Windows Mobile series: Windows Phone 7. But what differentiates Windows Phone 7 from Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Mobile 6 and a host of even crappier mobile operating systems squirted out by Microsoft?
Quite a bit, actually, and it’s quite a bit better… but it’s still two years behind the curve of iOS.
Today marks the official debut of Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s three-years-too-late response to the smartphone revolution headed by Apple with the release of the original iPhone. By most accounts, WIndows Phone 7’s software is far more advanced than its predecessor, Windows Mobile 6.5, and might even be pretty good… but it’s going to take more than a decent smartphone operating system these days to compete with iOS and Android: namely, a sizable, content-rich App Store with some showcase software for users to download out of the gate.
Early rumors tip the Windows Phone Marketplace to launch with a respectable 2,000 apps… but if news hitting the feeds this morning is anything to go by, those numbers might very well be inflated dishonestly. Microsoft has been prominently advertising several apps as being available on the Windows Phone Marketplace when it launches, including Rovio Mobile’s hit game, Angry Birds. The only problem? Rovio hasn’t even decided on doing a port yet.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBL2h3GgyKM
Microsoft has a rather ignoble history when it comes to trying to counter Apple’s hyper-effective and popular “Get a Mac” campaign. Their first efforts were just embarrassing: a series of advertisements featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates awkwardly mumbling non sequiturs at one another. That desperate bid for hipness failed, and so Microsoft launched their Laptop Hunter ads, which were comparatively straightforward: a camera crew followed “real” computer shoppers as they looked for new machines, and documented their ultimate choice of Windows laptops. Simple, pleasant and marginally effective… even if they did repeat all of the old, stupid fallacies about Apple computers costing significantly more than similarly specced Windows machines.
Pretty soon, though, controversy hit. Lauren deLong, an adorable red ead featured in the “Laptop Hunter” ads, turned out to be an actress with a filmography of ten movies to her credit. Since Microsoft’s ads purported to be following “real computer shoppers,” that made the ads’ truthfulness somewhat dubious.
So here’s the question: were the Laptop Hunters ads what the proclaimed themselves to be, or completely fictional? The “behind-the-scenes” footage of the Laptop Hunter ads shoot, as embedded above and first posted back in September, baldly asserts that participants were not told they were in a commercial until after they had picked their machines.
I’m not buying it. Not only are the individuals in the ads just a little too pointed in their dismissal of Apple products — I think a more common response to why a PC users would reject a Mac would be “I’ve always used Windows machines!” and not “It really seems like you’re paying for the aesthetics” — but surely, a professional actress like Ms. deLong would be savvy enough recognize the financial opportunity that had just presented itself if a film crew that had followed her around all day told her she’d be in a national campaign for Microsoft. The next thing she would have said is, “I have to call my agent,” not “How’s my hair?”
What do you guys think?
[Thanks, David!]
Microsoft just launched an app for its search engine Bing for iPhone.
Offered gratis on iTunes, the idea is to put a Microsoft search engine in the hands of iPhone users who have shunned Microsoft smartphones.
Capturing the iPhone market might be a way for Microsoft to bump up traffic for the “decision engine,” which currently has about 10% of the US Internet search market.
Wishful thinking? Maybe not: the first 247 reviews, 191 are five star — 77% — though some of the comments “I love this app, it’s a great Christmas present from Microsoft” set the BS-ometer spinning.
Any Bing aficionados out there planning to download the app?
I gave the web version a quick whirl when it first came out, but it didn’t blow my hair back. Haven’t bothered since.
As a blogger, it’s hard to know quite from just what angle I should tackle modder Will Urbina’s utterly wonderful but certainly unholy amalgamation of a Xbox and a Hackintosh.
Should I describe it as a hideous, pupal cocoon that has been secreted by Microsoft to encase the imago of the Macintosh struggling to free its wings within? Or is OS X just the magic employed a soul-devouring hag, who — once bedded — lets the charm drop and reveals herself as the uggo she is?
Either way, Urbina’s creation is probably a psychoanalytically diagnosable incubus in the mind of Steve.
Called the OS Xbox Pro, Urbina’s project takes a translucent Microsoft Xbox chassis and crams it with Hackintoshable guts, including a pair of 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550s, an NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT GPU, 8GB of RAM, a 16GB solid state drive, and four additional hard drives. One drive boots Windows 7, the other OS X Snow Leopard (retail bought, Urbina assures), with two other hard drives for video editing. The end cost was $1500 for component from New Egg, which is just a little bit less than the cost of a 27 inch iMac.
The impetus to Urbina’s profane cross-breed case mod? Although he prefers Windows, Urbina needed a work machine to use Final Cut Pro.
The end result is sure to have Cupertino weaving a circle around it thrice and shutting its eyes in holy dread, but personally, I just can’t think of a better use for an old Xbox than to make it into a Mac.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWWt_L-qeo
To help launch Windows 7, Microsoft is enlisting PC people to hold house parties to promote the new operating system.
For the October 22 launch date, Microsoft enthusiasts around the world just got selected to show off their new software at home with parties, sort of Tupperware style.
Naturally, the company has a few ideas of how these launch parties should go. A short sample party agenda, from the above talking heads: first, have a drink and mingle. Then shoot 20 or so photos. “Then when everyone was settled, I showed them my favorite features from the new Windows 7.”
“It only took like 10 minutes. Everyone just crowded around the computer in the kitchen.”
Andrew Coates, developer evangelist for Microsoft, told the Sydney Morning Herald the idea behind Windows 7 was to bring back the “sense of mastery” to software users.
“We have done a lot of work around why people weren’t feeling comfortable with software any more. People felt like they weren’t in control.”
Party hosts also have “a good chance” of winning a Windows PC worth $750, according to Microsoft.
“In a lot of ways, you’re just throwing a house party with Windows 7 as an honored guest,” says one of the actors in the video. “Sounds easy and it is.”
Whatever they’re smoking in the Microsoft marketing department, I’ll have some.
Via Sidney Morning Herald, hat tip to CoM reader Brett McCurdy.
Microsoft’s controversial Laptop Hunter ads were probably conceived, pitched and perhaps created on Macs, if these office snaps of the ad agency behind them are anything to go by. They show the desk of Alex Bogusky (with two Macs) at Crispin Porter + Bogusky plus the surrounding office space, also full of Macs.
I wouldn’t mind getting paid to sell PCs, as long as I didn’t have to work on them, too.
Via rixstep
UPDATE: Microsoft says this was their attempt to make the worst internal video ever. MMM…yeah. Interesting spin…
I’ve been wrapping up an all-intensive project at work lately, but I have to break my silence for this: “Rocking Our Sales” by Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band. I don’t really know where to begin. I guess I will just say this. I have no idea if Apple makes lame Bruce Springsteen parody music videos to inspire its channel sales teams, but if it does, I have to assume that it uses better lyrics than “Talk up our Microsoft Application Virtualization…See what’s on employee’s laptops with AIS and MDOP!”
EPIC FAIL, MS! And if anyone is actually inspired to sell more Vista based on this, really think about switching your job. I mean, damn.
Via Daring Fireball
