hans.gerwitz

Wait and see

Posted on April 5th, 2010

Microsoft has said they are not devel­oping Office for the iPad.

They seem to have forgotten their own history. The GUI Office apps and Windows itself were highly informed by devel­oping for Macintosh. Today’s Microsoft is large and rich enough that they shouldn’t need Apple to teach them anything, but what better way for them to establish expertise in touch-​​driven casual computing than to assign teams to dive into the leading platform?

Microsoft now has a more isola­tionist approach to R&D investment, preferring work that supports already-​​successful lines of business and working closely only with allies or “partners” that they can control. But they estab­lished those dominant business lines by keeping their enemies even closer. Not only with Windows (twice, consid­ering OS/​2) and Office, but SQL Server also began as a part­nership with Sybase.

Sun Tzu would not be impressed by this shift in strategy.

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Conspiracy

Posted on December 15th, 2008

“Watching someone writing an email on a Storm is like watching an antelope trying to open a packet of cigarettes.”

Stephen Fry

Here’s a rumor I’d like to start: the Blackberry Storm is a sacrifice play. RIM is purpose­fully taking the risk of alien­ating some users for a greater defensive purpose, to rein­force the reflexive disdain many Blackberry users have to (the idea of) the iPhone’s keyboard. If they pick up a Storm it will only further convince them touch­screen keyboards are a farce and dissuade them from investing the few hours’ use required to become profi­cient with an iPhone.

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Scruffy

Posted on March 16th, 2008

Via Justin Kodama and Shailendra Rao’s work on “3D Portable Office” design, Understanding Office Ecologies
, I found David Kirsh’s The Context of Work. This paper is full of insightful models, but the simplest lessons are around the distinction between neat and scruffy office usage “person­ality types”.

I am unde­niably a scruffy, preferring to keep infor­mation acces­sible than orga­nized. Thank god for Spotlight.

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Bill Gates vs. John Nash

Posted on February 20th, 2007

It is arguable that Apple was more inno­v­ative with tech­nology prior to Steve Jobs’s return to power. He dissolved the ATG, home of the original Cocoa, and Apple Data Detectors, and famously axed the Newton, continued devel­opment of which might have given us the iPhone as a platform years ago.

But the Newton’s brand had been tainted by the poor hand­writing recog­nition of the first models and a clunky form factor.

New (or returning) to Apple’s inno­vation DNA is marketing. And I don’t mean just adver­tising or PR, I mean making strategic business deci­sions to enter sensible markets that capi­talize but don’t dilute brands and have exploitable niches. Any student of game theory and business can appre­ciate that this is the real genius behind the 21st century’s Apple.

Microsoft, mean­while, has never really inno­vated in tech­nology. They have, though, blazed a trail in business; it could even be said that Bill Gates estab­lished the practice of selling software. How disap­pointing that they’ve taken to trying to copy other business models with varying success; the Xbox, Zune, and Windows Mobile Smartphones are all me-​​too plays. MS has plenty of bril­liant minds working on software, they need to get a few of them in strategic marketing.

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Seppuku 2.0

Posted on September 25th, 2006

Sprout Commerce has figured out how to commit suicide in the Web 2.0 ecosystem.

Immediately after Pete Cashmore’s glowing review in April I began using MyPickList to manage my wish­lists, rather than using the “buy” tag in del.icio.us as I had before (and limiting myself to items that have records on Amazon.com is so Web 1.0).

Imagine my surprise, then, when my list just became a 404 error and Sprout replaced the homepage with a notice that they are “under­going recon­struction to better serve our customers” and impore me to “check back frequently to use our new and improved service when we reopen.”

Yeah, right. I’ll be in line to trust you with my data right after you just ate it all. Thanks for wasting my time and energy.

If Sprout wants to find out what I’m inter­ested in now, I guess they can go check out my wists.

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