Microsoft has hired Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. His job title? Why “Enthusiast Evangelist”, of course.
It reminds me of Apple in the good old days when the prevailing Silicon Valley joke was:
Q. What’s the difference between Apple Computer and the Boy Scouts?
A. The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
Apple had job titles like “Evangelist” then. Now they just have the Supreme Evangelist.
From wcbstv.com
First it was cell phones in cars, then trans fats. Now, a new plan is on the table to ban gadget use while crossing city streets.
We all seem to have one — an iPod, a BlackBerry, a cell phone — taking up more and more of our time, but can they make us too distracted to walk safely? Some people think so.
If you use them in the crosswalk, your favorite electronic devices could be in the crosshairs.
Legislation will be introduced in Albany on Wednesday to lay a $100 fine on pedestrians succumbing to what State Sen. Carl Kruger calls iPod oblivion.
“We’re talking about people walking sort of tuned in and in the process of being tuned in, tuned out,” Kruger said. “Tuned out to the world around them. They’re walking into speeding cars. They’re walking into buses. They’re walking into one another and it’s creating a number of fatalities that have been documented right here in the city.”
Pedestrians have been hurt and killed in the manner Kruger describes. Not surprisingly, though, iPod users are less than thrilled with the senator’s proposal…
Hmmm…. I’ve written about this phenomenon before, musing on the way the iPod has redefined the notion of social space.
From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:38 AM
To: Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer
Subject: losing our way…This is a rant. I’m sorry.
I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn’t translate onto great products.
I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new video below. I know this doesn’t show anything for businesses, but my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple. They think fast. I know there is nothing hugely deep in this.
http://www.apple.com/ilife/video/ilife04_32C.html [Note: link no longer works]
I must tell you everything in my soul tells me that we should do what I called plan (b) yesterday We need a simple fast storage system. LH [Longhorn — now known as VISTA] is a pig and I don’t see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of “scenario, simple, fast” to heart.
jim
[Source]
Jim Allchin was Co-President, Platforms and Services Division of Microsoft. After 17 years with the company, he retired on January 30, the day Vista shipped to consumers. According to the Microsoft web site,
He shared overall responsibility with Kevin Johnson for the division of the company that includes the Windows and Windows Live Group, Windows Live Platform Group, Online Business Group, Market Expansion Group, Core Operating System Division, Windows Client Marketing Group, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, and the Server and Tools Business Group.
Well, apart from being free to spend more time with his money, Jim will also be free to buy a Mac!
Well, just check here for enlightenment!
Thanks to Martin Weller for starting my day with a laugh.
Nice column by Randall Stross…
STEVE JOBS, Apple’s showman nonpareil, provided the first public glimpse of the iPhone last week — gorgeous, feature-laden and pricey. While following the master magician’s gestures, it was easy to overlook a most disappointing aspect: like its slimmer iPod siblings, the iPhone’s music-playing function will be limited by factory-installed “crippleware.”
If “crippleware” seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard “FairPlay,” but fair it is not.
The term “crippleware” comes from the plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit, Melanie Tucker v. Apple Computer Inc., that is making its way through Federal District Court in Northern California. The suit contends that Apple unfairly restricts consumer choice because it does not load onto the iPod the software needed to play music that uses Microsoft’s copy-protection standard, in addition to Apple’s own. Ms. Tucker’s core argument is that the absence of another company’s software on the iPod constitutes “crippleware.”
I disagree. It is Apple’s own copy-protection software itself that cripples the device…
This morning’s Observer column…
Let us now brandish a clove of garlic and dispel the Reality Distortion Field for a moment. The iPhone looks like a cute gadget, but it does raise awkward questions. Will its screen scratch as easily as the iPod Nano’s does? Will it be as unreliable as the iPod range appears to be? (I speak from bitter experience.) Why does it have a built-in battery, just like the iPods? Will users have to send their phones back to Apple when the batteries give up the ghost? How robust is the mobile version of OS X – the phone’s operating system? Why is the mobile connectivity not 3G? And how did Apple come to overlook the awkward fact that the ‘iPhone’ name belongs to Cisco?
Answers, please – engraved on the back of a dead iPod – to Steven P Jobs, Apple Inc, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA.
Some of the stuff Wired spotted at Macworld.
The New York Times sees parallels between the iPhone and the original Macintosh.
When the Macintosh computer — which was also designed by a small group shrouded in secrecy — was introduced in January 1984, it was received with the same kind of wild hyperbole that greeted the iPhone this week. But a year later, the shortcomings of the first-generation Macintosh cost Mr. Jobs his job at the company he founded nine years earlier with a high school friend, Stephen Wozniak.
In light of the iPhone’s closed appliance-style design, it is worth recounting the Mac’s early history because of the potential parallel pitfalls that Mr. Jobs and his company may face.
Despite its high price of $2,495, the Macintosh initially sold briskly. But Mr. Jobs’s early predictions of huge sales failed to materialize. (On Tuesday, in a similar fashion, he set an iPhone goal of 1 percent of the world’s cellular phone market by the end of 2008.)
The Mac’s stumble was in part because of pricing and in part because Mr. Jobs had intentionally restricted its expandability. Despite his assertion that a slow data connection would be enough, the gamble failed when Apple’s business stalled and Mr. Jobs was forced out of the company by the chief executive he had brought in, John Sculley.
In a similar fashion, Mr. Jobs is gambling that people will pay a premium ($499 or $599) for the iPhone and he appears to have sought to limit its expandability.
The device is not currently compatible with the faster 3G wireless data networks that are driving cellular revenues to sharp gains in the United States (although several Apple insiders said the phone could be upgraded to 3G with software if Apple later decides to enable that feature).
Moreover, Mr. Jobs also appears to be restricting the potential for third-party software developers to write applications for the new handset, like ring tones and word processors…
Perceptive.
Yep — that’s right. the ZunePhone — Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s new phone.
And so it goes on. Mercury News reports that,
Cisco Systems sued Apple Wednesday over the trademark to the name “”iPhone,” setting up a legal battle between two of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies.
Cisco claims that Apple deliberately infringed its rights to use the brand when Steve Jobs introduced Apple’s iPhone, a long-anticipated gadget that combines a cell phone and a video and music player, at Macworld in San Francisco Tuesday, allegedly without Cisco’s permission.
The suit seeks an injunction to stop Apple’s use of the name.
“We’ve been in intensive discussions with Apple for several weeks regarding arrangements to share the brand,” said Mark Chandler, Cisco senior vice president and general counsel.
Cisco expected Apple to quickly sign an agreement sent over late Monday to use the name, but Apple never did.
Apple did not back down. Calling Cisco’s suit “”silly,” company spokeswoman Natalie Kerris noted that “”several companies” other than Cisco had already been using the iPhone name for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phones…
