Witty series of short movies explaining various reasons for buying an Apple Mac. Not recommended for Windows users unless they’ve been retrofitted with a sense of humour. The movies are clearly inspired by Umberto Eco’s celebrated essay arguing that the PC was a Protestant machine whereas the Mac was undoubtedly a Catholic one.
Thanks to Gerard for the link.
… should be Google’s new motto, now that it has given up on “Don’t be Evil”. The company’s lobbyists have been creating a bogus stink in Washington, complaining that Microsoft is up to its old tricks by making MSN search the default in Internet Explorer 7.
It’s not often I feel sympathy for Microsoft, but this one of those times. Google’s whinge is ludicrous. Here’s Good Morning Silicon Valley on the issue:
Right now you may be fighting tears, more likely from convulsive laughter than sympathy. For starters, users can choose; I made Google the default search engine with a couple of clicks right after I downloaded IE7. Not simple enough, says Google; users should be forced to declare their search affiliation the first time IE7 runs. Mind you, Google has benefited for quite a while from being the default search engine offered in the Firefox and Safari browsers, but the company’s now willing to let those users make an upfront choice as well. For its part, Microsoft says, “The search box in IE7 is not Microsoft’s. It belongs to the user.” MSN is not really the default, says the IE team; the browser just picks up whatever preference the user had set in IE6’s AutoSearch options.
Nicholas Carr has a nice take on this:
But what’s the most powerful and influential default setting in the search world today? It’s not – at least yet – in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. It’s on Google’s home page. I would guess that a strong plurality, if not a majority, of web searches are done through Google’s home page, at least in the United States. As “Google” has become synonymous with “search,” people head to its home page as much out of habit as anything else. It is, quite simply, where you go to search the web. But Google doesn’t give you any choices when you arrive at its home page. There’s a default engine – Google’s – and it’s a default that you can’t change. There’s no choice.
If Google wants to fully live up to its ideals – to really give primacy to the goal of user choice in search – it should open up its home page to other search engines.
Amen. Sauce for the goose… and all that.
According to AP (quoted in Technology Review)
Piracy accounts for about 35 percent of all new PC software installations globally, an IDC study estimated last year — costing the industry an average of $40 billion annually.
My guess is that most of that is accounted for by people ripping off Microsoft Windows and Office.
Wall Street wiped $32 billion off the value of Microsoft yesterday as its share price dropped 11 per cent. This was because the company revealed a dramatic shift in its strategy to spend bucketloads of money trying to compete in emerging online markets. Here’s what the Financial Times‘s Lex column had to say:
While Microsoft’s shares dropped like a stone after it revealed plans to pour cash into online and other new markets, Google’s stock barely budged. A warning, perhaps, of the ineffectiveness of Microsoft’s billions in the battle ahead?
The investment binge that will hammer Microsoft’s profits next year echoes other past spending sprees, such as the initial Xbox foray. The company spent years trying to convince Wall Street that it was swearing off such extravagances, so it is hardly surprising that the news was poorly received. In fact Microsoft has little choice. The coming Windows Vista product cycle could well mark the last hurrah of a truly wondrous business model. As more software moves to the web and mobile phones, Microsoft’s foothold on the PC will become progressively weaker as a place from which to shape the future of its industry. Putting Windows on servers was a nice stopgap, but further gains will become harder as Linux spreads…
I love that phrase — “the last hurrah of a truly wondrous business model”. Must remember it for future use.
Oh — and while we’re on the subject, Netcraft has revealed that Apache has overtaken Microsoft as the leading developer of secure web servers. Apache now runs on 44.0% of secure web sites, compared to 43.8% for Microsoft.
Hilarious report on BBC Online. Interesting (and significant) sting in the tail:
Prime Minister Phan Van Khai and President Tran Duc Luong had earlier taken time away from the ruling Communist Party National Congress, the most important event on the political calendar, to meet Mr Gates.
Under an agreement signed Saturday, Vietnam’s Finance Ministry became the country’s first government office to use completely licensed Microsoft software.
A statement said the agreement “reaffirms the government’s commitment in copyright protection as the country integrates into the international community”, Reuters reports.
This is significant because it shows that Microsoft is making headway in stopping people pirating its software in the Far East. So the moment when that part of the world begins to realise the true costs of running proprietary software comes nearer. And I think that is good news for those of us who are working to provide a cheaper, more affordable and sustainable alternative.
This morning’s Observer column…
When President Hu Jintao of China arrived in the US last Wednesday, his first appointment was dinner with Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, at Gates’s mansion (aka San Simeon North) on the shores of Lake Washington. They dined on smoked guinea fowl, which had been shot at by the US Vice-President, Dick Cheney. (He missed, and hit one of his friends instead; the guinea fowl was later killed by humane means.) The pair were joined by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, the Chinese ambassador to the US, a number of the President’s aides and the deputy assistant head of protocol at the White House. Owing to an unpatched security hole in Gates’s Windows-powered home-monitoring system, the meeting of the two Great Leaders was bugged and a transcript of their conversation has been obtained by The Observer …
Gates: You Hu?
Hu: I am the President of China.
Gates: Cool. I’m the Chairman of Microsoft. (Hu bows.)
Hu: Because you, Mr Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I am a friend of Microsoft.
Gates: Wow! That’s really cool. We’re very interested in China, you know. Big market. Smart people.
Hu: We are pleased that many great US companies are coming to China – for example Google.
Ballmer: (Heatedly) Those sons of bitches. They stole one of our top Chinese execs …
Gates: Cool it, Steve. Hu doesn’t know about that.
Hu: We also have Yahoo in China. They are very co-operative in rooting out undesirable elements.
Ballmer: (Mutters.) Maybe they could help root out Google …
According to today’s New York Times,
Microsoft has hired Steven Berkowitz, the chief executive of Ask Jeeves, to run its floundering Internet division, Microsoft said yesterday.
Mr. Berkowitz became president of Ask Jeeves in 2001 and chief executive in 2003. He helped transform the service, which was introduced to answer questions posed in English phrases, into a search engine to compete with Google. Mr. Berkowitz continued to run the company after it was acquired by IAC/InterActiveCorp last July.
Microsoft has been struggling to redefine its online strategy and build an advertising-based business to confront competition from Google, Yahoo and others. The company’s MSN service, which dates from 1994, has gone through a series of sharp strategy shifts as Microsoft has wrestled with whether it is a media company as well as a software vendor.
Most recently, the company decided to revive its effort to build advertising-based businesses as it sees Google give away free software, supported by advertising.
Despite a large investment to develop and promote its new search engine, Microsoft’s share of the search market in the United States has plummeted. In March, it had 13 percent of the search market, down from 16 percent a year earlier, according to comScore Networks. Ask Jeeves held its share constant at 6 percent over the same period.
Well, well. Who was the first guy the Chinese president went to see when he touched down in the US today? George Bush? No way. Hu dropped in on Bill Gates at his lakeside mansion (aka San Simeon North) in Seattle. Here’s an excerpt from the Bloomberg report:
April 19 — Chinese President Hu Jintao pronounced himself “a friend” of Microsoft Corp. as he toured the largest software maker’s headquarters and dined on smoked guinea fowl at Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ lakeside home. “Because you, Mr. Bill Gates, are a friend of China, I’m a friend of Microsoft,” Hu told Gates yesterday during a demonstration of new software at the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters. “Also, I am dealing with the operating system produced by Microsoft every day,” he added, drawing laughter from Chinese officials.
Wonder what’s the Chinese for “Fatal Error”.
This is hilarious — a spoof movie which runs the audio from the launch presentation of Windows Vista over illustrations drawn entirely from Mac OS X. A neat way of making the point that what Apple does today, Microsoft will also do — eventually.
From Sci-Tech Today…
Two weeks after a third-party vendor issued a temporary patch to fix a critical security vulnerability in the Internet Explorer Web browser, Microsoft has released a whopper of a monthly patch that includes a fix for the Internet Explorer flaw. The megapatch also includes fixes for nine other flaws, of varying severity, found in Outlook Express, FrontPage, and SharePoint.
In the Security Bulletin announcing the fixes, the software giant acknowledged that eight of the 10 flaws could allow a hacker to take complete control of a computer running unpatched software. To do so, the attacker would have to set up a Web site with malicious code and inveigle the unsuspecting user to visit the site.
The good part, said Rob Ayoub, a Frost & Sullivan analyst, is that these vulnerabilities finally were fixed. He also said that this monthly round of patches is surprising in that the updates apply to so many computer users. Some 90 percent of computer users run Microsoft Windows and the Internet Explorer browser…