Just saw this today – an Open Office for kids. Essentially, it looks like a slimmed-down set of features that would be simpler for kids to useL
Would be nice to see them go the extra mile and completely redesign the interface from the bottom up for kid friendliness. My company is currently releasing exactly that – more details later!
The mobile picture is now officially a three-way dance: Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The same people who dominate desktop computing. Everybody else is screwed. Former Palm CEO Ed Colligan famously said a few years ago: “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” That’s precisely what’s just happened. Phones are the new PCs. PC guys are the new phone guys.
But now we have the iPad. And now mobile apps have an opportunity to be more and do more than ever before. And … Apple has thrown down the gauntlet by developing special (and cheap!) versions of its own office applications for iPad – the iWork suite.
iWork includes Keynote (PowerPoint), Pages (Word), and Numbers (Excel). How is Microsoft going to respond?
Putting their own apps on iPad is a big, big move, from a lot of perspectives:
It would require huge redesign (lots of work)
It would implicitly be blessing Apple’s new semi-mobile platform (both annoying and strategically dangerous)
It would be at a much lower price point than desktop office … iWork is about $15 on iPad, versus about $100 on a Mac (also strategically dangerous and very financially risky)
And yet, to not do it risks being left in the starting gate as the race for mobile software really starts taking off. Above all else, after all, Microsoft is a software company.
What will they do? My guess: not get in until it’s too late, then jump in with both feet.
While Microsoft and Apple are still bitter rivals, several recent events have inadvertently brought them closer together in order to fight their common enemy: Google.
The phrase “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” comes to mind. Let’s explore how we got to this tipping point.
There were just so many choices for this column. Eventually I went for the one you see above, semi-reminiscent of Neal Postman’s famous anti-TV Amusing Ourselves to Death. But “John Dvorak Writes Good Column; World’s Jaw Drops” was a real possibility.
Dvorak, of course, has been tilting at Macs for some time. Now, apparently, he’s advancing in reverse and shooting some of his outrageous slings and arrows at the second incarnation of the Borg.
To put it simply, Microsoft makes money on Windows and Office, and loses money on everything else. And now … Windows and Office have developed an annoying little cough, are sporting some nastly little red spots, and are complaining of pain in the glutes. Free software on the low end and Mac on the high end are eating their lunch and sticking out their tongue at the former playground bully.
But why the cracks in the giant’s armor? Dvorak, like others, highlights that Microsoft has for over a decade behaved like Hammy in Over the Hedge, a microencephalic squirrel who is distracted and distractible by anything shiny, round, black, white, hard, soft, fat, skinny, blue, or angular … in short, anything at all.
Dvorak’s list is possibly the best-laid-out that I’ve seen, however, and funny besides – it’s certainly worth a read …
Here’s just a few on the money pits he mentions:
Years ago in the pre-Internet era, AOL was the talk of the town, so Microsoft had to copy it with MSN. No money was made; no strategic advantage was gained.
Netscape was the rage for a while, so Microsoft threw together a browser and got in that business. The browser was given away for free. No money was made; the strategy got the company in trouble with government trustbusters.
During the early days of the Internet, new online publications appeared. Microsoft decided to become a publisher too, rolling out a slew of online properties including a computer magazine and a women’s magazine. They were all folded.
Computer books became popular; Microsoft began Microsoft Press. After an early splash and success, the company soon lost interest and the division now languishes.
Teddy Ruxpin became a hot toy. Microsoft rolled out a couple of robotic plush toys, including the creepy Barney the Dinosaur who sang “I love you and you love me.” The company soon lost interest and dropped the whole thing.
A valid point that might be made is that many big companies start hundreds of projects. Just like start-ups, most fail, but the ones that hit, hit big, and finance future growth.
I’m not sure that Microsoft, however, has hit anything out of the park other than its big core franchises. Which might make Microsoft the next bird to cross Randy Johnson’s path.
I signed up for a Windows Live Messenger account this morning and was struck by the infrequently asked questions:
The title says frequently asked questions, but they’re obviously not. They’re actually questions Microsoft wishes people would ask …
What ordinary person – Joe in the warehouse, Betty in accounting – has ever asked: How do I create a strong password? Betty is much more concerned about creating one that she can actually remember.
And Joe has never wondered: How can I create my mobile credentials?. Seriously now … what on earth are those? I’m not sure I know, and I’m a COO and architect for a software company!
These are FAQs that have never been asked. Someone, somewhere, has been told: write some FAQs so we have some help on the website. Go figure out what people might want to know.
It might be easier to … just ask people what they want to know. Or check your logs and figure out what seems hard. Or watch a couple of users interacting with the system.
As anyone who follows tech news knows, Microsoftisplanningitsownretailstores. Presumably, having seen the success of Apple’s stores, Ballmer thinks there’s a model to follow here.
Key to almost every new business venture is a question: how is this differentiated from the competition. But based on what I’m seeing in Microsoft’s Retail Experience Center … please help me understand: how is this any different than Best Buy?
OK, so I get that there are digital displays for product shelves. I get that everything is Microsoft, Microsoft, and more Microsoft. I even see the mini-computers on the shopping cars (and wonder how long they’ll last).
But those are details. On the big picture … the whole metaphor of the store … nothing has changed. It’s a nice, plastic, pastels & neutrals, soulless big box store. How Microsoft!
And how appropriate that their recently-hired VP of Retail, David Porter, is a 25-year Wall-Mart veteran. His latest gig was much sexier, at DreamWorks Animation … but the role was head of worldwide distribution.
This is a great quote on usability from Whitney Hess’s recent article on Mashable. She’s actually defining usability in reverse … by saying what it is is not:
David Malouf, professor of interaction design at Savannah College of Art & Design, explains that “while usability is important, its focus on efficiency and effectiveness seems to blur the other important factors in UX, which include learnability and visceral and behavioral emotional responses to the products and services we use.”
I like that:
usability (including efficiency and effectiveness)
learnability
visceral and behavioral emotional responses
It includes a lot of overlap from my recent post, User-friendly: how to know your software is usable. Satisfaction however, which is the work I used in that post, is a pale reflection of “visceral and behavioral emotional response.”
The one thing I’d add: there are a lot of visceral emotional responses that Are Not Positive. (Using some features in Windows come to mind here, unpleasantly.)
I’m using a lot of Windows lately, via VMware Fusion … recently installing both Vista and XP. It’s for work, and it’s for certain apps that need to be tested on a PC.
The most annoying thing I’ve found so far – besides the way Windows is always mothering me to death me with little messages, asking me if I’m really, totally, quite absolutely sure I want to do something – is that fact that there are no visual cues that an application is launching.
You double-click an app … and nothing happens! Or so you think. Actually, it is launching (usually). But it’s entirely invisible until it appears, fully loaded, on your desktop. In the meantime, of course, you’ve double-clicked it a couple more times … and more of the same open like jack-in-the-boxes.
Annoying!
Mac OS X tells you an app is launching. First by changing the icon background color, and most importantly, by bouncing the icon in the dock until it is fully launched. Plus, if you double-click the app again by mistake, OS X is smart enough to not launch the same app twice.
Now that makes sense.
. . .
. . .
I’m sure this is in actual fact not the most annoying thing about Windows. But it is the most annoying thing right now for me.
Last week I bought and installed Office 2008 on our new iMac … and immediately had a 400+ MB download to update it. Tonight I started up PowerPoint … and am immediately confronted with a 158 MB to update it again.
I can only assume that Microsoft screwed up something in the initial update horribly, and needs to rectify its error with yet another massive update.
Not cool!
To date I have spent more time updating Office 2008 than actually using it.
It’s Groove, rewritten from scratch, one more time. Ray Ozzie just can’t stop rewriting this damn app, again and again and again, and taking 5-7 years each time.
Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO)’s second-biggest investor urged Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) to raise its $42 billion bid for the Web pioneer and warned Yahoo it has few options left, raising the pressure on them to seal a deal.
Isn’t it somewhat hard to argue both of those positions at the same time? Wouldn’t that almost be like talking out of both sides of your mouth?
Ken Ollin is wondering if the biggest innovation in the iPhone is greed. At least, that’s the catchy title of his blog post.
What he’s really questioning is why the iPhone is a closed garden instead of an open software development ecosystem.
In response, of course, eager Mac users have responded with the usual flood of comments to anyone who questions Apple – mostly making good points about the software development kit that will be coming out in February or so.
But Ken’s post is still valuable, as I commented on his post:
A lot of people have made good points in the comments. The SDK, etc.
But … let’s not lose sight of the point (even if we are Mac fans – and I’m one too.)
The point is that the ecosystem is more important than an individual piece of software or hardware – and any individual company. This is the key insight that initially won Microsoft the operating system war, and losing this insight is what is costing Microsoft today.
The point for Apple: cultivate the ecosystem. The returns are huge multiples of what the closed garden generates. Apple is likely moving in this direction with the SDK.
But here’s why commentary like this is valuable: the ecosystem approach is not in Apple’s DNA. Apple *is* learning it, but true-blue Apple SOP is to go it alone.
An occasional reminder is a good thing for Apple – and a good thing for all of us who love Apple products and software and ethos.
In a discussion on the burning question of “who Bill Gates really is,” we get the following brilliant insight:
“Bill Gates is the proxy for how Microsoft will be remembered. First and foremost, he’s a businessman. He’s not an inventor or technologist, per se, and I don’t think he would claim to be. He’s fundamentally a geek.”
Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun Microsystems
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
I'm a software exec who cares about UX and UI, scours web & social media, lives in Canada, plays hockey, uses a Mac (mostly). Oh, and I blog and speak at conferences.
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
