Adobe & Microsoft – A Marriage Made In Heaven?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 9, 2010 by admin in Technology
Saturday, October 9th, 2010If Microsoft acquired Adobe, you could finally watch your PDF’s and Word documents freeze in the same window! And… is Slate the new Coal?
Wouldn’t it be great if Microsoft, a company notorious for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging software with mind-numbingly illogical menus, and constant new overpriced versions that are backwards-incompatible, were to partner with Adobe, a company known for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging… oh wait. So why is it that so many tech industry and finance blogs are excited about the rumour of a possible merger or acquisition involving the two? It’s ironic that Apple – once the prideful domain of snobbish, intellectual arty types – is now part of the Evil Empire (along with Google) that everyone thinks needs to be taken down. In my opinion, anyone who sees anything positive in a possible Adobe/Microsoft merger is beholden to a business model that we can only hope is in its death throes. Apple and Google have gotten where they are right now with a really crazy idea: give the user what they want or need, and do it exceptionally well. Adobe and Microsoft, on the other hand, have for nearly a decade stuck to a strategy of buying their competitors , rolling exceptional products into their existing lines of outdated and over-developed re-releases of lumbering software suites, usually to the detriment if not total destruction of really great products. In any case, the rumour is already being called “nonsense” by credible sources, so the whole idea may be as vaporous as Microsoft’s “slate”, an attempt to compete with the iPad, which is supposed to be available in time for Christmas. What a great stocking stuffer for the people on your list who’ve been naughty, not nice! Maybe slate is the new coal. Read the rest of this entry »
Please Notify Kin’s Next Of Kin
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 12, 2010 by admin in Technology
Monday, April 12th, 2010The marketing of Microsoft’s new KIN may miss the mark in about a dozen ways, but at least it got the tech press talking about something other than the iP… PHEW! That was close.
Because even though it was born just today, we’re not sure how long it has to live. It’s rare that I’m utterly dumbfounded by the release of a tech product. But if you’re as perplexed as I am regarding what to think about Microsoft’s Kin, perhaps we can learn something together as I try to dispel my ignorance. There has been a quiet buzz about the product’s release for some time now (as codename “pink”), but today was the official rollout. Such as it was. According to available press materials, the Kin is targeted at “social networking-savvy teens and twenty-somethings”, but if you were aiming at this market, wouldn’t you want to roll your product out by having somebody like Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers pitch it, as opposed to a guy with a pot belly in a form-fitting shirt who – if you are a twentysomething – probably looks like your dad? The video below from Microsoft’s own press site blows it six ways to Sunday. It’s embeddable, but uses Silverlight; it’s presented by two fortyish guys who keep talking about their proposed market as “they”, sounding most of the time like their proposed market is a demographic they made up based on their ignorance and then created by looking for certain results; and it’s…well, BORING. I don’t think the device and related concepts are so far off the mark; I’d LOVE a phone that eases my transitions from social networking to web and e-mail to phone. And I mean one that isn’t the iPhone. But the promise of this sort of thing is inevitably so interwoven with the service that makes it work that I can’t imagine the Kin’s partnership with Verizon delivering all of this at a useful price. If you find the actual Kin site as annoyingly “hip two years ago” and cryptic as I did, Engadget has an expansive and thorough roundup of the product that puts all the pieces together. Which I think bodes poorly for the Kin, you really should be able to explain a product in a sentence or two if you’re marketing it to attention-impaired millenials. Read the rest of this entry »
The Adobe Apocalypse
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 19, 2010 by admin in Technology
Friday, February 19th, 2010Why I hate Adobe, and how their products could bring down western civilization.
I’ve been deriving secret glee from Steve Jobs’ repeated slams against Adobe Flash. Although I have a lot of friends who are hard-core Adobephiles, I have to admit I’ve always quietly loathed the company’s products. I always found the interface of two of their flagship products – Photoshop
You Won’t Find The G-Spot With Your iPad
[ Comments Off ]Posted on February 4, 2010 by admin in Technology
Thursday, February 4th, 2010If you’re an Apple or Google lover who thinks Microsoft is The Evil One, you really need to get up to speed. No, One Bing Shall Not Rule Them all.
If you’re the sort of person who thinks of Microsoft as The Evil One, you haven’t really followed what Google and Apple have been up to lately. And if you think that tablet devices don’t have a big future you’re probably also fortunate that you don’t have investment dollars either, because you’d be kicking yourself down the road for the opportunities you missed. Yes, the tablet wars are on. Steve Ballmer rushed the announcement of the HP/Windows Slate to beat Steve Jobs recent unveiling of the iPad. And hot on the tails of Jobs’ announcement, Google released a rather feeble concept video of their Chrome Operating System in use on an imaginary tablet device (images here). And then of course there’s the lawsuit against the Indian company that allegedly stole the CrunchPad and renamed it the JooJoo. But what’s really going to be interesting about how this all plays out is that it’s not about the devices per se, it’s about who controls how you do what you do, and all the big players know this. Yes, Apple kicked Adobe in the face over flash, but in a way, who cares? Flash has been a crashmonster since its inception. What’s really at stake here is how you get on the web, where you buy things, and how you do your business. And Apple’s closed system on the iPad is geared toward this end. Google already has search pretty well locked down, and they additionally want you phoning and creating all your office documents through tools like the Google Phone, Google Voice, Google Docs, and G-Mail. Imagine a future in which the coolest new device doesn’t play nice with the coolest new tools you want to use on it. And if you can’t even install your own software, because it’s all located on a remote server that you have no contorl over. And to take “Evil” to a new level in this realm, now that Apple makes their own chips for their exclusionary device, they’re essentially like Intel and Microsoft rolled into one. Adding a little irony to all of this is the fact that Apple is talking to Microsoft about replacing Google on the iPhone with Bing. Who is your evil nemesis now? Read the rest of this entry »
Forget That Mac Tablet – The Microsoft Courier Is Coming
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on October 4, 2009 by admin in Technology
Sunday, October 4th, 2009All you fascist Mac-Addicted zombies are gonna be jealous when I have my cool gizmo before you have yours.
My interest in the ultimate iThingy, innovative laptop concepts, and the much-rumoured Mac Tablet borders on an unhealthy obsession. If somebody would just go ahead and MAKE one of the darn things, I’d be the first sucka in line to buy one. And now, I’m in real danger, because the Microsoft Courier may just beat the Mac tablet to market. I mean, when you’re talking about imaginary magic fairy gizmos, anything can happen, right? The impending Microsoft answer to the Mac hoopla is actually pretty intriguing. Watch the video below to see exactly how cool an imaginary Microsoft product can be. I’m just left wondering how a device that small can possibly run a Windows operating system. It must have a pretend fairy-powered CPU too. And since it’s a startlingly clever concept considering its Redmond origins, rabid PC-hating MacFreaks of course had to immediately dig up this video from 1988 showing that Apple was “already there”. Well, thank God Apple didn’t go there; if I had to look at and listen to that little bowtie-wearing dork in the video every day I’d stop using computers altogether. He’s more annoying than “Microsoft Bob” or “Clippy”. Well, maybe not Clippy. And just one last thought (swiped from Microsoft’s grinning robots or the Brotherhood of the Mac. Which is worse? ) to all you Mac-fixated zombies out there who are going to claim in advance that the Courier couldn’t possibly compare to a Mac Tablet: “Go back to your house. I know, you’ve got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There’s a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute MONSTER.” Read the rest of this entry »