Microsoft launched a new site, Microsoft by the Numbers which highlights all their product stats like:
over 170,000 apps for Windows Phone
over 2 billion minutes per day spent by Skype users
76 million XBox 360 consoles sold to date
It looks like they’re missing a big number though.
Where’s the $900 million write down for all the unsold Surface RT tablets?
I couldn’t resist. Microsoft, you set me up for this.
Taken from The Combustion Chamber
I love the fact that Microsoft is touting the non-touch-optimized interface of Office as an advantage over the iPad.
Wow, we’re all really dying for the those hard to tap hit areas!
I’ll give them this, it is a differentiator.
via Yimmy’s Yayo
The Verge: CBS blackout sparks rise in TV show piracy
CBS’s block on Time Warner Cable (TWC) customers is less than a week old and already the blackout is fuelling a rise in TV show piracy. TorrentFreak reports that the percentage of illegal downloads rose substantially in the week since it went dark, as piracy rates for popular CBS show Under The Dome increased by 34 percent over the course of one weekend. As downloads went up, the show unsurprisingly saw its lowest viewing figures this season.
My wife worked at NBC Universal for over 10 years. One of the many things I learned about television from her was don’t fuck with peoples’ cable.
One of my favorite things to do when I taught design at Rutgers Newark and FIT was to have students rethink existing websites/services.
SVA Masters student Tom Calabrese did this with one of my most hated services of all time, the United States Postal Service.
Check out his presentation on Slideshare.
via Brand New
Update: Regarding my hate for the USPS–I’m specifically referring to the experience of waiting in line at the physical post office locations. It’s just a miserable experience. When at all possible, I use the automated machines, where you can weigh, stamp and mail things without having to interact with postal employees.
As I kid I loved watching the nature shows on PBS.
If I happen to be flipping around channels and I come across one now, I’m always sucked in (the same happens if I stumble upon Cast Away or The Godfather).
Mental Floss has a great story about a wasp in Costa Rica that turns spiders into zombie construction workers:
In another post, we were talking about what happens to spiders and their webs when scientists give them a little bit of marijuana and other drugs. While researching that post, I learned that its not just humans that alter spiders’ behavior with chemicals. There’s a wasp in Costa Rica that does the same thing, in a more gruesome and sinister way, as part of its journey to adulthood.
The tropical wasp species Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is a parasite, and it takes advantage of an unlikely host. The web of the orb weaver spider Plesiometa argyra is normally a place where bugs meet their untimely death and become spider snacks. Using an arsenal of toxins and mind-altering chemicals, though, H. argyraphaga is able to turn the spider into a slave and a meal and its web into a safe haven.
Nature rules.
Taken from The Combustion Chamber
—Seth Godin
via Cameron Moll
So no one is biting on the price of Microsoft’s Surface Pro:
Microsoft is discounting its Surface Pro tablet this weekend, following heavy reductions to its Surface RT costs recently. The 10 percent price cut to Surface Pro reduces the cost of the 64GB and 128GB models by $100 each in the US.
As I’ve said before, I don’t watch sports. I watch design and technology and Apple is my team. This doesn’t mean I can’t call out Apple when they mess up. Like when they launched their shitty maps in 2012 (they’re still pretty useless to me in cities like San Francisco and New York where I need subway/bus directions). Or when my iMessages don’t show up in chronological order on my Macbook.
Back to Microsoft. Last fall they tried to “pivot” and move from being a company focused on desktop software to one that can do desktop software and consumer-focused mobile software with Windows 8/Metro/Not-Called-Metro OS and mobile hardware with Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets.
I said the whole thing sounded half-baked (John Gruber agreed).
The Surface tablets are almost a year old, and they’re still looking half baked. In fact, at this point I’m not even sure Ballmer knows how to use the oven. It doesn’t matter. Not only is Microsoft sticking with their Windows 8/RT/Surface pivot, but they’re raising the stakes and making it even more pivot-y by reorganizing the whole company. (For what it’s worth I was talking with some ex-Microsofties a few weeks ago when I was in Seattle and I asked them what they thought of the reorg-pivot-y-goodness. They laughed.)
I laugh too. The same way I laughed at Windows Vista, the brown Zune and the Kin (you totally forgot about the Kin, didn’t you?). I also laughed at Steve Ballmer, when he laughed at the iPhone in 2007.
I laugh at Steve Ballmer and the team he’s mismanaging (even more so than Bill Gates) because Microsoft is a company built to sell software to companies. They’ve never understood how to sell software or devices to human beings with emotions.
Yes, the XBox has been a phenomenal success, but if Microsoft relied on their Entertainment division to carry the company, their upper management would probably all jump off a bridge. If you’re wondering how much money the Entertainment division makes for MS it’s not much.
Maybe I shouldn’t be filled with this much schadenfreude because at least Microsoft did try to pivot with Windows Phone 7 & 8 and Windows 8 but it’s clear people and businesses are not nearly as excited about Microsoft’s new products as Microsoft is.
I recently asked my father, who’s been a Windows user since it debuted in the 80’s, if he was planning on upgrading to Windows 8. He told me, “no way.” He said he’d likely get an Apple computer the next time he needs to upgrade. I think that’s telling. You could argue that he’s older and doesn’t “get” Windows 8 and he’s not the target demographic for Window 8, but all demographics are buying iPhones and iPads so clearly Microsoft is doing something wrong. Or maybe they’re ahead of their time. I’m serious. Ok, I’m not.
I’ve read some articles saying the XBox One is Microsoft’s last chance to gain a foothold in the consumer electronics space.
I doubt it.
What I do know is schadenfreude goes down smoooooth.
BGR: Frost & Sullivan: Apple is ‘too late and too limited’ to tackle automotive market:
Well known business consultant and market research firm Frost & Sullivan recently issued a report that claims Apple’s move to take on the automotive infotainment market with Siri and iOS 7 is “too late and too limited.” Apple announced this past June that it will introduce deeper Siri integration with in-car systems when it releases iOS 7 this fall, but Frost & Sullivan thinks Apple’s move into the space will never amount to much.
Too late and too limited?
If you say so.
But I say you’re wrong.
