Microsoft Might Kick In $1-$3 Billion To Help With The Dell Buy Out
$3 billion to keep Dell going?
It’s like supporting a horse carriage company during the golden age of automobiles.
If I were Michael Dell, I would give the money back to the shareholders (it never gets old).
Ponder that for a second.
This statistic is from September 2012, but I’m posting it because I’m not sure I caught it when it was first announced.
It’s also worth noting today is the iPhone’s 6th Birthday (via).
I’m trying to remember what Steve Ballmer said about the iPhone when it was first announced….. Oh yeah! Now I remember.
So Adobe bought Behance. It will be interesting to see how this acquisition goes.
It tastes a little bit like Comcast’s acquisition of NBCU, where the pipeline bought the content. In the case of Adobe, they make the content creation tools and now they’re buying the showcase holding the creations made with their tools.
I don’t have any positive or negative feels on the deal other than that (yet).
I signed up with Behance a few months ago and posted my updated portfolio after 6 years of procrastination (this was the last major update …in Flash). So far I really like the Behance Network.
I hope Adobe doesn’t mess it up.
At the right time, we’ll keep disrupting and keep discovering new things that people didn’t know they wanted.
MacNN: Apple internal video shows thinking behind stores
This bit is the key:
The approach appears to be very successful, and under Johnson’s watch the chain became the most profitable per-square-foot retail chain the world, even surpassing high-margin jewelry and apparel chains. Retail imitators like Sony, Microsoft and in particular Samsung have tried to mimic the approach, but their implementation — lightly-differentiated copies of the Apple Store with a more rigid consistency from one store to another — has failed to resonate with the public, as recent surveys have shown.
Mimicking is exactly what Apple’s competitors do, including Microsoft with their poorly performing Apple Store rip-offs.
It all gets back to what I wrote back in August. The fact that this internal video has been made public isn’t going to make a lick of difference to Apple’s competitors, because they’re likely to just mimic an approach to retail, not internalize a process and way of thinking. Apple cares about making people happy because they know it will inevitably lead to sales. You can’t mimic care. People know when you’re being sincere.
This silly “care” thing extends way beyond the retail experience and into Apple’s products. They make things they enjoy using and they think others will enjoy using while the competition makes iPad and iPhone and MacBook competitors. Apple’s competitors don’t think about the human experience, they focus on filling a product category.
It was a truly black Friday for Microsoft last week. As in devoid of the light from Surface screens.
Over at Fortune 2.0, Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports Apple sold 11 iPads per hour versus zero Microsoft Surface tablets at the Mall of America in Minneapolis.
Microsoft continues to show its DNA as a company knowing how to sell to businesses, not to people.
Then again, it seems even that business edge is fading.
Over at GigaOm, Eliza Kern on the roots and rise of Airbnb:
First the roots:
“Airbnb was born out of necessarity. Our rent went up. It was born out of a problem,” said Joe Gebbia, the company’s co-founder and chief product officer at GigaOM’s RoadMap conference in San Francisco Monday. “By inflating the air bed, it began that design process.”
Then the rise:
“We started with airbeds,” he said. “And people have listed private rooms, and then… boats and treehouses and castles and villas.”
When someone listed their island in Fiji on the site for relatively decent prices, that’s when Gebbia realized Airbnb had reached a new level of business.
Yeah, I’d say the island-in-Figi-listing is a good indicator of hitting the next level.
Ars Technica: Steven Sinofsky, Windows President, leaving Microsoft effective immediately
Steven Sinofsky, President of Windows and Windows Live Division, is leaving Microsoft effective immediately, reports All Things D.
The move is claimed to be a result of growing discontent within the software giant, with a number of executives reportedly unhappy when working with him due to his failure to be a “team player.” Such a move has striking parallels with Scott Forstall’s recent exit from Apple.
I thought it was enough that Microsoft copied Apple’s integrated approach to hardware and software and their retail store design.
Now they’re copying how they fire senior executives?
The Court of Appeal of England and Wales has ordered Apple to pay the legal fees of competitor Samsung on an ‘indemnity basis’ after the company published a “false and misleading” notice in the wake of a patent lawsuit over the iPad. The judgement, intended to humiliate Apple, will require the company to pay for all expenses associated with Samsung’s legal defense, with any disputes over the exact amount likely to be resolved in the latter firm’s favor.
These UK judges are being a bunch of dicks with this legal disclaimer issue. They’re acting like a bunch of drama queens.
I think it all gets back to bitterness over the Revolutionary War.
It’s same reason George Lucas filled the Death Star with British actors.
(I’m only half kidding)
MG Siegler responding to a comment about how Microsoft is in deeper doodoo than they realize (I think they might be starting to realize, but maybe I’m giving them more credit than I should):
Kids of my generation grew up with PCs. Those were the only computers we knew from an early age. Where are the kids today going to get that initial Windows PC exposure? Their computers are iPads. Their schools are filled with Macs — and those will probably be replaced by tablets in the not-too-distant future.
Like MG, I too, grew up with Windows. My father bought the first IBM PC in 1981. Windows 1.0 wouldn’t come out for another 4 years and we wouldn’t be regularly using Windows in our home until version 3.0 in 1990. Why did we use Windows on our home computer? Because that’s what everyone’s parents used at work.
As I’ve mentioned before, Microsoft doesn’t know how to sell to consumers, they only know how to sell to businesses. Their enormous (yet now slowly dwindling) wealth is thanks to the alliances and relationships they made with businesses in the 80’s and 90’s. Yes, Microsoft has kicked ass with XBox, but their XBox division brings in chump change to their bottom line compared to Windows and Office.
Starting with the shit-brown Zune in 2006, Microsoft made their first attempt to speak to human beings with a new product for consumers, not businesses. Then in 2010, from the ashes of the Zune rose the phoenix called Windows Phone 7. Then 7.5. Now 8. And also Surface.
Microsoft is in a battle where they’re not gaining much traction with consumers, while Apple continues to encroach on their business territory with iPads and MacBooks and iPhones. With the new Surface and Windows 8, we’re going to see if all the human beings out there understand what Microsoft is trying to sell them.
Seth Godin brings our attention to the Weber-Fechner law:
The more stimulus you’re getting (light, sound, pressure, delight, sadness) the less easily you can notice a small change. That seems obvious, but it’s worth saying.
If you’re entering a market filled with loudness, it’s harder to be noticed, even if the incremental benefit you offer seems large to you. If you’re trying to delight existing customers, the more delighted they already are, the more new delight you need to offer to turn heads.
This brings to mind the Blue Ocean Strategy.
Submitted, my new Kickstarter has been.
Their approval, now I wait for.
mmmMMMmmm.
Over at The Verge, Tim Carmody reacts to The Kindle Fire:
“The Kindle Fire,” he added, “is a service. It offers 22 million items. It calls you by name. It makes recommendations for you.” Bezos was talking about the Kindle Fire as if it were Amazon itself: the entire retail and technological experience made manifest in a single device. The future of Amazon, he seemed to be saying, isn’t the website; it’s this material portal, and others like it.
Echoes my reaction from a few days ago. The Kindle Fire is Amazon incarnate—a vessel for buying more stuff. The same as the iPad is Apple incarnate—a best-of-breed, general purpose tablet computer, designed for everything from productivity tasks to watching movies to listening to music.
There’s a good deal of overlap in what you can do on both devices, but the focus is different. To the average person, this difference in focus might seem very subtle, but to me it’s extremely important.
It reminds me of the phrase (which I believe Steve Jobs said, but I can’t find a source): “We don’t design products to make money, we make money so we can design products.”
