Category: Microsoft

Extra Credit

A few show notes before the show notes.

While we’re waiting for the episode to get posted (hey, voice manipulation is a tricky business and Leo’s a busy man), The Macalope has some further comments on some things that were discussed on MBW:

  • In the All Things Digital love-fest between Jobs and Gates, Gates kept talking about how cameras were going to be set up in everyone’s house and your computer would react to your movement. Indeed, Roughly Drafted discusses at length the fact that Microsoft’s new conference table is not a touch-sensetive table, but works with cameras. Personally, the Macalope can think of few things creepier than Bill Gates and Microsoft installing cameras in his home (one of them is that Jerry Lewis movie). Thank you, no.
  • The Macalope’s pick was PandoraJam. Having used it more thoroughly in the past 24 hours, he should now point out that it’s a little buggy. On slower machines or connections the files it creates will likely have some skipping, but at least you have access to the full songs so you can go back and listen to them to decide if you want to buy them. Maybe the flaws are nice way of keeping people honest. Not for the Macalope, of course. He is as honest as the day is long. It’s for you people. At any rate, the Macalope still thinks it’s worth $15.
  • The Macalope did mention this, but if you listen to the All Things Digital interview, twice Jobs alluded to an upcoming online offering in the next year or two that he wouldn’t elaborate on. He then said that .Mac was going to get an update “soon”, leading the Macalope to believe that these are separate topics. He’s interested to hear the thoughts of his charming and well-manicured readers who might have sat through the cast.

BFF

Jobs and Gates chummy at All Things Digital.

Jobs and Gates trade jests at rare joint appearance.

“PC guy is great, he’s got a big heart,” the chief of Apple Inc. said…

People let me tell you ’bout my best friend,
He’s a warm hearted person who’ll love me till the end.

Jobs, 52, and Gates, 51, reminisced about the industry and old partnerships. The tone was jovial, even sentimental, but Jobs did get in a few good-natured digs.

People let me tell you bout my best friend,
He’s a one boy cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy.

At one point, Gates said employees working on Microsoft’s Zune portable media player admired Apple for creating the market for such devices with its hugely successful iPod line.

“And we love them because they’re all customers!” countered Jobs.

People let me tell you ’bout him he’s so much fun
Whether we’re talkin’ man to man or whether we’re talking son to son.

“We’ve kept our marriage secret for over a decade now,” Jobs said, to roars of laughter.

Cause he’s my best friend.
Yes he’s my best friend.

Not.

Paul Thurrott attempts to make lemonade from Zune lemons.

Yesterday Paul Thurrott welcomed the news that Microsoft had sold it’s millionth Zune, proudly declaring that it’s “not doing all that horribly.”

Thurrott, who does not hesitate to rail against those who point out the Mac’s market share gains, thinks nothing of pimping this piece of Microsoft marketing tripe. Sadly for Thurrott but humorously for us, a funny thing happened on the way to writing the original piece he links to and, well, turns out it’s wrong. Microsoft is gonna probably have sold a million Zunes. Someday.

Even if it had been true, however, Thurrott’s post is an escapade in jackassery.

Of course, Apple sells several million iPods a quarter, so there’s still some ground to make up.

“Some ground.”

This, incidentally, is also what Thurrott calls the land mass between Hungary and Mongolia. We call it the Russian Steppe. He calls it “some ground”.

No one’s really sure why he does this. He just does.

Now, the Oxford American Dictionaries (better known to Mac users as “Dictionary”) defines “several” as “more than two but not many”. The Macalope will leave it up to his intelligent and fabulously sexy readers to decide if last quarter’s 10.5 million or the previous quarter’s 21 million can accurately be described as “several” million.

But still. Not too shabby.

Well, actually, no, still rather shabby.

Microsoft is a notorious channel stuffer, so that might explain why while the company can claim to have “sold” 1 million Zunes you, like the horny one, might not have seen anyone actually using one outside of a CompUSA sales associate killing time before he’s downsized.

Thurrott makes a point of noting in his retraction that Apple only sold half that number in its first six months. Indeed.

Which is amazing considering the size of the overall market at the time and and that the iPod was effectively being sold only to Mac users as it didn’t ship with software for Windows until July of 2002 (see Wikipedia’s iPod entry).

Look, it is much harder to break into the digital music player market now than it was in 2001. But this is also Microsoft we’re talking about. They can practically force retailers to take as many as they tell them to. Is 10% of the hard-drive based market really anything to crow about? Great, it looks like they’ll make their target, albeit probably by stuffing the channel. But the Zune doesn’t have “some ground” to make up. It still has to prove that it can be anything more than a distant second in a subset of the market.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all

Making the whole widget, that is.

On his new blog, Walt Mossberg (tip o’ the antlers to Michael Gartenberg) talks about how Microsoft and Sony are gettin’ themselves some o’ that old-time Apple religion: making the whole widget.

Those of you who, like the Macalope, lived through the 1990s where every yahoo analyst and oh-so-well-meaning Apple basher swore up and down that the company needed to license or die can feel free to bask in the schadenfreude.

Of course, they’re still doing it, but not nearly as much.

Mac sales down! Vista to blame?!

Short answer: no.

As a teacher of the Macalope’s liked to say, “There are no stupid questions, Macalope. Only stupid people.”

Which brings us to eWeek’s Joe Wilcox who asks Did Vista Sap Mac Sales?

“Sap Mac sales”? What conference call were you listening to?

After a year of gains, Mac shipments declined during Apple’s fiscal 2007 second quarter. Is Vista a reason?

Mac shipments declined? What? No, they didn’t. They were up 36%.

Sequentially, overall Mac shipments declined 6 percent, as measured in units and dollars, between Apple’s fiscal first and second quarters.

Oh, fer…

Not the old “quarter to quarter” crap again. C’mon!

And the “years of gains” part isn’t even correct and Wilcox’s own chart shows that. You know, if you’re looking at sequential quarters — apart from asking yourself why on God’s green earth you’re doing that — you might want to actually look at the data before you make generalizations.

“Years of gains”? No. Mac sales declined slightly a quarter ago and, duh, more significantly… exactly one year ago!

But Wilcox has apparently only just heard of this “cyclicality” of which we speak.

The word from analysts: No impact. The declines are seasonable, and typical for Apple and less than fiscal 2006 second quarter.

Uh, you know, Joe, you can actually do that calculation yourself. You don’t need to call some fancy high-paid analyst. Just get the ol’ slide rule out and let ‘er rip!

What’s funny about Wilcox’s piece is the underlying “Uh… no…” tone in all the quotes he gets.

“I wouldn’t read too much into a sequential decline,” said David Daoud, manager of IDC’s personal computing and PC tracker programs.

You can almost hear Daoud scratching his head and speaking… very… slowly…

This one is better, though:

“Sales always decline from [Apple’s] Q1 to Q2 because of seasonality,” said Stephen Baker, NPD’s vice president of industry analysis. “A better question would be if the sequential decline this year was more or less than the sequential decline last year.”

“Sales always decline this quarter, you numbskull, and, uh, your question sucks.”

Now, one might argue that Wilcox only asked a question and faithfully reported the answer.

So what’s wrong with that?

What’s wrong is that the question is so misplaced. Did he really think Apple’s results were a bad thing? How could he have missed the multitude of reports that Mac sales soared? How could he have missed Apple’s stock price ripping past 100?

Astounding.

And that is why you fail.

Pogue on Apple TV vs. the Xbox.

Everyone’s linking to David Pogue’s Apple TV review today. Pogue also has some spillover content on his blog, including a clue as to why Apple only allows you to buy video content, not rent.

Here’s how the Xbox handles it:

First, each movie is available for rental only during a several-week window–then it’s gone. Second, you have to start watching the movie within two weeks of downloading it. Third, once you start watching it, you have to finish watching within 24 hours.

In each case, the movie is lost forever if you’re tardy.

Well, isn’t that craptacular?!

The Macalope suspect that — like DRM — Apple could probably find a better way of handling rentals than Microsoft which loves to roll over to the recording industry. But barring that, that’s really one of the differentiators between the two companies, isn’t it? Microsoft’s willing to give you a half-assed solution for something were Apple says, no, you don’t want to do that because it’s going to suck.

Can’t you just hear Steve Jobs saying that?

And you’d just nod vigorously in agreement, too, wouldn’t you.

Finally, here’s Michael Gartenberg’s on the Apple TV after a glowing review:

Is there a downside? Not really.

There you have it.

The Zune continues to not catch a break

Poor Zune.

A few Zune-related links for your amusement:

Michael Gartenberg is still looking for someone to squirt with. Click through to the post by Steven Levy who did manage to get squirted in the wild (and doesn’t that sound great?! Awesome use of metaphor, Microsoft!):

…the song he sent was actually recorded by his own band. Matt told me that when he added the song to his Zune, he put no DRM on it, and indeed his preference would be to let me have it with no protections so I could keep it and even share it as much as I wanted with friends. But the way Zune handles its song sharing, its draconian DRM is slapped on tunes indiscriminately, whether the artists want it there or not. That stinks.

And then enjoy seeing a Zune guerilla marketer get hauled off by the Austin police (tip o’ the antlers to BoingBoing).

Now, enough Zune schadenfreude! Go do your homework!

Decision time

What does Vista mean for Mac market share? Depends who you ask.

There seems to be a bit of disagreement over Vista’s launch and what it means for Mac market share.

Surprise!

According to Information Week, at least two analysts think it’s an opportunity for Apple.

“We think Vista is good for Apple,” ThinkEquity Partners financial analyst Jonathan Hoopes says in an e-mail. “As people upgrade their PCs, we expect them to increasingly consider the Mac alternative.”

That’s pretty much what the Macalope’s been saying. Vista forces many PC users into a buying decision.

But Paul Thurrott last week advised against such irrational exuberance.

In fact, there are reasons to believe that PC sales will grow dramatically in this very quarter because of Vista’s release. So it’s much more believable to think that Apple’s market share will actually be closer to 3 percent, or even less.

Twice!

However, I’d argue that Vista is quite obviously a threat to Apple because it further closes the gap between Windows and OS X in the eyes of the world (and, in reality, Vista exceeds OS X in many areas). And one might make the argument that Vista is good enough to cause some Mac users to switch back to Windows.

Up? Down? It’s all so confusing! Who are you gonna trust?

Well, if you’re the Macalope (and you’re not)*, you’re going to trust Hoopes. Sure, Thurrott’s right that no one should count their chickens before they hatch but this isn’t poultry, it’s prediction.

Now, the Macalope’s been burned before and, while it’s tempting, he’s resisting the urge to put any stock in his own anecdotal evidence that his relatives, friends and acquaintances are increasingly asking him “Now, tell me about these ‘Macs’ again?”.

Why? Because he tends to hang out with remarkably charming, erudite, witty, intelligent and sexy people. In other words, even if they’re currently PC users, they already fit nicely into the Mac user demographic, so they’re probably not representative of the PC-using population as a whole.

That said, there’s no denying that Microsoft made a strategic error in giving itself five years to get Vista out the door. Now it’s coming back to it’s customers and saying “Hey! Remember me?! I sold you that OS you’re using five years ago? Yeah, well, I’ve got a new one now and you’re going to have to buy a new machine to run it but I’ve got this great wizard that will step you through all the different versions to help you pick which one is right for you!”

It’s hardly irrational to speculate that Microsoft might get a few doors slammed in its face.

The Macalope will do Thurrott the courtesy of not even replying to his speculation about users switching from the Mac to Vista.

Because…

Please.

* Or are you?!

"It was hell," he recalled

Michael Gartenberg returns to Jupiter Research.

Jupiter Research’s Microsoft’s Jupiter Research’s Michael Gartenberg is returning to the fold after a grueling…

…three-week stint at Microsoft.

The Macalope was truly dismayed to read last month that Gartenberg was leaving Jupiter as he is an excellent analyst and, well, he just hates to see anyone good go to Microsoft.

While Gartenberg may have quickly realized that the fit between plain-spoken analyst and spin-happy corporation is not a good fit, the Macalope also speculates that Jupiter made him a late but attractive counter-offer. In his premature Jupiter swan song, Gartenberg wrote:

My current job is great, my boss is wonderful and I was compensated OK.

Ouch! “Great.” “Wonderful.” “OK.” One of these things is not like the others.

Whatever the reason, the Macalope applauds the ultimate decision.

Well, assuming it is the ultimate decision.