Posts from — May 2008

Daniel Eran Dilger
Microsoft’s marketing of Windows Vista and the Zune have failed in large part due to the fact that Microsoft has not learned how to effectively sell consumer products. Consumers buy Windows and Office, but that’s because they have no choice, not because of the company’s marketing savvy. Microsoft only effectively markets its products to businesses, which represents a very different type of sales relationship.

Businesses are so used to disgorging overloaded language about facilitating and empowering that they don’t find Microsoft’s marketing of the same caliber all that difficult to swallow. Consumers are a whole ‘nother ball game, and Microsoft is striking out in efforts to reach them. This has big impacts on the company’s future prospects.

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Daniel Eran Dilger
Copying the self-serving campaigns run by SVTC and Greenpeace, the group Climate Counts has made Apple, Inc. the core of its latest press releases. The group says Apple “is not yet taking meaningful action on climate change,” and is a “choice to avoid for the climate-conscious consumer,” but then points out that its “action” metrics are all based on ineffectual political posturing. And the reason for the tough critique: Apple elected not to join the Climate Counts consortium last year and throw money at the group’s ineffectual efforts to “facilitate engagement.”

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Daniel Eran Dilger
Microsoft has been keeping awfully quiet about sales figures for its Zune, a product that many Windows Enthusiasts originally predicted would cause considerable grief for Apple’s iPod. However, despite a new model refresh last fall and plenty of advertising, Microsoft has been left to announce that its actual sales are still a joke.

According to an Associated Press article citing Jason Reindorp, Zune’s director of product marketing, the device has sold “just north of two million” between its debut in November 2006 and May 2008. Apple has sold roughly 76 million iPods during that same period, more than doubling the installed base of iPods since the Zune’s debut.

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Flash has plenty of enemies and obstacles, but it also enjoys wide deployment and familiarity. Two areas where Flash can offer real value is in displaying and packaging video on the web, and in serving as a Java replacement for developing applets. Here’s a look at how Adobe is working to defend its strengths in the face of competition, and how its efforts to open the Flash specification in the Open Screen Project play into these efforts.
Continues: Flash Wars: Adobe Fights for AIR with the Open Screen Project

While widely deployed as a web plugin and among the few web technologies that have become a household word, Adobe’s Flash has more than a few substantial enemies that would like to see it replaced, cloned, or erased.
Additionally, Flash faces a number of significant obstacles that are its own fault. These also erode Adobe’s position and have helped force its hand in opening the Flash specification. Here’s a look at the external competitors of Flash, and how Flash has hurt its own chances to establish itself as a web platform in the future.

Continues: Flash Wars: The Many Enemies and Obstacles of Flash

Rene Ritchie presented Flash cookies as another thorn in the Flash platform for users, as described in the article Flash on iPhone: Video Dream or Privacy Nightmare? – Phone different

Pitted against Microsoft’s efforts to crush Flash using its own copycat Silverlight platform, open source projects seeking to duplicate Flash for free, and Apple’s efforts to create a mobile platform wholly free of any trace of Flash, Adobe has scrambled to announce efforts to make Flash a public specification in the Open Screen Project.

Will it help get Flash on the iPhone? Here’s the first segment of a three part series with a historical overview of the wars between Flash and Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Apple, Google, and the open source community, the problems Flash faces today, and what future Flash can hope for as an open specification.

Continues: AppleInsider | Flash Wars: Adobe in the History and Future of Flash

Incidentally, Flash was the subject of the first article I wrote on RoughlyDrafted: Flash in the Plan

Technorati Tags: Apple, History, Software

Gene Steinberg of the Tech Night Owl podcast invited me to join Bob LeVitus and Steve Kruschen on his weekly show this week. I rattle on for some time about Apple’s purchase of PA Semi and the portability of Windows versus NeXTSTEP and Mac OS X; PowerPC vs Intel x86; the vaporware of Copland, Gershwin, and Taligent compared to Vista, Windows 7, and Singularity; and Apple’s success in a slow economy. You can hear for yourself and subscribe to the Tech Night Owl RSS feed at:
The Tech Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg

May 1, 2008 episode:

http://www.techbroadcasting.com/podcasts/nightowl_080501.mp3

Earlier episodes I’ve participated on:

Mar 20 08
Jan 31 08
Jan 3 08
Nov 8 07
Sep 20 07
Aug 9 07
Jun 14 07
Apr 26 07
Mar 1 07
Jan 11 07

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPod, Mac, Microsoft, Software