Surface Hub 2

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Now, that is one good industrial design.
Perhaps the only thing from Microsoft that I liked right away!

Samsung’s Shamelessness

David Howard, Microsoft deputy general counsel:

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After becoming the leading player in the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung decided late last year to stop complying with its agreement with Microsoft. In September 2013, after Microsoft announced it was acquiring the Nokia Devices and Services business, Samsung began using the acquisition as an excuse to breach its contract. Curiously, Samsung did not ask the court to decide whether the Nokia acquisition invalidated its contract with Microsoft, likely because it knew its position was meritless.

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via DF

5 Real-Life Problems OS X Yosemite Solves, And Windows 8.1 Screws Up || Konrad Krawczyk

Konrad Krawczyk :

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1. It’s still free!

Not that we were expecting Apple to hike the price of OS X Yosemite after making OS X Mavericks free in October 2013, but it’s still worth noting that Windows’ biggest competitor is free. Meanwhile, a copy of Windows 8 costs roughly $100 on Newegg. Even Windows 7, despite the fact that it’s approaching five years of age, is the same price.


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The fact is this. I’m not a Microsoft apologist or an Apple acolyte. I’m simply a consumer that likes good products, whether they’re made by Microsoft, Apple, Acme, or Stratton Oakmont, just like you. In the case of OS X Yosemite, instead of trying to shove a mobile-ish OS down our throats as Microsoft did with Windows 8, Apple is aiming to make life easier for us desktop folk.
As someone who’s about to head home to a Windows 7 PC, how can I not like that?

via TheLoop

Apple Passes Microsoft

Ben Evans:

A symbolic moment, this: in Q4 2013 the number of computers sold by Apple was larger than the number of Windows PC sold globally. If you add Windows Phone to the mix they’re more or less exactly equal.

via DaringFireball

Bundled Out by The Fishbowl

fishbowlDOTpasticheDOTorg:

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Blaming Ballmer for the woes of Microsoft, though, misses the fact that every problem the company is experiencing today was written into its DNA in the 1980s.

In 1980, IBM were looking for an operating system for the IBM PC, their entry into the nascent personal computing market. When attempts to license CP/M from Digital Research stalled, IBM went to Microsoft. Microsoft didn't have an operating system so they licensed a CP/M work-alike originally called QDOS (literally “Quick and Dirty Operating System”), filed down some of the more jagged corners and licensed it on to IBM.

Not long after, seeing the success of the IBM PC, a company called Compaq realised that there was a market for “PC Compatible” computers. The only two parts of the PC that weren't off-the-shelf hardware were IBM's proprietary BIOS (which Compaq engineers reverse-engineered), and the PC-DOS operating system, which Microsoft was happy to start selling to third parties as MS-DOS.

DOS wasn't the best PC operating system. It wasn't even a particularly good one. All that mattered is that it was the operating system on the IBM PC, and then on the “PC Compatible” clones.

Microsoft did not make its mark as a builder of great things, but as a very successful bundler of good-enough things.

Microsoft built its empire making products that complemented DOS, and that would eventually become symbiotic with DOS so that each would ensure the others dominance. Microsoft then used its monopoly position to exert absolute control over the channel that delivered those products to customers. I’ve heard a first-hand accounts of Microsoft’s ruthless dealings with OEMs in the DOS era, and they’re even worse than you think.

Eventually by the mid-90s an argument could be made that Microsoft was making the best PC software in its class. Not because it had suddenly found the ability to develop cool, innovative products, but because everyone else was dead. This was the ‘golden era’ that most modern-day pundits seem to be hearkening back to: the two great serpents of Windows and Office, each with its jaws eternally locked on the other’s tail; Microsoft the victorious monopolist.

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via TheLoop

Microsoft Lying || Shocking!

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How can the screen with a larger diagonal measurement be smaller? Because it's a different shape. Long and thin gets you a bigger diagonal but a smaller screen, for the same diagonal inches.

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Microsoft's advertising is dishonest, read WHY.


via loopInsight

‘88 Acres: How Microsoft Quietly Built the City of the Future’

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber’s:

Both an interesting story on the design and evolution of Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters, and a great use of HTML5 design elements.

MicroSoft´s Counting On Its Minions …

Michael Mulvey:

But it’s not the solid hardware isn’t what has me perplexed. It’s the complete lack of software demonstrations. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Here’s a company who’s made billions of dollars selling software for over 30 years, and when it comes time to debut the device launching them into the future, they don’t bother to allocate even a few minutes to showing off how well software runs on it?

via >>> DaringFireBallDOTnet

Microsoft's Metro Interface

Still not my thing.
Apps, the new magic word.

Why Microsoft's Windows SUCKS!? … You Dare Asking?

See Bigger.
TwitPicDOTcom
via>>>>> DF

Apple vs Microsoft: Bizz methodology & Myths with Google on the corner.

Jean-Louis Gassée's iPhone = Mac 2.0:

We know how the first reading of the equation continues. The Mac had immense promise, a much better personal computer than the 16-bit clone of the Apple called the IBM PC. But Apple’s arrogance beleaguered the platform. Instead of following the Microsoft model—focusing on software and letting licensees create a prosperous ecosystem—Apple repeatedly nixed Mac clones and was marginalized, with the Mac market share sinking as low as 2%.
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First, shall we agree that Microsoft “open” model is the exception rather than the rule? How many other examples of the Microsoft platform licensing model, with its caveats, prohibitions, and insistence on fealty, do we see? Have we forgotten that Microsoft’s methods led to a conviction of being a monopolist?

Second, there is the Mac’s rebirth. Last year, its US market share approached 10%, with a 90% unit share in the $1k-and-greater segment. For the past five years, Mac unit sales have grown faster than the PC industry.

via ------>★