Microsoft has a Soul? You have to be sentient first….
The Soul Of A New Microsoft: From the article: “Microsoft is betting that Zune will follow the path of Xbox: Like the game machine, Zune arrives as a flawed first version that screams for an update. And like a much criticized networking feature on Xbox that eventually gave it an edge when online gaming took off, Zune’s Wi-Fi technology hints at a broader vision.”
Does this seem to anyone else a terrible, flawed, stupid and ridiculously sinister idea? They release a shitty product and hope people adopt it with the hope of it being brilliant down the road?
A few lessons to MS here:
1) The lifecycle of an MP3 player is one to two years. Usually one year if you follow Apple’s model. The lifecycle of a video-game machine is based on experience through software subject to hardware interference/enabling, thus letting it have a much higher life-cycle. Plus there is only three real choices. That is why people stuck with the X-Box.
2) Apple releases great products out the gate. They don’t rely on release-shit-and-update strategies to gain market share. This is a similar tactic to sites like TagWorld, which don’t have authentication on their user registrations. They don’t care the quality of the registrants, they just want numbers to inflate valuation. Numbers don’t mean shit. Experience means everything
3) Fluff pieces in Business Week does not good coverage make. “Webification” has to be the stupidest “we will not say Web 2.0″ term ever.
The real question here is: why can’t Microsoft release a good product out the gate?
My Zune was stolen, but in the short amount of time it was in my hands, I felt that all-to-familiar feeling a geek gets when they touch, or work with something that just doesn’t feel right. You know the feeling? Like beta-software with inefficient code, or bad code you inherited. Or a source-code that craps out on ./configure with error messages outlining missing dependencies.
It felt wrong.
The iPod, and devices like it (think things like the Sidekick, Blackberry’s, even BMW’s iDrive) feel “good” and tactile and walk you through their operation through the very act of fucking around with them. And I think that’s Microsoft’s inherent problem: they don’t translate “fucking around” into “making work” as well as any of their competitors.
Fucking around becomes a frustrating experience to the point that you just say “FUCK THIS” and walk away (this happens daily at work). Any geek worth their weight in silicon can figure out applications intuitively through deductive process whereby they think through the software to the developer that made it (or maybe this is just me). Microsoft (and lots of others, think Motorola cable boxes and phones) apps/systems/devices make this impossible.
A vulgar version of the problem is this:
Microsoft = fuck this shit
Apple = this is fucking sick
A non-vulgar version:
Microsoft confuses being complex with complexity
Apple understands complexity is defined through small-scale interactions which yield greater results than their constituent parts could on their own.
I read Microserf’s regularly. Copeland did very good research into the culture there when he wrote it. I think that its still a relevant book even now, and if anything, the problems shown in that book are even more true and severe now.
please note these are my opinions and not that of my employer
Good article. Don’t appreciate the swearing though.
JJ