Microsofts Biggest Threat is Modesty

iTunes 7

iTunes 7, which was launched on Tuesday lets you browse music by the album cover, as seen here...

It's a cool new way to re-discover your music collection, according to Steve Jobbs. Congratulations to the Apple team for that one. Then we have iTv, to be released in then first quarter of 2007 (i.e. in the January keynote).

iTv

For just $300, you too can play media files you own, on a television in your house. Thats pretty revolutionary right? Well it is for Apple, in that its taken them this long to release a product (Media Center Extender) that has been available elsewhere for 2 years at a cost of $200. But surely the Apple one has more features? Surely things like Live TV Recording/Streaming/HDTV will come as standard? Obviously Apple aren't very used to copying, they forgot the copy the good bits here. Currently iTV has none of that, you'll have to wait and see what the release is like I guess. Or just pay less money now and guarantee that you get what you want. But that's not the Apple way, is it?

Whats this got to do with Modesty?

My point is that Apple fuss over themselves, calling big conventions and putting literally thousands of hours of work into slick presentations, and people buy into it. Steve Jobbs, on Tuesday, convinved people that Apple had done something new. Microsoft throw products like Media Centre out there, with barely a whisper in comparison. The only publicity Microsoft seem to get for free is when their products break during presentations, like that has never happened to Apple, or has it?

Apples recent adverts for example, have been the most dorky smug bullshit I've watched in years. The best thing about them are the parodies they inspire. None-the-less all the iDicks around the net buy into the crap. They think "Yeah, by buying an Apple, I am hip, I am with it, I am suddenly a good looking cool guy who likes the funside of life".

Microsoft have, in comparison, hired Ricky Gervais to do some seriously funny stuff about working at Microsoft, yet it wasn't even officially released. And here, the irony of ironies, I am linking to their videos, on Google Fucking Video. (Video1, Video2) Better still, they show an incredible ability to laugh at themselves by releasing they Ipod parody video, and yet again, rather than take claim for it, here it is on Google video.

Another interesting example is AJAX. Probably the biggest hippest new thing for web programmers this century, so you'd imagine the guys who created it would be out to take credit for it, wouldn't you? Without microsoft, there would be no XMLHTTPObject. Without the XMLHTTPObject, there would be no AJAX. Without AJAX there would be no web2.0. (Gradients and big fonts don't do it by themselves, we realised that with Nakatomi). Without web2.0 there would be no Google Maps, no GMail, no Writely and the like. In fact I think Microsoft were the one company who actually suffered because of the XMLHTTPObject, yet they created it.

What Microsoft needs, and they need it badly, is someone who can run a Keynote without sweating, or twitching, or hunching over. They need to make their conferences slick, by combining good slides, good speakers and military style preparation. They need to let people know that they have good stuff, and that it works well. I read a quote recently by Bill Gates, when asked in 2001 about the new waves of direct competition that his company faced...

Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It’s a good thing we have museums to document that.

That's the sort of attitude they need to take into their conferences. Pride and confidence, not fear and incompetence. Of course, when I say "need", I don't really mean it. Like I am sure a 90% market share is good enough for them at the moment.