WhatMeWorry

Microsoft Copping to $10 Million Seinfeld Mistake?

According to a MS spokesman, the next chapter of Microsoft's quirky campaign begins tonight with the theme "Windows. Life Without Walls."

This morning's WSJ has a full page ad, depicting a guy with a saber saw who just sawed off a hole in a wall showing the outdoors and a mess in the room.

What a hoot! It captures MS design philosophy perfectly!!

1. Build a house (OS) but forget some essentials, like a window (network access).
2. Jury rig an opening for a window, creating an internal mess and exposing the house to the elements and thieves (viruses, spam).
3. issue a Service Pack window, that can be opened from the outside. And so on......

LOL

Microsoft: In Need of Focus

"Instance the CD; monetize the IP? What hogwash!" It's market speak.

Ballmer is a marketing guy, put in charge of a high tech company with a monopoly. That is a deadly combination.

I worked for a company like that, high tech with marketing guys in charge. It had a monopoly on copying and these marketing exec's thought they were very smart because the money just rolled. But they never understood the technology. With all the cash, they bought up lots of high tech start ups, funded world class research labs which enabled them to get into all sorts of side products that never made money. Even though the labs acquired companies gave them a 20 year head start they mismanaged the digital transition because of their ignorance of the technology and lost their monopoly. So from a high flier in the 60's and 70's they almost went under, stock now has gone nowhere in the last 10 years or more.

For another example, think of how the marketing CEO almost ran Apple out of existence.

The monopoly postpones the inevitable but Ballmer is following the script and will do the same to Microsoft.

Where is Adobe Going vis-à-vis Apple?

The problems started when Chizen, a marketing guy, took over from the founders who were technical guys that understood the graphics/publishing business. Chizen saw macs as a shrinking minority compared to wintels and so focused Adobe's products on Windows versions first and mac versions as later follow ons.

This worked initially, as window users started buying such mainatays as Photoshop and Acrobat (a product that Chizen saw as the future of Adobe). Given the number of Wintels vs Macs the company seemed on a roll.

The problem that Chizen overlooked is that the vast majority of Window users were graphic/publishing amateurs who after buying the first version saw no reason to upgrade (given the high cost of this software), compared to the Mac professional users. As a result the windows sales fell off and because mac software got second class attention and did not keep up with OSX innovation, mac sales lagged.

Jobs understood that he needed professional as well as amateur graphic software so got Apple to do it. He learned from MS Office that you can't rely on on others for compelling software that sells products.