February 16, 2006 @ 8:36 AM
I’m having a really hard time hating Microsoft today. And I don’t mean their Windows® Operating System, for which I hold as much contempt as ever, but rather the Microsoft Corporation itself.
They did this thing where they allow you to hear their developers talking about projects in their own words; through blogs and video diaries such as Channel9. By doing this, they further distance themselves from the practices of companies like Apple who operate under a shroud of secrecy, developing for months at a time, then dramatically unveiling a tremendous update of some sort - who’s net effect is usually that I have buy all of my software over again to take advantage of some incremental speed increase.
What Microsoft is doing is the single most progressive and effective marketing strategy happening today. I just got to sit in (and you can too), on an hour long meeting among the top developers of Microsoft’s new Cleartype screen font technology.
As it turns out, people don’t print blogs to read them. It’s true. If you are reading this right now from a copy you just printed off your Canon i560, you don’t get the internet, and need to stop using it immediately before you hurt someone. So… people don’t print blogs. But they do read them on screen with fonts that were developed based on devices like the classic IBM Selectric business typewriter. And not even the nice beefy font produced by the typewriter, but the ultra fine feather weight version found on the daisy wheel. It didn’t occur to the developers of screen fonts like Courier, that those characters spread out as they press through an ink ribbon, and that the letters on the daisy wheel were never intended to be read directly.
Listening to what’s important to Microsoft’s Bill Hill when it comes to screen font readability, I realize those things are important to me too. What’s important to Apple? I wouldn’t know. Based on their recent offerings, it’s dashboard doodads that tell me the current weather or automatically download the most recent Dilbert cartoon (that one is pretty sweet actually). What I don’t get from anything Apple puts out, is that their developers are genuinely interested in making my life better.
To Steve Jobs: Do this. Do this now. Copy Microsoft. Admit you are copying them. Admit your competitor has a good strategy - that you too want to make users’ lives better, and not just cooler looking. Do this, or so help me I’m buying one of these.
Oh… and scraping the Apple sticker off the rear window of my Jeep.
Comments
Nah, buy one of these: http://www.voodoopc.comThat way it'll still look cool.
(Said the recent Switcher/iMac G5 purchaser.)
I understand completely! Although in Apple's defense. They have to keep everything secret or half of their stuff would have been stolen prior to release. (OS X living two lives was a goodie) And no one is worse than Quark as a company! Although MS is on the ball with the developer discussions and Apple should/could benefit from doing the same. If only we could find some way for MS and Apple to exist in pure kick ass harmony. (Pipe dreams I know).
Just wanted to you tell I agree. Apple is quite a secretive and anal company at times.
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