I recall hearing a story of a co-worker at Microsoft, who was a technical assistant to an executive, who had a Mac. It wouldn’t normally be a big deal, except he worked directly for an executive. As a result, this Mac was seen in many meetings across campus – it’s distinct aluminum body and fruity ghost shining through the lid a constant reminder that this was one less PC sold (even if it ran Windows through Boot Camp or virtualization software….
App hoarding. The dark, unspoken secret. We’ve all done it. I logged on to a Windows 8 tablet I hadn’t used for quite some time, and I was so ashamed of myself. So much junk, so many free apps I downloaded, tried, and abandoned. Only recently have I begun steadfastly maintaining a “two screen” limit on iOS to try and keep the applications on my devices solely to those that I use regularly. This isn’t new, mind you. Enterprises have…
A few weeks ago on Twitter, I said something about Apple, and someone replied back something akin to, “Apple is only one release away from irrelevance.” Ah, but you see… we all are. In terms of sustainability, if you believe “we get this version released, and we win”, you lose. Whether you have competitors today, or you have a market that is principally yours, if there is enough opportunity for you, there’s enough appeal for someone else to enter it…
Working on another blog post, and ran across an interview of Bill Hill from 2009. Bill reinvented himself many times in his career, from a newspaperman to someone who fundamentally worked to change the way the world read text on a digital screen. It harkens back to yesterday’s post, as well as my post on the machines coming for your job. Specifically, at about 19 minutes in, this conversation comes up: Interviewer: “In this economy…What’s the relationship between fear…and taking chances…?”…
I ran across a piece yesterday discussing one hospital’s lack of success with iPads and BYOD. My curiosity piqued, I examined the piece looking for where the project failed. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, it seemed that it fell apart not on the iPad, and not with their legacy application, but in the symphony (or more realistically the cacaphony) of the two together. I can’t be certain that the hospital’s solution is using Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) or Remote Desktop (RD,…
When you start a new job, there’s only one you. You don’t get a new identity just because you started at a new company. You have the same Social Security number, you have the same fingerprints, same birthdate, same home town. You get a collection of credentials that give you access to company resources, but you don’t really get a new “identity”. In fact, pretty much the only time you get a completely new identity is if you enter the…
At an annual Microsoft company meeting early in my Microsoft career (likely around 1999), Steve Ballmer interrupted the lively flow of the event to read a few letters that had been sent to him from executives around the world. As I recall, Microsoft technology was not working perfectly for these customers, and they weren’t happy. After he read the letters, Steve broke into a speech about “delighting the customer” – a mantra he adopted for some time, and I continue to use to this…
One of the most common questions I get asked – by our subscribers, by press, by my friends, by my family… by lots of people, is: “What’s the difference between Office 2013 and Office 365?” This is usually followed by the person meekly (unnecessarily) stating that they feel bad because they don’t get it. Don’t. Don’t feel bad. Though Microsoft is getting better, the branding and packaging isn’t easy for people to digest (complex packaging and licensing is the cellulose…
For almost two weeks, my main computer – a ThinkPad W510 (circa 2010) has been running Windows 8. Courtesy of the Logitech Touchpad T650 I’ve mentioned here and many times on Twitter, the experience has been – to me – much smoother than when I was trying to use Windows 8 (in a VM, admittedly) with a mouse during the previews. Three things I want to say up front: I’m trying to be positive and fair, and give Windows 8 on a…
Early Aug. 2012 – Short of information about how the Windows Store, the forthcoming home for Windows Store (nee Metro) applications was doing, I began exploring the store, trying to assess how many applications were actually there. I had heard rumblings of 400 or so applications. As I said late in Sept. 2012, my intentions were never malicious. I pondered whether there was any way to query the store programmatically. Here’s how it went down. Aug. 15, 2012 – I had…