Great stuff on wired.com today: "Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill". I read this article with a high degree of amusement. As the Microsoft machine marches on, taking over market after market, it is nice to see them stymied, as evidenced by their own employees. Microsoft employees tend to be a smart lot -- so if they are buying iPods in droves, then it seems like management should try and figure out why, instead of simply banning the practice.
From what I've read about the "PlaysForSure" program, it seems like Microsoft has solved a lot of the reasons why non-iPod mp3 players have sucked on Windows. So eventually, with this software in place, the non-iPods may start to take over the market (just like wintel PCs before them). But for right now, Microsoft has got nuthin'.
But meanwhile, the machine continues to march. I had a quick look at Microsoft's new "MSN Search" the other day, and at first glance, it appears to be a total Google rip-off -- at least from a UI perspective. It looks like the search results that it is returning still aren't as complete as Google's. But how long will it be before Microsoft can out-Google Google?
sigh.
-Andy.
This article annoyed me. Mostly because I sit at my desk practically all day long with my iPod and no one has ever even mentioned anything about it to me. Maybe things would be different if I were a full-time employee, but I think the author of the article is definitely pushing the "hey look, Microsoft is being evil again" angle... For all the crappy things MS does, they're not that stupid.
MSN Search, on the other hand, sucks. When I put my name in to Google, my journal comes up right at the top. MSN doesn't even seem to know it exists.
I will keep using Google in my Firefox browser.
hey, if they can out-google google or out-ipod apple, great. the end result is better pr0ducts for us. as long as they don't bomb google headquarters or spray sarin on apple, all's fair in compitition.
I hope every company out there keeps fighting tooth and nail to give us higher quality per dollar. It really doesn't matter to me if it's MS, apple, google, Rio or unwashed open source developers. gimme pr0ducts and make them high qaulity and cheap.