A New Conversation with Microsoft

Scoble wants us to tell Microsoft what we want from them... heheh. You asked and I'll tell you:


Microsoft is only a good when they are reacting to a threat. Absent a real threat, Microsoft focuses only on consolidating their tight grip around the consumer's throat.

I want Microsoft that leads! I want Microsoft to blow us away with a rewrite of Office that makes all those before it look pathetic. I want Microsoft to care about the home consumer without forcing me to use business tools. You brought up the Office suite - does the average home user need this much power?

Take a look at Apple, seriously! They created a wordprocessor for the consumer. Pages is a great application. It comes with fantastic templates. It doesn't pretend to compete with Word. It's a different class of application. It's aimed a set of users that Microsoft willfully ignores.

Microsoft has been the top dog in the computing industry since 1995. In that time, has Microsoft done anything with it's lead?

Spreadsheet? Lotus. Word processing? WordPerfect. Web? Netscape. E-mail? Eudora. IM? AOL. Portals? Yahoo. Search? Google. Music? P2Ps and Apple. Gaming? Nintendo and Sony. Blogs? Blogger & Google. Portable Documents? Adobe.

Has Microsoft ever been at the vanguard of anything? ever? even once?

Sadly, it will never happen. Why? Because Microsoft is too big. The best thing for Microsoft would be to break it up! Let the smaller parts outmaneuver the competition ... not waste time worrying about propping up another division's 2nd rate product.

I want Microsoft to lead... Be bold! Take risks! Stop reacting!

The Email Purge

After we got back from Mexico, my mailboxes were flooded with e-mail. Sure, you would think that it was junk mail but Mac OS X kindly filters out 95% of my junk automatically. No, these were e-mails that I had agreed to during the course of political action meetings, product demonstrations and other nonsense. So, even though I was remotely interested in what the messages offered, there was simply too many of them and not enough time to participate in any of them.

And so I began the purge. I am now clicking "Unsubscribe" to all of these messages. I simply can't handle the flood any longer. Sorry, California Dems, National Dems, MoveOn, John Kerry and everyone else who has bombarded me with "Call to Action" e-mails... I can't do it any longer. I'm waving goodbye to you... hopefully for now but maybe I'll reconsider some of you in the near future.

A Shyness that is Criminally Vulgur

i declare today to be independence from technology day. yes, it might seem just a tad bit odd that Neema, of all people, would wish for independence from technology. i think that it's gotten a bit overboard that a person can be reached at nearly any point on the planet. there's something to be said for "alone time" and i think that we've well exceeded the real world need for availability. i find it infuriating that people expect everything to be done immediately when there's no good reason for it.

let me give you an example. i am currently on the night shift. i work from 7am to 7pm. i come home and try to sleep during the day. it's hard enough as it is with this obnoxious celestial object that incessantly beams light into my eyes while i'm trying to rest. then you have to deal with the environmental noise that constantly invades my thoughts. then you have ones internal thought processes and worries that preoccupies your thoughts the moment externalities are removed. so, it's hard enough to rest when you need to do so. and when the office calls you to harrass you about medical records, WHEN THEY KNOW YOU ARE SLEEPING BECAUSE YOU WORK NIGHTS, it's excessive. this is a perfect example of something that can be appropriately dealt with e-mail.

so, i urge you to fight for your independence and freedom from the shackles of technology. it's perfectly acceptable and reasonable to not want to be available at all times. do not give your cell phone out to anyone other than friends and family. let them know that you will turn it off on occasion and that it's OK and you will get back to them in a timely manner.

Apple and Intel

This rumor had been around for a very long time and finally, it happened. Essentially, it was the unthinkable for any Mac-o-phile because of the animosity that has existed for nearly two decades between the opposing camps.

In case you didn't watch the keynote address at WWDC, Steve didn't look happy about this movement towards Intel. In fact, if you read between the lines, it was far from what he would have liked. He liked ridiculing Wintel performance... it put the onus of performance squarely on Apples shoulders. From now on, comparisons between Photoshop on the two platforms fall onto the OS! Intels CEO looked positively joyous... It was like the dork that finally gets a date with the hot girl (because the hot girl got dumped by her boyfriend for another girl) ... which, incidentally, is exactly what happened.

Microsoft dumped Intel for IBM.
IBM dumped Apple...
and Apple & Intel wound up together.