Links tagged with “Microsoft”
Gruber's Google I/O Thoughts
The big loser this week, though, was Microsoft. They’re simply not even part of the game. RIM looms large, as BlackBerrys continue to reign as the best-selling smartphones in the U.S. But Microsoft? They’ve got nothing. No interesting devices, weak sales, and a shrinking user base. Microsoft’s irrelevance is taken for granted.
As usual, John Gruber nails it. Microsoft really has no chance at catching up with either Apple or Google at this point, and it’s pretty stunning. They entered the game way too late, and, as far as I know, it’s still going to be a while before the first Windows Phone 7 handsets come out. They’ve already lost the mobile war.
However, as Gruber mentions, things between Apple and Google are getting very interesting. While I admittedly have not been all that satisfied with my Droid experience so far, it’s a promising platform, and I really love how much Google is pushing cloud technology. A cell phone should operate completely separate from a computer, and that’s something Apple just hasn’t done right yet.
Google's Microsoft Moment
Anil Dash takes a look at recent Google developments and decides they’ve reached their “Microsoft Moment”:
Is Google evil? It doesn’t matter. They’ve reached the point of corporate ambition and changing corporate culture that means they’re going to be perceived as if they are. Whether they’re able to truly internalize that lesson, accept it, and act accordingly will determine if they’re able to extend their dominance in the years to come.
The Power of Word in Outlook
Microsoft’s response to the Fix Outlook Campaign:
There is no widely-recognized consensus in the industry about what subset of HTML is appropriate for use in e-mail for interoperability.
Uh, what about, you know, the same HTML standards used in browsers and just about every other email client? And if you don’t want to do that, can you really argue that simple things like background images should be left out of a popular email program? It really boggles my mind how much Microsoft just doesn’t get it–instead of listening to developers’ gripes about creating HTML emails for Outlook, they spend most of blog post talking about how you can integrate charts into your email. Just because you want to write emails with Word’s engine doesn’t mean you have to completely ignore HTML standards.