Microsoft's announcement that it will release Zune, an MP3 player to go head-to-head with Apple's iPod, is running into the usual flack from partisans, most of whom have denounced it because Microsoft does not innovate, just copy.
The Zune MP3 player will come with a new on-line music service that allows users to access it via the player's Wi-Fi connection. What's more, Zune is being designed without business partners, like so many of the company's previous digital media products.
Moreover, there will be a whole family of products under the Zune name to come next year, including an Xbox-like portable video game machine.
And brace yourselves: Zune will be accompanied by a PR blitz that promises to be as overwhelming as the half-billion-dollar Xbox 360 launch last year.
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You can argue about innovation or development, but one thing hasn't changed for certain: Microsoft is using its very old strategy of "embrace and extend."
E-Mail Jack Kapica at jkapica@globeandmail.ca
Posted July 24, 2006, at 2:27 p.m.
Microsoft tries to save face: The usual cynics should be having fun pecking at a wounded Microsoft, which has decided to be a better corporate citizen by issuing a list of 12 "principles" describing how they will abide by various antitrust rulings.
Among the principles are a willingness to design its Windows Live suite of Internet services separate from Windows, so that customers can choose the Windows operating system with or without Windows Live; to open up Windows patents and license them to other developers; greater support for industry standards, creating more interoperable products; to license Windows to allow people to go to any website or use any competing application.
Of course the company is trying to make it look like it's been planning this all along, and not offering the principles as a grudging response to the antitrust cases Microsoft has lost in the United States and in the European Union. A week ago, the EU fined Microsoft a whopping $357-million (U.S.) for failing to comply with the terms of a March, 2004, antitrust settlement. And the EU would fine the company more each day until it complied.
The resolution of this case has resonance well beyond Microsoft, and well beyond whatever you think of the company's marketing practices.
Like a lot of other players, especially those in technology, the company's first response to the antitrust charges was to throw tons of money at its legal department and use a strategy of delay, block and appeal to wear down the opposition.
The strategy seemed to have worked to some extent in the United States, where resorting to the courts has become a national sport. It was less effective in Europe, where the culture sees the courts as a last resort, not a first one.
I'm hoping that the era of swashbuckling high-tech heroes will calm down a bit and think twice about shooting off their lawyers' mouths before negotiating settlements.
The whole legal strategy has done nothing for technology except to strangle it.
E-Mail Jack Kapica at jkapica@globeandmail.ca
Posted July 20, 2006, at 5:50 p.m.
A tree falls in Riverdale: On Monday night, I became a victim of the Big Wind that knocked down trees all over the Toronto area and robbed us of power.
As I write, past noon on Wednesday, all my power is still out, and I'm awaiting Toronto Hydro to find a free moment to reattach the wires; they're working double shifts helping all the other tree victims, and I just have to wait.
As a result, we have had no air conditioning, and find it difficult to sleep in this sticky heat. Our food is spoiling in the refrigerators. And although the sun sets quite late this time of year, we are without lights (save for battery-operated flashlights) in the evenings. We have no Internet and no television to amuse ourselves, and no light to read by. And until we found an old analogue telephone handset in the basement, our telephones were dead, because they had all been replaced by wireless versions, which need AC power to operate. The Internet telephone we have was also rendered useless, and we had to rely on the dwindling charges in our cellphones to connect to the outside world.
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