Microsoft's PR firm has been troting out Bill Gates for the media over the last month. He appeared in 'Fortune' magazine being frightened of Google, and this last week frightened of the iPod. His quotes from an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung have made the rounds.
As Hadley Stern writes in Apple Matters, "... it is fun to see the iPod needle Bill Gates..."
Mr Stern gets some minor facts wrong (it was the Palm 1000, not 100, and being an iPod fanatic is contemptuous towards the Zen Micro: "the whole thing felt like a cheap kids toy in my hand."), but he does identify the flaw in the Gatesian logic: iPods are consumer products, not computers. Apple tries for simplicity; Microsoft for complexity. Myself, I prefer something inbetween, which is why I prefer the capable Zen Micro over the too-simple iPod.
Getting on with the deconstructionism, let's analyse the statements quoted in the German newspaper:
Gates: "As good as Apple may be, I don't believe the success of the iPod is sustainable in the long run."
- implies Microsoft's success is sustainable in the long run; nothing is sustainable in the long run; look at Wal-mart starting to stumble.
- "As good as Apple may be" -- damning with faint praise; "may be" casts doubt on Apple's capabilities.
"You can make parallels with computers: Apple was very strong in this field before, with its Macintosh and its graphics user interface -- like the iPod today -- and then lost its position."
- mention of the hardware and the GUI, but not the operating system.
- "was very strong" negates the fact that Apple is on the come back: Mac sales are up, while PC sales are sluggish.
- curious mention of "its graphics user interface" because Windows copies the Mac?
- Apple is successful in releasing updates to its OS; Windows is not.
"If you were to ask me which mobile device will take top place for listening to music, I'd bet on the mobile phone for sure."
- this prediction comes from the guy who said the TabletPC would be the top selling type of PC by 2006.
- context: the current push by Microsoft is their new software for mobile phones.
- of course he'd bet on the mobile phone (cell phone, in North America), because his company hopes to make $$$ of them. But that's no reason for you to bet on the cell phone as your MP3 player of choice -- or not.
- no mentionof MP3, but of "music," becuase Microsoft doesn't want you using open source music files, but their locked-down WMA format.
"The BlackBerry is great but we're bringing a new approach."
- same tactic as "as good as Apple may be"
- Blackberry is to be considered old; we are new (implication: new is better)
"With BlackBerry you need to link to a separate server, and that costs extra. With us, the e-mail function will already be part of the server software."
- implication is that our solution will costs less -- this from the company that claims that Windows costs less than Linux.
"Therefore I'd venture the prediction that Microsoft will make wireless e-mail ubiquitous."
- we want to be the monopoly all over agin.
- ubiquitous email relies on ubiquitous wireless, which does not exist.
Ballmer Joins the Death Watch
The Microsoft CEO predicts that Google will perish in five years, saying " The hottest company right now -- the one nobody thinks can do any wrong -- may just be a one-hit wonder." (Actually, the Google Print service is quite screwed up.)
I s'pose that's one way to regain monopoly status: wait five years for competitors to perish. Interesting that he considers Google a one-hit wonder, in light of maps, Blogger, Picassa, video search, and so on.
Speeches by Microsoft execs are carefully orchestrated; the concentration by Gates (in Fortune magazine) and Ballmer (at Stanford University) on despariging Google's seach engine is a way to define the debate in the media. Good things we have blogs to route around the media.
I think that they are more worried about what maps.google.com and Picassa represent.
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