The only thing, as an Android user, I drool over is the ability of iCloud users to have their music "uploaded" for free (without transferring any data). I signed up for the Google Music beta, and 20 minutes later deleted my account. Why? It was going to take several weeks to upload my 60GB of music, during which time I wouldn't be able to seed my torrents as easily. And, saturating my upstream kills my downstream bandwidth.
For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
91–100 of 176 posts
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes the market is just not there, and it's more about the timing.
So you're saying that one of the spectacularly failed Windows powered tablets from yesteryear would succeed today, because the "timing is right"? No. Those products were terrible, horrible, awful products, that's why they failed. The timing for tablets is evidently perfect now, and yet not all tablets are succeeding in the market. Because they suck.
There is more than just market/customer timing. It comes down to available components. Li-poly battery tech + cheap lightweight capacitive display + available 3G radios and networks also heavily contributed to the success of iPad.
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of Microsoft's difficulty integrating things into Windows is a result of the anti-trust lawsuit they went through? People seem to forget that Microsoft went through 3 years of worrying that the government would break them up because they bundled a browser with Windows. That had to have changed how they felt about bundling new things into the OS. Or do people think it was long enough ago that the culture has…
> People seem to forget that Microsoft went through 3 years of worrying that the government would break them up because they bundled a browser with Windows. I think that's a pretty large oversimplification. Microsoft didn't get in trouble just for bundling a browser; they got in trouble for bundling a browser and then using their position of market dominance to lock out competition, e.g., they used Windows licensing…
Yes, MS didn't want preinstalled 3rd party apps that replicated functionality. :-)
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you market MS-only products when all the early adopters are using Macbooks?
What does MS-only mean ? They actually provide client apps for macs, if that's what you meant.
By MS-only, I refer to Microsoft technologies and development tools for Windows, Windows Phone, Azure. Early adopters (alpha geeks, developers, etc) generally use Macbooks now which you can see for yourself at any tech conference. Microsoft really doesn't market to this group, it pretends they don't exist.
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're saying that one of the spectacularly failed Windows powered tablets from yesteryear would succeed today, because the "timing is right"? No. Those products were terrible, horrible, awful products, that's why they failed. The timing for tablets is evidently perfect now, and yet not all tablets are succeeding in the market. Because they suck.
There is more than just market/customer timing. It comes down to available components. Li-poly battery tech + cheap lightweight capacitive display + available 3G radios and networks also heavily contributed to the success of iPad.
Of course, but again, that doesn't explain why other tablets are failing today. Motorola's Xoom contains those same parts, yet its sales are terrible. Because it sucks.
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#96Does anyone else feel like the cheers of success for iCloud are a little premature? It's amazing that since it's Apple we automatically believe the "No, really I mean it this time!". Shouldn't previous performance be taken into consideration (.Mac, MobileMe)? Boy who cries cloud?
Until iCloud is launched (not til the fall), all we have is old broken promises, vapourware, and some very expensive data centres.
I want iCloud to live up to the hype as much as anyone. But at this point the only thing we should be calling a success is the awesome power of the Jobs Distortion Field. He's the tech equivalent of a superstar athlete in their prime and the top of their game - evidenced by articles like these.
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#97Google is providing facsimiles of applications in the web browser, along with remote storage. Apple is providing smart remote storage that works with local applications. Browser apps are clunkier than web apps, at least for now and the immediate future, so Apple has the apparent edge.
I disagree. Web apps are ubiquitous and people know how they work. Google doesn't do keynotes to announce that Gmail autosaves to the cloud... of course it does. Everyone has that expectation of web apps. Microsoft got a lot of criticism for Windows 7 touch capabilities for taking something designed for mouse input and adding touch on top. It wasn't designed for that. I think that's exactly what Apple is doing here w…
Web apps became popular because the desktop was too unwieldy for the average person to deal with. The browser was easy to deal with in comparison. The situation with iOS is completely different. The main advantage that web apps have is sharing and collaboration but that is easier to accomplish than a web app being as smooth and looking native to the average user.
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#98Does anyone else feel like the cheers of success for iCloud are a little premature? It's amazing that since it's Apple we automatically believe the "No, really I mean it this time!". Shouldn't previous performance be taken into consideration (.Mac, MobileMe)? Boy who cries cloud? Until iCloud is launched (not til the fall ), all we have is old broken promises, vapourware, and some very expensive data centres. I want…
> vapourware
There's a beta. Register and download it.
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you see the SkyDrive features at the MS event? No. Actually neither did I. In fact it wasn't in the recent MS events. In fact it was announced with with a blog entry: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archiv... Why didn't MS talk about this at their special Mango VIP event? No idea. MS seems to think that getting too much attention for features is a bad thing.
I agree. It appears that turn by turn navigation (via Bing Maps) is also coming in the Mango update and if so, it would be a really big differentiator (only Android has it thus far) for their platform. Not a peep during their event. -- John Gruber recently critiqued the Windows 8 preview video that was uploaded to youtube. It looked like a high school project. I doubt Apple would ever preview their OS with such a poo…
>It looked like a high school project. I doubt Apple would ever preview their OS with such a poorly produced video.
I think it's pretty good and clean. The iPad UI looks like a scaled down version of OS X in 2001 compared to that now and I've heard the same sentiment from many other people.
Metro looks like that to new people but is very functional once you start using it. Here is a good primer on it.
Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. An obvious example from the real world is the tablet. Prior to the introduction of the iPad, Microsoft and its partners had shipped lots of models of tablets for over a decade and they were all failures. Then came the iPad. The iPad didn't succeed because Apple presented it well. It succeeded because unlike all of its predecessors it didn't suck .
Sometimes the market is just not there, and it's more about the timing.
No. The windows tablets that have been available since the 1990's were simply shit. They were simply a flat screen running windows with a pen. and that idea hasn't changed a bit since windows for pen computing in 1991. Same old windows+a pen interface, and it's absolutely horrible.
It wasn't timing, it was simply that Microsoft didn't get that a tablet was something different.