For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation • Hacker News Board

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#101

Post by elehack » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:13 PM UTC

JunkDNA wrote: post #79

The problem for Microsoft is that they continue to serve two masters: consumer users and corporate users. Corporate IT shops, especially within certain industries, can be exceptionally wary of anything that moves data outside their walls. Consumers are in general not nearly so picky. Corporations are MS's biggest customers and for years have had considerable influence on product direction. It's just not in Microsoft'…

I think there's a huge opportunity here, that Microsoft is trying to enter with their "Private Cloud" advertising, for the Software plus Services model that runs against servers you own or lease. Sold properly, that could work very well with corporate clients - "Here, your employees can enjoy transparent sync, always-available-anywhere access, with all data stored securely on your servers."

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#102

Post by MatthewPhillips » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:16 PM UTC

technoslut wrote: post #97

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main advantage of web apps is ubiquity and ease. The former is of extreme importance when it comes to the cloud. If a user has to think about whether they can access a document at a later time, the cloud is failing them. If iCloud is to succeed it has to convince consumers that ubiquity is not that important. That's a huge thing to overcome and I feel it is being brushed aside in these iCloud praising articles.

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#103

Post by ezy » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

Microsoft killed their own brand.

Through their own efforts, Microsoft means Office, which means corporate. Unsurprisingly, their best consumer success is only tangentially associated with their name. "Microsoft Xbox" sounds like "Accounting Bouncy-house" to most people. There's a little bit of a dissonance when you remember that, yeah, Microsoft made this game system.

Even Windows, which is used by a majority of consumers today, feels like using a work tool at home, rather than something more personal. The way it communicates with you is like a colleague, not a friend. There are features that are the same as equivalent features on other operating systems, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But they are designed to make you "more productive", not to help you. Even when the mechanism is the same, it feels off as a personal device...

So, it's unsurprising that M advertises the Cloud heavily and it just feels like a "team-building" video, whereas A takes advantage of M's "to the cloud" ads building awareness to do a small press push and a brief description in a presentation and it's perceived as the second-coming.

And here's the thing, the "to the cloud" idea as marketing is a great idea! It's funny, and totally memorable -- but the Microsoft brand just kills it dead.

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#104

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

I have to agree with the Chronicle's basic point which is that Microsoft has talked about "cloud computing" for a long time and not delivered anything. Even a bad anything.

Its a very good example of the Innovator's Dilemma [1] in action, you've got some smart folks who see a future problem, and start creating interesting technology and vision around that problem, and then the reality that the company doesn't "need" it now gets in the way of pushing it from concept into the product stream. So it never gets to the 'commit' point where everyone is on board with shipping it to customers and trying to support it.

Why? Because that is "risky" but just tweaking the current product stream and adding a few features or targeting an adjacent market is much lower "risk."

As Clayton points out in his book innovation always loses in the 'risk' evaluation. So companies that are 'managed' always strive for optimum returns, and since you can't predict the future they are risk averse. Companies that are 'lead' on the other hand have the capability to ignore the risk in order to get to the rewards on the other side.

Startups have the risk meter pegged so it doesn't enter into their management decisions, instead they are focussed on execution and they flame out or succeed as they will and when they succeed they clarify the risk around their idea (if it flops the managers can pat themselves on the back for avoiding that land mine, if it takes off the managers wring their hands and wonder if they should have been able to forecast that success.

I think Apple may have combined some protocols and services into a useful adjunct to their product strategy. We won't really know until later when we see how it fairs. From the presentations and markitecture that Microsoft has espoused it seems like they could have done something similar but they didn't. It does reflect badly on how they are being managed, and that buck does stop at Ballmer. So it will be interesting to see how this affects his future there.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060521996

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#105

Post by peterb » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:22 PM UTC

schrototo wrote: post #25

brown9-2 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't designers represent "the user" also? Maybe a closer analogy would have the program managers representing "the business".

I think the difference is that designers have a vision of what the users really want, as opposed to what they say (or even think) they want. Whereas the PMs (in that example) are more the focus-group types.

Design is more than that. It is what users really want, but it is also how they feel when they use it, how it works, how it looks, etc. PMs are great at getting projects done. They herd cats. But very few have studied design, industrial design, art history, architecture, literature, etc.

Jonathan Ive studied industrial design. Steven Sinofsky studied computer science.

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#106

Post by checoivan » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:26 PM UTC

jasonkolb wrote: post #5

I don't know that anything Apple is doing is that revolutionary, the difference is that Apple and Jobs are phenomenal at presenting the idea so that people actually get it. I'm sure there are a lot of Microsoft execs right now that are saying "we already do that with product X" and pretty pissed off that they were never able to sell product X over 5 years the way Apple did in an hour. The bottom line is that Apple kn…

It's not about marketing, Apple is brilliant in making a feature easy and discoverable.

On spot comment. Cloud file storage and auto replication, file and document automatic sync,Web versions of office. Msft has that. You can even extend sync through API's.

Features are there, but seems like nobody knows about it, discoverability is lacking.

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#107

Post by kenjackson » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:28 PM UTC

recoiledsnake wrote: post #99

WrkInProgress wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. http://www.riag…

I didn't read the Gruber post, but I think he was refering to the actual production quality of the video, not the UI itself.

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#108

Post by contextfree » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:37 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #104

I have to agree with the Chronicle's basic point which is that Microsoft has talked about "cloud computing" for a long time and not delivered anything. Even a bad anything. Its a very good example of the Innovator's Dilemma [1] in action, you've got some smart folks who see a future problem, and start creating interesting technology and vision around that problem, and then the reality that the company doesn't "need"…

Huh? They've delivered lots of stuff. Some bad stuff, some good stuff. The real problem is the lack of cohesion.

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#109

Post by contextfree » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 6:56 PM UTC

peterb wrote: post #105

schrototo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is that designers have a vision of what the users really want, as opposed to what they say (or even think) they want. Whereas the PMs (in that example) are more the focus-group types.

Design is more than that. It is what users really want, but it is also how they feel when they use it, how it works, how it looks, etc. PMs are great at getting projects done. They herd cats. But very few have studied design, industrial design, art history, architecture, literature, etc. Jonathan Ive studied industrial design. Steven Sinofsky studied computer science.

I'm not sure if there's any particular significance to this, but the current head of PM for Windows is Jensen Harris and his degree was in music composition.

Re: For Google, iCloud Is Annoying; For Microsoft, It's A Humiliation

#110

Post by neuroelectronic » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 7:06 PM UTC

jolan wrote: post #98

paulitex wrote: post #96

Does 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.

No thanks, Google will host my personal data for free, and it works on all platforms.