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

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

#3
Seems like this just is echoing Gruber from earlier this week:

"But Google’s vision is about software you run in a web browser. Apple’s is about native apps you run on devices. Apple is as committed to native apps — on the desktop, tablet, and handheld — as it has ever been."

http://daringfireball.net/2011/06/demoted

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

#4
Microsoft has a marketing problem, they have a lot of cloud services like Skydrive, Live Mesh etc. but are not able to grab the attention of consumers or media like Jobs is able to, on stage.

However, Windows 8 seems to be coming with a ton of integrated cloud features so I don't know about the humiliation part.I just don't see that their marketshare is affected more than 1% specifically due to the cloud services in Lion.

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

#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 knows how to sell products to consumers, and Microsoft doesn't. Microsoft and Google both suffer from the same disease, they try to sell a product, not address a need. They might be the same thing in the end, and Microsoft might have even gotten there first, but Apple really gets marketing.

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

#6
post #2

the word cloud appears 43 times on that page ... Larry Ellisons rant ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOEFXaWHpp ) is more apt then ever.

I get pretty annoyed by its generic use, but I'm hopeful that we're seeing a narrowing of the term here.

Larry Ellison is right, we've had the "cloud" forever -- the network is the cloud -- but I think there's a good fit for the term "cloud" in the user space. "Cloud" describes a user experience. It's something that laymen can latch on to and begin to identify with an experience. While it abstracts detail, it's useful for marketing. The user may think:

"When I access Google Apps from this computer, my environment and experience are exactly the same as it is on any other computer. This is cloud computing."

The same would would apply for iCloud. Any device registered under your account works interchangeably.

Operating in the cloud means interchangeability of some underlying component that users are used to having to think about. E.g., "Oh, I'm not at my computer, so I can't access that document."

As an industry, we should try to narrow our usage the term to refer to services that deliver a location and device agnostic view of the entire end-user experience.

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

#7

Microsoft has a marketing problem, they have a lot of cloud services like Skydrive, Live Mesh etc. but are not able to grab the attention of consumers or media like Jobs is able to, on stage. However, Windows 8 seems to be coming with a ton of integrated cloud features so I don't know about the humiliation part.I just don't see that their marketshare is affected more than 1% specifically due to the cloud services in…

How do you market MS-only products when all the early adopters are using Macbooks?

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

#8
I was going to say something about this being flame bait, but I went back to MS's marketing material and it does seem like their vision marketing is at great odds from their execution: http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/software-plus-...

Unless by services they means software updates, CDDB updates, and downloading Office templates...

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

#9

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…

I agree. It is the simplicity of things that Apple gets right. Most of the time when Apple says "it just works" that it does and consumers like that.

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

#10

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…

I agree not massively innovative but it's not just the presentation, they're very good at removing all the rough edges and creating a coherent whole.
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