Microsoft's new "I'm a dork" store
Microsoft's "I'm a PC" trucker hat
(Credit: Microsoft)Why must Microsoft strenuously seek to earn the "dork" label that Apple has been pinning on it? In case you missed it, Microsoft is now offering "I'm a PC" gear - like ties and skateboards and probably pearl-encrusted thongs - online for purchase.
This is stupid. It's not stupid because it's Microsoft. It's stupid because no one wants to wear an "I'm a PC" trucker hat. Or, if they do, they have problems that Windows can't solve for them.
Microsoft needs to be defining its image, not letting Apple define it. Why isn't Microsoft telling the story about much of the world's economy being written in Office? "That memo that Hank Paulson just sent to the world's finance chiefs? Written in Word." Or highlighting that the world's youth are growing up with its XBox gaming consoles? Or something that demonstrates that Microsoft is a leader, not a follower?
I'm a Microsoft critic, but it's depressing to watch the company make such a lame attempt at creating its image as trucker "I'm a PC" hats. It can and should do better.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
News.com, it's too bad you choose to continue to carry his blog. Is he really the best representation of open source you could find? If true, it's sad.
Fortunately, with FeedRinse, I will be filtering his stories out of my RSS feed from now on. I can't believe I went and signed up for a service like this just to rid my feeds of this farce.
John
LOL
Regardless, in case you didn't notice, the post was complimentary to Microsoft. It's a good company. Why does it have to create a lame image with dumb marketing? Please re-read my post.
Heh...the only thing Sharepoint is vastly superior to a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. And the only people who make ridiculous statements like that are **** MCSE's who make their living fleecing people by implementing and/or administrating horrid 'dependence-ware' like Sharepoint.
"There couldn't be a more open-and-shut case of ongoing bias. "
It's a blog dude...If this was some kind of factual news it would be on msnbc.com....oh wait no it wouldn't.
MCSE the lowest common denominator of the tech world, if you can actually call MCSE technical.
Nice. I'll admit Matt is a little one-sided, but at least he's a little smarter than to make a claim without backing it up.
I can understand why Matt finds this "dorky". It's because he's a computer scientist with that typical geek mentality. But look beyond the computer scientist syndrome and you see laymen users love it and identify with the "I'm a PC" brand (yes, brand. Interesting isn't it).
Matt is also wrong on something else too - Microsoft is not letting Apple define it. Microsoft sat back and let that happen with the "I'm a Mac" ads for quite sometime. Microsoft is now giving Apple a taste of it's own medicine making lay computer users identify themselves with the PC. If Apple tries to challenge that, they're in effect saying lay computer users are stupid. Looking at the response, lay computer users love it.
You guys need to get out of your computer scientist geeky syndrome and look at things from the user lay perspective.
And none of the suggestions by Matt such as "world's economy being written in Office? "That memo that Hank Paulson just sent to the world's finance chiefs? Written in Word." Or highlighting that the world's youth are growing up with its XBox gaming consoles? Or something that demonstrates that Microsoft is a leader, not a follower?" click with the general user better than the that 3 worded Ad.
It might work with the geeky or corporate crowd and Microsoft does that pretty well. But they've targetting another segment so instead of using your left side, you might to look at the larger picture.
For once they are being honest in their advertising. Shame on you for calling them out on their honesty.
As for the lame hats and t-shirts, well its customer base is rather ignorant and trailor-trashy in general, and those people eat this sort of crap up.
So they are honest in advertising and appealing to their base. What more do you want?
- by softwaredesignengineer November 19, 2008 10:30 AM PST
- >>As for the lame hats and t-shirts, well its customer base is rather ignorant and trailor-trashy in general, and those people eat this sort of crap up.
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- by odubtaig November 19, 2008 11:24 AM PST
- Not exactly true. The_Decider does constantly lay into Ubuntu while singing the praises of SUSE like he was getting paid for it (and thinks there's no difference between a cluster and a mainframe) but he's not even remotely representative. Actually, he makes me look reasonable which is an interesting achievement.
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(15 Comments)Exactly the attitude that makes Linux suck at the desktop.
The real reason Linux sucks on the desktop? Apart from Canonical no-one in a position to do anything about it cares. The core Linux developers are interested purely in server performance, Red Hat has officially abandoned the desktop and whatever Novell are up to is anyone's guess but they only seem to sell to enterprises these days while treating their free distribution as an extremely experimental testbed where they can throw any old crap out, much like Red Hat used to do with Fedora until it bit them on the arse (several times).
Until recently, no-one's believed there's any money in Linux for the desktop so no-one's been paid to do it.