Microsoft appears to be getting relatively strong early adoption of Windows 7 in the 10 days since its official launch.
According to Net Applications, more than 3 percent of PCs accessing the Web in the past two days have been doing so using the new operating system. Usage of the operating system has been growing strong in recent days, though Windows 7 already accounted for 2 percent of global Web traffic in the days ahead of its formal launch.
"The early adoption of Windows 7 looks very strong, and I don't believe Vista enjoyed the same early success," said Vince Vizzaccaro, an executive vice president at Net Applications. "Plus, we've seen surges the past two weekend days, and Windows has historically seen much higher usage market share on weekdays than on weekends."
However, weekends tend to see stronger usage by consumers. And consumers are more likely to move quickly to a new version of Windows than businesses, which tend to do extensive testing before adopting a new operating system.
The news is not all positive for Microsoft, though. As a whole, the Mac OS continues to gain on Windows. As of October, Windows had 92.5 percent of the worldwide operating system market, but Mac OS reached 5.27 percent, up from 5.12 percent in September. (Past numbers from Net Applications showed the Mac OS with significantly higher market share, though the market research firm says it has changed its methodology to better reflect the relative traffic of the countries from which it is getting data.)
Apple's recent anti-Windows 7 advertising has touted that if users are going to upgrade their Windows XP machines and have to transfer their data anyway, they might as well move to a Mac. Vizzaccaro said the early numbers suggest that the Mac might indeed be benefiting from such a trend but said it is too early to know for sure.
"We'll know much more in the months ahead," he said.
Seth MacFarlane
Microsoft said Monday it has canceled its sponsorship of a planned variety show with the creator of the "Family Guy."
In a statement, a Microsoft representative said the show--a variety show to be done by Alex Borstein and Seth MacFarlane--was not "a fit with the Windows brand." Microsoft had hoped to use the show to tout its just-released Windows 7 operating system.
"We initially chose to participate in the Seth and Alex variety show based on the audience composition and creative humor of 'Family Guy,' but after reviewing an early version of the variety show it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand," the representative said.
Microsoft had announced plans earlier this month to present the Fox TV special.
Now who didn't see this coming?
While the number of Apple-owning households continues to grow, the vast majority of those Macs are sharing space with at least one Windows-based PC, according to a new study.
The NPD Group said Monday that its online survey found that 12 percent of households with a computer have at least one Mac, up from 9 percent a year ago. Nearly 85 percent of those with a Mac, though, also have at least one Windows-based PC.
(Credit:
Apple)
Overall, Mac owners tend to have more computers and more electronic devices than non-Mac owners. Two-thirds of those with an Apple machine have three or more computers, compared with 29 percent of Windows-only houses.
Houses with Macs also tend to be home to twice as many gadgets, including more iPods and GPS systems than are present in non-Mac abodes.
That makes me feel a bit better about my own domicile, which is home to several Macs and PCs, not to mention more gadgets than I care to admit. There's another reason, though, why Apple owners tend to have more digital gear than their non-Mac-possessing counterparts.
"While Apple owners tend to own more computers and more electronics devices, there is also a high correlation among Apple owners and more affluent consumer households," NPD analyst Stephen Baker said in a statement. "Thirty-six percent of Apple computer owners reported household incomes greater than $100,000, compared to 21 percent of all consumers. With a higher household income, though, it's not a surprise that those consumers are making more electronics purchases."
NPD compiled its results from 2,300 responses to its online survey.
Although the conventional wisdom is that the rise of the Netbook is hurting the Windows business, a Microsoft executive said Tuesday that lower-cost laptops can actually be a good thing.
Speaking at an investor conference, general manager Charles Songhurst said that overall, most people buying Netbooks are either multiple PC owners in developed markets or first-time PC buyers in emerging markets.
"From what we see they are incremental," Songhurst said. "They are new scenarios."
Even if that is true, the fact is that Netbooks have been growing in numbers, while traditional PCs have slumped--a shift that has undeniably hurt the average amount of money Microsoft is getting for each copy of Windows.
One of the opportunities, Songhurst said, is if Microsoft can gain additional revenue on high-end PCs, noting that Microsoft has tended to get about $50 in Windows revenue for the standard $1,000 PC. (Microsoft tends not to talk about how much it charges PC makers for Windows, so it was interesting to hear him mention that figure a couple of times during his chat, which was available as a Webcast.)
Songhurst
(Credit: Microsoft)Asked about Google's forthcoming Chrome OS, Songhurst said that while it could be a threat if it is demonstrably better, just being cheaper won't offer much of a threat, saying the quality of Windows 7 will help the company fend off new competition. Microsoft plans to launch Windows 7 on October 22, while Google's Chrome OS is not expected until next year.
As for whether Apple might gain ground inside corporations, Songhurst said that Apple isn't winning over the key executives that make technology purchases, such as chief information officers.
"If they are not compelling to the CIO, they are not going to make inroads in the enterprise," he said.
On the Bing front, Songhurst acknowledged that even if Bing is getting good results in the U.S., the company faces an even larger hurdle in the global market, where Google has nearly 70 percent share. Songhurst said that although Bing's engine is available globally, it has yet to put the same kind of marketing dollars overseas as it has in the U.S.
"That marketing push makes a (big) difference," Songhurst said.
One of the other things Microsoft has done is sign deals with companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo to make Bing the default search engine on new PCs. Asked if Microsoft is eying more such pacts, Songhurst said yes.
"Always we'll do distribution deals for Bing," Songhurst said. "We're quite active in getting out and competing for those."
Microsoft on Thursday said the next version of Office for Mac will arrive by the 2010 holiday buying season, and it added that the new version will include a version of Outlook.
Outlook for Mac will replace Entourage, the current e-mail and calendar program in the Mac Office suite. Although it will still differ from the Windows version of Outlook, it will add support for more Exchange features, such as public folders and rights management features.
Office for Mac had a version of Outlook in its pre-Mac OS X days, but Microsoft switched to the Entourage program with Office for Mac version X because that version lacked a good connection with Exchange.
The software maker has worked over the past several years to add better Exchange capabilities to the e-mail software.
Apple, too, has worked to support Exchange within its own mail program and has said it will add improved Exchange capabilities from within Mail as part of its forthcoming Snow Leopard operating system. Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft's Macintosh business unit, said on a conference call that he couldn't really talk about how Outlook for Mac will compare to Snow Leopard, in terms of Exchange support, since Apple hasn't yet released the new operating system or detailed how the Exchange support will work.
Wilfrid also said he had nothing to say about rumors that Microsoft might be working on mobile versions of Office for the iPhone.
"That's been a popular question," he said. "No, there is no news today about any iPhone work."
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced a partnership with Nokia that will see it creating mobile versions of the Office applications for Symbian phones.
Microsoft also plans to bring Visual Basic support back in the next version of Office for Mac, but it didn't share more about the features that will be part of Office for Mac. In addition, it said it will launch a new "business edition" of its Office for Mac product that adds improved connections to SharePoint and Exchange Server.
The new product is slated to join the existing Home and Student edition on retail shelves on September 15, reducing the number of versions Microsoft sells from three to two. The new business edition, which will sell for the same $399 as the standard edition of Office.
Microsoft is releasing the second service pack update to Office 2008 for Mac, the company said Monday.
The free update, which is expected to be available later on Monday from Microsoft's Web site, is designed to improve speed and stability as well as add new features for connecting to SharePoint servers and to Microsoft's Office Live Workspaces.
"With SP2 we are not only delivering on top customer requests midcycle, but also taking a first step in bringing Microsoft software plus services to Mac users," senior product manager Mike Tedesco said in a statement. "This connection unlocks the door for Mac users to Microsoft services for easier collaboration and file sharing with colleagues, customers and classmates."
With the update, Mac Office users will be able to save documents to Office Live Workspace. The site also is expanding its Mac browser support to include Safari 4, in addition to Firefox.
Microsoft declined to offer any details on the next major release of Office for the Mac, but a representative said that the company is "on track with the next release and that is based on the standard 2-3 year release cycle."
Office 2008 was released in January of last year.
After leaving Microsoft in 2001, Brian MacDonald found it tough to find his second act. He was involved with a few start-ups and arranged some real estate deals in the Seattle area. He even built a boat in China.
But none really offered the challenge he was seeking. So, when he had a meeting in February 2007 with Microsoft search boss Satya Nadella, he was inspired. That night, he went home and cranked out a 10-page paper on the challenges and opportunities he saw for Microsoft in search. It was in Nadella's in-box the next morning.
Brian MacDonald, the creator of Microsoft Project and Microsoft Outlook, came out of retirement to help redesign the user interface for Microsoft's search engine.
(Credit: Microsoft)"I just want to work on the biggest problem in the industry," he said. By April, he was back at a desk in Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus.
MacDonald could hardly have found a bigger task than entering the search fray. After three years in the search business, Microsoft had yet to make any significant headway despite having spent billions of dollars.
"Search is kind of the Mount Everest of the industry right now," he said. "That's really the mountain that you want to climb."
He's been back at the company two years now, and Microsoft still finds itself at base camp, struggling to reach double digits in market share and its online business is losing hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter.
But Microsoft hasn't given up on its expedition. This week, it takes an important step. After months of testing within Microsoft's walls, the software maker is publicly detailing its plan to revamp its search engine under the name Bing.
The update consists of a new look, a new name, and new capabilities for the product. And in the process, Microsoft hopes it will also get a fresh start in what has thus far been a painful journey.
Several of the features are things championed by MacDonald. In particular, the new engine has a left-hand navigation pane for moving among different types of searches. Kumo also breaks a search query down into a number of possible categories.
When one hovers over a particular result, they get a pop-up window with more information, such as the query terms in context on the page.
In other cases, Microsoft is bringing more information into the results themselves. Type in "Amazon" and one will get not only links to that Web site, but also the company's hard-to-find customer service phone number. A search for UPS will let one track a package directly from Bing.
While potentially useful for customers, it could also be a sticking point among those whose content it is borrowing from so liberally. Product searches, for example, aggregate both user and professional reviews from various sites directly within the Bing result.
"I don't think we are trying to do something unnatural to have the person stay within the site," MacDonald said, adding that in the end the company thinks it will drive more people to the pages it is indexing.
With Bing, Microsoft also makes its interface more similar when one moves among different types of searches, such as photos or news. It's not unlike the way Outlook has some common interface tools that remain consistent even when a user switches from calendar to contacts.
"You get a different tailored experience but you still feel like you have stayed in Outlook," MacDonald said. "That's very much the integration model we have been going after."
Perhaps the biggest thing, though, MacDonald said, was the fact that the new design is opened up to allow more innovation down the road, as opposed to the classic search page with its single page of generic results.
"The 10 blue links alone makes it hard for an engineer to have that brainstorm in the shower," he said. "You need that extra surface area."
In one example, Bing now allows full articles to be shown within the search engine both for Wikipedia articles indexed by Powerset as well as for health topics, using content licensed from the Mayo Clinic.
In choosing MacDonald, Nadella said he admired the way that he could see opportunity where others saw mature markets. His approach with Outlook particularly resonated with Nadella.
"E-mail existed, calendaring existed, and contacts existed," Nadella said. "He changed the way people interacted with those applications."
Tapping MacDonald meant dealing with someone very unlike himself. In contrast with Nadella's neat desk, MacDonald's office is so cluttered his assistant was once asked if it was an office or a store room.
"We're different," Nadella said. "I don't work like Brian."
But creating some difference was an important cultural shift that needed to occur, he said. "Out of that will come the creative breakthroughs," Nadella said.
One of the big debates was on another of MacDonald's ideas--putting a picture in the background of the main search page. Each day, Microsoft has a different photo on its search page. It's designed as the kind of thing to get someone to check back each day, but some inside Microsoft saw it merely as a graphical distraction that slowed page load times.
Bringing back MacDonald was just one part of Nadella's strategy. The other piece was creating a deep science background to replace a culture that had been based on marketing other people's technology. To lead the effort, he convinced Harry Shum, the head of Microsoft research Asia, to join the search effort.
"He brought about that change in our engineering." Nadella said. Early on, the company's ranks were mainly filled by folks from research or other parts of the company. "Lately, of course, the Yahoo parade has been great for us," Nadella said.
As pleased as he is with some of the changes, Nadella's goals appear to be rather modest. If Microsoft were to go from 9 percent share to 11 percent by next year, he would consider that a success.
"I would say those are great gains," he said. "It's not a share battle that is going to go from 8 or 9 (percent share) to 20 in a quarter."
For his part, MacDonald said he wasn't always sure he wanted to go back to work at Microsoft. He said that he had long had thoughts of how the company could win in search, but added "I wasn't always sure the company was...fully committed."
These days, he is more convinced--sure enough that he sold that boat he built in China.
"It was, literally, a slow boat from China," MacDonald said. "It took days to get anywhere. It wasn't really compatible with the time commitment I need in this job."
Microsoft's latest anti-Apple campaign continues to draw fire, a sure sign that the company has finally at least gotten in the game.
The latest critique comes from BusinessWeek's Arik Hesseldahl. Hessedahl points out that the sticker price of the laptop is just the start of the comparison and suggests it is the Windows computer, rather than the Mac, that is loaded with hidden costs.
Microsoft, of course, made the opposite claim with it's "Apple Tax" return, which argued that owning a pair of Macs costs thousands more than two PCs over their lifetime.
And although I was the first to call Microsoft out for its faulty math, I will also say this. The fact that Microsoft was able to get people fired up shows that Microsoft has at least found the right area to focus its energies.
Until now, its 7-month-old Windows advertising campaign has been a rambling affair, shifting quickly from one disparate subject to another, from Seinfeld's shoes to cute little kids. In fact, one of the only things that the campaign's early pieces had in common was the fact that none were the kind of thing that would generate much real discussion on the issues.
That hasn't been the case since Microsoft shifted to its "laptop hunter" ads which focus directly on costs. Whether you agree or disagree with Microsoft's math, we are all finally talking about the relative costs of a Windows PC versus a Mac.
Even Apple has chosen to weigh in on Microsoft's latest claims. In a statement, Apple notes that "millions of people have switched to Mac because they love the security, stability, and power that comes with world-class hardware and amazing software that just works, right out of the box."
It puts its own spin on the price issue.
"A PC is no bargain when it doesn't do what you want," Apple said.
Let the games go on. At a minimum, this should be fun to watch.
With three genuine installments on the Web, it's naturally time for the parodies of Microsoft's "laptop hunter" ads to start rolling in.
The first one I've seen is from LandlineTV. It features Frank, a homeless guy with $1,000 to spend on a laptop.
Frank's first stop is the Apple store.
"These are beautiful," he says, spotting a MacBook Air that is "so thin" but costs $1,700.
"What can I get for $1,000?" Frank asks. Eventually, he winds up in front of a Windows PC.
"Windows Vista Home Premium...This is (BS)," Frank says.
"Is this plastic?" he asks, before noting that the computer has "second-rate Korean components."
In the end, he uses the Windows laptop to cover his face while sleeping on the street. I've embedded the video below, but you should click play only if you don't mind some coarse language, partial nudity, and complete PC bashing.
Microsoft, for its part, declined to comment on the parody. As for Landline, it is a three-person outfit that has been doing Web video since September. Among its earlier videos was one called "Hockey Moms for Truth."
"We're sort of a Saturday Night Live meets the Twitter Age," CEO Jared Neumark said in an e-mail interview. Neumark said the company aims to crank out about two videos per week.
Microsoft and technology analyst Roger Kay have made a couple of changes to their charts outlining the "Apple Tax," but the update does little to address broader critiques of their math.
On Monday, Microsoft noted that it has updated both Kay's white paper and the accompanying blog post and chart to reflect the fact that both failed to take into account Apple's latest hardware specifications. The new paper and chart use slightly different models on the PC side.
However, the main points I (and others) made last week regarding Microsoft's bad math haven't changed. Kay's report (and Microsoft's accompanying tax return) still put charges in the Mac column that they fail to account for on the PC side when it comes to both software and services.
Suggesting that users can just bring their old copy of Office and Quicken--and that they won't need to upgrade over the five-year life of their new PC--assumes a lot. It's particularly laughable as Kay and Microsoft add in a charge for updating iLife on the Mac side.
On the services side, Microsoft had a fair point of AppleCare being more than Dell's basic three-year warranty. But then it threw in all kinds of other services, such as in-store training and the optional MobileMe service to again lose credibility.
I mean, really, one could have added (as several readers suggested) the five-year cost of antivirus software only to the PC side as well as a one-time charge for removing crapware from the PC. Personally, I'd recommend antivirus software for both the Mac and the PC, although clearly Windows users have had greater need of it to date.
