Microsoft

Corporations can be heinous places. All day, people wander around, playing politics like so many Lindsay Lohans in "Mean Girls."

So today, one wonders just what machinations are being endured by Simon Aldous, the Microsoft Partner Group manager who was Wednesday quoted by PCR as suggesting that Windows 7 was rather inspired by the simplicity of the Mac OS. Indeed, Aldous declared that Microsoft's new operating system was designed to "create a Mac look."

In what appears to be a somewhat hurriedly written post on the Windows Team blog titled, "How we really designed the look and feel of Windows 7," Microsoft showed that perhaps some of its underwear is currently a little twisted.

The post read: "An inaccurate quote has been floating around the Internet today about the design origins of Windows 7 and whether its look and feel was 'borrowed' from Mac OS X."

This would suggest that Aldous was, in fact, misquoted.

However, the post, written by Brandon LeBlanc, continued, "Unfortunately, this came from a Microsoft employee who was not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7. I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed."

"I'm Steve Jobs, and Windows 7 was my idea?"

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Some would therefore now conclude that he was quoted accurately, but he didn't quite get his facts right. This is entirely possible, though one might wonder why he would have made comments with a ring of such endearing honesty.

However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of this Windows Team post is a comment left by someone with the handle "i-dont-do-tat".

This commenter wrote: "I know Simon Aldous, having worked in the same U.K. subsidiary as him for a few years. He's a good guy who, for me, is telling it like it is. He's paying testament to the common view that a Mac is cool and a great template to copy."

As many in the world of business will tell you, copying happens all the time. The competition is scrutinized religiously, and the best articles of faith are taken and sometimes even improved. This happens in every product category.

The "i-dont-do-tat" poster concluded that perhaps honesty might not be such a bad thing: "Denying this to your customers just makes you look stupid because the very look and feel of Windows 7 is desperately trying to look like a Mac OS--just admit it."

Oh, of course one mightn't expect honesty in the mass-market arena. It is a very dangerous place in which to say anything at all. Equally, though, in a tech world interview, perhaps a little nod toward the opposition is not such a bad thing. It might even lull it into a little complacent smugness.

One can only hope that Simon Aldous had a good breakfast Thursday and that he hasn't endured any untoward communications. Unless it's a job offer from Apple, of course, which he should accept only if the company gives him a better deal and appears to come from nicer people.

That's how the corporate world works, you see. Like high school, it's all temporary, so you have to make the most of it while you can.

Judging by its initial sales, Windows 7 is certainly proving more popular than Vista.

Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft sold 234 percent more boxed editions of Windows 7 than it did Vista in the initial releases of both products, according to research released Thursday by NPD Group.

In actual dollars, Windows 7 has also been more successful than Vista. However, early discounts on pre-sales copies and a lack of a promotional boost behind Windows 7 Ultimate led to revenues only 82 percent greater than those of Vista.

"Ultimate was a much bigger part of what Microsoft did with Vista, whereas this time I think they not only kept the price very high, but really kept the focus on the Premium product and the Premium three-pack," explained the author of the report, NPD's Stephen Baker, to CNET News. "Most of the promotional fire that they've put out there has been focused on those, for example, 'Buy a computer, get a $50 copy of Home Premium.' The pre-sales were all pretty much focused on Home Premium."

The numbers provided by NPD include both the initial sales of Windows 7 following its release on October 22 and pre-sales data from the discount program that Microsoft launched in July.

NPD declined to release actual sales figures for Windows 7, but the percentages help tell the story.

Web statistics firm Net Applications also found early adoption of Windows 7 to be strong.

(Credit: NPD Group)

Sales of PC hardware running the new OS didn't fare quite as well. Though growth in PC sales for the Windows 7 launch was at its highest level for the entire third quarter, it wasn't as strong as during the Vista launch, showing a 6 percent decrease from Vista's initial days.

A mixture of different factors affected the sales of Windows 7 PCs, notes Baker. Vista was launched in January, which traditionally offers a better sales environment than October. Also, the new OS was hurt by sales of PCs with older operating systems, which made up 20 percent of all sales during Windows 7 launch week. In contrast, PCs with older operating systems made up just 6 percent of all sales when Vista hit the market.

Baker doesn't think the current recession had a bearing on the lower PC sales for Windows 7's launch. "We've seen pretty strong sales growth on computers all year regardless of the recession," he said. "People have been buying more units of PCs all year than they had in 2008. At least from a unit perspective, we haven't really seen much impact on the consumer PC market from the recession."

Have you ever been hurt by a lover who went back to her ex?

Have you ever experienced that constant troubling frisson, even when you were with them, that it was only a matter of time?

Well, might I offer you a little televisual solace? Jerry Seinfeld, he who walked a mile in Bill Gates' shoes with the man himself, has gone back to his first wife, the Mac.

It seems almost a movie from an alien world to remember Jerry and Bill buying shoes and moving in with a normal American family.

I know some found these ads bizarre. I found that a good thing. And a very good thing for Microsoft. These movies were a delight, a departure, a signal of something that was finally different, a signal that someone was, well, thinking different.

Yes, they didn't last. They were, perhaps too daring for their time and their brand. But they were more viral than the "I'm a PC" campaign.

So to now discover that Seinfeld has appeared on HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" with a MacBook Pro craftily centered on his desk is to experience something akin to a kitchen knife being sharpened upon one's spine by a recently fired busboy.

You can see a still over at TUAW, because I am too disturbed to show it here.

Although I have embedded a little waffle from Seinfeld and his co-starring minions explaining their enthusiasm for "Curb"'s Larry David.

However, if it is, indeed, remotely true that Seinfeld was paid $10 million for his aborted Microsoft ads, one might have hoped that he would have wondered if it was quite right to be seen with a Mac again so quickly.

Unless, of course, Apple paid him $15 million. Which they wouldn't. The company would have been more ready for him to pay it. So, Jerry, love "Curb Your Enthusiasm". But did you really have to? Did you?

I feel fairly confident that Windows 7 will turn out to better than its predecessor.

I feel fairly confident that it will not turn hairy users bald, nor cause sane users to enter institutions of mental restructuring.

However, I have been watching these two pieces of film from Japan with some small prick of concern.

In each we see a television personality attempting to enjoy the touch screen facility and, well, finding the screen as frigid as a beer in a Reykjavik bar.

I don't speak Japanese quite well enough beyond "watashiwa kekong shtemasen" (no, I am not married) to know what is being said.

However, the fine Japanese news source, Japan Probe, was itself somewhat discombobulated by these two seemingly unrelated incidents of Windows 7 opacity.

I should say that both these clips appear to come from Fuji TV, so I hope that they didn't manage to obtain a rather duff copy of the operating system.

But there is something disconcerting about seeing the rather serious gentleman in the beige jacket and imposingly expensive watch fail to expand his view of the world. His face is so unbearably fixed, as if it too has been frozen in sympathy with what is happening on the screen.

It also affects one's blood pressure to see the chap in the waistcoat on the breakfast show "Tokudane", continually tap a file, then the Windows logo, then any and every part of the screen in a vain attempt to make for a little exciting television.

Indeed, one of his fellow televisual employees scuttles up and crouches down in front of the screen and tries to help him out. Yet still his screen finger skills bear as much fruit as, well, some fingers that attempted to make sense of Vista.

I am sure these were isolated incidents caused by inferior configuration or some kind of digital unfamiliarity.

However, I will be eagerly scouring the Web for sales figures from Japan.

Was Apple going to keep quiet about the launch of Microsoft's Windows 7?

Do raccoons know how to get at the leftover spaghetti in your garbage can?

So, indeed, here is an immediate retort starring Messrs. John Hodgman and Justin Long.

Apple's appeal is a very simple one. It is one that you have heard this before, often late at night, often inebriated, sometimes over the telephone.

Surely you remember the script: "Your lover let you down before? You went back to her. She was unfaithful again. And still you went back to her. Now she comes a-callin', telling you things will be different this time...and YOU'RE GOING TO BELIEVE HER? WHAT ARE YOU? NUTSOID?!!!"

However, this time, it doesn't stop there. Because Apple also specifically asks XP users whether it's terribly wise to go with Windows 7 when Mac is No. 1 for customer satisfaction. (The XP user, naturally, decides she doesn't need "pain and frustration.")

Apple has decided to create this little surge of communication, more examples of which you can watch here, designed to prick at your conscience while Microsoft tries to pick at your pocket.

Which suitor should you trust? The one who's supposedly let you down before or the cool, allegedly costly one?

In a tough economy, what may be most telling is how many people decide to bide their time and hide their money, until Windows 7 is deemed to be worthy of at least a steady relationship.

When, like Microsoft, you've suffered more criticism for your operating system than Tom Cruise has for his height, you have to really think deeply when you launch something new.

You could go out and continue to tell people that you're very clever. But then they'd be a little more reluctant to believe you.

You could tout Windows 7 as the brainspawn of a whole new generation of terribly clever engineers. But then consumers might have a vision of an operating system created by pot-smoking, pot-bellied youths with the body odor of mousetrapped rats.

So you reach the conclusion that you've listened to both the great washed and unwashed out there and designed a new operating system completely according to their needs.

Then you draw on a little creative license and suggest that Windows 7 was actually not Microsoft's idea at all, but that of all the suffering, frustrated, maddened folks who screamed at Vista till their neighbors called 911, shortly followed by a call to their local Apple store.

This new ad undoubtedly embraces Microsoft's newly discovered zest for emotional values. It is charming, safe, warm--visual cocoa for a bleak economic winter.

It's just that I can't help thinking that if Windows 7 does go wrong--or at least if your own copy of seizes up like a nervous "America's Got Talent" contestant--then aren't you, one of the billions of brains behind this new system, just a little complicit in its failure?

They're really clever, those new marketing people at Microsoft.

It is always fun when serious people offer a confessional.

On Microsoft's Bing blog, director Stefan Weitz decides to tell everyone who will listen that he has been an "avid rocket launcher since 1975."

I am not aware what effect this might have had on his parents, his neighbors, or the local police and fire services as he was growing up, but I can find no evidence that he was ever arrested for such avid launching.

Weitz is now, however, vexed that science is not cool in school.

So he and his friends at the Bingdome have decided to revive child enthusiasm for launching.

Please welcome Mission: 10,000 Rockets, a program designed to get your kids to design rockets that will successfully immolate beyond ashes several countries of which we have not become fond.

No, wait. I haven't got that quite right.

Perhaps something like this will be useful for a trip to the planet Titan?

(Credit: CC Erik Charlton/Flickr)

Mission: 10000 Rockets is, in fact, asking kids to imagine what the next generation of space travel might look like. If you can get your kids to walk away from their Grand Theft Auto and design the rockets of the future, they might get their creations actually built.

No, not to full size, but at least they will be brought to physical being by some "cool artists" whose work might just be worth a fortune one day.

A book of all the designs will also be produced, all the proceeds from which will be returned to schools. And eight extremely fortunate schools will receive $5,000 to fund scientific projects in their cash-strapped establishments.

As a recent job advertisement for an astronaut in the Calgary edition of Craigslist proved, there is a renewed enthusiasm in the space project, some of it no doubt engendered by the very real prospect that our own world will shortly disintegrate.

So what better way to make your children productive this weekend than by getting them to design a spacecraft that might, one day, preserve a little humanity for the residents of the Planet Titan to marvel at?

Update at 9:20 a.m. PDT: Comments from Lili Cheng added.

Ray Ozzie is getting more social.

No, the infrequent blogger and Microsoft's chief software architect has not decided to Twitter his every move. Rather, Ozzie has set up a new social computing lab at Microsoft, to be headed by Microsoft Research veteran Lili Cheng.

The Future Social Experiences (FUSE) group brings together three existing efforts: Cheng's creative systems group from Microsoft Research and two units that were already part of Ozzie's world--the Media Labs and Startup Labs group.

Ozzie sent an e-mail Thursday to Microsofties talking about the move and its importance.

Lili Cheng

(Credit: Microsoft)

"The three groups being combined have concrete skills and code in areas where 'social' meets sharing; where 'social' meets real-time; where 'social' meets media; where 'social' meets search; where 'social' meets the cloud plus three screens and a world of devices," Ozzie wrote in the memo, which was seen by CNET News.

"FUSE Labs will bring more coherence and capability to those advanced development projects where they're already actively collaborating with product groups to help them succeed with 'leapfrog' efforts. Working closely with (Microsoft Research) and across our divisions, the lab will prioritize efforts where its capabilities can be applied to areas where the company's extant missions, structures, tempo or risk might otherwise cause us to miss a material threat or opportunity."

In the memo, Ozzie also noted the changing nature of social computing.

"For many years, technology-based 'social' innovations have been most commonly viewed through the lenses of communications and collaboration: messaging, chat, calls, meetings, conferences, co-editing, document sharing, collaboration, multiplayer gaming and the like," Ozzie said.

"More recently, many factors have begun to transform all that which is 'social': the ever-present, high-bandwidth internet both wired and wireless; the ease of connecting people; the dramatic rise in digital cameras, camera phones and 'app-capable' phones; net-connected game consoles & TVs; and so on."

Cheng, who will head the new lab, has specialized in social computing but has also worked in other areas, including helping Microsoft's Jim Allchin with the design of Windows Vista.

The new group will consist of around 80 people initially, Cheng said in an interview Thursday.

She noted that social computing is becoming central to all types of computing tasks, from gaming to search to business.

"When you think of what people do on their PCs, so much of it is (to) connect to other people and view information shared with them by their friends," Cheng said. "That's what people do on their computers."

The challenge, she said, is that personal computers weren't really designed with that in mind. Even networking, she notes, was an afterthought.

"It just feels early to me," Cheng said. "It feels like nothing works really well."

Businesses in particular, are still trying to figure out how to adapt social computing into their world, which also has rules and boundaries.

Although Microsoft has been doing a lot of research in social networking, the company is often not thought of as a leader in the area--something Cheng hopes will change.

"I'd love when people think of those tools to think of Microsoft," she said.

Cheng, who spoke to me just after meeting with her new team in Cambridge, Mass., said she is still trying to get a handle on all of the projects now in her purview.

"I didn't even have a chance to tweet myself," Cheng said.

Microsoft made other changes on Wednesday in its engineering ranks, shifting several projects under the auspices of Peter Loforte, general manager of Engineering Excellence and Technical Strategy & Community. Loforte will now head a team that includes the company's engineering "excellence," technical community, strategic technical recruiting, distributed development strategy, as well as the technical strategy team responsible for ThinkWeek--Microsoft's brainstorming process that used to be headed by Bill Gates, who would amass technical papers from across the company and review them twice a year.

There are those who believe Windows 7 doesn't need selling.

As long as reviewers continue to suggest that it is a fine, fine thing, then people will gravitate towards it as they buy their (much cheaper than Mac) PCs.

Microsoft is, however, taking no chances. It has released nine new ads designed for you to not be ashamed of being seen in public using the new operating system.

And what's the best way of encouraging people to not feel ashamed? Why, you try to make your product cool.

It is not cool to ever tell people you are cool. You must be it. You must sound it. And you must look it.

So I have embedded three of the films for you to decide just how far up your frigid cool scale Windows 7 has risen.

You may note the very sparse use of words, the delicate musical choices, even the sly wit.

For myself, I tend to notice the rather excessive scrubbing that seems to have been eked out upon far too many of the actors.

Casting is a very difficult art, and especially in the "Your PC. Your Life" film, I wonder if the man who sings about waiting for his spaceship to fly (and what can that possibly mean?) doesn't look a little too polished to be a truly raw exemplar of cool.

Still, as Mao Tse-Tung was always fond of whispering to those closest to him in intimate situations: "A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery."

No, wait, that wasn't the quote I was searching for. It's this one: "Women hold up half the sky."

No, no, it can't be that one. It's definitely this one: "Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically."

You see, the enemy's tactics are, as Microsoft has learned sometimes to its cost, very cool indeed.