This video previewing Microsoft’s upcoming Phone Companion app for Windows 10 seems to summarize Microsoft’s strategy when it comes to smartphones. At about the 3:10 mark, Joe Belfiore (Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems Group) says: Today, people have this expectation that they’ll be able to take whatever device they have and have all of their […]
Google is Abandoning Me, and So I’m Abandoning Google
March 17, 2015 by 4 Comments
Given Google’s willingness to abandoning major projects, with Google+ as potentially the latest victim, I’ve decided to abandon Google. I’m not doing this in a vacuum: since making a concerted effort to go entirely cross-platform, I’ve found that relying on Google properties makes things unecessarily difficulat, particularly on Windows Phone. And so, watching Google doing away […]
Lessons From Going Cross-Platform
March 2, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Here’s the industry’s dirty little secret: each major platform, be it iOS, Android, or Windows/Windows Phone, is good enough to be considered life-changing technology. Yes, users tend to favor one platform over another, to the point of fandom and complete ignorance of the other two, and that’s just fine. These things are intended to enhance […]
Lenovo’s Superfish is Really Bad Marketing, and How to Fix It
February 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Good marketing means carefully managing every aspect of product (design, manufacture, etc.), price, promotion (advertising, sales, public relations, etc.), and place (distribution). It’s simply not good marketing to secretly alter a product to generate revenue in ways outside the control of unsuspecting customers. That’s particularly true in a technology industry where privacy and security have […]
Microsoft’s Strategy in 628 Words
February 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Twitter is great for teaching a person to be short and sweet in their writing. Unless you continue tweets, which I never do, you’re stuck with 140 characters or less to convey complete thoughts. That’s a challenge for any writer, and if nothing else Twitter has taught me to be more concise when the need […]
Is Apple Growing or Just Upgrading? (Updated)
October 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Update 1/28/2015: So, Apple’s Q1 2015 (fiscal) financial results are in, and they had their best quarter ever. Maybe any company’s best quarter ever. They generated $74.6 billion in revenues, $18 billion in net profit (wow), and sold 74.5 million iPhones at a higher average price per unit (thanks to the iPhone 6+, of course). […]
Microsoft’s Windows Phone Strategy
August 25, 2014 by Leave a Comment
One of the most controversial topics in technology, at least by my reckoning, is exactly what Microsoft’s Windows Phone strategy should be. Industry pundits take a number of positions, such as the notion that Microsoft should abandon Windows Phone for Android, that they should glom onto Android designs to gain traction in smartphone hardware (e.g., HTC’s […]
Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review Part 2: Executing the Vision
August 1, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In Part 1 of my impressions of the Surface Pro 3, I waxed philosophical about how well the machine fits within Microsoft’s vision of “one operating system, many devices,” but is it a perfect machine? Of course not. No matter how far technology has progressed in making a machine like the Surface Pro 3 possible, […]
Will a Plan B (Or C) Work for Windows Phone?
July 8, 2014 by 1 Comment
Paul Thurrott, along with a few others, is among the most knowledgeable and influential writers when it comes to everything Microsoft. So, in my transition to all-Microsoft products, I’ve started to follow him a bit more closely. His latest piece, titled “Plan B for Windows Phone?”, is interesting and makes some important points. I don’t […]
Windows Phone’s Past Performance Does Not Predict Microsoft’s Future Results
July 1, 2014 by Leave a Comment
I’m certainly cognizant of the uphill battle that Microsoft faces in terms of making Windows Phone a viable player in the smartphone market. They have a very compelling strategy, namely that of creating a single development environment that supports many different platforms (Windows 8.1 desktop, notebooks, hybrids, and tablets, Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones, and the […]