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> Microsoft is really trying to follow Apple's playbook here I see Microsoft as following Microsoft's playbook for devices. On the desktop their mantra was bac
by raganwald 17y ago
> Microsoft is really trying to follow Apple's playbook here
I see Microsoft as following Microsoft's playbook for devices. On the desktop their mantra was backwards compatibility, backwards compatibility, backwards compatibility and that worked for them. But on devices, they are far more liberal. PlaysForSure is a good example, they threw their users and partners overboard when they released Zune.
- javery 17y agoThey kept trying to emulate their desktop success on mobile, build a general purpose operating system and then let any and every hardware manufacturer ship it with their hardware. It worked great on desktop, a thousand IBM clones beat down Apple's proprietary hardware/software combination. They finally realized the same approach might not work on mobile, the experience is more closely tied to the physical hardware then the desktop or even laptop experience will ever be. Killing the current Windows Mobile (6.5) is the best move for MS, as was killing PlaysForSure. If you just try to make everyone happy you end up making no-one happy.
- ZeroGravitas 17y agoThe Zune replacing a plethora of PlaysForSure devices was itself an example of copying Apple's iPod strategy. This was the point when they realised their desktop strategy of creating an OS for multiple commodity hardware manufacturers wasn't working in the mobile device space. Windows Phone 7 Series is just taking the Zune and turning it into a phone. Which again, is copying Apple's iPod -> iPhone strategy and adding the odd compromise of still having multiple commodity manufacturers but constraining them all to producing near identical devices.
- raganwald 17y agoI don't remember Apple licensing iPod to other manufacturers, and I don't remember Apple switching DRM formats and dropping support for the old one. As far as I know, when the iPad is released it will be able to play music purchased the very first day the iTunes Store opened, and it will be able to play music ripped by the very first version of iTunes when it was Mac only. I see Microsoft as still compromising left right and centre, trying to get hardware manufacturers to play pricing Seppeku. The one thing they have in common with Apple is taking a technically reasonable product--Zune--and rebranding it with a more marketable product's name. Aplle did this when they bought NeXT and rebranded it as mac OS X!
- ZeroGravitas 17y agoThis is getting weird and recursive. Are you saying Microsoft didn't abandon one business model and copy Apple's because in order for that to be copying Apple's business model Apple themselves would have to had a previous business model and abandoned it too? Apple didn't licence iPod to other manufactures. Microsoft did. Then it abandoned that approach and built the Zune in what was at the time a fairly major turnaround for them and instead copied the iPod model. I don't follow the Zune too closely, but it is still only built and sold directly by Microsoft isn't it? Just like the iPod, and unlike the previous devices in the PlaysForSure family. The whole point of that branding being that the music, bought from multiple stores, would play on multiple devices, made by different manufacturers (notably not including Apple).