Powerful structures for product-driven organisations
So Windows 7 is now winding its way through to be on the PCs your average users. It's virtually impossible to know how they'll like it. Certainly the development community has been very impressed. A lot of my colleagues have been using it as their primary OS for many months. I've had it running since… Continue reading 7 reasons
Perhaps it’s a coincidence, perhaps a conspiracy. Perhaps there’s something in the west-coast water supply but the last week or so has seen a pretty sophisticated debate break out on the use of facts and intuition in design. Douglas Bowman is leaving Google, having been heralded as one of the best things to happen to… Continue reading The numbers’ game
Whatever shape the buttons on your laptop, Microsoft has spent the last few days at PDC revealing some very interesting ideas about what the future of computing may hold. Yet, with every news story - about the release of an abstracted operating system idea, about a new operating system with some nice looking UI elements,… Continue reading Fighting the blue monster
More news from the department of 'if Microsoft did it, they'd be strung up from a lamp post but if Apple does it, no one cares' department. It seems that you have to be so cool to be a member of the apple app creators' club that you're not allowed to even talk to the… Continue reading Hostage for a fortune
I've commented before a couple of times that Microsoft could release the MacBook or iPod and everyone would declare it a dud. The products that the blue monster releases which are good (Messenger, Office, Visio, the server products etc) are ignored while the company's detractors happily pick apart shortfalls of products like the Zune, or… Continue reading Apples and not apples
Amid the phenomenal suprise of the new... 3G iphone, Jobs also slipped some other news into the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote. It seems Apple is re-releasing an old favourite from Microsoft: Yes, it's the sick older sister of Windows '98. The ill-fated 'millennium edition' of Windows which barely made it into the noughties. This new… Continue reading Is it just me?
I've talked here a few times (here and here) about how Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to catch a break. Google or Apple get gushing reviews for living 'in beta', Microsoft gets slammed for getting stuff out too soon. Apple's security is questionable, but we never hear about that. Nor it seems are we… Continue reading Creating the ribbon
Yesterday's Mix Session 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: What Is the Business Reality?' would more accurately have been called 'how are we going to make money out of this stuff?: no new information here'. Panelists were Bryan Biniak of Jacked, Tim Kendall of Facebook, the ever charming Loic Le Meur, now of Seesmic, and brainiac… Continue reading In the money
If yesterday's Mix keynote was all about products and developers, today's was all about Ballmer himself, who was interviewed on stage by Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki, an ex-apple evangalist, pulled no punches - poking Ballmer on Vista, Google, Yahoo and Apple, as well as some pretty suprising jokes about chair throwing, anti-trust hearings and Ballmer's infamous… Continue reading Monkeying around
I'm at the Microsoft Mix08 show in Las Vegas with Conchango this week. There were some interesting thoughts in the keynote presentations that kick off the conference. Apart from some pretty unveiled comments about Yahoo, Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie very explicitly talked about the challenges which he sees facing Microsoft in the next few… Continue reading Heads in the clouds
Leading product 