Microsoft Says iPhone Is Irrelevant To Business 435
An anonymous reader writes "A Microsoft exec has turned attack dog, lashing out at Apple's iPhone by saying the device isn't good for business. Why? Because the iPhone is 'a closed device that you cannot install applications on.' Specifically, he's talking about Microsoft Office. 'While the entry of the iPhone (with its cut-down version of Mac OS X) into this market offers new options for consumers, Sorenson believes user familiarity with the Windows Mobile interface — and the ease with which companies can buy and develop applications for the platform — will sustain its increasing popularity and help keep the iPhone out of the lucrative corporate market.'"
Jealousy and Fear (Score:5, Insightful)
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OTOH, they do know that the more iPhones that get bought, the less they'll make in 'doze-based cell phone OS sales ...and in the same market niches where Microsoft makes it's own money when it comes to the things.
Not always (Score:2)
A couple of years ago people were wondering why you'd ever want your email on a phone, now there's a large segment of the business market who couldn't live without it.
I think he's right, Windows CE is a good platform for business stuff and if the iPhone is modelled on the mac then it'll be a great platform for consumers.
The bad news for apple is that th
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Apple already has
Re:Jealousy and Fear (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Jealousy and Fear (Score:5, Funny)
I believe that is "JE FUD" which is french for "I make shit up about the competition."
Re:Jealousy and Fear (Score:5, Funny)
I believe that is "JE FUD" which is french for "I make shit up about the competition."
Re:Oblig Python reference (Score:5, Funny)
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Time to update the US corporate slogan (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess now it should be:
"What's good for Microsoft is good for business."
Haha (Score:2)
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Of course, it's a lot less sinister when taken in toto. (Or out of toto for that matter.)
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft complaining about a company locking competitors out? that's rich...
On the contrary, this is why Microsoft is dominant and Apple is tiny little niche player. Microsoft has ALWAYS generously courted developers for their platforms. They understand that they can't do it all... a vibrant third-party market means more people by Microsoft's platform. Why do you think there's no such thing as the "Microsoft PC"?
Apple has always been incredibly hostile to third parties.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Have you not seen Microsoft try and completely dominate everything remotely related to computers? They pretty much wiped the floor with alternative Office Suites. They started focusing on web browsers, and for a while pages were built solely with IE in mind. They've created unnecessary media formats where good alternatives were readily available. And what the hell are they doing with a search engine? It's never made sense to me that the company who makes an OS also needs to make a search engine. Then you've got the Zune, the XBox, a number of devices that run Windows Mobile. In server space they have web servers, mail servers, etc. The only thing remotely related to computers that I haven't seen Microsoft try to dominate is CAD software.
There may be a wide variety of third party software and hardware, but it's not because microsoft has just yielded the field.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop. You're both right. Microsoft plays nice for a while, lets a lot of other players take all the risk of innovating to see what products keep their platform valuable, waits for the hard work of perfecting the design to be over, watches to see what features have the most to do with market appeal, and then swoops in with their version - shoddy, but universal to the platform. No sane IT department would want to vet IE as a safe and desirable application, but they don't have much choice ("I can't get on the Internet!" "What happens when you try?" "I can't. It's missing!" "What?" "The Internet! The blue 'E'! I think a virus ate it!"). Not many web application developers would want to code for IE, but it's a safe design assumption. They can't very well tell a potential corporate customer "To use all the features, you'd want to get Firefox or Opera", the company already has web filtering and proxy software, not to mention Windows group policies, that are only capable of locking down IE. Release some CRM software that doesn't suck (please, pretty please do that) and watch how quickly you get "embraced".
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2. Limited third-party support or not, the Sidekick family of phones is a tremendous success in its target demographics.
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From what I remember reading (no links sorry), the iPhone will not support the installation of unsigned applications and plug-ins. However, everyone expects this to be simple to disable or override at the cost of invalidating your warranty.
Also there was some discussion that suggested that 3rd parties can request that their code be signed...
Apple just wants to prevent people f
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That one bug in the email sure is annoying. Too bad I can't try a different email app.
You're arguing that a hypothetical bug in an unreleased product makes Windows Mobile better?
I wish this thing played videos.
Uh, it does. Standard MPEG-4/h.264.
Will this thing ever support Flash?
Nobody in any position to know has said that it
I smell a ZunePhone... (Score:5, Insightful)
'course, a more likely explanation is that MSFT already has a cell phone OS biz they'd rather keep protected from such things as competition, no?
IOW: Nothing to see here, move along... :)
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http://news.google.com/news?q=zune%20phone [google.com]
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So, if you want your phone to succeed, you must get the operators to like it. But what operators h
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2) Vodafone can 'declare' w
Just in: Revlon a "strong buy" thanks to MS... (Score:2)
Industry analysts just figured out how much lipstick they'd have to put on this pig...
Not Irrelevant, But Limited in Appeal (Score:5, Insightful)
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What is their target audience with the IPhone, the people that but $600 phones are 99% corporate users. The high end phone market which means phone $400 or above is less than 1% of phone users. [...]Most people don't spend more than $200 on a phone, I just did but it was a blackberry, otherwise I was considering a $350 model, because it had windows mobile on it and office mobile.
Oh come on. I'm a professional user (and an owner of a Windows Mobile phone, which I like a lot), but I absolutely abhor Office mobile, and so does everyone else I know.
You can't do jack shit with it aside from preview badly-formatted versions of presentations, spreadsheets, and documents. You can't edit anything on it in the way of fonts or any formatting beyond a basic bulletin board editor (bold/italic/center/left/color/etc.). As soon as you save anything, you destroy the document. Except for sen
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Maybe the DRM on the iPhone would suit Apple just fine if they get a dominant position in the market (like it does with iTunes/iPod), and they have the bonus that they can pass the blame to others for their practices.
Hard to say who is requiring it to be locked down, and even whether it will even be locked down, at this point. But the complaint that it is more locked down than an MS
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I for one use my phone for business, taking pictures, sending them via email, etc... all of which the iPhone will be able to do, and very nicely so I will be purchasing one. Besides, most of the business people I know u
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Very few people i have ever met have used anything but what was shipped on theirs.
Blackberry made it (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they are being a little delusional.
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Re:Blackberry made it (Score:4, Interesting)
There is also a consumer oriented version which can access any imap server, but this version is intentionally crippled.
Also, the "enterprise server" only runs on windows, so your still tied in... I wonder if this will change now that microsoft are competing head on with blackberry, after all it would be incredibly stupid of them to have their primary product dependant on their biggest competitor.
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I own a Nokia 770.
Who exactly.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the iPhone can't accept installed applications (e.g. a future OpenOffice Mobile for Microsoft haters), I'm shocked and disappointed.
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If you had a phone that could do this, and tied Outlook to your main e
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I'm a loyal Apple customer with three Macs at the moment. I've been using Macs since the System 4 days.
The iPhone is a joke. The early pda phones lacked keyboards. I've had three such phones. The lack made them a pain to use as a phone. Try using a touch screen for navigating a touch-to
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In fact, if the Blackberries couldn't read docs and presentations none of the managers around my place would ever get around to approving any of my stuff. It's absolutely critical if they're going to be used in the corporate world at large to be able to read word documents, power point presentations, and to a much lesser extent pdfs and excel spreadsheets. Edit? Well, people can probably get by that. It must also connect to either exchange or the other
I wonder... (Score:2)
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So? (Score:5, Insightful)
So?
Apple doesn't target large business/enterprise markets. They never have. Their products are always marketed as tools for empowering individuals. If you didn't know better and could only guess from reviewing their advertising, you might think that businesses don't use personal computers. Often in these cases they behave more like a consumer electronics company rather than a PC maker.
Apple has never shipped HP or Dell level volumes and they've never seemed interested in trying. They get waiting lists for some of their products as it is.
Adding enterprise app accessibility would only introduce bugs, increase complexity, and reduce the overall user-friendlyness of the device, none of which would be Apple's fault (and I'm not even a fanboi). Besides, can anyone imagine Jobs up on stage at some show, introducing the latest email or ERP integration piece? No one drools over that kind of stuff.
It's clear that part of Apple's rep for simplicity is due to the avoidance of the products and systems that can't be made simple. Enterprise apps are necessary and useful, but their deployment and use are a clusterfuck and probably always will be. Apple can't change that, so why take the downside?
WTF are you talking about? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/itpro/ [apple.com]
Here's just some of their headlines from the news box:
Apple Takes on Exchange Server
Apple's Open Calendar Server vs. Microsoft Exchange
Xserve Review
Apple's Xserve Gives an Enterprise Alternative
http://www.apple.com/itpro/solutions.html [apple.com]
Need Help Configuring Apple Solutions?
Contact Apple Consulting Services for comprehensive onsite consulting and enterprise-oriented services.
One of Apple's big enterprise selling points always has been interoperability with MS & UNIX products.
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Empowering individuals? please tell me your a shill because if a real person speaks like that then the marketroids have won and we're all doomed to annihalation through mass stupidity.
Not FOR business. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is not stupid, they did their market research for this thing and know exactly what features Joe Public wants, not what Mr. Jack Business or Mr. Slashdot Nerdling wants. They want to woo the Joe Publics, and I strongly suspect that they will.
I think MS is complaining because they know that the iPhone is going to destroy the Zune, and they have nothing to compete with it. Not only that, once enough Joe Public's get a hold of these things, there market for WinCE will be under fire - and then their market for Office on such devices. Apple is smart, they are picking their battles. They are not even trying to compete with the business market at this point. They are targeting a totally different segment, and MS is scared that they will win.
Think of the changes in the marketplace, if everyone owns an iPhone in the public space, and becomes accustomed to using OS X on their handheld... What sort of PC will Joe Public consider buying after using a OS X device? I suspect more iMac's will fly off the shelves after the iPhone becomes established. I think Microsoft is seriously afraid of losing the mobile market, the DRM/Music Market, and eventually the desktop market. And the iPhone is the device that will drive in that wedge.
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I know, I own one. And the UI drives me insane. It is poorly thought out, and reminds me of the interfaces pre Windows 3.11 (Not including X of the day).
In the Keynote Jobs stressed how coco ran on the phone. So, if the first revision does not support additional software (and I suspect it will eventually through iTunes just like the ringtunes...) future revisions will. Either way, it does not matter. You are discussing a feature, not a benefit. Geeks buy fo
This Just In! (Score:5, Funny)
When you can't... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is it about 'business' (Score:2)
The iPhone is targetted at the same demographic the iPod was - people with sufficient disposable income to purchase a premium product, and who care about the "spit-and-polish" that only Apple seem to apply liberally.
The "closed" nature seems to be a bit over-blown too. Just because jo(e)-rando
Beyond silly (Score:2)
Brett
Useless for business? (Score:4, Insightful)
Forget the IPhone, the Irack is more important (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzBmHY3URWs [youtube.com]
Sounds familiar (Score:2)
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I'd be mildly surprised if MS has criticized Linux for being a closed device you can't install applications on, but, yeah, the rest of the criticisms (which all seem to boil down to "its not Windows and all users are used to Windows and want more of it") have been used against Linux.
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Uh, no, they didn't. Not even close. Seriously.
not for business anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
MIKE: I need to call Chet ask him about that spreadsheet
CHET: My phone is ringing!
MIKE:Great, let's call Sue and look at the powerpoint!
CHET: As long as it has plenty of bar graphs!
See for yourself. Apple doesn't give a flying flip about the suit, at least not while they are at work. Their ads are filled with attractive youngsters talking about meeting up for bike riding and whitewater rafting! They don't CARE about the business market.
MS and PDA (Score:3, Interesting)
I had no problem using my PDA for writing. I would enter it as plain text, and then format it in MS Word when I got the big computer. The PDA was to keep contacts and appointments, and jot down drafts. I saw no one complaining that theri franklin planner was inadequate because it did not include a typewriter. Same thing.
I suspect the problem with the iPhone is that it is not going to fit in with the MS workcylce, specifically exchange. Of course blackberry is not a problem because I believe it does have an exchange component. Apple, OTOH, is just uses standard protocols, and does nothing special. Therefore, when the executives get their iPhones, which they will, it is conceivable that at some point MS will have to open up exchange. This means the MS should be scared because the iPhone is the thin end of the wedge. MS lucked out that the there were enough hacks to maintain the monopoly with the PDA threat, but they may not be so lucky with the phones. Just look at what the iPod is doing to the precious WMP formats.
red herring (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't get it (*shock* *surprise*) (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft can continue to enjoy the business cell market for a while. If the iPhone proves to be successful with the personal market, then SJ will get more leverage to strongarm more networks to accept the "apple
Microsoft hypocrisy (Score:2)
The real solution here is to urge Congress and the FCC to force mobile phone carriers to allow users to purchase and conn
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Request for comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody else?
Thank you sir, you may lower your hand.
Re:Request for comment (Score:5, Informative)
I've used it. It's one of the few things on WM 5.0 that actually works more or less as you'd expect it to. That said, it's really not terribly useful. I can't see any situation where it would be more useful than, say, an automatic Word-to-txt converter on the phone.
begin sort-of on-topic rant:
WM 5.0 has one of the worst interfaces I've ever seen on any computing device. Inconsistent from things like the "dismiss" button which swaps sides depending on the app you're dismissing, to the utterly abitrary selection of which functions have buttons on the bottom bar and which have nice big buttons in the main screen, to the random way you quit various applications - do I click the "OK" button, or the "X" in the top right, or the "close" text on the bottom bar - the answer is different with nearly every app. Or the fact it takes 7 clicks on tiny little menu items and icons with the stylus to find the task manager to switch between running applications. Some of our more impatient and less technical users were just rebooting their phones when they ran out of memory rather than navigating that maze each time.
Then there's the flat out bugs and glitches (some of which I'm told will be fixed in some subsequent release... on a thousand dollar phone... which is a crucial business tool in my job... great, thanks, let me just bend over a bit more for you) like the way the hard buttons just stop working every so often (sometimes all of them, sometimes just one or two, like the "answer call" button). Or the screen which sometimes randomly fades to white. i.e., when you're on a call to a client and want to hang up, but the buttons don't work and the screen has gone white so you can't see where to click, the only way to hang up is to take the battery out. Prior to this I'd never seen a telephone handset that crashes and has to be rebooted.
These are the barest tip of the iceburg of the problems with these phones. They're totally unsuitable for business use or any other use where the phone needs to be relied upon. The idea of the makers of this toy dissing the as yet unreleased iPhone as irrelevant for business is hilarious.
If you need a phone to impress your friends at the bar or to play solitare on the train home from work, a WM 5.0 device is perfect for you. If you actually need to rely on it as a phone, mobile data connection, and PDA, i.e., as a business tool... I'm not sure what your other options are, but loads of phones do PDA stuff now, and plenty can do email, and although admittedly Exchange calendering integration is well-implemented and handy in WM 5, if you can give that one feature up it is well worth doing so.
These bloody things were pushed on us geeks by management and have been an unmitigated disaster from day 1. My immediate manager, not a particularly technical guy, implied I was some kind of Luddite when I expressed some doubts (fairly mild ones, as it turned out) prior to the rollout. We previously all had Nokia 8210i handsets and iBurst [iburst.com.au] PCMCIA cards for our laptops, which worked reliably and quickly about 95% of the time.
I am *not* a blind MS hater. I use and deploy their products at work, and they're much better than they once were. But WM is simply crap in the very worst traditions of half-assed marketing-department-driven Microsoft dross.
Apple would have to try pretty hard with the iPhone to make it any less relevant than Windows Mobile.
*sigh* end rant. Sorry about that, WM 5.0 has made me quite bitter.
Japan (Score:2)
Whenever someone talks about the next big portable thing over here, I remember just how unrealistically cool are cel phones in Japan, with vibrant and very hi-def screens, generous storage, nice messaging capabilites... But very few Japanese use smartphones. And boy
Deja Vu !!! (Score:2)
Windows Mobile interface (Score:2)
Windows familiarity (Score:2)
I am familiar with Windows Mobile interface and that's exactly why I'm drooling over iPhone.
Microsoft said the same thing about the Internet (Score:2)
Microsoft laughs at the iPhone now, but how long before Microsoft has the zPhone (Zune Phone) to complete with it?
He's right. Sorta. (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple's market is the same as the market for things like the Motorola RAZR. I'm sure it will be sell well just from the cool factor, no matter how impractical it is.
Ask a stupid question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ask a company about its competition, and they will trash the competition.
Let's get serious here... asking Microsoft what it thinks of its competition? Such an interview has no value. The response will always be negative. Ask Microsoft about any of its competition, and the response will always be the same.
Step 1 (Score:5, Funny)
In the Microsoft playbook: say device is beneath your worry;
Step 2: Attack device as imminent failure;
Step 3: Watch as device becomes success;
Step 4: Purchase company which produces device. If this is not possible;
Step 5: Release half-assed version of device which fails on all levels except hype.
I'd be carefull (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is together with Google in offering Google Maps on the iPhone. I clearly remember the impressive presentation of that specific feature. It's bound to move toward a killer application for those offering Navigation systems. And before you can say 'MS Office sucks' we're likely to have Google Apps on mobile devices. And they definitely are a competion to anything MS in the mobile area.
Do you people still remember Ami Pro, Lotus 123 and Windows 3.1? That was all we needed back then and with the browser apps we get exactly that. On top of a bazillion layers running them on a performance hog called JavaScript. But it's all we need. With phones running 500Mhz CPUs and Full Scale Browsers stripped down versions of expensive proprietary shrinkwrap applications are getting more harder to sell by the minute. And MS is feeling that right now.
You Know (Score:4, Insightful)
iPhone's suckage? (Score:3, Informative)
1. No unsigned apps is a big one. This is really a damn shame, and limits the iPhone to a certain crowd (fashion-conscious blackberry users and Apple devotees).
2. EDGE?! EDGE sucks. The latency is beyond terrible. Now that Cingular has UMTS, Sprint/Verizion have EVDO, and even T-mobile is going 3G, why would ANYONE consider a "nextgen" phone to be an EDGE-only phone. This is a *terrible* decision. As much as I love Apple, I would *never* trade in an EVDO capable PDA for an EDGE one; even if you paid me to take the EDGE one. EVDO (or any low-lataency 3G) changes the way you access the internet while mobile. With EDGE, you putter around slowly, and you don't use an EDGE device while driving about 50 mph, or riding the train. With EVDO, you're always online.
As far as I'm concerned, #2 is damning. Especially now that Sprints super-cheapo SERO plans are avaliable to anyone in the know, there is no reason whatsoever to go with some crappy overpriced EDGE device, even if the UI is Nirvana (and given that its a first generation product, I'm skeptical). Don't look at the bandwidth numbers and think that your EDGE device is similar to a dialup; its not. It's more like a low bandwidth satellite connection, with roundtrip latencies approaching 2-3 seconds while the connection is maxed out (and given that its 128 kbps, thats not hard). EVDO, UMTS, and other 3G technologies blow the doors off this; both Sprint and Verizon sell PDAs and Phones that give you live streaming video, even from things like ORB and Slingbox.
Don't go with EDGE. It sucks. I worked with an EDGE phone for a long time, and now that I've got EVDO (particularly Rev A) I would never, ever go back. Even at twice the price.
the iPhone can read Microsoft Office (Score:5, Informative)
One hundred and forty phone models.... (Score:4, Funny)
Now that's the most abusive utilization of the term "run" that I have ever seen.
Umm, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Umm, no. (Score:5, Interesting)
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You must be thinking of "Windows Internet Explorer 7."
Re:Microsoft are correct (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, get a clue.
Re:Microsoft are correct (Score:5, Funny)
Thank you, and goodnight.
Re:Microsoft are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
With the increase of rich applications in the browser (AJAX etc.), the need to install binaries on a mobile decreases. If, as promised, the iPhone basically has the full build of Safari on it -- then this should be possible.
I'm no Mac fan boy, but realise with each passing year I use a web browser more, and stand-alone applications less. The iPhone fits with that trend.
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Re:Microsoft are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure he is... assuming your office only uses desktop-installed versions of MS Office software. But what if the iPhone had a full-capability web browser installed on it [apple.com], and you used one of several web-based [google.com] Office-like [slashdot.org] applications, and your company had web-based email & calendaring interfaces, and used IM for business communication as well?
Suddenly that non-business iPhone looks pretty darn business-capable. Microsoft has already stumbled several times in recent memory by dismissing the ability of these internet tubes to route around their monopolistic strategies... how many more of these mistakes can they afford to make?
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Unfortunately, it seems that they can afford to make a whole bunch more...
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Why run something bloated when you can run something bloated on web page running off a web browser inside a tiny mobile phone... web office apps only make sense on actual PC's with solid connections.
Office Mobile is designed for MOBILE PHONES it is optimized for MOBILE PHONES- I couldn't imagine running web applications on a cell phone- that's so counter-intuitive. What would happen if you went t
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I have a Palm 700p as my main cell phone. While I don't use the Office-compatible apps too often, but it's handy in rare instances. For instance, a client emails me a Word document detailing changes to
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Microsoft is about to get their ass handed to them again and they know it. Consumer device or not, gimmick or not, the iPhone is already having a huge impact on the moble market - AND IT'S NOT EVEN OUT YET!!!
Next up: "One time software giant Microsoft files suit against Apple, Inc. for monopolizing the mobile business device market"... well, it wouldn't be the first time someone snatched the pretzels out of Ballmer's mouth.
ewwww... I just grossed myself out.
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I'm not sure they haven't already past that point, it may be that the last mistake they could afford (and maintain their top-of-the-heap position) has already been made, and not caught up to them. One place that may have been is not staying out ahead of the OLPC. One thing that isn't often ment
Re:Microsoft are correct (Score:4, Funny)
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