OS X Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 – the Onion
Microsoft announced it will be releasing a new edition of its operating software, called Windows 7, while Apple is working on its new OS X Snow Leopard. How will they stack up against each other? – from the Onion
Yahoo suggests Microsoft should make new offer
Now that Yahoo’s ad deal with Google Inc. is off, Yahoo Inc. CEO Jerry Yang said his company is open to a new offer from Microsoft Corp. “To this day, I believe the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo,” the Associated Press quoted Yang as saying late on Wednesday at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) said in its company blog Wednesday that it is ending its proposed advertising search deal with Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) in the face of opposition from the U.S. government.
David Drummond, Mountain View-based Google’s chief legal officer and senior vice president for corporate development, wrote that after four months of review, “it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle, but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn’t have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.”
The companies said in June they were looking at a partnership that would let Yahoo display search ads sold by Google in exchange for a portion of the revenue. Critics of the deal said it would give Google too much control over online advertising.
- from Bizjournals
Microsoft placing “I’m a PC” recording booths outside Apple stores
Microsoft Corp., engrossed in multi-million dollar marketing blitz to counter anti-Vista propaganda from rival Apple, Inc., is now using a portion of its budget to fuel guerilla retail tactics near the Mac maker’s stores.
AppleInsider reader Tom submits the following photo, which shows a large Microsoft-branded kiosk parked outside a shopping center-based Apple retail store.
“It’s a friggin booth where you can record your own I’m a PC video,” he said. “This is outside the Apple Store, Bullring, Birmingham, England.” He added that a trio of Microsoft staffers will be on hand to turn patrons off from the Mac for the next three days.
The move is an extension of the Redmond-based software giant’s $300 million advertising campaign aimed at cleaning up the image of its Windows Vista operating system, which has been tarnished at the hands of Apple’s long-running “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads.
- from Appleinsider
Netflix Begins Roll-Out of 2nd Generation Media Player for Instant Streaming on Windows PCs and Intel Macs
Netflix, Inc. the world’s largest online movie rental service, today announced it has begun the deployment of Microsoft Silverlight to enhance the instant watching component of the Netflix service and to allow subscribers for the first time to watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers. The deployment, which will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers, is the first step in an anticipated roll-out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.
Silverlight is designed for delivery of cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences inside a Web browser. It is expected that Netflix members who watch movies and TV episodes instantly on their computers will enjoy a faster, easier connection and a more robust viewing experience with Silverlight, due to the quality built directly into the player. Among the viewing enhancements with the new player is a breakthrough in timeline navigation that vastly improves the use of fast-forwarding and rewinding. The new Netflix player takes advantage of PlayReady DRM, which is built into Silverlight, for the playback of protected content on both Windows-based PCs and on Macs. That had not been possible with previous generation technologies.
“Silverlight with PlayReady offers a powerful and secure toolkit for delivery of dynamic streaming, which offers faster start-up, and higher quality video, adapted in real time to users’ connection speeds,” said Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt. “Members who enjoy watching movies and TV episodes from the growing library of choices that can be instantly streamed at Netflix will be thrilled with this next generation improvement of access and quality, on a broader range of platforms, including Intel Macs and Firefox.”
“Instantly streaming from Netflix directly addresses the needs and wants of today’s Web users by providing on-demand, high-quality online video,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corp. “By using Silverlight, Netflix can deliver to its subscribers a higher quality video experience on the Web, on more platforms.”
Silverlight was tried and proven this summer as NBCOlympics.com streamed thousands of hours of live and on-demand online video for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
For Macintosh users, the Silverlight player will work only on Intel-based Macs, which currently account for roughly three-fourths of Mac units operated by Netflix subscribers.
The Netflix instant watching catalog of more than 12,000 choices continues to grow with significant new titles from CBS, the Disney Channel and Starz Play, which the company announced recently. In addition to watching instantly on the PC and Mac via Silverlight, Netflix members can enjoy the same movies and TV episodes on their television with a Netflix ready device such as the Netflix Player by Roku, which was introduced in May, the LG Electronics BD300 Blu-ray disc player and the Samsung BD-P2550 and BD-P2500 Blu-ray disc players, which are on sale now at retailers nationwide, and, soon, the Microsoft Xbox 360.
Is the New MacBook Expensive?
McCracken’s Third Law of Computer Buying specifies that when you’re spending $1000 or more for a system, you shouldn’t obsess over price differences of $100 or less. So the cost of the MacBook, Lenovo, and Sony is close to a wash–especially considering that each machine has some attractive qualities missing in one or both of the other laptops. Considering only the hardware you get for the price you pay, they’re comparable values.
(I do think that a long-time tendency of Apple to simply not offer some features at any price is more striking than ever with the new MacBook, which not only didn’t add some stuff that people were hoping for but eliminated FireWire. But that’s less a question of price and more one of basic feature availability, or lack thereof. Feel free to discuss in the comments, though.)
Then there’s the white MacBook. At $999, it’s meaningfully cheaper than the new MacBook, the Lenovo, and the Sony–which makes sense, since it’s a less ambitious machine in terms of industrial design, and it doesn’t have an LED display. But it’s not a bad machine for the price, and Apple’s decision to keep it in the MacBook line at a lower price makes perfect sense–especially since the new MacBook’s starting price is $200 more than what MacBooks started at prior to last Tuesday.
More Mac-PC Price ComparisonsAnd the Dell? It’s by far the lowest-cost machine here, with a sale price that’s almost $500 less than the MacBook. At that price, it’s a deal; at its normal price of $999, it’s a close rival for the white MacBook (albeit one with more RAM and a bigger hard drive). But the Dell has a less fancy Core 2 Duo, basic integrated graphics, no LED backlighting, and good mainstream industrial design rather than the high-end aspirations of the MacBook, Lenovo, and Sony. It’s an attractive alternative if the MacBook sounds too pricey, but a significantly different machine.
In the end, I think that all five laptops look appealing in their own way, and each one has its own personality; I can imagine buying any of them and being happy with what I got for my money.
Which leaves the question I asked in the very title of this article: Is the new MacBook expensive? Here’s my answer:
“The new MacBook is in the same ballpark pricewise as fancier high-style 13-inch Windows laptops. But if you’re happy with something a little more basic, you can get a Windows 13-incher for a lot less–or, for that matter, the white MacBook, which is a good deal at its new price.”- from here
Microsoft Sues DHL After Train Dumps 21,600 Xboxes
Microsoft is suing U.S.-based cargo-delivery service DHL Express for allegedly losing 21,600 Xbox game consoles because of a train derailment in Texas, according to court documents.
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle, Microsoft said it is seeking more than US$2 million in damages from DHL for two containers of Xbox consoles that sustained “impact damage, wetting, pilfering and shortage” after a derailment near Duke, Texas.
The Xboxes were en route from a Microsoft office in McAllen, Texas, to Long Beach, California, for eventual delivery to Hong Kong at the time of the loss, which occurred on Oct. 13, 2007, according to court papers. Flextronics Industrial in Hong Kong was the intended recipient.
Microsoft claims that DHL has refused to compensate it for the loss, even though the delivery service “negligently breached its duties as a common carrier, handler, bailee, warehouseman, agent, or in other capabilities,” according to the court papers.
DHL could not be reached for comment Friday.
- from PCworld
Microsoft calls on Congress to reconsider bailout
Following the massive Wall Street sell-off, Microsoft on Monday called on Congress to revisit its bailout decision, saying government action is “vitally important.”
“Microsoft strongly urges members of the U.S. House of Representatives to reconsider and to support legislation that will re-instill confidence and stability in the financial markets,” general counsel Brad Smith said in a statement. “This legislation is vitally important to the health and preservation of jobs in all sectors of the economy of Washington State and the nation, and we urge Congress to act swiftly.”
- from cnet
The 25 Most Influential People on the Web
Each year, we turn to readers and BusinessWeek staff for the Best of the Web list, asking them to contribute names for a list of the Intern et’s movers and shakers. Take a look at the slide show to see which people have the most impact on the Web these days. – read at BusinessWeek
Steve Ballmer
Mitchell Baker
Jeff Bezos
Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt
Jeff Clavier
Paul Graham
Arianna Huffington
Joi Ito
Steve Jobs
Jonathan Kaplan
Loic Le Meur
Jack Ma
Matt Mullenweg
Rupert Murdoch
Craig Newmark
Gabe Rivera
Kevin Rose
Sheryl Sandberg
Jon Stewart
Peter Thiel
Maria Thomas
Anssi Vanjoki
Jimmy Wales
Evan Williams
Jerry Yang
Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redefine ‘I’m a PC’
RELAX, computer users, after only two weeks Microsoft will stop teasing you as the company begins the next phase of an ambitious — and risky — $300 million campaign intended to make over its tarnished image.
The campaign, which begins Thursday and carries the theme “Windows. Life without walls,” will move away from the enigmatic teaser commercials that featured Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld in offbeat conversations about shopping, shoes, suburbia and the potential of computing to improve life. The teaser ads have generated considerable discussion since they started on Sept. 4, not all of it positive.
What follows is an audacious embrace of the disdainful label that Apple, Microsoft’s rival, has gleefully — and successfully — affixed onto users of Microsoft products: “I’m a PC.”
One new Microsoft commercial even begins with a company engineer who resembles John Hodgman, the comedian portraying the loser PC character in the Apple campaign. “Hello, I’m a PC,” the engineer says, echoing Mr. Hodgman’s recurring line, “and I’ve been made into a stereotype.”
The strategy to use the Apple attack as the basis for a counterstrike is typical for the agency behind the campaign, Crispin Porter & Bogusky.
- from NYtimes
Microsoft announcement tomorrow: No more Seinfeld ads!
Remember those awful Microsoft ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates? Well, now you can forget them. Microsoft flacks are desperately dialing reporters to spin them about “phase two” of the ad campaign — a phase, due to be announced tomorrow, which will drop the aging comic altogether. Microsoft’s version of the story: Redmond had always planned to drop Seinfeld. The awkward reality: The ads only reminded us how out of touch with consumers Microsoft is — and that Bill Gates’s company has millions of dollars to waste on hiring a has-been funnyman to keep him company. Update: In a phone call, Waggener Edstrom flack Frank Shaw confirms that Microsoft is not going on with Seinfeld, and echoes his underlings’ spin that the move was planned. There is the “potential to do other things” with Seinfeld, which Shaw says is still “possible.” He adds: “People would have been happier if everyone loved the ads, but this was not unexpected.”
- from Valleywag
