Nokia thinks WinMoPho's are great. Imagine my surprise...

During a break on a big project I’m working on I was catching up on some reading.

I ran across this piece on the Boy Genius Report - Nokia’s Jo Harlow: Windows Phone is ‘easier, faster and a hell of a lot more fun’

Imagine my surprise!

Nokia’s product boss says something like this about the product that Nokia has bet the farm on.

I’m sure if Jo worked for a company that sold bovine manure there would be some way to tell us that their bovine manure is a hell of a lot more fun that the oppositions bovine manure.

Given Nokia haven’t sold a single unit yet and Microsoft’s share of the mobile market is so small that it would represent a massive reduction of Nokia’s already shrinking market share you’d have to hope everything Jo Harlow is saying is true otherwise the bovine manure manufacturing sector may start looking good.

The Blackberry Zombiepocalypse Spreads

So RIM have had a ‘core switch failure’.

Blackberry devices all over the planet started imitating the sales numbers of the Deadbook and finally Jim Balsille and Mike Lazaridis stump up and say “whoops…our bad”.

Yeah…I’m sure sending out a video apology on the launch day for the iPhone 4S is going to help. Following it up with a few free apps isn’t really going help all that much guys.

Faced with plummeting market share, wrong headed thinking and launching an unfinished product to market with the vague promise of “we’ll fix it with software updates soon…promise…really…”, isn’t going to help.

Not only has RIM lost the ‘cool’ factor, they’re losing everyone’s confidence.

RIM should put Jim and Mike out to pasture so they can worry about ice hockey teams and telling each other that they’re the best.

Stick a fork in RIM, they’re done.

Another World Changer Passes

So in the last week Dennis Ritchie passed.

Nowhere near as well known as Steve Jobs, but at least as important.

Dennis Ritchie was a co-creator of UNIX and the C Programming Language. Without him we would be dealing with a very different computing landscape. Linux, Mac OS X and a whole lot of other technologies wouldn’t exist without the work that he did so many years ago.

Unlike Steve Jobs there won’t be the huge outpourings of grief at Apple Stores all over the world, but, there should be, because without the work of Dennis Ritchie its arguable that Apple wouldn’t be the company that it is, neither would a lot of others.

So farewell to another pioneer who changed the world.

Stallman eulogises Jobs

Richard Stallman has jumped the shark!

I came across this article the other day Stallman blasted over Jobs eulogy.

Here is what Richard Stallman said in his blog post:

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.


As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.


Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.

This post is a great example of whats wrong with the Open Software movement. Its out of line and ignores the realities of the world for a narrow point of view.

Most of the world doesn’t see the Apple ‘ecosystem’ as a ‘jail’, they see it as a solution to their problems.

Android is great but after living with a Samsung Galaxy SII for a while I have to admit that Android for all its promise is fundamentally flawed.

To make it work I need to play with it, software doesn’t always work from model to model, the bluetooth pairing with my car is patchy, most time it works - sometimes it doesn’t - when it doesn’t its a major pain and the voice command system isn’t great.

On the other hand the iPhone just works. I’ve had no trouble with stuff working as I expect, the bluetooth pairing is rock solid, the voice command system works, including with my car’s bluetooth which the Samsung doesn’t want to use.

If the Apple jail is all about making the technology accessible, and as easy to use as a toaster, you know what, great! Lets have more of it because most people don’t want to fuck with technology just to make a phone call from their car, get music moved from their computer to their portable player and so on.

99% of the planet just want it to work without any screwing around.

Its not a jail, its giving people what they want. They just want it to work.

This is something the Open Source movement needs to take to heart. If you want to become more than just a geek paradise, if you want to change the world, you need to solve people’s problems, not give them new ones.

Happy Birthday Windows XP - Your Daddy wants to kill you now!

So Windows XP turns 10 soon and Microsoft develops a case or corporate dementia. Conveniently forgetting the total clusterfuck that was Vista. By the way that was launched in 2007.

The good thing is that they want us all to start planning our move to Office 2010 and Windows 7 now because extended support for XP and Office 2003 winds up in 2014.

2014!!

By then they should have the 3rd service pack out for Windows 8 and, assuming it isn’t a screw up of Vista proportions they’ll be trumpeting Windows 9 or whatever they’ll end up calling it.

The problem for Microsoft is that Windows XP was good. Actually it was very good. Who the hell needs to upgrade except to keep the wheels of Microsoft greased with cash that Ballmer can spend on buying Yahoo or Skype or whatever.

Now that they’ve announce Windows 8 anyone who was thinking of moving to Windows 7 has a reason to delay further. I mean if Windows 8 comes out in 2012 then corporates have until 2014 to migrate from XP and save themselves the cost of the intermediate upgrade.

This doesn’t sit well with Microsoft so expect the migrate to Windows 7 output from Microsoft to be cranked up to maximum.

Ignore it and keep your money in your pocket and wait for Windows 8, I mean it can’t be as bad as Vista…can it?

The iPhone 4S is a disappointment?

So the Apple iPhone 4S was a ‘disappointment’?

According to this press release iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Top One Million in First 24 Hours I’d have to question that sentiment.

So if this is a disappointment all I have to ask the financial auguries is what the hell constitutes a success? Given the track record of the financial ‘industry’ of late I’d have to say that the disappointment sits with them.

Apple moved a million units in 24 hours! That is an astounding figure.

God help the competition if, according to the genius financial analysts, Apple exceeds their expectations with the next iteration of the iPhone.

Vodafail and RIM: A match made in Heaven

So rumours are flying that Vodafone may want to buy RIM.

So lets see, the carrier who has managed to comprehensively screw themselves and the Australian consumer is going to ‘buddy up’ with RIM who displayed breathtaking arrogance and gave away a market they created and delivered below standard, half finished products.

Excellent!

The only winners out of this one are going to be the RIM shareholders who may actually be able to get a reasonable price, assuming the rumours are true, and they haven’t been started by some Wall Street analyst desperate to dump his ‘dog’ stocks before bonus time at a price inflated by a stupid rumour.

Nahhhh. That’d never happen.

Steve Jobs

To my mind there are two things that defined Steve Jobs for me and they are best exemplified by, firstly, his pitch to hire John Scully

“Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?”

and the Think Different campaign that was launched after he returned to Apple

You did change the world.

I want my iPhone 5!!!

From the reaction you’d expect that Apple has just run over a litter of newly born puppies.

The iPhone 4S? They all cry, where’s the iPhone 5 I’ve been reading about in the press and tech blogs? You know the one with the different form factor. The aluminium back. NFC payment facilities.

Lets see. The ones crying foul the loudest are those same tech blogs who have a barnyard full of eggs on their collective faces because their prized and carefully cultivated “highly placed source who cannot be named” turned out to be some putz with no idea and a big mouth.

The market analysts are also shocked and upset. “We were expecting an iPhone 5”, they all cry. “Oh dear God!” they exclaim.

"Our research notes have just been revealed for what they really are!"

The recorded ravings of a bunch of alcohol and fine food addled, overpaid, astrologers and carnival side-show hucksters.

The true worth of their highly priced research notes have just taken a dip in the order of the Greek economy.

To most users its an improvement in performance. Their collection of cases, accessories and suction cup vehicle mount thingies will all work with the new device saving the average consumer a small fortune in buying new stuff and the 4S will be available in even more carriers in the US.

Doesn’t sound like its too bad all in all if you're in the market for a new phone.

Anyway for all you bitter and twisted souls who want to rail and rant at the world to express your frustration at Apple destroying your lives because they didn’t deliver the iPhone 5 you wanted…too late…some has done it for you.

Larry Ellison tells HP Shareholders how smart their board is

On CNN Money there was a piece the other day Oracle kicks HP while it’s down. But why?

Unkind people would say because its hard not to. In reality its because HP is rapidly going from Silicon Valley icon to the punch line of a joke.

Between new CEO, Meg Whitman, claiming she’s ideally suited to running HP because “I bought a lot of software. I was one of the largest enterprise customers in Silicon Valley”, and paying out Leo for 11 months of spectacular decline.

Leo got $11 million. $7.2 million just to go away and $2.4 million for ‘results based bonus’. Results Based Bonus?!

Lets see, shut down the whole Palm thing, a share valuation that jumped off a cliff and putting it out there that HP will get out of the server/PC business and he gets a performance based bonus? I suppose if the bonus is based on decimating the company, then I guess its justified.

The best bit is they’re paying him to go back to France or Belgium and if he loses money on selling his house in California HP will kick in up to $300,000 to help poor Leo.

The reason Larry wants to kick HP while they’re down is because they deserve it!

Hell! I want to kick HP. This just makes me angry. Its stupidity of such a colossal scope. A Board that obviously did nothing to keep the CEO under control and now wants to keep its job by hiring Goldman Sachs to deal with ‘activist’ shareholders.

The best thing that could happen to HP right now would be for Oracle to buy them out and let Larry treat the HP Board to a bit of Ellison love.

The Deadbook gets…well…deader?

The Android Runtime environment for RIM’s Deadbook was looked on as a way to get traction for what has been a tablet “slip slidin’ away’ on the cold, unforgiving Canadian ice.

Nope.

It appears, according to this article RIM releases list of Android-on-Playbook no-nos that this isn’t going to help RIM reverse the growth and final decline of the zombie tablet.

In fact it might just speed up the process.

There’s a feature documentary in this story of how Blackberry gave away the market. Maybe, Dawn of the Deadbook?

How Confident are HP's Board of their Decisions?

I guess they’re not.

It seems that they’ve hired Goldman Sachs to help defend against ‘activist’ shareholders.

Activist shareholders!?

You mean the guys that actually own the company and hire the Board to run the company in an intelligent and farsighted manner? You mean the guys that own the shares that want to see the board increase the shareholder value?

Oh. Okay.

Just so we’re clear because it sounds a lot like protecting your ass because that loud noise the board is hearing is the sound of pissed off investors who don’t necessarily see the genius in your strategy and would like to fire your collective asses.