Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Posts Tagged Microsoft

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Jan 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Inside Blogging | No Comments

There are scandals, and then there are scandals (not to be confused with what passes for celebrity scandals).

Microsoft handed out a whole bunch of really nice laptops to a whole bunch of bloggers. Take that, anti-blogger triumphalists. Needless to say, hilarity ensued as words like “bribe” and “sellout” and “unethical” and “PR disaster” were thrown about.

My take – if you expect rigorous standards, go to Consumer Reports. Otherwise, caveat emptor applies, as always — even for freebies.

What were people thinking: Gee, I really trusted blogger x when I didn’t know anything about him/her, but now that I know they are another human with all the same frailties as me, I can’t fully trust them to deliver those Olympian pronouncements to live my life by anymore. I mean, what’s next, companies creating fake blogs?

Full disclosure — I’m still waiting to make my unethical sell out. And I still don’t have a big plasma HDTV. (And yes, I have read Bug Jack Barron: The saddest day of your life isn’t when you decide to sell out. The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out and nobody wants to buy.

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I Want My Nintendo

Jun 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Fun | No Comments

Will Nintendo beat Sony and Microsoft in the next round of the gaming console wars? This guy thinks so. My vote will go to whichever company can provide me their latest console loaded with hot software to test and report on. (Yes, I’m still waiting on a wall mounted Plasma TV to review). Because I don’t want to end up like this guy – writing about really old video games with fondness. I want to be able to say that back in my day, the games were lousy, and I’m glad I have the latest gear. I want to say I’m glad the designers of today only care about how good a game looks and don’t care what it plays like.

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Branding Done Wrong

Jul 25

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

Eight months of searching for a product name for the latest incarnation of Windows, and Microsoft comes up with Vista. How I would love to be a consultant. How MS could take eight months and not come up with an improvement on Longhorn (who really wants their computer OS named after a large, stupid ruminant) is beyond me. Accurate maybe, but we’re talking marketing here. Heck, I could have made random picks out of the dictionary until I got a better name much quicker and cheaper. 

I guess MS is hoping that Windows Vista turns out better than AltaVista, which was once a cutting edge search engine, dethroned by Google (for those of you too young to remember.) 

I suppose that the boring, focus group driven name fits the boring, focus group driven product. And hopefully diverts attention for just how late the product is. I have to wonder what the effect of all the top management of a company being rich beyond the dreams of avarice have on a company; in the case of Microsoft, it would appear that the combination of money and a lack of competition have caused it to become downright lazy.

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Microsoft Pulls Switch Ad

Oct 15

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

The internet supposedly has this libertarian live-and-let-live sensibility to it. This is quite often true, but when it comes to what computer you use, that sensibility goes right out the window for a lot of people. Instead, use my choice or you’re an ignorant goober seems to be the sensibility. I happen to love Macintosh — it has its weaknesses, and Windows and Linux have their strengths. If you make a different choice, I figure its right for you. Still, I do get a chuckle out of Microsoft, when I’m not getting steamed that is. Luckily, this time it’s a chuckle. In keeping with Microsoft’s long history of Apple flattery, they decided to imitate Apple’s new Switch ads which feature real people who’ve switched from Windows to Macintosh. But they did it in Microsoft’s typical ham-handed fashion. Eagle eyed members of the Slashdot community noticed that the picture of the woman in the ad was actually a stock photograph. AP then went further and tracked the woman down based upon information imbedded within the files that accompanied the ads, and discovered that’s she’s an employee of the PR firm that originated the ad. She insists she really did switch, but Microsoft pulled the ad. You might say that’s the difference between Apple and Microsoft in a nutshell – Apple worries about the substance, Microsoft only the form. Sure, they could have found someone independent who switched and identified them, but all you really need is to claim someone did — that’s good enough.

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