Another blow against Mircosoft

[Colossus 2]

Haha Bill, you'll never defeat the mighty iPod!

Quote[/b] ]

Microsoft's leafy corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, is beginning to look like the streets of New York, London and just about everywhere else: Wherever you go, white headphones dangle from peoples' ears.

To the growing frustration and annoyance of Microsoft's management, Apple Computer's iPod is wildly popular among Microsoft's workers.

"About 80 percent of Microsoft employees who have a portable music player have an iPod," said one source, a high-level manager who asked to remain anonymous. "It's pretty staggering."

The source estimated 80 percent of Microsoft employees have a music player -- that translates to 16,000 iPod users among the 25,000 who work at or near Microsoft's corporate campus. "This irks the management team no end," said the

source.

So popular is the iPod, executives are increasingly sending out memos frowning on its use.

Of course, Microsoft's software is used by dozens of competing music players from manufacturers like Creative Technology, Rio and Sony. Its Windows Media Audio, or WMA, format is supported by several online music stores, including

Napster, Musicmatch and Wal-Mart. Microsoft's PlaysForSure program markets this choice as a boon for consumers.

Nonetheless, Apple's iPod commands 65 percent of the portable player market, and its online iTunes Music Store 70 percent of online music sales, according to Apple.

"These guys are really quite scared," said the source of Microsoft's management. "It shows how their backs are against the wall.... Even though it's Microsoft, no one is interested in what we have to offer, even our own

employees."

So concerned is management, owning an iPod at Microsoft is beginning to become impolitic, the manager said. Employees are hiding their iPods by swapping the telltale white headphones for a less conspicuous pair.

"Some people are a bit concerned about being traitors, not supporting the company," he said. "They're a bit stealth about it."

How "stealth" varies from division to division. At the company's Macintosh Business Unit, which publishes a wide range of software for the Mac, owning an iPod is almost de rigueur.

But at the Windows Digital Media Group, which is charged with software for portable players and the WMA format, using an iPod is not a good career move.

"In the media group they all smoke the company dope on that one," the manager said.

Mary Jo Foley, editor of Microsoft Watch, said she had no knowledge of the iPod's popularity on Microsoft's campus, but has noticed a lot of iPod chatter among Microsoft's legions of bloggers.

"I have seen lots of Softies blog about it," she wrote in an e-mail.

Microsoftie Chris Anderson, for example, just blogged about buying himself an iPod, three days after buying his wife one.

"I couldn't resist anymore," he wrote. "The industrial design on the iPod is absolutely amazing. The usability of the device is light-years beyond anything else I've seen."

Robert Scoble, who calls himself the "Microsoft Geek Blogger" and is one of the company's most widely read and vocal mouthpieces, sometimes appears obsessed with the iPod.

He recently penned an open letter to Bill Gates about how to build an iPod-killer (first thing: start a blog). "Even I want an iPod," he confessed.

The Microsoft manager said he's heard from several executives who dutifully bought Microsoft-powered players, tried them, failed to get them working, and returned them in favor of an iPod. He went through the same experience, he said.

He had no idea if Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, own iPods -- he's never seen what gadgets they use. "I've never seen either of them with any device, but I only see them in meetings," he said.

"There are frequent communications within the company about why it's a bad choice," the manager said. "So many people have chosen the iPod, executives feel they should send out memos about it."

For example, an internal e-mail circular sent to several senior managers in mid-December talked about iPod shipments to Apple's nearby store in Bellevue1.

The e-mail said: "FWIW, the gal at the Bellevue Square Apple Store said that they are getting in two shipments of 200 iPods every day to keep up with this week's demand, and are nearly constantly selling out."

The note prompted a curt reply from Dave Fester, general manager of the Windows Digital Media division, who wrote the group: "I sure hope Microsoft employees are not buying iPods. We have great alternatives. Check out http://experiencemore."

Fifteen minutes later, the manager responded: "I don't know what I was thinking. I'm sure that Microsoft employees are not buying iPods, or Macs or PlayStations."

In 2003, Fester stirred up considerable controversy claiming Apple is locking in consumers with proprietary file formats, despite Microsoft's long history of using the same tactic.

As for hiding his own iPod use, the manager said he flaunts his iPod, despite the constant comments -- and occasional arguments -- it prompts.

"I don't really care if it pisses them off," he said. "I'll argue why they're doing it wrong. If you want me to stop using it, give me a product that works and is as easy to use."

Neither Apple nor Microsoft responded to requests for comment.

Wierd News

[Billabong81 0]

Hah! I have an iPod and personally love it .

[blackdog~ 0]

I do not have an MP3 player.

I do not use my cell phone.

Perhaps these things are for people with social lives, or something.

[Odin -AEF-Kampa- 0]

Perhaps these things are for people with social lives, or something.

Whats that ?

[shinRaiden 0]

Sigh, it goes around in cycles. On the engineering side of the house, you have lower-level managers and team leaders who understand the need to get the job done fast and right, and use whatever rational means necessary. For that reason, in one group in Sustained Engineering, a manager stated that only white-box machines would be authorized, no big-label machines due to the inflexibility, increased downtime, and cost overhead. And it worked.

50~75% of the employees in that Windows testing group had Linux on one or more machines to learn systems management on their own in between test cycles. The platform was not generally business essential, but the exercise was invaluable for engineering skills enhancement, and thus was overlooked.

Employees rolled their own systems and lived 'real' dogfood, not the current spoonfed mush. People's email would go down, and managers would get cranky. But you were expected to come to the table with some idea of the likely problem and possible solutions, and you had better have worked through the issue before you got summoned to the war room.

Now, things are different. http://netsec runs things with an iron hand. They're so paranoid of Longhorn pics getting out that there's a phyiscal network blackhole around the upper 20's buildings. If you're a poor sap running the official AV suite and click on the wrong link with the official browser and get a virus, your tap is turned off and your machine is ordered wiped. No exceptions, recovery-quarantine not allowed. Heaven help you if they don't like what they see when they run the routine SMS bots on your machines.

Even the entire XP key system is sent to sleep with the fishies. You have to get manager approval to activate more than 3 desktops or one server, and your keys only work with the internal auth servers, and are matched to your user account. The DFS http://products is still there for those who know how to work it, but it's slowly being purged to the internal MS Catalog.

Even Sharepoint Server is another issue. Prior to Sharepoint, each dept rolled their own, but with the number of wannabe sql and ASP junkies and Excel whizkids it generally wasn't trouble for small teams. Sync'ing data and making group level reports was a nightmare though, and folks would routinely get publically chewed out by brianv. Sharepoint was billed as the end-all to fix that, protect the data, and sync it all up.

The real effect is this: data ACL's are now mandatory and audited. They know where your data is and what you're doing with it. You still need people to manage it all, only they need to be technical writers, XML designers, and Infopath monkeys. There's a lot of empty sites because the overhead is too much for a lot of teams. They ought to be on their hands and knees thanking billg that he hasn't moved them to Siebel, yet...

jallchin, that guy's got issues. Mad Hatter on crack. The W2K completion video he made of him dissing the competition's receptionists and assaulting a penguin in their parking lots with a baseball bat was rather tasteless and offensive.

My hat's off to the little guys in the trenches. They beat their heads against the wall making components that they know are designed only for the quircks of the REDMOND domain, or are ordered to do it that way by legal so they can hijack the appeals process. Remember how the formerly independent IE got grandfathered in as an essential OS component?

My real pity though is for the solutions services group. When all your coworkers are in Bangalore, and you're expected to keep their hours and your clients... sigh. One rule of thumb was "yes, the employment contract says 60 minute break for lunch. Your boss also reminds you in the followup email to your daily helpdesk performance audit that you have a mandatory 20min response time. That's why it's a good idea to keep a couple boxes of poptarts in your tech bag you work the halls with, because that's all the lunch and break you get, or at least until the cafeteria closes.

[EiZei 0]

Meh, I prefer to carry my music in my cell phone (the infamous N-gage, what people don't realize however that it's the only decent sub-100e smartphone) rather than lug an overpriced mp3 player with me.

Not that im against apple or anything, the things I could do for a brand new mac mini..

[kerosene 0]

Only thing about the iPod, after your 1 year guarantee, thats it, anything other than a batery running down will not be fixed, you can buy a refurbished model as a replacement, mabye.

Apple should take down their page on after-sales service and replace it with a scanned drawing of a raised middle finger, cause that's what it amounts to.

[Colossus 2]

Who can resist against a music player (where you can store anything) that has a 40Gb hardriver?

You can put alot of OFP addons on it

The only minus with a iPod is the battery capacity.

[Donnervogel 0]

Only thing about the iPod, after your 1 year guarantee, thats it, anything other than a batery running down will not be fixed, you can buy a refurbished model as a replacement, mabye.

Apple should take down their page on after-sales service and replace it with a scanned drawing of a raised middle finger, cause that's what it amounts to.

My store gives me 2 years guarantee... my iPod is running daily for over a year now and no problems. Battery still working flawlessly. Nothing to complain about.

@eizei

I have yet to see a low prized mobile phone that can handle 20 GB or more of data.

[EiZei 0]

I have yet to see a low prized mobile phone that can handle 20 GB or more of data.

Well.. I can settle for 1GB only though.

[Tex -USMC- 0]

Yeah, that's a bitch that Microsoft employees are buying iPods rather than Microsoft's own mp3 play- wait a second.

[denoir 0]

Who can resist against a music player (where you can store anything) that has a 40Gb hardriver?

Me. The advantage with an mp3 player is that you can make them without any moving parts. You're kind of missing the point by putting in a hard-drive in one.

I don't need to carry around 40gb of mp3's on the subway to work. Half a gig or so on a flash memory card, is quite enough and the remaining 100 gigs of mp3's you have on your much safer hard drive on your computer.

The only bonus point with iPod is that it has a fairly clean and usable interface. But so does my old rio 500 - and it weighs far less and I can use it to test Newton's laws of gravity - without breaking it - or even disrupt the playing music.

[theavonlady 2]

Horrors!

[miles teg 1]

Same here. For $50 I got a nice little 256meg USB memory stick that has a built in mp3 player, headphone input, radio, and recorder that can record voice or record straight off the radio. I absolutely love it! I only need to carry around a few CD's worth of music anyways, and when I get bored of those songs I just swap them out for some other mp3's in my collection which are mostly mp3 conversions of my old CD collection as well as stuff from independent artists off of the old mp3.com site. It also only uses one AAA battery which lasts for a long time.

In short, it kicks ass! Screw I-POD.

Chris G.

aka-Miles Teg<GD>

[Colossus 2]

As you see, I'm brainwashed by Apple

Quote[/b] ]headphone input, radio, and recorder that can record voice or record straight off the radio.

All of this can be done on a iPod

Quote[/b] ]I don't need to carry around 40gb of mp3's on the subway to work. Half a gig or so on a flash memory card, is quite enough and the remaining 100 gigs of mp3's you have on your much safer hard drive on your computer.

It's not suitable for everyone. You really don't have to use all the space for music, you can have any kind files on it.

I can agree that maybe 40Gb is a bit over the edge.

But it's a advantage to have that kinds of space. If were to move, for example, all your OFP addons on another computer without burning a CD

I would be doing that with my iPod.

EDIT:

Quote[/b] ]The other advantage is that I don't have to chose the 100MB of music I want to listen to at home. I can have all my ~6GB of music with me whereever I am an then chose what to listen to depending on my mood or whatever. I don't have to care everyday what collection of music to take with me.

That's because you have a small music collection. Mine is currently about 90 Gb which wouldn't fit on any of the iPaq models anyway.

If you have 90 Gb of music, what kind of file-type are they?

[theavonlady 2]

If were to move, for example, all your OFP addons on another computer without burning a CD

I would be doing that with my iPod.

Are you playing the OFP Xtra Slim Edition?

[Donnervogel 0]

I don't need to carry around 40gb of mp3's on the subway to work. Half a gig or so on a flash memory card, is quite enough and the remaining 100 gigs of mp3's you have on your much safer hard drive on your computer.

uhmm well for you maybe. For me the iPod serves for two main purposes. It's an external harddrive I can use for taking data with me to uni or back home. (atm I am carrying my diploma thesis which is around 12 GB with all the additional data and even programs I need to work on it)

The other advantage is that I don't have to choose the 100MB (or 256) of music I want to listen to. I can have all my ~6GB of music with me wherever I am and then choose what to listen to depending on my mood or whatever. I don't have to care everyday about which collection of music to take with me.

Quote[/b] ] But so does my old rio 500 - and it weighs far less and I can use it to test Newton's laws of gravity - without breaking it - or even disrupt the playing music.

I wouldn't call my 20GB iPod heavy at all. I don't even notice it when I'm carrying it in the inside pocket of my jacket. I do my daily running for the bus and train with it and everything. No problems and I never had any disruptions. It survived every fall to the ground so far. And knowing my clumsy fingers it's not very rare that that happens.

[kerosene 0]

I had the 5 gig, which was ample. plus one of my friends has a 2meg internet connection, so it was useful for moving stuff around, without having to burn a cd. I'd get a 10 gig if I get another - Although I think 15gig might be the minimum now.

The reason I prefer the hard drive option is cause you stick tons of stuff on there and not have to change it for a really long time, that and playlists.

[denoir 0]

I can agree that maybe 40Gb is a bit over the edge.

On the contrary, it's way too small. Since you're already carrying a bloody hard drive, why not make it a proper sized one - say 200-300 GB.

I see iPod as the worst of both worlds - you don't have enough space for proper file strorage, yet you carry around a HD with movable parts.

As for transporting files, well, I really don't have that problem. First off, both at home and at work I have a 100 Mbit line, which is enough for most things. Friends and family all have at least 10 Mbit connections. Should everything else fail, I have my laptop.

Quote[/b] ]The other advantage is that I don't have to chose the 100MB of music I want to listen to at home. I can have all my ~6GB of music with me whereever I am an then chose what to listen to depending on my mood or whatever. I don't have to care everyday what collection of music to take with me.

That's because you have a small music collection. Mine is currently about 90 Gb which wouldn't fit on any of the iPaq models anyway. Plus you don't get away with uploading shit to the device as you always have to upload your new stuff anyway.

On the rio I have 256 mb which is enough for 3-4 albums. Since I'm on the subway for oh, say 20 minutes, 3-4 albums are more than enough. And I get some 15 hours from a single AA battery.

Quote[/b] ]uhmm well for you maybe. For me the iPod serves for two main purposes. External Harddrive I can use for taking data with me to uni or back home.

There are far better, faster, bigger dedicated external HD's that you can buy for that purpose. But that is outdated anyway. Get a good internet connection instead.

[Donnervogel 0]

I might have a small music collection, but that's because I only keep music on the IPod I listen to ;) And what you can't do with 256 Mb of music (only) is what I do. I leave the house in a depressed mood. Then I listen to some dark music maybe. Would I have a 256MB flash memory thingy I would have taken some dark music with me. During the day I meet a beautiful girl, have some talks with her. Now I'm cheered up and want to listen to completly different music. No problem with my iPod. I the past I used mp3 CD Discman. Then I often was disappointed because I didn't have the right music for my mood with me.

I often have such mood "swings" and then I am happy to have the abillity to chose the right music.

Quote[/b] ]There are far better, faster, bigger dedicated external HD's that you can buy for that purpose. But that is outdated anyway. Get a good internet connection instead.

Well I can't listen to music with dedictated harddrives ;) and I don't need a bigger or faster one. The iPod is just perfect for my needs. And I can't use a good internet connection for the same things because not every computer at uni allows me to connect to my home computer and download from it. Also I would have to spend lot's of money more for my electricity bill at the end of the month because I would have to keep the computer running.

You might have other demands and thus the iPod isn't the right solution for you. For me it's one of my best investments in recent years. There wans't a single day I regreted to buy it. I'm completly satisfied and I didn't experience any problems despite extensive usage. All I wanted to point out is that there don't have to be any problems. Sure there can be problems with it. But it doesn't mean the iPod doesn't take any blows and breaks down on the spot.

[denoir 0]

I often have such mood "swings" and then I am happy to have the abillity to chose the right music.

It's not an iPod that you need

Quote[/b] ]You might have other demands and thus the iPod isn't the right solution for you.

I'm not surprised that it suits some people's needs, but I am surprised over the wide success of it. To me it seems as a flawed concept. Actually, HD mp3 players came about the same time as flash-memory based. And until the iPod boom, they were generally (IMO rightfully) considered inferior, due to their bulkier size and moving parts.

[Daddl 10]

hd players are very good if you either need to transport huge amounts of data on a regular base and don't want to burn a few dvds each time, or if you are not just commuting but actually travelling longer distances. You can carry all the music/audiobooks you want and in addition to that all the data you need. Even as a communter you don't need to switch the audio files on your player every few days - you can simply carry them all with you and select what you want to hear when you want to hear it.

They're not for doing sports. Although you can very well run with them or go biking I'd rather recommend a player with flash memory - as even 1gb flash players are dead cheap nowadays.

I got me a 20gb iRiver hd player (H-120) over a year ago - and I've put it to good use. A flash player (even with 1gb) would never have been enough for my needs. I usually carry about 10gb of music and audiobooks, 2gb of tools and backups, and keep the rest free for when I need it to transfer data (often 7-8gb). No need for dvds or a second external hd. And with USB 2.0 and simple plug&play it works fast, with Linux, Win32 & Macs - and without the need for drivers. Very usefull!

[Colossus 2]

If were to move, for example, all your OFP addons on another computer without burning a CD

I would be doing that with my iPod.

Are you playing the OFP Xtra Slim Edition?

My OFP folder is only 7,11 Gb

I can agree that maybe 40Gb is a bit over the edge.

On the contrary, it's way too small. Since you're already carrying a bloody hard drive, why not make it a proper sized one - say 200-300 GB.

How the heck could they put a 200-300 Gb HD in a small iPod??

It's designed to fit your pocket, I have had a 40 Gb HD on my computer and that HD is pretty big.

It's really incredible that they actually can make a 40-60 Gb HD on such a small device, don't you think?

I mean if we were in the 90's now it wouldn't even been possible to make these kinds of HD's.

[Gadger 0]

The IPOD is perfect for me, when moving from home to unviersity and back again, it lets me just copy my entire hard drive without the need of countless cd's/dvd's.

[EiZei 0]

I can agree that maybe 40Gb is a bit over the edge.

On the contrary, it's way too small. Since you're already carrying a bloody hard drive, why not make it a proper sized one - say 200-300 GB.

How the heck could they put a 200-300 Gb HD in a small iPod??

It's designed to fit your pocket, I have had a 40 Gb HD on my computer and that HD is pretty big.

It's really incredible that they actually can make a 40-60 Gb HD on such a small device, don't you think?

I mean if we were in the 90's now it wouldn't even been possible to make these kinds of HD's.

Actually, I could just run over to the nearest computer store and get a 2.5" 100GB hard disk for less than 200 euros atm.

However, I find microdrives to be more interesting in this regard, gigabytes of capacity and much smaller than ipods.

Ok, not really, I actually could hardly afford my "new" display adapter, radeon 9550 for 63 euros.