Microsoft “is now copying the Windows 7 to-market strategy across the board,” Thurrott writes. “That is, they’re not communicating anything about a product until the feature set is written in stone. So we hear nothing about things like Windows Live, Windows Phone, Kin, whatever, until it’s very close to release, too close for the company to have to scale back its plans and be embarrassed by feature cuts, as it was repeatedly with Windows Vista.”
“I know that, internally at Microsoft, many people do not agree with the direction the company is going. And all you have to do is read the tech press and, heck, the mainstream press, to see who’s getting all the press these days,” Thurrott writes. “It ain’t you, Microsoft. And that is indeed bad news.”
“And if you’re looking to copy Apple’s success–and you are–then at least do it right. It’s not about the products at all,” Thurrott writes. “What Apple does right is marketing. It’s form over function, plain and simple. How else could the world be so excited over an unnecessary over-sized iPod touch? Because it’s from Apple, that’s how. And the press markets it for them, and makes people believe that this is somehow a big deal. It’s a self-replicating back-patting, buddy system, plain and simple.”
“And you’re not part of the circle, Microsoft,” Thurrott writes. “How else can you explain the ginormous Windows 7 sales that get no attention, and certainly no love from Wall Street? You’ve sold over 100 million licenses of this thing in record time and all anyone can talk about are lost iPhones and the iPad. I mean, give me a break.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Do you think that Thurrott really believes that Apple’s many product successes are all about the marketing? That Apple’s vastly successful products are all about form over function? If so, the guy is lying to himself, not to mention vastly overestimating the power of marketing. iPad sells itself much easier and more quickly than any TV commercial or print ad by simply being placed into people’s hands. It’s then that people really want an iPad. It’s then that people realize that the machine is more than “an unnecessary over-sized iPod touch” and that anyone writing such drivel is clearly an idiot or an Apple hater (as anyone who’s heavily invested in Windows-centric websites would certainly be likely to be if they value their future income prospects).
Windows 7? Is he kidding? Nobody who’s even remotely with it gives a rat’s ass about Windows. And Wall Street rewards companies who have futures, Paul, not derivative, sloppy dinosaurs like Microsoft.
What Paul really ought to do is hurry up and start selling advance tickets to a live webcast of himself for the day when Apple passes Microsoft in total market value, so we can watch his face turn beet red and then his head pop off like a dandelion.
How in the world does this guy still have a job?
“It’s form over function, plain and simple.”
Which explains all the iPhone-like phones that are being made by other companies and are incredibly popular.
I love that he’s so pissed off that people don’t use all devices the way he would AND that he doesn’t understand that.
Truly comical.
Oh, and Paul, Windows 7 sales are far from ‘ginormous’.
Thurrott is an idiot. MSFT sold that many copies of Win7 because users couldn’t hold their WinXP machines together any longer.
The big news isn’t that MSFT sold 100 million copies, the big news is that they haven’t sold more than that.
it’s != its
that’s all I’m saying
@ChrissyOne
They actually don’t have a job. They live on the us feeding them by posting and reading their crap.
Every single person that has tried my iPad thinks it is amazing and wants one. I think that is more than just “marketing”. The window’s press just can’t grasp the concept of design value and user experience.
Also, most of those same people who want an iPad are Blackberry users who want to get an iPhone as soon as it works on Verizon.
I tried one at a Best Buy, now I want one.
You have to try one.
I always feel dumber after I read this guy’s stuff.
I don’t get Thurrott. I mean he is a smart individual but his continued attacks only shows he is Microsoft’s fanboy. Which is okay. If the iPad was Microsoft he would be Genius, Innovative, great new refreshing direction Microsoft is taking. But he seems to not understand the entire form of Apple. Apple does it right, in the way where the nerdiness is removed from the product. Maybe this hard for Thurrott because he is a nerd and isn’t getting the same love as in the 90s.
Funny he talks about Apple’s closeness, but actually Apple is more open than Microsoft. Open standards and Open Source is what powers Apple’s incredible success.
Thurott has to come to realize people love the products because of quality, secureness, ease of use, and the human interface design is all the more easier to understand.
Microsoft is a has been. 20 years from now they will be reduced to only selling Office and Exchange.
He’s just going flail about more and more wildly and he spins into irrelevance. There’s no logic or reason at work here, just a sad, vain attempt to recapture the glory days of the 90’s. At first it got my Irish up, but now it’s just funny.
Yes Paul, it’s JUST marketing. Apple’s hundreds of millions of customers are just fools that watch too much TV and don’t understand how infinitely better Windows products (and you) really are.
The iPad is unnecessary. Why? Well of course, if we had been meant to use tablets, we would already have one just like Bill said a decade ago. If we didn’t buy those crappy flip-books then God just didn’t intend for us to have them. Thank you so much for reminding us.
This from the guy who runs the single ugliest site on the web. Of course he thinks success is all marketing and ‘form’ because he understands neither.
So I’m enjoying this. A lot. The hilarious tripe that Paul writes will just get more desperate and grasping, and I’ll be laughing long and loud as I read it.
Have fun circling the bowl Paul!
And the chair tossing heard round the world. I wouldn’t want to be within a mile of Balmer’s office on that day. How about organizing a mass e-mail campaign set to begin on the day of the event at market close, sending condolences to Balmer in mass.
An oversized iPod Touch is still better than anything Microsoft puts out. Am I the only one noticing that?
One can really get exhausted with these “Microsoft decline and how not to be Bagdad Bob” support group. They all gather around a working PC and hum the Microsoft song while praying to the coding god that Apple will fail.
Yet, they walk or run past an Apple store with finger in ears yelling Window 7 sold a 100 million copies and the media conspiricy against Microsoft. All the time dragging information on anti virus, botnet listing, and system restore disks. I really think they should lose the pocket protector, slide rule, and that silly pencil they use when the computer crashes and they have to do a manual report! I guess they are the last to see and the first to fight change. Well, they may still accept a netbook made to look like an iPad with that very important stylus!
They call us crazy for using a Mac or iPad!
Why are we not agreeing with the absolutely correct conclusion that Steve is the world’s most successful marketer – ever? What’s wrong with that?
When Steve says something is ‘magical’ – then the whole world, and especially the media lemmings, report that it is, indeed, magical.
Whether or not it actually performs some kind of magic is as irrelevant as mammary glands on a boar hog.
The problem Microsoft is up against is that the only business model they have ever had was the reverse engineering of other people’s good ideas. Those ideas are no longer subject to reverse engineering and Microsoft is lost. Boo hoo.
@oo7curtis
Good point.
Also, I’m sure that if you dig, somewhere there is a Thurrott article saying that the iPod touch would be great if it only had a bigger screen..
I can tell you de river running by Thurrott’s house: it’s de Nile.
(Okay, so it’s more of a verbal pun than a visual one, but it still works.)
Thurrott and Ballmer will be the last two people able to say: “I have never tried the iPad”. Plonkers.
“How else could the world be so excited over….”
That alone expresses Thurrott’s cluelessness, and he can’t tell “its” from “it’s” either.
Thurrott probably had his article submission commission cut when M$ was laying off all those employees and retrenching. He’s merely pandering to Monkeyboy (marketing) in a poor attempt to get back on the M$ feedbag.
Sorry, Paul, but marketing will only take a product so far. At some point, the product must stand on its own virtues. The successful marketing of a weak product would result in a big initial burst of sales followed by a dramatic drop-off as the weaknesses revealed themselves. Returns would be significant. At least, that is how I see it.
@ Why – I don’t know about you, but I buy technology products because they help simplify and organize my life, so I spend less time tinkering with tools to keep them working, and just use them for their actual intended purpose.
Currently, Apple’s products do this better than anyone else’s, as anyone who tries them out can see for themselves – so Apple’s claims are indeed justified. No conspiracy theories needed to explain that.
@neo
Maybe they will sell just exchange…. open office does pretty much what almost everyone wants and its free.. And as far as exchange goes.. who knows what apple might offer by then.
im a college kid who was in need of a laptop but i didnt get one because i knew apple was coming out with a tablet device since the second i saw the iphone so i waited after my ibook broke to see what apple would do. i was really tempted for a macbook but i didnt have the money. now the ipad is out got it first day its my laptop. im in college what do i do i type papers surf the net and play games so why did i really need a 1500 dollar computer for my ipad is all i need, i made a keynote project yesterday night and i wrote 2 papers on it already. my ipad does what i need it to do. the only reason i will get a imac once i graduate and i never have to write a paper again is so i can pic up photoshop as a hobby and im gonna want to look at a 27 inch screen for that. but right now my ipad is my computer and im most certainly happy. gonna go out and get the docking keyboard and long power cable 2day then its back to the library for my 5 pg paper on sex and gender roles in the work place. i chose apple cause i know every apple product i have used just works.