“Any person even remotely associated with Microsoft should be livid, ashamed of him/herself or a mix of both,” Rocco Pendola writes for The Street. “Livid if they’re not accomplice to the company’s active and ongoing implosion. Ashamed if they have mailed it in over the last five years.”
“You’re misleading yourself if you cannot see the writing on the wall. Get ahead of the curve on this one: Microsoft is the next Research in Motion,” Pendola writes. “You can’t make a big enough deal over the travesty Microsoft contributes to in the tech space. It’s what amounts to plagiarism vs. using somebody else’s work as a source of inspiration. Tesla does the latter, Microsoft the former with respect to the Apple retail concept.”
“Walk into a Tesla store. You see something modeled after an Apple Store, however, you never feel like you’re seeing a copycat, such as the types Steve Jobs chided at one of his last product launch presentations for Apple,” Pendola writes. “Obviously, the Microsoft experiment didn’t work out well, no matter how you slice it. It certainly didn’t drive meaningful sales, save xBox… The Tesla model not only works, it looks good as an Apple-inspired concept. It’s respectable… Microsoft obviously designed most of its stores by taking photographs of an Apple Store and literally copying every last aspect. I would say ‘detail,’ but that makes it sound like Microsoft was thorough in its larceny. There are no cosmetic distinctions. None.”
Pendola writes that one “distinction that sets Apple and Tesla as retailers apart from Microsoft: Steve Jobs and Elon Musk stock their stores with beautiful and unique products that people want to touch and aspire to buy. If you have the resources to make a purchase from either store, you get in line to do it. Given the cold reception to the Surface Tablet and Windows 8, Microsoft clearly doesn’t have the ability to level the playing field in that regard… It’s impossible for retail to drive your brand and consumer experience, if your products suck. Simple as that.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For as long as it takes.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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MDN: great, great picture.
Heehaw 🙂
AAPL will go up to $829 in 2013 …
Ahhh…Stanley Kubrick, a true master.
Tesla Motors sells $100,000 suckage.
…said the testicle that wished someone had sucked it.
Don’t feed the troll.
Tesla rocks.
Musk is a man of vision. The Model S makes everything else out there look dated. It is expensive for exactly the same reason Macs are expensive. They’re the best you can get and people aspire to own them.
Testicle boy is just a dick with a Dell and just like the rest of the cretinous sheep that troll Apple news and videos.
What sucks about it, BLN? The world-leading electric range? The world-leading performance? The 5-star safety rating? The touchscreen-based operator interface?
Inquiring minds want to know…
The idiot talks his usual crap.
Go away and troll somewhere else BLN.
Neither Gates, nor Ballmer, have vision of the future. One is an accomplished bureaucrat, while the other was an effective thief. When the thief could no longer steal, he left with his riches. The other isn’t smart enough, or care enough, to recognize that he’s out of his element, and should his mentor.
But both of those chaps are aspirational exemplars of business acumen compared with the revolving-door leaders of Nokia, Research in Motion, and now HP.
Too bad that Telsa is run by a mindless twit who thinks that Google and Android will win the day b/c Larry Page is in charge and Steve Jobs is dead. We will see, Elon, who wins the day and who is a footnote in history.
Elon helped found PayPal, owns a company that beat the Aerospace giants to space on the COTS program and is producing electric cars and components for electric cars for Toyota and Daimler. I’d say he’s doing pretty damn good.
Yeah, Elon may be wrong about Apple vs. Google, but I certainly can’t knock him. Elon has already accomplished enough to not simply be a “footnote in history”. And I’m pretty sure he’s not done just yet.
Yes, Musk should really have kept his mouth shut there. Stupid comment from a guy who seems, at least in other areas, to be very smart.
His comments were thoroughly taken down in the comments to the article about his sputterings in wallstcheatsheet.
I am in awe of Telsa and Elon Musk, as much as I am of Apple and Steve Jobs. Kindred spirits.
Elon says that Google will topple Apple. My estimation of him went way down after that. And, No! He does not come close to Steve Jobs.
I’m with Elon here. Lately it has started to dawn that Apple may be running out of ideas. You cant just speed bump iPads and phones for years to come.
Note: before Forstall was let go, he was said to be sending emails to others at Apple, asking for ideas. That doesn’t sound like a good sign.
I smell that you just pulled that out of you ass…..it’s dripping too.
Apple has been making Macs for 28 years. It’s been 28 years of speed bumps and better hardware and software.
iPod, iPad and iPhone will be done the same way.
The next big thing, when it arrives, will be a new idea.
Until then it will be speed bumps and better hardware and software. WTF is wrong with that tried and true method? No other company can do that simple thing. They can do speed bumps, hardware or software, not all three.
If you think Apple with its billions in R&D spending each year doesn’t have another couple key products in the pipeline which you have never heard of you’re not following their history and the history of “launches”.
There is the launch (iPod) followed by the build-out upgrades, while other products (iPhone) come stealthily in from below with no notice.
Their terrific engineers know what products they want to see in their lives and they are designing a number of them. We will see.
Tech revolutions don’t happen every year. They didn’t under Steve either.
And it isn’t like Google is currently setting the world aflame with innovation lately either – other than having people walk around in public with prop Project Glass headsets that don’t actually work.
The revolution will NOT be televised. If you think you’ve seen it all from Apple (and all of Steve Jobs ideas), think again – the development/concept of the iPad started in 1984(!) as the entire PURPOSE of the company. There is an entire ecosystem of ideas to come now that the iPhone/iPad planet has been formed…
I had the same reaction to Musk’s comments.
I wonder what Elon thinks when he ponders the fate of his own enterprise? Some day he’ll be gone. According to his thinking, on that day it will be all over for Tesla but the shouting…
Check out the misguided responses at that article. It’s hilarious, and disturbing that there is a large part of our society that are actually THAT dumb!
Emirates thinks otherwise. They are adopting windows 8 tablets for their planes.
I would bet a good amount of money that Emitates is being paid to do so by Microsoft. Apple has never had to pay for product placement
Emirates is your example?
Yes…and American Airlines hands out Samsung tablets to Business Class passengers on some long haul flights. I think it’s foolish. When I’ve been handed a Samsung tablet by a well-meaning AA flight attendant I can’t help but wonder why AA management thinks it’s OK to give me a second class device. If they truly value me as a customer…they should give me the gold standard…an iPad.
I’m quite serious. It feels like they’re being cheap and that’s NOT the message AA (or Emirates) should be sending to their premium paying passengers.
Business class IS second class.
Buy first-class tickets if you want an iPad 🙂
While speaking with a Bell rep, they mentioned that I would be eligible to receive a Samsung Tablet if I did such and such.
I replied that Bell really didn’t put much value on my intelligence if they were not offering iPads.
The rep said, “Oh. You know your stuff.”
>Mac Plus, great visual.
BALLSMEAR is the best…EVER!
Why aren’t you getting on Google’s case for copying Apple with Android, mind you to the point of flagrant patent infringement, copying iTunes, the AppStore and even phones cases! Now I read they want to copy AirPlay too.
Like Microsoft is no worse, actually better, than Google.
““Walk into a Tesla store. You see something modeled after an Apple Store,”
Of course, Tesla retail is run by George Blankenship, formerly of Apple retail.
The funny thing is I’ve been thinking about buying a Tesla S, next year, with some of my Apple profits.