“Aiming to re-create the excitement that accompanied the launch of Windows 95, Microsoft is gearing up for a massive campaign to launch Windows Vista,” Ina Fried reports for CNET News. “Chairman Bill Gates has tasked the Windows marketing team with repeating its achievements with the decade-ago launch, such as convincing scores of people to line up at retail stores to purchase the operating system… there is a team at the company’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters focused entirely on generating buzz for the OS, planning such things as having a Vista PC make Oprah Winfrey’s influential ‘favorite things’ list.”
“On the consumer side, Microsoft is focusing on digital memories, TV and movies, games, music and communications. On the small-business front, Microsoft is pitching Vista as the key to better backup and security, improved sales and marketing pitches, and improved collaboration and mobility, as well as touting it as a hub for financial management. Its big business push centers on management of PCs, security and compliance, controlling information access, and handling an increasingly dispersed work force,” Fried reports. “…Much of the energy in the computer world has shifted away from the PC and toward devices like digital cameras or the iPod. With Vista, Microsoft is hoping the PC will regain prominence as the machine that unites all of those digital devices. But unlike rival Apple Computer, which makes its own hardware and software, Microsoft must convince partners to aid it in reaching its goals.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft: Windows Vista. Everything we promised for Windows XP, 2000, NT, Me, 98, 95. Trust us, folks, this time we mean it. It’s translucent! It’s innovative! It’s super! Wow! And because you have no idea what Mac OS X is or looks like or that it came out in March 2001, you’ll lap it all up as more original ideas from Microsoft. Suckers. (laughs all the way to the bank)
Once again, why iPods (and iTunes downloads) don’t come preloaded with THIS is beyond us. Such an omission is criminal. It’d be easily deleted, unobtrusive, and Windows-only users would be able to quickly see what they’re missing.
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