Is crippling Hotmail the only response Microsoft has for iPad?

In a previous post I examined the seemingly awkward posture of Microsoft in not responding to the need for a Microsoft Word-class word processor on the iPad. Today, I am just wondering if the "once-was" giant has dug in even deeper into a seeming iPad resentment.

You may have seen this Boston Globe interview of Bill Gates on the iPad. It nearly made me puke. This guy was my hero, you know, until that day. You can go see it here. I really don't know what is going on with Microsoft. This company once had their shares trading at $120. Today, it's scarcely $26. So, it's not like I am the only one who is restive about how this company is run. Perhaps, I am the only one not doing enough about it. I have believed in Microsoft for so long that I am not willing to face the possibility that glares me in the face. I still have my meagre RRSP savings in there, un-divested! I know! And my core competencies are built around Microsoft technologies.

It was disappointing for me to find, at least as an investor that Microsoft would not produce any Office product for the iPad at launch. Little did I know that that would not be the worst. My sister, Deborah Ilechukwu was arriving Edmonton from Abuja-Frankfurt, but was not on the expected airplane. I went to Hotmail online on my iPad because I needed to search my mail into a few weeks back to pull the record locator so that the airline could help me with info on Debo's whereabouts. I had gone to Hotmail when the iPad just arrived and it worked just fine. To my deepest chagrin, I realized that the iPad browser was now being redirected to use some crippled web page designed for the dumbest phone browsers. It supported no search, it was obtuse in every way. There was no option to display the full page, as most serious sites would offer you. I dug around and found a month-old story: Microsoft claimed that Hotmail would not work well on iPad browser and is trying to fix the problem. In the meantime, they would redirect iPad to mobile phone UIs.
I am really beginning to feel that I am backing the wrong horse here. When an animal is too obese to respond to brush fire, it usually gets roasted in it. If you had 3 months to respond to the iPad and you are still trying to even understand what that is, six months after, I think some rot needs being cleaned out in there. Three months should have been enough to even rewrite the entire Hotmail. This is the only online email service I know that fails on the iPad.
I just hope Microsoft is not boycotting the iPad. Notice: the iPad is no Netscape, you know. The world has changed. You have rested on your fat behinds long enough with the confidence that no one can replace Windows. You fail to realize that no one is talking about replacing Windows any more. The automobile never replaced the hot air ballon as a means of transportation.
I hear all the desperate reorg going on at Microsoft mobile. I think you need a reorg even down to the bone. When you are morbidly obese to the point that you cannot respond to a flame held to your feet, 20 minutes of treadmill will not do it. You need a more invasive surgery for starters.

Location:190 St NW,Edmonton,Canada

Hello Docs.com

I read the exciting announcement today, by Facebook CEO, that Microsoft and Facebook are collaborating to host docs.com, an online document sharing platform based on Microsoft Office 2010. 


For nearly a year, Microsoft has been testing the concept of putting Microsoft Office on the Internet with the Office Online initiative. Office Online was based based on Microsoft Office 2010 whose desktop versions were scheduled for release in early to Middle 2010. But all along, I wasn't sure how quickly or how well  the Office in the cloud concept would catch on. Again, I didn't know how the platform would work for persons that don't have Office installed locally. The little I remember of the beta product, it was like it still uses rendering engines available on your local machine from the Office mother ship, which sort of limited its appeal as a cloud-based document platform like Google docs.


Now, this announcement of docs.com with its deep Facebook integration is really a good thing for Microsoft. First, it launches an Office alternative on a generic, distributed platform and second,  it logs right into the FaceWitter (facebook+twitter) mentality of our day. I hope it works out for Microsoft and for Facebook. If it does, the Facebook platform will change drastically into a collaborative platform for productivity not just for fun and games. 


I see a few huddles, though: The current docs.com website is a Silverlight site. The controls that render those Office docs are Silverlight controls. This can be a problem for mobile system users on non-Flash, non-Silverlight platforms. Lots of Facebook users are on the move and casual. Many of them use mobile phone apps to connect to Facebook and a significant number of these don't have Flash or Silverlight. Notable among these are the iPhone and iPad.


In a previous post, I spoke about how disappointed I was that Microsoft did not release iPad apps for Microsoft Office. With this new move towards docs.com, it's perfectly possible to use docs.com on the iPad just as easily as using it on the desktop. The only catch is that the iPad does not support Silverlight, which the docs.com site requires. I think that docs.com can really fly well on the wings of the iPad but Microsoft will have to think seriously about supporting the iPad. To do this, they would have to create an iPad compatible HTML5 version of docs.com in the minimum or just go on and show some leadership with this new emerging web standard altogether.


So, hello, docs.com! What do you have for the modern user?

The iPad era: Is Microsoft hard of hearing, or just too heavy to respond?

As a Microsoft shareholder, I have reason to be concerned. I really do. When everything else around you is moving and you choose to stand still, you make a big target. Worse still, if you are a large one. 

I will dispense with the background quickly: On January 27, 2010, Apple announced a new breed of computing devices called the iPad. Launch date was set for end of March and the item was available in stores on April 3. This thing has no need for a pointing device, no need for third party chips, no need for Windows and actually, no need for any of the things that make normal computers dove-tail into some Microsoft service.

In the 2-month period between the announcement and release, so many companies jumped on and designed something that would take advantage of the iPad. Till today, I have heard nothing coming from Microsoft. At first, I was like ... "Microsoft can't be so stupid as to ignore this. They have to have Word, Excel and PowerPoint out there on day 1. They can't afford the risk of Office devotees discovering Pages, Numbers and Keynote." But what do I know? Launch day came and Microsoft released and announced nothing. Nothing!

You know, there was that time when WordPerfect was king. It was great on DOS and beat WordStar hand-down, in my opinion. Most people may think that it was the greatness of Microsoft Word that killed WordPerfect. But I don't think so. I think it was WordPerfect for Windows that killed WordPerfect. The then WordPerfect Corporation did not respond well to the new world and people learned Word. And guess what? They like Word. 

No one would need to learn a new productivity app if the one they like is available on their platform of choice.

I am sure that some old soldiers at Microsoft are so callused in their joints that they don't know how to stay alive through agility. Before now, Microsoft was good at playing on its own field because it was a very large field but now, it needs to learn to strategize in a multi-faceted way. It needs to learn the times. It needs to be nimble at the feet. It needs to walkout more. 

Jealousy has no place in modern business. An old-fashioned way of thinking would go this way: "If we build for a non-Windows platform, we are encouraging it and hurting our main bread and butter. So, ignore it and use our sheer strength to suffocate the market place." And that's so sad, if you ask me! Amazon is my hero company in this regard. The iPad came head-on with Kindle, and the press sensationalized it. What did Amazon do? Sulk, wine and play the ignore game, wishing that iPad crashes and burns? No. It made an iPad-compatible Kindle. Apple played a similar genius game when they made BootCamp, a Windows-compatible apple machine. And believe me, there's little more to know about how well a company is run or how smart and nimble its execs are. By comparison, AMZN shares stood at $131.81, AAPL at $235.97, and MSFT at $29.16. When last did you see such a large company equity worth so little? Ford and GM kinda come to mind.

I have a personal investment in Microsoft and so I have an interest in advising them not to be stupid. If the iPad makes the iPhone OS the dominant breed of consumer OS, then Microsoft may be positioning itself for certain extinction. No one company has a monopoly control on what people like. A good company should always position itself well for every eventuality. 

My Great Windows Azure Idea:: A window into my lover's heart

Today, I dare reminisce on how my lover treats me. You may have such a lover too. Like, it's all feeling blissful until that rare "wait-a-minute!" moment. Then, you wonder if you've been getting the rough end of the stick all along.


Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing offering. It's like your application sitting on some platform out there, nestled on top of a highly scalable, robust and distributed (NLB + operating system + database + network + servers + domain name + buildings + air conditioning + disaster recovery + CDN + ...  'you get the idea') all wrapped in one single "pay-per-use" experience located at Microsoft-maintained data centers.

Long ago, in October/November 2008, some of us tech lunatics (as in 'madly in love with technology') were recruited by Microsoft to try out these new stuff and tell them what we think The idea was that we are the technology community and we were previewing this stuff and we say what we want, they make it happen and then they'd release the final product, and we and them will live happily ever after. Just think of it as the nerd equivalent of, "Windows 7: my idea!".We were a select few. Our idea mattered. We loved it! We worked tirelessly night and day, we poured in opinion, we made friends, we fought one another, we fought Microsoft, we defended Microsoft, champions rose and fell on the score board (rising when their answers helped others and stayed up late taking questing from another time zone, and falling when they go on vacation), people got help! People gave help! The revolutionary Azure way was on its way! Our compensation package: Pure adrenaline. Yes, Microsoft paid us in adrenaline units; the excitement of uninstalling Feb CTP to install July CTP! The uncertainty that follows if you didn't follow the uninstall/install order carefully. The sigh that follows when Pita.O or Neil Mackenzie or Yi-Lun Luo or Steve Marx or jnak (there are many other heroes of the community) gives you an answer that works. The frustration when you got the wrong answer, the diligence from re-installing, the fortitude from data corruption, calling in sick at work because you were hung over from doing too much Azure last night at home, the $200 you shelled out to get a Vista upgrade because they wouldn't put the SDK on your Windows XP. The laptop you have to lug to work because your client still insisted on Windows XP ... again, you got the idea. All pure joy! All pure adrenaline! All worth it. Lunatics, remember? After all, you were contributing to something important.

The idea was that all those opinions were heard and someone in the back office was also working day and night to consider the ideas and actually do something with them. After all, the community has spoken! After all, this would have cost Microsoft so much and would have cost the community so much too! It can't just be for nothing, right? They must be important, those ideas. Yes!

Bolstered by this feeling of relevance, we gave ideas:
(a) We want multiple roles per instance
(b) We want to make it less expensive to run my very small service on Windows Azure
(c) We want you to continue to offer Azure free for developers
(d) We want the ability to send emails right from Azure (as in local smtp server)
(e) We want a way to reschedule worker roles so they only run when needed
(f) We want you to Create a "beta" environment for.NET 4.0 tests and evaluation
(g) We want you to Provide DNS services for our domain and subdomains

But then,  these ideas and many others like them were scattered over the community space or placed on connect. There was no way of seeing, in one place, what Microsoft actually did with these ideas. So we just kept giving them!

Then, there was this top shot from Microsoft who sent surveys to a few of us, really select few! These guys can really make you feel important. Mike Wickstrand. And we responded to the surveys, all about how to make Azure better. And Mike sent back these nice appreciation letter of how they so love what you  are doing for Azure and even invited you to VIP status for the next PDC. The point being, these ideas we give are really very important to Microsoft. So, we kept giving them!!

Then, Mike goes and sets up this aptly named website called MyGreatWindowsAzureIdea.com and invited us to go aggregate these ideas there and vote on them. The concept caught on. They even pinned a redirect on the community space telling us in essence, "if you put your idea on this new ideas aggregator and it gets voted up by the community, you'll get Microsoft's listen". So, we went. And we kept giving them and voting them up!!!

Then, here's the time of reckoning! Microsoft released the commercial build of Azure on Feb 2, 2010. Then, I cast my eyes back at those great windows azure ideas we gave. The most popular ideas are captured in the list I showed you above. They have votes ranging from 266 - 1790. Yes, 1790! About 600 and 1000 early adopters of the Windows Azure platform actually spoke with one voice on an idea. It must have been accepted or even completed, right? (Note that there are tabs for "Accepted" and "Completed" on the MyGreatWindowsAzureIdea.com site.

Oh! There! There are items in the competed and accepted columns. It must be good. What? Just one item  accepted? It has 150 votes. Oh, do you know why it was moved to accepted? No, not the votes! Mike said he heard it "annouced at PDC[09]" prior to even launching the "my great windows azure ideas" site. Ok. What about the other accepted ideas? None. Right, and the completed ones? All 4 of them. Yeah!! Highest votes on each of them? Vote count: 1,2,4,58. Who are the proud authors of the "completed" ideas? Mike, Mike, Mike and ... Mike. Each and every one of them. Wait a second!! Nooooo! Each of these ideas was already implemented and deployed prior to PDC09. So, let's just call these Mike authored ideas, "Idea templates" seeded into the system to show us how the process will work.

So, last week or two, I got another questionnaire from Mike. I haven't even opened it. Maybe I should. Maybe there's a t-shirt ballot to be entered for. Maybe I should do it for the t-shirt. Man! I'd love to be paid in Microsoft t-shirt rather than sheer adrenaline. Hmmm ... could I still do it just because the ideas count for something?